Buffalo Woman Comes Singing

PROLOGUE

Although this story is my story, told through the metaphors of my own personal experience, my hope is that it is more than just a personal recounting. My prayer is that it will stimulate understanding, growth, and healing in your own life, which in turn offers healing to our Mother Earth. In this time of our maturing as a species of two-leggeds (humans), the messages, the spirit, the energy of our great teachers is calling to be lived out into the world through our own bodies and our own experience, through you as well as through me. I call my work EMBODYING SPIRIT, in honor of this understanding.

In thinking about this, I want to share with you a song I wrote some time ago with one of my spiritual benefactors:

THE RETURNING

White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman is a day woman,

a day woman,

a woman of Light.

Her Lightness makes her white,

shows her white,

crystal bright.

We want her here,

we call her here,

White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman

Buffalo Woman of Light.

Through my heart she comes;

she comes

in soft white glow,

she shines out

through my heart,

Buffalo heart,

Buffalo Hat,

Sacred Tipi.

White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman

is returning through me.

This song speaks to that very experience—of embodying the energies of the great teachings, which is not only mine but many others’ as well. Within the last two years, I have had women of every race and walk of life come to me saying, There has been a woman in my dreams, a beautiful native woman walking beside a white buffalo, who seems to be calling me. This is puzzling, because I don’t know what this image means. Yet I sense it is a very important message. Can you help me understand? And thus it is that White Buffalo Woman comes singing into our present experience.

So that you might know and understand her song more deeply, let me briefly share her story. For more depth, read Joseph Eppes Brown’s The Sacred Pipe, in which he shares the account from Black Elk, the Lakota holy man, visionary, and leader who died in the early 1950s; or the beautiful artistic rendering of that same story in Vera Louise Drysdale’s The Gift of the Sacred Pipe.

A long, long time ago our Lakota people—now popularly known as Sioux, a nation of Plains Indian tribes now living primarily on reservations in the Dakotas—lived settled, agrarian lives in the woodlands, and came out onto the Prairies to hunt buffalo. Two young men from a small hunting encampment were out scouting across the rolling hills covered with long, soft grasses waving in the breeze. They moved with focused awareness—on the lookout for game or the presence of other people, possibly enemies. Their practiced eyes swept the horizon. Suddenly they noticed, in the far distance, something moving. They stopped and looked more closely, aware that a strange aura seemed to surround whatever was there.

The mysterious figure was coming directly toward them, and as it approached, the two scouts could see that it was a two-legged (a human being), still surrounded by a bright and beautiful light. They watched in fascination as this person came closer, and soon perceived it to be a woman with long flowing hair, who carried a bundle of some sort on her back.

The men in this archetypal story were two very different sorts. The first man looked upon her with lust. He saw that not only was she a woman, she was a beautiful woman. And not only was she a beautiful woman, she was alone and undefended. He went toward her with intent to take advantage of her. And this mysteriously radiant woman opened her arms and her shawl and drew him to her. The other young man simply watched and saw a mist swirl about and surround them, and after a while, when the prairie breezes blew away the mist, he saw the woman open her arms. What fell from them were his companion’s skull and bones. The bleached skeleton fell into the dirt—some even say that snakes crawled through it. The bones then crumbled into dust, and were scattered by the winds. Thus was his selfish intention broken apart and dispelled.

The second young man, the kind of person my people call a true warrior, looked with awe upon this beautiful, mysterious woman and her powers. As with all true warriors, his intent was not to harm or take for himself, but to serve All Our Relations, and the whole Circle of Life. Seeing her power and beauty, he wished to share her with his people. And so he spoke to her, saying, Oh, woman of power and mystery, will you come and teach my people?

Yes, she replied to the good man. Go before me to prepare a lodge [tipi], and I will come.

And he did this, gathering the people of his camp in an enormous lodge made of the skins of many tipis. So she came among them, revealing from her bundle the catlinite pipe with a long wooden stem, whose high purpose is use in sacred rites to bring about a reunion with all things in the Circle of Life—a re-membering of ourselves as one with all things, with All Our Relations.

Holding the stem of the pipe toward the heavens, she said, "With this sacred pipe you will walk upon the Earth; for the Earth is your Grandmother and Mother, and She is sacred. Every step that is taken upon Her should be as a prayer. The bowl of this pipe is of red stone; it is the Earth. Carved in the stone bowl and facing the center is this buffalo calf who represents all the four-leggeds who live upon your Mother, The stem of the pipe is of wood, and this represents all that grows upon the Earth. And these twelve feathers, which hang here where the stem fits into the bowl, are from Wanbli Galeshka, the Spotted Eagle, and they represent the eagle and all the wingeds of the air. All these peoples, all the things of the universe, are joined to you who smoke the pipe. All send their voices to Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit. When you pray with this pipe, you pray for and with everything."

This version of the story comes from Black Elk’s account in The Sacred Pipe, recorded by Joseph Eppes Brown.

White Buffalo Woman reminded the people then, and reminds us today, of the intricate web of life of which we are a part, and that our honoring of the holiness—the wholeness—of that web is the only way we will be able to move through this crucial time into a new era of harmony, beauty, and abundance. Her words spoke of each thing and each day as holy, and thus to be treated by us as such. Creator’s law of oneness, given us when the world was formed, is that we must be in good relationship with all things and all beings—with All Our Relations.

The phrase, All Our Relations, is used to represent the full Circle of Sacred Life, of which we are a part. This sacred circle includes not only two-legged relatives of all colors and persuasions, but also all the peoples with four legs, those with wings and fins, the green standing (tree and plant) people, the mineral and stone people, those that live within and crawl upon the Earth, those in the starry realms, and those ancestors who have gone beyond, as well as those children of generations to come. Everything, both known and unknown, is included in this phrase of wholeness and holiness. The corollary to creator’s law, brought by this mysterious holy woman, is that whatever we do to any other thing in the great web of life, we do to ourselves, for we are one.

When she left the people and walked out over the prairie, one of her final acts in the far distance was to roll in a buffalo wallow—a hollowed-out place in the ground, made by buffalo rolling. When the dust cleared and she ran off again across the prairie, the people saw that she had become a white buffalo calf. Thus, those Lakota named this mysterious holy woman, White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman. And she continued to communicate with them through visions she sent—visions that guided and gifted them with new and powerful rituals for living in harmony. She is to us Elder Sister, who first appeared a very long time ago, calling us to live a life of deep ecology upon Mother Earth, for ourselves and the generations of children who follow us. It is obvious that she continues to send visions to us in this modern time. The critical nature of the issues we two-leggeds have brought upon Earth call White Buffalo Woman to speak now with special urgency to people of all colors and religions, to awaken truth and harmony within us all.

I, as many others, have heard within myself and my visions the pulsing rhythm of her song, its truthfulness and beauty. I have answered that call through my own continuous learning and transformation, and through sharing those understandings I have reached with others who have, in turn, called out to me. My story, and your story if you so choose, is one tiny part of the unfolding of White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman’s story, a small yet significant part of our coming into oneness with All Our Relations.

This song came to me as a part of that learning and sharing:

Buffalo Woman is calling. Will you answer her?

Buffalo Woman is calling. Will you answer her?

She’s calling light; she’s calling peace.

She’s calling Spirit; she’s calling you.

Buffalo Woman is calling. Will you answer her?

Buffalo Woman is calling. Will you answer her?

Buffalo Woman is calling. Will you answer her?

She’s calling light; she’s calling peace.

She’s calling Spirit; she’s calling you.

Buffalo Woman is calling. I will answer her!

       We will answer her!

I have been answering her in my own way, and you will answer her in yours. This book is a sharing of part of my quest to embody these teachings and share them with others. A primary note in the song of all my questing has been a search for the ancient truths that ring down through time to form a foundation for present and future truths, from wherever these might come. I am drawn more intensely to the truly old ways of my native people than to the teachings of many modern elders who have been deeply influenced from childhood by outside cultures, foreign religions, and values. I am more interested in the spirit of ancient living tradition rather than in the set forms and structures of any one period. What you will find here may be more real than romantic, more experience than ideal; more universal than Native American. And yet, through it all, I hope the ancient truths I have found will speak.

Although my racial background contains Native American blood of several tribes through both my mother and father, and I am on the official tribal rolls of the Crow people—the registry of all those who belong to a given tribe—I am a mixed blood, a métis (a French word for half); thus, in common terms, I am a half-breed. This has been both a challenge and a gift, making it less than comfortable in either world, and yet creating within me the metaphor of the rainbow bridge, which has become my outward teaching. Spiritual elders have indicated to me that I will never have a traditional form—that mine will be a formless form that breaks through form into Spirit.

As is respectful among Native peoples, the names of people, sacred places, articles, and lineages have been purposely fogged to protect those concerned. After all, the specific people and location of the stories are not so important as the lessons learned through our interaction—lessons that, hopefully, will stimulate your awareness of the great songs of truth wanting to sing out through you.

My continuing prayer for you and for All My Relations is that we will listen to White Buffalo Woman as she comes singing a holy song among us, and that we learn to live her truths through our lives for the benefit of All Our Relations.

Ho!

INTRODUCTION

In our present time of ecological and social crisis, all of humanity is looking for new ways to move forward, ways that will solve current problems without creating new ones (as we have in the past with gasoline engines and other technological advances). One place it has been obvious to turn is the native peoples of our lands, whose ancient ways reveal a deep ecology that is at once both physical and spiritual, even though their practice is varied in the hundreds of tribes on this continent. These ancient teachings call us to turn primary attention to the Sacred Web of Life, of which we are a part and with which we are so obviously entangled.

This quality of attention—paying attention to the whole—is called among my people holiness. Holiness is never understood to be focusing attention on a white-bearded old man figure as God, or on any specific spiritual figure, but rather enlarging our awareness to consciously include and respectfully consider All That Is, All Our Relations—all beings, energies, and things in the larger Circle of Life.

This sacred focus on holiness as an integral part of everyday life is central to Native American teachings, and is of great value to us today. White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman, the mystical woman who came long, long ago to bring the sacred pipe as a symbol and reminder of the holiness, stands today as a central figure in the spiritual way of the Lakota Sioux and many other native tribes. The symbolism of the two men in the story of White Buffalo Woman told in the Prologue, as well as her pipe and teachings, are clear metaphors about how we are to approach life on Mother Earth if we two-leggeds—we humans—are to make it through this next century and create a new way of being on Earth that will open us to our full human-ness.

Central to White Buffalo Woman’s message, and to all native spirituality, is also the understanding that the Great Spirit lives in all things, enlivens all forms, and gives energy to all things in all realms of creation—including Earthly life. Several things follow from this understanding:

‣ We, and all things in the web of life, are related. We are not only children of our Mother Earth, but also of our Father, the Great Spirit. And thus we are all each other’s brothers and sisters.

‣ Primary to our beingness, and to our relationships in the larger hoop, is the feminine energy of nurturing and renewing—of ourselves, each other, and all those peoples in our Sacred Circle of Life, especially the children.

‣ Each of us has Spirit within us to develop and bring forward. Each thing and being contains Spirit’s living flame—consciousness and aliveness—and thus has the right to be respected and honored for its unique power and gift.

‣ Through each of us Spirit can speak, and thus guide us and our people.

‣ Each of us is a small, yet significant part of the wholeness and at the same time contains the wholeness. As in a hologram, where each piece contains the whole picture yet the picture becomes clearer as more and more pieces are joined together, so our harmony, unity, and cooperation with All Our Relations are necessary for the full picture of life to be revealed. It is only through this harmony that we will be able to move forward.

‣ Our participation with the Great Creator in the continuing unfoldment of life is essential. Thus, renewal dances, such as the Corn Dance among the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, and the Sun Dance among the Plains peoples; the harvest dances and honoring dances of other peoples in the Circle of Life, such as animal dances; plus all the other ceremonies honoring the cycles of the seasons and of life, are both our duty and our joy. These rituals focus participants toward the unfolding unity that can create life anew.

Interestingly enough, the various native tribes or groups practiced these principles within their own group and with Mother Nature, yet they seldom extended this practice to other groups or tribes. A unified dance of all people, a rainbow dance of creation, did not occur to them. This is why the sacred dream of the Lakota visionary, Black Elk, was so important. When he was only nine years old, in the late 1800s, he had a vision of all races and colors dancing together to renew the Tree of Life. (This story is told in Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt.) He was so uncomfortable with what had been revealed to him that he did not even speak of it until later in his life when urged to do so by an elder. Yet Black Elk’s vision of a universal, global dance of creation and celebration that will be required in order for life to continue is absolutely vital to us all in this present day. In fact, we must not only renew the dances of creation, we must also extend them to include All Our Relations. This is the task before us, and it cannot be completed until we all join in a joyful dance of life.

In our process of transforming and healing ourselves and the world in the present, it seems important that we understand something of our place in North American history. We need to know where we are and who we are being called to be, whether or not we are Native American. Let us first look at one of the structures used by many early native peoples as they attempted to create a peaceful and harmonious life.

From the earliest times, our native people have had councils—often comprised of all males or all females—each holding a powerful focus of energy for the people. In many tribes, the men had an impressive war council—but they also had a peace council as well. During the latter years of the fighting between Indians and whites in the late 1800s, the finest of our Native prophets began to receive information from Spirit. They were told that their people must make peace and eventually come into spiritual unity with the oppressors, in order for anyone—most especially their own children of coming generations—to have a good life, and for the Tree of Life to blossom again for all.

At that time, the war councils and warrior societies, which were devoted to conflict and did not serve the people, essentially became obsolete. Our world was changing rapidly. The intention of Peace was set within the deep spirit of the Americas, and yet our struggle since then has been to make it real in our daily lives. The great prophets from time immemorial spoke to our people of returning to the oneness—the brother/sisterhood that was modeled on this continent at the time of the great Sun centers in the South, when the Dawn Star walked among the people (see chapter 7). But for the most part, our Native people, as well as those from across the waters, engaged in divisiveness, warring, and separation, and in conflict over territory. Thus Indian and white alike were joined in a karmic endeavor to complete the warring and return finally to oneness and peace.

To give an example, in his classic work, The Cheyennes, E. Adamson Hoebel speaks about the Cheyenne tribal council of peace chiefs. He explains:

The keystone of the Cheyenne social structure is the tribal council of forty-four peace chiefs. War may be a major concern of the Cheyennes, and defense against the hostile Crow and Pawnee a major problem of survival, yet clearly the Cheyennes sense that a more fundamental problem is the danger of disintegration through internal dissension and aggressive impulses of Cheyenne against Cheyenne. Hence, the supreme authority of the tribe lies not in the hands of the aggressive war leaders but in the control of the even-tempered peace chiefs, all proven warriors.

Yet this peace council of male elders eventually failed to control the Bow Society, the warriors who wanted to go to war indiscriminately, without consulting their spiritual sources or the council of elders. In the subsequent fighting with other Indian tribes, a third of all the warriors and most of the chiefs on both sides were killed. The Sacred Bundle of Arrows—the central sacred object of the tribe, representing masculine, procreative power—was lost to the Cheyennes. Other serious physical and spiritual calamities befell them as well, all of which clearly pointed out the danger of indiscriminate warring, when what actually should have been happening was the making of peace and the nurturing of the people. Because of all this, the male Cheyenne peace council eventually lost its power and function.

The message here is the primacy that the pursuit of peace and holiness must have in the minds, hearts, and actions of the people. In days of old, this concern extended only to those within the tribe. Now we have matured into a new time of understanding: we realize that peace and harmony must be generated not only within the entire family of two-leggeds but within the full Circle of Life as well.

In the time since the degeneration of the male councils, the female elders, whom we might call spiritual Grandmothers, have stepped forward in spirit with intention as peace councils. Their actions have not been so public. Rather, they centered their spiritual work in small quiet groups or hoops, circles of women who have come together with intention to nurture and protect. Their functions have included:

‣ Holding all peoples together in their hoops of Oneness.

‣ Weaving their spider-web tapestries of peace among the peoples.

‣ Encouraging use of the plant medicines that help us create patterns of harmony within ourselves.

‣ Struggling over marriage baskets whose power is the melding of the poles within us, whether male/female, left/right, or Indian/white.

‣ Creating shielding hoops of women in a world circle devoted to prayer for all peoples.

These Grandmothers have taken the banner of peace and woven its spirit into reality on hundreds of looms. In modern times they have stimulated the creation of books and other media to awaken all peoples to their golden destiny as family upon Mother Earth under Father Sun. They have echoed into the spirit of our time, the song of oneness sung for us by White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman as she gifted the Lakota—and others who learn from them—with her pipe of peace. The spirits of the Grandmothers have been strong, moving through time and space to touch the spirit of anyone in our time who has been ready to carry the banner, to continue the weaving, to speak the unity. They have touched Native, half-breed, and white alike with their haunting call. Now the living Grandmothers of holy stature are few, and those of us who hear their call must answer.

It is now time for me and for you, whatever our race, color, or background, to learn this song of unity and to sing it out—time for us to carry it forward in beauty another seven generations to touch all the children of our Mother Earth and Father Spirit. A traditional song, created from White Buffalo Woman’s words, says,

With visible breath, I am walking.

With visible breath, I am walking.

I sense that this is her way of saying that she is walking through her life with the smoke of the sacred pipe being sent out with every breath. This smoke represents our prayers and respect for everything in the Circle of Life. We must do this, not by getting caught in the romanticism—the beads and feathers of the paraphernalia path—but rather by living these values in our everyday lives.

Buffalo Woman Comes Singing is a sharing of stories from my own quest to make these teachings real in my life –to embody spirit and holiness in my work and in my personal experience. Although these values and ways did not always surround me, even in childhood, I have always carried a deep and quiet trust that they might live again. It is my sense that my stories may parallel your experience and so let you know you have a compatriot in your own quest—or even more positively perhaps, someone to help create a useful map for parts of your journey that you have not yet walked into reality.

May these words serve you and All My Relations.

PART ONE

RECLAIMING THE

LINEAGE

Grounding myself in the roots of my native background—after having been taken away from them in adolescence—has been one of the most powerful aspects of my spiritual quest. I had been actively seeking spiritual teaching and guidance since my youth, yet I had not found anything to satisfy me as I approached my late twenties. In these beginning chapters, I share with you my seeking of a medicine teacher, and finding one; my seeking of life’s direction, and being set firmly upon the path.

CHAPTER ONE

THE WOMAN WHO KNOWS

EVERYTHING

Grandma gave me, even more than a personal relationship with her, a relationship with the power she served:

the Sacred Bundle of the Lodge and its feminine nurturing and renewing power.

Her people called her The Woman Who Knows Everything; I guess that’s why my dad advised me to come home to the reservation area in Montana to talk with this little old lady when I asked him questions about his experience of some of the spiritual practices of our Apsa Indian people. The whole thing was odd to begin with, first of all because I had not really been around Dad for twenty long years, not since my folks divorced and we left our home ranch. Secondly, I had just moved to San Francisco into a new flat with a new telephone number that almost no one had. And still my dad called to chew me out for not staying in touch! Spirit was already moving in mysterious ways, yet I had no idea what lay in store for me in the northern mountains of my home reservation country.

I was in my late twenties at the time, and in the full power of my first Saturn return—a twenty-eight-year astrological cycle said to be a powerful and challenging time to make the first transition into full adulthood or other life changes. Having just cut myself free from years of working as a teacher, counselor, and administrator in the academic world, I had come to California to take the next step in my life—opening to new experiences and possibilities, both within and outside myself.

My academic career had not given me the opportunity to facilitate the kind of healing and transformation I desired for my students. In fact, it felt as though all the rigid rules actually blocked such things from happening. It seemed I had always been a teacher, having for short periods taught every level from first grade to college. Yet, somehow, it was always rote, always a dead form instead of truly living education. There just had to be something more, both for myself and for those I served!

So I headed for the West Coast where things were popping and crackling with an awakening consciousness; and now here I was, in the early seventies, enrolled in one of the newly formed and very open humanistic doctoral programs. Although I had been awarded a scholarship to attend Stanford University’s prestigious clinical psychology program, I had turned it down because they required that new doctoral candidates work on someone else’s project for two years before getting started on their own. This was absolutely horrifying to me, for although I hoped to gain good credentials, what was first on my list was an intense desire to get on with finding out who I was and what I personally could offer the world! So I chose a new and untried program where my own experience was the major factor. And that’s where I was when my dad called—newly set up in a Noe Valley flat with a hippie boyfriend known as Lucky.

For years of my life, I had longed for a personal Medicine teacher, someone highly developed spiritually, who would help me develop my sacred uniqueness and gifts; someone who would teach me magic, who would help me develop the healer I had always known was there inside me. My sense is that each of us yearns for an elder who will focus personal attention on our special gifts and challenges because our current educational system of teaching has none of this. We all know the need within us for this kind of devoted attention from someone wise and loving, most especially someone who will pay attention to our spirit and its development. In times past, this would have been a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a neighboring godparent, perhaps a tribal shaman. However, with the new mobility of the fifties, which led to the separation of extended families, very few of us had this cohesiveness.

Certainly, at the time of my childhood on the reservation, much of the Native culture and spirit had already been shattered. Although a few families held strongly to the old ways, many were torn by the shift to a radically new milieu in which alcohol seemed to stand out and beckon as a solution to the dissolution. This was also nearly three decades before the Indian Freedom of Religion Act was passed by Congress in 1978, when many of our spiritual and ceremonial ways were still actually illegal. The Act at long last re-established the right of Native people to practice their religion—practices that had been made a federal offense in the late nineteenth century in order to suppress the culture and way of life of a conquered people—something totally antithetical to our Constitution. Had the old ways been functioning fully and available in my growing-up years, it is clear to me that I would have been chosen for my path when I was five years old and my already blossoming spirit would have been trained. But no one saw. And a little renegade girl, raised in the hills far even from the Apsa reservation village, slipped between the cracks.

I was left, however, with the beauty of Spirit’s aliveness in Mother Earth. It was all around me on the chokecherry-lined creeks running north out of the reservation’s Pryor Mountains, where my Nez Percé grandfather had created big ranches over several decades. When my older brother Tom, my only sibling, and I were not working on our parents’ self-sufficient ranch, we were running the nearby hills in search of the sweet wild strawberries, and riding our ponies into the aspen groves above the ranch looking for fat blue-black gooseberries along the spring-fed streams. I would lie for hours in ancient buffalo wallows where cool spring breezes blew above me, and the warming sun fed my body and soul. Around me were fields of crimson shooting-star blossoms, their exquisite fragrance wafting to me on the breeze. And in nearby marshy ponds, blackbirds kept up a constant chorus. I told my mom once, Heaven is just like this, except that the animals are not afraid of us. I’ve come many miles and years since then, and that child-envisioned heaven is still what I long for and pursue.

In my first free year after leaving my professional job in Minnesota, I studied and played in the fading bouquet of San Francisco’s flower-child days. Janis Joplin was gone, Vietnam had released our young men, and Carlos Castaneda’s stories of plant medicines and magic in the Sonoran desert were on everyone’s mind. And certainly the old medicine woman up north was on my mind, for my spirit had longed since my early childhood for a wise elder to guide and teach me. Dad had invited me up for the next summer, and I’d made plans to be there on quarter break. I was excited and yet a bit nervous, since I had not seen Dad in so many years. Nor had I met my stepmom and my new relatives, members of the neighboring Shinela tribe on whose adjacent reservation they now lived. I looked forward to seeing them, and yet, my focus of attention was on the Woman Who Knows Everything.

As soon as I arrived in Lone Deer, my stepmom, Ella Jay (also called E.J.), began preparations for me to meet Grandma Rosie. Ella Jay was a tall, smiling woman with a deep and beautiful spirit. She was thrilled to have me in her family, happy for Dad that I was here, and joyous about my spiritual intentions. The old medicine woman was Ella Jay’s aunt, and yet in the traditional way, she was called Grandma, so she became Grandma Rosie to me as well. Our first meeting was to be a dinner at our house, and Ella Jay was preparing the meal. Ella Jay’s daughter Heta (which means Loving Child in Shinela) and I were sent off to get Grandma from her relatives’ place.

I nervously knocked on the door of the trailer house, which was opened by some young people with a slightly hostile attitude toward this blue-eyed, half-breed stranger from their old enemy nation who was picking up Grandma. The Apsa and the Shinela had lived close to each other, vying for the richest buffalo country in the world, for many decades. The Shinelas had been allied with other Indian nations, all of whom then attempted to take away the exquisitely beautiful mountain area of Montana, the home country of the tiny Apsa tribe. These allied nations had never conquered the fierce Apsa, yet every family on both sides remembered very clearly those of their ancestry who had been killed in the mutual fighting. Those old animosities were fueled anew when the U.S. Government placed the Apsa and Shinela on adjacent reservations—and I was facing them now.

Grandma Rosie came hobbling toward me across the small room, a bent and wrinkled woman in a traditional flowered calico dress that hung loose on her slight frame. She walked with a cane to help her crippled leg; her blind eye was white and the other one misty as she looked up at me, turning her head in a birdlike fashion from her bent position. But at eighty-five years old she still had her raven black hair, liberally sprinkled with white. Because I had been told that she did not speak English, and was very hard of hearing besides, I simply reached out my arm to give her support. Her frail arm rested on mine, and down the steps we went. Her summer moccasins, made of white canvaslike, tennis-shoe material rather than of leather, padded softly beside me. The journey—which still unfolds before me in beauty—had truly begun!

We did not speak on the way back to the house. I wanted to study her out of the corner of my eye, yet out of respect I kept my eyes on the road. Anxious thoughts raced wildly through my mind about how I would possibly be able to learn from this person whose language I did not speak, and whether she knew everything going on in my tumbling mind, and if there would be time enough in my very limited days to touch her magic—forgetting that the essence of magic is that it requires no time. I helped her up the steps to where Ella Jay was waiting. When we were all inside, my formal introduction to the Woman Who Knows Everything began.

I was so startled I almost jumped as Ella Jay cupped her hands and literally SHOUTED into Grandma’s ear in her native tongue, telling her who I was, about my wanting to receive blessing and learning—all the while gesturing toward me. As Grandma Rosie nodded and Ella Jay shouted, I had a terrible sinking feeling that I would never be able to communicate with this wise old woman.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Grandma crooned, acknowledging the introduction in an incredibly long glissade. When the shouting was finished, Grandma carefully laid her cane aside, slowly reached to shake my right hand with hers, and gently grasped my forearm with her left hand. The touch of this frail and bent little woman was amazingly soft and warm, and yet some deep part of me knew she had the strength within her to move mountains!

Then all thoughts were swept from my mind in amazement, as this tiny, frail, wizened woman began to shine with golden light and unfolded out of herself into a radiant woman of light towering above me, pouring golden rays of love and wisdom upon and through me. All else in my surroundings fell away as I looked up into the face of an angelic presence, awed by the beauty and stunning transformation. Moments of such grace have no time, and I bathed in that light until I was filled. Then the light began to fade, she began to fold into herself again, and soon my eyes perceived again the outer form I would grow to know so well. She released my hand and arm, picked up her cane, and walked to the dinner table. I recall looking sideways at my dad with a "some little old lady!!" look on my face as I joined them at the table. He had gifted me with a priceless and life-altering presence, and my communication with the Woman Who Knows Everything had begun.

As we sat down, Grandma Rosie prayed over our meal for ten minutes with words I could not understand. Once again I tasted the frustration I would continue to experience in our daily contact. Only twice in my presence did she ever break her vow never to speak English, for I found out many years later that she did know English. She had taken this vow after being forced into a white school as a child, and beaten for speaking her own tongue. On her death bed she spoke to me in English, and before that on a somewhat humorous occasion when she was quite frightened. This occurred several years after I first met her, while I was driving her back from her relatives in Lone Deer to her own home in the nearby village of Benney.

The old, narrow road wound up a valley and over high open meadows surrounded by towering evergreen trees; then it fell, winding down into another valley and out onto the open plain along a cottonwood-lined river. Just as we dropped over the far side into the sharp, blind curves, an enormous logging truck rushed at us, then roared past—its size, speed, and the wind it created around it almost pushing us off the road. Grandma Rosie’s eyes got as big as saucers, and she blurted out, Big truck! Then, very embarrassed, she did not speak again.

Off and on for many years, Grandma had been the keeper of the most powerful Sacred Lodge among her northern people, a Buffalo Spirit Lodge. It consists, in essence, of a tipi surrounding a bundle containing the buffalo relic that represents the nurturing and renewing power of the feminine, one of the most revered sacred articles of this tribe. It is much like the Sacred Arrow Bundle, representing the male procreative power, held by a southern group. In olden times these Lodges were held jointly, and so a balanced power was available to the people in times of need. Such Lodges and their bundles of sacred objects can perhaps be likened to the altar of a church, where people go to pray and gain spiritual blessing. A similar bundle might be held by a tribe, a clan, or an individual, often having come to them through spiritual questing. Such bundles are held and used as a continuing form of guidance and blessing.

Traditionally, such Lodges and their Sacred Bundles were kept by a man and wife. But in this case, no couple had been able to meet the standards for very long in the years since Rosie’s husband had died. The ideal was for this couple to measure up to very high standards, both in their understanding of the sacred object and its use to benefit the people, and also in their exemplary conduct as models for the tribe. It would have been likely that this couple would have been younger and stronger than Grandma Rosie, so that she would have had an honorary rather than everyday working connection with the bundle.

Yet, the federal government’s purposeful breakup of the culture—or breakdown, as it might be more aptly called—occurred at every level of tribal life. Held captive on small reservations, men accustomed to lives as nomadic hunters, warriors, and shamans no longer had roles to play. Instead of a natural, healthful diet of gathered plants, and hunted meat, and herbal medicines to feed and nurture their families, the women were rationed white flour, sugar, coffee, beef, and perhaps beans—if they were lucky.

All their religious practices were outlawed. Whiskey and smallpox-infested blankets were issued to the people by the conquering oppressors. These actions were a means to genocide. And to add insult to injury, the agents assigned to care for the people were often corrupt and mean-spirited, selling the people’s supplies for their own profit. Extended families were broken up first by keeping the people in small, separate groups with no interaction allowed and, second, by forcibly taking the young away from their families to be taught in missionary boarding schools where they were often treated like dumb, superstitious animals. Most of the younger elders now of eligible age and wisdom to act as keeper of a Sacred Bundle were those who were taken away to white schools as young children, indoctrinated in a new religion, and taught that the old ways were superstition and foolishness, then sent off with shortened hair into the competitive, material-first world to raise and feed their families. Few had even been around the Sacred Lodges—beyond the occasional emergency situation when prayer was desperately needed—let alone spent the days and years of devotion to its service that would prepare them for its keeping. And even fewer had the necessary interest for such full-time service to the people. Being Lodge keepers not only required them to be exemplars of traditional values, it also meant rising at dawn to open and smudge the Sacred Bundle with cleansing herbal incenses like sage, sweet grass, or cedar (see here and here). Then it was necessary to be available all day, every day, for those coming to be blessed in its presence; to carefully put the bundle away in the twilight hours; and to guard it through the night. Grandma, old and frail though she was, still received the bundle back into her keeping again and again, when others failed at the task through lack of knowledge and dedication, or through behavior unworthy of the keeper of a sacred lodge.

Although Grandma Rosie and I had continuing contact from the very beginning of our acquaintance, what she gave me, even more than a personal relationship with her, was a relationship with the power she served—the Sacred Bundle of the Lodge and its feminine nurturing and renewing power. And this was very difficult for her because, although I was related to her through marriage, I was still a member of a tribe of traditional enemies with whom her people had fought for generations.

She had very likely had a similar experience to mine at that numinous moment of our first meeting and so knew deeply my spirit, and my intention to heal and serve. And yet Grandma Rosie found it hard in her daily life to share her knowledge with this young enemy woman. This amazing elder had been for all the years of her life a shining light to her own people. In her younger days, she had been a strapping, big-boned woman who was a healer, teacher, and spiritual leader among her people. The dimming of her bright eyes, the stoop and frailty of her body did not lessen the light she shed upon the Shinela. Yet her medicine was only for her own people. She had no sense of the rainbow medicine that is now awakening us to our oneness with all the two-legged family. Like Black Elk, when given the vision of all peoples dancing together, she could not find this in her experience. The understanding of what I call rainbow medicine was not yet alive in the spirits of the people.

This rainbow medicine way teaches that, in order to step across the gap that lies between this age and a new age of harmony and abundance, we must make a bridge, and that bridge must be made of light. In order for the light to become a rainbow powerful enough to arch across the chasm, it must contain all colors—all peoples, all nations, all things. If any one color is left out, it will not have the strength to become the arching rainbow bridge upon which all of us will walk into a new time. This, in essence, is the same teaching given us by White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman: the teaching of oneness, of unity, cooperation, and harmony. Living this new way into reality seems to be the challenge of those of my generation, rather than of Grandmother’s. And so, her best course was to turn me over to Spirit, to the Sacred Bundle, to the higher power. There the truth would out.

Letting the Spirit be the judge was a traditional practice of Native people in the distant past. If someone from outside their clan or tribe came to them seeking spiritual knowledge, they knew that they had no right to judge this person or their spiritual intent. That was for Spirit to decide.

They also knew that Spirit needs no police: The truth of what is in the person’s heart will eventually show itself, and the Circle of Life will serve them what they have coming. If these seekers come with a good heart, clear mind, and deep intention—if they come taking care of themselves and helping others—then Spirit will be moved through the sacred forms to bless them and encourage them no matter what their outward appearance. Then, the tribe can follow suit. However, if they come with a bad heart, a deceiving mind, and an intention to destroy—taking rather than giving, serving only themselves—then they will receive in like manner from Spirit. The people will not need to stop them or deter them ahead of time. The old ones trusted Spirit’s ability to deal with such things and were glad to have it that way.

Nowadays, due to the breakdown of the traditional culture and its spiritual values—as well as to the overwhelming intrusion of outsiders into their lives at all levels—many Native people have come not to trust Spirit’s ability in such matters. They feel that they themselves must police the sacred ways. This is a very pompous and burdensome place to put oneself—unless, of course, one has an impeccable spirit, an open heart, and an absolutely unfailing perception of the deeper spiritual intentions beyond a seeker’s surface. In my experience, few if any have those credentials.

One of the most powerful aspects of Native spirituality in its myriad forms among many different tribes is that it is a mystical tradition, rather than a priestly one. Let me explain the difference as I see it.

In a priestly tradition there is a human lineage down through which the teachings and powers are passed. Perhaps it began with one especially enlightened being, and it has come down through time via the spoken or written word. Lineage holders are acknowledged by certain initiations such as the laying on of hands. This kind of religion has a priesthood of men and/or women, and these special ones are the spiritual teachers and authorities. Often in this kind of religion, a common person must come to the priests or priestesses for intercession with God, or the gods. They are told they cannot communicate directly, or receive directly from Spirit. Often, the enlightened one at the beginning of the lineage has spoken or written of the way. Over time, this becomes the given word. Anyone presuming to communicate with Spirit thereafter is often seen as an imposter.

Mystical religion, on the other hand, understands that the Great Spirit lives within each and every thing, Earthly or otherwise, and so teaches that communication with Great Spirit/Source/God is a completely natural part of all beings. Those who are especially trained or experienced in spiritual matters can provide a roadmap or a model of what has worked for them—and has perhaps worked for others seeking communion with the Great Spirit. They become like elder brothers or sisters on the path. They can guide and assist others, yet would never presume to require another person to go through them to reach Spirit. Their calling is to assist, rather than to intercede. Their intent is empowerment, not disempowerment.

The mystical peoples realize that God speaks to each of us, if we will but listen; and that, in fact, God often speaks through one of us to all other people. Thus, the Bible is continually being written. It is a living, growing revelation; it is not a closed book. For example, the old-time Lakotas listened to the vision of Black Elk, which he received when he was only nine years old, and literally danced it into their mythology—their ever-growing Bible. It was a revelation not only for them, but for people of all races upon Mother’s breast. Rather than being excluded by a structured and complete past, this new vision was honored and made a part of the vital, living tradition.

Since Black Elk’s time, though, several things have happened to profoundly influence our native spiritual ways. The first is that there are always natural human tendencies at work that want to formalize things, to get final answers, and to gain power by having exclusive access to these final answers.

The second influence is that our Native American people were defeated in a war that was almost a genocide, and their spiritual ways were forbidden them by the conquerors. Since our Northern Plains people were forbidden purification (sweat) lodges, vision quests, and sun dances—all of which were means of touching the Great Mystery—fewer and fewer were able to touch into vision. Because of this, only a tiny portion of the people remained strong in their old ways through clandestine practices in the far back country of the reservations, away from the government agencies. When the living tradition of mystical revelation was broken, the most natural thing in that situation was to hold tenaciously to what had already been given. Those elders who had the strength of spirit to carry the knowledge and to practice the old ways eventually became more and more like a priesthood.

The third crucial influence on Native spirituality is that there are only rare individuals among the elders of our time who were not uprooted and taken away from their ancient spiritual ways, and who were not beaten for speaking their language or for daring even to speak of their former culture or spirituality. In addition, in the mission-run schools, the Native children were indoctrinated into priestly religions—largely Catholic, but other European religions as well.

I remember one Hopi couple speaking to me of their own personal challenges with this. The wife was raised in a Catholic missionary school and indoctrinated with the idea that the old Hopi ways were superstitious at best, and the ways of the Devil at worst. This had made her both fearful and disdainful of the ancient ways. Her husband, on the other hand, somehow managed to escape that upbringing, and continued to be a strong practitioner of the old ceremonial life. When they fell in love and married, it took many years for them to resolve this deep conflict, and for her to become comfortable with the old ways, to understand them, and to come to know their deep beauty and purpose.

Although Grandma Rosie had also been taken away to missionary schools, she had likely already had some training in her people’s spiritual ways. And when she was able to leave that schooling, she resolved to reintegrate herself into the Native ways—cultural, linguistic and spiritual. Also she obviously had the strength of spirit and intention to do just that. I’m sure that her heart longed for more young people of her tribe with whom to share her knowledge, yet she was able to share it with those from whatever race or background Spirit directed to her. Grandma’s way was not to judge, or turn away, but to give that seeker over to Spirit through the Sacred Lodge. Thus, she chose to open every opportunity possible for Spirit to speak to and through that seeker, in service of All Her Relations. And this she did for me.

ABOUT THE EXERCISES

These exercises I offer you in each chapter are an opportunity for you to deepen my story by making it yours as well. You may wish to create a special journal or notebook in which to keep your work on the exercises.

To begin with, I want to acquaint you with the form I will frequently use. The first step we take in any of our learning is a step of awareness, of focusing attention on what is true for us now without judgment or denial. Too often we want to jump ahead to something considered more ideal. And yet we cannot reach that new place because we do not know where we are standing right now, what influences have formed our experience, or what powerful beliefs we hold that have brought us to exactly where we are.

Taking this inventory is of utmost importance because it is clear to me that these beliefs, attitudes, and influences determine most of our experience. If we attempt to learn by turning outward, before we establish where we are within, we deny ourselves the firm ground upon which to build the rainbow bridge of transformation. All changes begin within us and proceed outward: we do, in fact, create our own reality.

Once we take our inventory we have a better idea of who, what, and where we are now, and what we actually want to be different in our lives. Once we reach this point, it is time to create a dream, an image, a feeling, a vision that we can project clearly into our future without reservation or fear. The least reservation or fear will stop the mechanism of creation, so we must find ways to clear hesitations of any kind.

If we find ourselves unable to do this, perhaps we’re not ready for what we thought we wanted, for this means we still have work to do in the area of our reservation or fear. However, if our reservations make sense upon examination, then perhaps all we need do is slightly alter our image so it more truly corresponds to our inner truth.

Not until this clearing is complete will it be time for us to take action on any other—especially outer—changes that need to be made. Once completed, though, the image or dream we hold in our hearts will have become so clear as to take on a very powerful reality. When we arrive at this point, getting what we’re asking for cannot be very far off.

TAKING INVENTORY

In many of the exercises I offer, I will very likely ask you to go through the following steps in some form. Internalizing this method, which can be applied to any form of learning, is a powerful gift we can give ourselves, one that can move far beyond our work together in this book. These steps are:

1. Assess past history and present truth, without judgment or denial, of the internal beliefs, attitudes, and influences that have brought you to where you are.