HEIRLOOM STORIES ARE SIGNPOSTS

Climate Change Essays (3)

There is a story from my tribal oral tradition, which I haven’t wanted to write about.  First, it is a spoken word experience to be told the old way during winter storytelling time.  Then there is the story content, which is so layered and rich, it requires time and retelling for the understanding of the story to begin to appear. Most people will never regain the story retellings essential for learning.  In spite of my personal objections, an interesting experience happened to me amidst last year’s drought and inspired me to find a way to begin to share guiding precepts from the epic story of Hummingbird Boy.

This past spring at Hamaatsa, seeds from a planting in late fall of the previous year sprouted.  A deep trench had been dug and then fine arroyo sand filled the long narrow row.  Flowering plants producing pollen are crucial for our honeybee’s maintaining a healthy hive.  The Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, known to me as Gua’kuu in my Keresan language, is one such amazing flowering pollinator plant with many uses. 

Its’ leaves are nutritious as a food.  Cooked into a paste, it can be applied to clay pottery used much like ink for decoration and then when the clay is fired the ink-paint becomes permanent.  Once rooted, Gua’kuu is prolific and can quickly become established even in arid areas.  

I was excited when I saw a row of sprouting plants popping through the deep sand.  My excitement was short lived when the following day in the twenty-foot row only two plants remained.  Rodents, maybe ground squirrels, burrowing mice, cottontail rabbits, or possibly even birds, may have helped themselves to a feast of new greens in the bleak drought ridden spring we were having.  Still, only two little plants poked through the sand.  I was astonished to keep seeing the two baby plants surviving from day to day.  At last a sigh of relief when one of the stalks reached a height of eight inches.  Eventually, I quit watching their progress so closely.  One week passed before I was in their area again.  How could I have missed what I was seeing so beautifully before me?  One strong stalk, three feet tall with a single brilliant lavender ball of bloom waving gently in the morning light!  

I stood frozen in place at what I was seeing as I remembered: This is the flower that Hummingbird Boy finds in that epic story of drought! The plant emerges through a small, very round two-inch hole in the earth.  It looks just like this one!   In the story, the People are given the way to start over.  Now in this parched dry land right here at Hamaatsa, I received my own personal experience bearing witness to how potent these heirloom stories are. I realized that I’ve managed to hold on to them by telling them over and over again, even into these changing climate times.

All people the world over have their stories.  Spoken words are part of the cultures and become part of their languages and traditions.  There must have been a time when man was rich with Language.  Printed literature is really very new to humans.  It can become very misleading and like other great discoveries, very dangerous when corrupted.   All great stories tell about human susceptibility to corruption and loss of integrity.  A quick personal check whoever we are, is to answer truthfully, “When and where and with whom, did I last listen to a story that revealed insights into the ebb and flow of human actions that make up a known personal journey that connects me to who I am right now?” 

Hummingbird Boy is one of those stories. It reveals who humans are when they are connected to one another through their connection to all that lives and dies.  It brings understanding of how disconnections come about and the near impossible task to reconnect.  It also reveals how every culture and racial group of people are attempting in their own ways to regain their former connectivity. 

The story intimates the distance and timeframe necessary for the human mind to comprehend the immensity of human endeavor to regain a sensibility for restoring a divine and harmonious order. I believe it’s a sacredness that can only be called the Mind of God.

Throughout the Americas are story deposits divinely located like signposts pointing the way.  Many Indigenous people are still able to share, at least one to another, these stories, which give direction. It’s unfortunate that the light skinned ones leading the return to these so-called new worlds have been such spoiled children with their eyes and appetites focused on obtaining rich resources in the earth.  This resulted in one of the greatest natural resources of these lands to slip through the fingers of greed and delay the true wealth that belongs to all people to be gathered and shared.  It does make for a true-shared story of trauma.  

Hmmmm.  Maybe this is why the search for a Listener?  Someone who can use their time to sit around a small fire and one day discover a boy that is a hummingbird.

Photo Credits: Deborah Littlebird, courtesy of Hamaatsa; USDA Forest Service.