Muscogee Nation News Column March 2009

It’s late afternoon before the column is due. I’ve almost emailed the editor twice to say: “it’s not possible”. I am out on the West Coast rehearsing every night at San Diego State University for my show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. It will open in Los Angeles in March, as part of the Native Voices at the Autry series. There are a few reasons I am telling you this: 1) I am need of a column ASAP, and mostly 2) maybe this will inspire others who think it’s too late to pick up a musical instrument, write a book, learn the language, learn songs, or anything else, because they hit thirty (yes thirty, I’ve heard many a hitting-thirty panic that they were too old….give me a break), forty, fifty, sixty, or….

This show is one of the biggest challenges I ever had. First, I had to write the show. I have rewritten the play countless times. I have written, recorded and performed the music for the play, and kept going, even as I have been turned down many times for one thing or another mostly for being too Indian, or not Indian enough. Go figure. And now, one of the most difficult challenges: I have to memorize the play, and to act. I haven’t acted since I was a high school student at the Institute of American Indian Arts. I was always the shyest student and usually sat at the back of the class and said nothing.

I begged the director. “Please, let me just read the play.” “No way”, he said. “You can do it”. “Well, at least let me tape all the lines to the floor”, I argued. “No”, he said. I even looked up how much it cost to rent a teleprompter. They were too expensive, and huge. Writing on my arms was the most cost effective. But I don’t have enough arm space for the whole play. So, I’m here this afternoon, memorizing my play. And I’m nearing sixty. (“Nearing” means, I’m closer to sixty than to fifty.)

I don’t like to write about myself, in fact, I’m several years late with a book I was contracted to write, because I don’t want to write about myself. I write because I love stories and words, and these columns, because I think they might be useful. Maybe by writing this you might decide to keep going, to take care of your gifts, no matter how old you are, seven or hundred. I’m not special. There are many talented people out there in the nation.

I’m including an excerpt from the show. And if any of you make it out to LA between March 12th and March 29th, I’ll get you in. Just say you’re my relative, or you’re with the band. Let me know. I’d be honored.

Redbird Monahwee (to her father):

I followed you as you unloaded it from the truck. I helped, as you strung the deer up on the tree. I squatted down with you, as the red sun kissed the red earth. You tamped out some tobacco into our hands.
You said, “We pray with tobacco to acknowledge the spirit of the deer. We give thanks, mvto”.
“There is much suffering on this earth.
Even plants suffer. Tobacco agreed to come along as we walk this world. It’s medicine, a gift from the Creator.”
And remember I said, But Daddy, you smoke two packs of Lucky Strikes a day!”
I was such a little plant, drinking in your words.
“And what about whiskey, Dad”, I asked you.
“It's killing me”, you said.
“I'm sorry, Hokte”.
“Pray for me girl.”

Report from the Island

I just got a report from home. Now there are two redbird families in the yard.  Two males with their wives. The guys are chasing each other around the yard. The females are sitting together on the wall, visiting each other. 

Isn't that exactly how it is?!

Sun Going Down in the Pacific

Our earthly star, from the window of my flight between San Francisco and Burbank.

Okay, Okay

Yesterday took a break. Hung out with one of my favorite people: Charlie HIll. We walked over to Amoeba Records after a late lunch at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles on Gower near Sunset where I used to always run into Mike Tyson, when I hung out in LA a few years back. We stopped at an ATM and this young native woman just happened to be there. Turns out she's Oneida and Seminole. Osceola is her last name, and she's a student at a fashion school nearby. Charlie knew many of her relatives. What are the chances? There are no accidents.

Subsistence

This is from my friend Candyce Childers from Eagle River, Alaska. She's one of my closest correspondents and has this to share about subsistence. Her comments remind me that the system of the "over-culture", or, commodity-culture is torqued by selfishness. It is coming undone.

" I went to a public forum at the university discussing the future of subsistence. It was interesting to hear people's perspective on subsistence as a concept. One panelist (Yupik) commented that subsistence and the myriad ways it is regulated is insensitive and bizarre. He drew a comparison between the land as our Native grocery and the grocery stores in the city. He asked the audience to imagine that in order to get food from the grocery in the city we all had to apply for permission. And imagine that we were told we could only go grocery shopping two weeks out of the year during which you must get everything your family of 6 will need for the next winter. On top of that, you could not use a car, bus or other mechanical transport to go to the grocery but must walk. It was powerful and moving.

Another interesting point that a panelist made was how our ancestors handled individuals who were selfish. Even if a man was a good hunter it wasn't a guarantee that he could remain a community member. The community survived by living communally. Everyone had to share their resources and when an individual failed to do so they would banish or kill him. The reasoning was that he would eventually cause the death of the entire village either literally from starvation or from division. Imagine how disruptive it was to have missionaries and teachers move in with their values of individualism and competition."

Thanks Candyce.

Muscogee Nation News Column February 2009

One of those markers of giant political shifts occurred last week, as Erin Thin Elk Contreras drove me across the homelands of her people, after picking me up from the Sioux Falls Airport. Her bright spirit stirred me from the sleepless haze of my all-night flight, and I remain impressed by the way she walked nimbly over ice and snow in high heels as she wheeled my suitcase to her car. (Now that’s a skill, another new category for the Olympics!) For the first time in U.S. history, Barack Obama, a visionary leader and a black man was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States.

We tuned to listen to Barack Obama’s inauguration speech on the AM station, as we headed out for Vermillion over sunlit plains. Our ears perched close to listen as he accepted the presidency of this very young and troubled country. In Obama’s voice the whole world heard that his mind is clear, free of clouded and contentious knots. We appreciated the finely crafted oratory of Obama’s speech, and the careful choice of words spoken to bring American citizens together into a vision of helpfulness and compassion. There is a direct connection between the clarity and resonance of one’s speech and the shine of character. In Obama we have the gift of an intelligent man. How refreshing. You can hear in his voice that he listens to the ancestors. The last election gave us a man who said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."—Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004. He left the country in a wreck.

Many questions surfaced as I listened, and later watched the inaugural events on television in my hotel room. Will there ever, or can there ever be an indigenous president? Where are our indigenous leaders, those who can bring us together, can inspire us? We need those who can see with Seventh-Generation eyes. We need to see beyond skin color, past laws and rules that go in and out of season, such as the recent attempts to throw away children and grandchildren because they don’t have the requisite amount of blood. (We aren’t pedigreed dogs. We are human beings.)

Very early the next morning Erin picked me up to drive me back to the airport. At twenty-nine she’s a very young administrator in the university’s diversity program, the Indian student advisor, and is the mother of three young children. The youngest, not much over two-years-old, dozed in her car seat as we drove East in the dark. Erin and I talked carefully in the dawning morning. At dawn the crack between worlds opens. This day we carried hope for our country. And this day, like every day has a soul. We shared stories that mattered to us. She spoke carefully, with clarity. In her I heard the old people. I heard the young, smart and beautiful young Lakota woman whose life is a balancing act between the eternal and the everyday. In her I saw that we are growing our indigenous leaders. They are among us.

Here I Am

I am deep in memorizing and rehearsing my one woman show. I have to get it to the level muscle memory.

So, I apologize to all those who have sent me emails or called and I have not responded. I will be deep in show until it opens on March 12th. Then I'll be doing five shows a week at the Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry Museum in Griffith Park in LA.
I am more challenged than I have ever been in my life.
I am learning focus and belief.
As I move through the script, a one woman show I wrote: Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, as an actor, I can see more than ever how these stories we bring into the world are not just us. The writer is the catcher, the caretaker. Most of what happens during creativity is below and way above the surface. We are not the sole author, of anything.
I remain in awe of the process.
The story is a being.
An actor becomes the story, along with the production crew, the stage and the audience as well as the atmosphere of each performance. And in this story the actor will also play saxophone and sing, with Larry Mitchell on guitar and effects.
Exciting, and absolutely terrifying!

Keith Wilson 1927-2009

I first met Keith in the mid seventies. He was humble, approachable and human even as he carried an immense spirit. He was a mentor to me, from my very first publication, the last song, which came out from a small press: Puerto Del Sol Press, located in Las Cruces, New Mexico, his home.

Don't ever under estimate the power of mentorship. Sometimes you don't have to say much at all, it's just the belief, the care, the attention that waters and feeds the gift. He was there. He was always there. And I believe, despite his passing yesterday, he will always be there in the realm of poetry, which is the realm of the night sky and where it meets dawn. This remains one of my favorite poems of Keith's, and I responded to it in She Had Some Horses.

Travel well, Keith. We'll meet on the other side, again.



Thantog: Songs of a Jaguar Priest
by Keith Wilson


PREFACE

Into these restless days enter one precious
deeply felt

knowing always the impotence
hours bring, the sadness, coming just after
light, moments, the touch of wind, the chill
O, I have dreamed the thousand dreams, known
softly the nights turn walking into victories
shared only by the moon

I wish somehow I could tell you or tell myself
O darling of the light, mistress of the night,
words hold mockery and high villainies: a word.
Love. A meaning, "I want you," in most languages,
the same. In English we discriminate, knowing
the subtleties of longing better with colder blood:
it is possible to love and not want, to drive
our bones with skeletal needs, biting our own tendons
loose to at last walk free.

Breaking Illusions

I embrace today’s soul. I embrace my emotional exhaustion, or should I say, welcome the new emotional muscles?

I knew this test was coming. My knowing showed me a fissure, a rip in my illusions about a beloved person. I have had a tendency to imagine particular kinds of others as clean in their intent, imbued with qualities I want them to have, because I want to see them with the shine of the symbol they have become for me. Many of us do this. We make leaders, athletes, movie stars, and other achievers into symbols and lose their human qualities. When they become oh-so human we discard them along with their gifts.

One of the most loaded symbols is “Mother”. Religions have sprung up over the holy symbolic connotations of Mother. To be Mother is sacrosanct. Mother is sacrifice, is love without question, is feeding even from one’s own body, is carrying children and giving birth, is care of the hearth, is the making of food from the gifts of the earth. She is the ultimate creative power. Like anything a symbol embodies its opposite. Mother out of control is supreme control over her children. She smothers them, she demands absolute loyalty, and she force-feeds them with guilt and food even as she eats her children. She is destruction.

Our mothers are demigods until we sprout into our personhood, our potential mother/fatherhood to take our place. Then, they become essentially, biologically, rivals. Either we make friends of our rivals, or we throw them over. Each culture decides differently. In this larger cultural overlay of “civilization” that has supplanted our indigenous cultures (and all cultures have indigenous roots) children are encouraged to make anyone older the enemy.

And then, as we become mothers (or fathers) the story begins again, and we make our way.

Are there archetypes for children? There are for filial behavior. Remember the prodigal son? They aren’t quite so loaded however, as children are expected to malleable, given to youthfulness. What happens though if they don’t grow up, if they cling to childhood?

There can be no Mother symbol (or Father symbol) without children.

There are many paths around a symbol, around how we see and interact with each other. We make symbols of authority figures, and again of particular political leaders, athletes, actors, etc. We even make symbolic figures of each other as friends, colleagues….but I continue to believe one of the most powerful is Mother. A Mother gives; a Mother takes away.

Smashing those symbols, those illusions and setting free the people inside them can be liberating, and even so, absolutely terrifying. Those symbols can be life preservers in the deep, deep ocean of psychological waves and shifts.

I remember the day I decided to see my mother as a human being. I chose to see her as a little child, growing up under the duress of extreme poverty with a mother who didn’t know how to love. She became a human being, someone on the path alongside me. She was no longer a towering figure of perfection gone wrong. I found a way to forgive her, to forgive myself. Our relationship shifted. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t transgressions or failings. There were. There are. We are human.

Yesterday I had to face an immense illusion. I had worked on it for years. Perfected it. I had carefully built a symbol. I used materials of hope, and put together a design made of how-I-thought-it-should-be, and had hammered it together with wishes. Hammering with wishes is like hammering with handfuls of water. I had created someone wasn’t there. And the someone-who-wasn’t-there was who I had imagined interacting with me, was whom I had been relating to all this time.

It broke, as such illusions eventually do. What I had created was no longer there. Instead, what stood, was a very small and raw human being, with immense insecurities, failings and fears.

My first instinct was to defend myself, to fight.
Breath and love began leading me, first to see the illusion I had created, then to act with integrity even as I feel the pain.

And for me, most of all, because of my particular tests, I had to acknowledge my knowing. Knowing is beyond the human mind and emotional field. It has always told me the truth. The truth can be painful beyond measure.

Mvto, knowing.

And mvto, or thank you, dawning. This morning is another day. Each day has a soul, is a being, and loves to be acknowledged. How beautiful you are in blue blue sky.

MNN Column for January 2009

This morning when we left the house it was dark. We wound down the hill, Diamond Head direction to Hui Nalu Canoe Club at Maunalua Bay. I’ve been traveling far, nowhere near these warm seas. It was to be my first time paddling in months. We have a number of paddlers for a 7AM Sunday morning paddle, several canoes worth. I’m happy to be in Jeff’s canoe. He’s one of the best at riding currents. We go out past the blinker buoy where the water turns turquoise and clear. Beautiful. And because it’s relatively flat we keep going straight out to the deep blue. Those waters are ultramarine. I keep a lookout for whales. They return every winter to these waters to give birth.

Then we turn toward Diamond Head and surf the blue. When we turn back, we race. This means picking up the time and intensity of the stroke, and focusing. Focusing means to put your intention straight ahead, so that your vision places your canoe ahead of the rest.

I am in seat two behind an inexperienced stroker. I notice that when we can hear the competition coming up alongside, she turns. When she turns her stroke deteriorates. When the stroke deteriorates, everyone else’s stroke suffers, because we follow her lead. I also notice that when she looks anywhere besides directly ahead the canoe falters. I deliberate whether to say anything or not because I am not the steersman (the person in seat six, who directs the canoe). Then, because we’re falling back, I do.

“Focus! Look straight ahead. Your eyes carry energy. You are the canoe’s eyes.”

It’s almost magic the way the canoe responds.

And this becomes a lesson for me, something both the stroker and the spirit of the canoe is teaching me. Our attention literally goes in the direction we look or spend our time. It’s important to know where we are going, to keep an intention and keep moving in that direction in mind and heart.

And finally, some New Year’s resolutions from tribal members and others we care about from around Indian Country:

From Mvskoke Pastor, Rosemary McCombs Maxey:
“My breakable resolution is to not torture you, Craig, and Ted too much. My nobler one is to mentor and coach Creek youth in our language, history and culture, and to do a better job of recording life lessons I have learned from being a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.” And we’ll look forward to hearing from you, Rosemary.

From Muscogee Nation Second Chief Alfred Berryhill:
“I resolve to do the unresolved.” Okay, we’ll hold you to that, Alfred.”

From the Mvskoke writer Eddie Chuculate: “Write a novel. I bought a fresh journal today (Dec.20), so that’s a start.” We’ll keep everyone informed of your progress, Eddie.

From the inimitable head of the California Muscogee Creek Association Eli Grayson: “My goal for the next year is to try not to throw my shoes at anyone who voted for George Bush.” Everybody in Oklahoma, duck!

Tuscarora singer, songwriter Jennifer Kreisberg of Ulali: “As we make a fresh start this Solstice, I am releasing any past hurts done to me...” This is in the spirit of our traditional Mvskoke New Year, as I understand it.

And finally, from Cree singer, songwriter, Buffy Sainte-Marie:
“In every dream I can smell the sweetgrass burning
and in my heart - Always hear the drum
and hear the singers soaring and see the Jingle Dancers
and still this love goes on and on
still this love goes on.

Let's honor our traditions.” Thank you Buffy for the ongoing inspiration.

Mvto.