Teachings 6
Beside the condemnations of them profiting from the ‘white people’ and getting rich, most of them died without a penny to their names. These are the people who cannot backbite, who remain guardedly careful not to hurt others, and who give all of what they have to the people around them. They might keep hold of something for a little while, even a few years, but eventually most of what they own finds a way to someone else. It seems like they are always giving things away; that’s the way many traditionalists are and how they are always doing. Even sometimes people ask, “Are they getting ready to die or something, are they alright? They’re giving all of their things away.” So even if they were rich, then everyone would end up a bit richer because of that. But there is a lot of jealousy. Its hard to understand why this is the case because they are so generous and compassionate. Instead, these people could start to learn the Indian way of life from them; if they only went over and brought some food, or just visited them. But its not an easy way to live anymore; not in this world we have today.
The accusations that you see going against them would make anyone hesitate to get in and learn their culture. And the charges are leveled like a criminal offense, “They are giving our culture away to others; to non- Indians.” Or “They are witches.” Or “They are just getting rich from the white people.” “or they are selling our culture.” I heard all of these things said against Thomas Banyacya and the other Traditional chiefs and Hopi spiritual leaders. They stand right alongside all other true Indian traditionalist, in being attacked like that. You can see how it makes someone who cares about these people so sad; it pains the traditional people deeply. I have watched many tears roll down out of the eyes. I have had tears roll out of mine when I go back in my mind to those memories where I see the elders crying like that. I gets into you real deeply because these are not people like the abrasive, aggressive, competitive types of people we get used to in non-Indian society. I have seen how many traditionalists shy away from the non-Indian world. They may venture out, but how lots of people are living there really bothers them. They are tender hearted even if they are strong in integrity, they are affected and sensitive because of the way they were raised to believe. They might be able to live through a snowstorm that would wipe out anyone else, or dig potatoes out of frozen ground with their bare hands, or run for forty miles once each week to travel between gardens, but they are soft on the inside. So many things have made me hurt a lot by seeing how others treat them. They are destined to be lonely in this world. Really no one seems to understand them; except a rare few. Of course all of the accusations are false, or not what people would be thinking of as bad if they knew the traditional ways themselves; because these ways are a way of the heart. That’s the way I’ve always been explained it. What it is to be indigenous doesn’t have anything to do with anything except the heart. Even all the ceremonies could be set aside if someone was able to get close enough to God without needing them. Indian ceremonies are what help people to get close to the traditional ways of living and thinking and experiencing life. I once heard it said, coming from a traditionalist, this teaching about the sweat lodge. The sweat lodge is used by indigenous people in America and other parts of the world. It is a spiritual sauna. It is used to purify our hearts and minds, our body and our spirit.
There are songs to help do that too. It gets people on the same page and helps to build a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood too. Well so it was explain by one traditional elder, who uses this way to help himself and others out, “The sweat lodge is only a symbol. It is how you live out there that matters.” Its only a symbol of reality. So is a number. You can say two or three seashells. Do you really have those seashells in your hand? Is there just one, or is it three you have there? None of us are perfect. We are not supposed to be. We are supposed to be learning. We are meant, just like the trees, to grow through the entire course of our lives. And the way that this creation was set up for us, we are to look ahead to our old age with a good prayer. That’s the way they tell us to do it always. Look to the top of the mountain. Don’t just stop right here. Don’t rush. Don’t get too hyper or too lazy, just keep moving gradually with a good prayer. By making that prayer and moving gently along, good things will come to our attention, God will gives us what we need and bless us. So we are to remember to look forward toward our death and our heart is working with our mind to keep a prayer there into old, old age. The prayer can be said this way, “Creator, bless me and watch over me. Bless me to live on a beautiful trail of life into old, old age. Bless me so I can become a good prayer for the ancestors and the unborn souls.” Its good to go through our minds and pray for everyone. Make a good feeling for the well-being of everyone in our lives or around us. We can travel through our minds and back through our memories of the early day and yesterday and a month ago and all the people who come before our memory, we make a good prayer for them. In the Sundance way they teach us that we are like a sacred pipe that lives when our heart is prayerful like that. These pipes are alive themselves and we can be spiritually what they are if we keep our spirits clean through forgiveness and love. The same way we have to clean the channel that runs through a sacred pipe because the herbs build up a residue over time. We have to keep our heart clean or else the prayers won’t work anymore for us. It gets like smoking a plugged up pipe. We get dirty. So we have purification ceremonies but it we don’t get spiritually clean from them to relate to our relatives with a right hope for them, then we are missing the whole purpose. That’s the way I hear those words talking; that teaching about the sweat lodge being only a symbol. Probably others can figure to explain it better, but these teachings work their way into our lives when we give them our attention and meditate on them over the years. The more we think about them, the more these teachings begin to make sense to us. They start to help our lives out when we get to understanding some of these things. Then eventually we can start to explain them to ourselves also. Our mind and heart starts to work with these teachings and we become quieter and more peaceful in our spirit. We start to get healthy. That’s the point of the medicine ways, to become whole and healthy within ourselves so that we see that the only One we rely on it the Creator and our Mother Earth, and that we are a part of each other. We begin to see the beauty of how God made it all and to love life and all of the creation. We find gratitude to be able to be alive and our love makes us want to serve all of our relatives who know this love also, and to help out those who suffer, however we can figure out to do this. We are a slave to no one, only God, at that point. So it is like a car or a good horse, these ceremonies, like our prayers. If they don’t get us to where we are going; if we don’t end up in a good place; even a good Cadillac isn’t really worth anything. You could drive it around all day, and pass by all the neighbors, but if the person behind the wheel is suffering and in pain, what use is that Cadillac to the owner? Sometimes we have to ask for help which isn’t easy. And when that help comes they say that they best way you can repay it is helping out someone else. That’s because if we don’t do that we aren’t going to go along very long until we fall back in the ditch again.
When our elders help us and tell us to do something kind for someone else, they mean it so everything ends up O.K. for us. They don’t want to keep helping us all the time. That’s what happens to medicine people and prayer persons; they get burdened by helping people all of the time. They can’t say no, if someone asks for help, so they get tired, overworked and worn out. Today, since people have stopped helping them and have gotten stingy and not wanting to give back to them, they end up in desperation a lot. Medicine people can pray and talk with the spirits before helping someone out, but if the spirits give them the go ahead, then they have to help. So they medicine isn’t working anymore. It could bring someone back from death or terminal illness, but if people don’t work with it, nothing will happen. They say that God helps those who help themselves. That doesn’t mean go make sure you take really, really good care of ‘yourself’ and try to get a lot for yourself. With the medicine it means God serves you when you serve others. You have to make the effort and be humble and sincere and give back in the best way you can think to do that. When you do, it will put a smile on your face. How you figured out to help someone; you find a way to create care for someone and then you might even get a smirk on your little face as your clever mind think of how to do it; how to touch that other life in a beautiful way that they will be surprised and feel cared about. A very clever person has a talent for living and becoming a blessing to others. Many use this for bad, or selfishness, which gives coyote a bad name, but it is a really good gift to have. Some medicine men use this coyote medicine to change things in amazing ways. Someone who it seemed couldn’t go on anymore, and it looks like they might not make it, and everyone kind of washed their hands of trying; then along comes one of these good coyote medicine people; and what they figured out, to do, maybe no one knows, and maybe it will make people laugh later, or just astonish everyone, but sure enough, that person is doing exceptionally well all of a sudden. And so you can see how these ways are not limited to any kind of race or kind of people. The potential is there inside the human being. We are all God’s children. The same Spirit entered all of life and it came like a Holy wind from God and so it is the same in all people and all life. But it works the same in the human because we all have the same form. We are called the five fingered ones. that is a word for human beings. My dad likes to use that word, “Bila Ashdla’ee”, five fingered ones. He says that we didn’t cry in Indian, or Chinese, or Nigerian or Swedish, when we were born. We cried in our first language; our true native language: The human language. That’s the language we are given when we come out of the body of the woman, when we are still pure and our spirit knows who we are still.
