THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community
by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, November 2007, #36
THIS WEEK’S DISH -
FROM THE SHADOWS OF HISTORY: An Homage To North America’s Indigenous Forbears
“I make the argument too, and I don’t think it’s a new argument, that America doesn’t know how to say it’s sorry. I don’t know if anybody’s noticed this. This is not a strong suit in America. 20,000 more troops [in Iraq] doesn’t sound like ‘I’m sorry’. …America doesn’t know how to say it’s sorry for pretty much anything from what I can figure. And I think we’ve got to work on it.
You know, I have seven kids in my house right now. …To learn how to say you’re sorry is something that you try to learn at about four, isn’t it? And I feel like America is at about four. …The perfect example: 1990, a hundred years after the Wounded Knee massacre, Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I know a lot of you know this story. You know, three hundred men, women, and children shot down by the 7th Calvary.
The Lakotas go to Washington, and they ask for an apology from Congress. You know this story. ‘Can I get an apology?’ At that time, Daschle, very powerful guy, says, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ His answer was that if we apologize to the Lakotas, we’re going to have to start apologizing to a lot of other people too.”
– Winona LaDuke, Program Director of Honor the Earth, Founding Director of White Earth Land Recovery Project, Vice Presidential Candidate in 1996 and 2000 for the Green Party, and Ojibwe mother of three, writer, and environmentalist, speaking at the Montana Human Rights Network/Honor The Earth benefit on 12 January 2007
LAKE SHASTINA. Adam admires beautiful Lake Shastina and the surrounding land while attending a healing ceremony for the earth. Mount Shasta, California. April 2007.
LET US NOT FORGET. For many, Thanksgiving represents coming together with loved ones to share in the harvest bounty, while looking forward to the warm tidings and celebrations of December. In schools, children are taught the story of the Pilgrims and the Indians who came together to share a historic meal of cooperation, neighborliness, collaboration, and even diplomacy.
As one delves deeper into U.S. history, history itself reveals that the commonly accepted views of history have largely been written from the perspective of white colonizers. In the United States, for example, it is generally believed and taught in schools that the U.S. began as and still is a democracy today. This teaching contradicts, or at best, skews historical fact. From the country’s start as a national government, the vast majority of the population were disenfranchised with no power to vote, including: Native Americans, all people of color, women, and white people who didn’t own land.
Had it not been for the dedicated activists who made up the various voting rights movements – the power of the people’s protests, their voices in unison, their acts of courage undertaken at the risk of imprisonment, ridicule, personal injury, and death – would theses groups still be unable to vote, own land, or hold office? Where would we be had not our forebears daily been a force for change?
Even today, millions of people in the U.S. still do not have the power to vote, such as citizens who have served time for a felony in certain states, immigrants, and citizens under 18 years old. In addition, the undemocratic barriers to voting experienced across the country – from rigged electronic voting machines, partisan election officials, unfair I.D. requirements to vote, and a cornucopia of election day voter suppression crimes – is an article unto itself. Let us not forget that we are the forebears of tomorrow, and that no governing body can ever hold authority over what is the birthright of the people.
STEWART MINERAL SPRINGS. Following Adam’s participation in his first sweat lodge at Stewart Mineral Springs, Aireen dips her feet in the retreat center’s pure, healing waters that flow directly from the peaks of Mount Shasta. Weed, California. April 2007.
SPIRIT OF THE LAND
All but forgotten from the pages of mainstream American history except in over-simplified or demonized episodes, the native people of this land continue to work for economic and political equality, reparation, recognition, identity, and healing. Did you know Christopher Columbus is documented by historians as having killed and enslaved the indigenous populations of the places his ship landed, people who had lived on their homeland for perhaps thousands of years? Since Columbus set foot in Costa Rica in 1492, a day still disrespectfully celebrated as “the discovery of America”, and onward to the first 13 colonies and the later “expansion” of white settlement from coast to coast, millions upon millions of Native Americans have lost their lives in what has been aptly termed “The Silent Holocaust”. This is the history of our country and the land we live upon. Whole families and villages slaughtered. Well-worked farms abandoned or destroyed. Rich cultures, languages, and wisdoms lost to the barrel of guns and prejudice.
It is a “silent” holocaust, because its length spans hundreds of years yet is still unacknowledged by the vast majority of Americans, school curriculums, and political leadership. It is a “holocaust” because, like the Holocaust perpetuated on over six million Jews and others in Nazi Germany, it has been systematic. A key part of official government policy since the first convening of the Continental Congress, between 95 and 99 percent of the original indigenous North American population have been killed. We use the present tense in describing this domestic holocaust against the native people of the U.S., because the prejudice, poverty, and detrimental policies against Native Americans continue to this day.
Who is left standing to tell the story of what our indigenous brothers and sisters have gone through, to preserve the wisdom of their ancestors, and renew the timeless beauty of their cultures? Beyond the lies of history, television news, and modern-day distraction, the story is clear. We can listen to the spirit of the land and the songs of the soil upon which communities and civilizations once lived and loved without oppression. The trauma of nearly five hundred years of genocide, displacement, and forced integration into white society continue on reservations across America. Yet, simultaneously, representatives of the tribal nations, young and old, hold high the light of peace and reverence for all of life in ceremony, song, and spirit, ensuring that the light of the ancient knowledge will never fade into nothingness.
MOUNT SHASTA. Attending a healing ceremony for the earth in Northern California, Adam smiles as sacred Mount Shasta towers behind him. April 2007.
A RESERVATION, A SCHOOL AND A CEREMONY
While traveling out West earlier this year, I met a young Native American man in the bathroom of a Greyhound Bus station. Full of passion, sadness, and a profound sense of honor for his heritage, he told me of the tragedy of one Indian reservation today that he knows well: rampant alcoholism, cycles of poverty, alarming suicide rates including members of his family, and the degradation of a culture tormented by the demons of abuse spanning generations upon generations. This torment had affected him deeply, but he had chosen to turn away from self-destruction and take a different path. He had just come from a school in California where younger Native American generations can go to be trained in the ways of their elders, where the ancient wisdom and practical traditions are passed on through ceremony, stories, skills, and songs.
The school the young man attended, Headwaters Outdoors School, is open to all with multiple locations in California. Classes include Wild Edible & Useful Plants, Wilderness Skills, Plant Medicine, Boy’s Rites of Passage, Earth Philosophy, The Scout Way, and Nature Awareness. Special retreats include Hidden Canyons of Utah, Garden Island of Kauai, and The Art of Seeing. The Headwaters website says:
“At Headwaters Outdoor School we teach skills Earth People have used throughout time to survive in kinship with the Earth. Our classes are held in areas chosen for their abundance of wildlife, creeks, meadows, forests and spectacular views. Class locations include the Marble Mountain Wilderness, the Mount Shasta area and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Classes are intensive and we suggest you arrive prepared to immerse yourself fully. Beginners as well as experienced students are welcome in all classes. Our class sizes are small to insure that the individual needs of each student are met. If this sounds like the school for you, please come and join us.”
A week prior to meeting this young man, I had attended my first sweat lodge ceremony led by Native American tribal elders. Inside the lodge, men and women of all ages and denominations gathered around hot rocks heated by a wood fire and, in pitch black, played drums, sang songs, and offered prayers of healing and thanksgiving to the Earth and the Great Spirit. I remember one man who, during his turn to lead the prayer, spoke with anger and defiance about the undying light of his people. In his words, I discerned the pain and eternal strength of a nation in healing, poised to emerge from the shadows of history.
The next day, at a Native American healing ceremony for the Earth, overlooking pristine Lake Shastina and wondrous Mount Shasta, I saw leaders of all races and nationalities, from white to red to yellow, gathered to uphold this same fire: the fire of healing. As we gathered in a circle, offerings of tobacco and sage were cast into the fire, and prayers and songs of healing for the Earth and all nations were spoken and sung, sometimes solo and often in unison.
RED WHITE AND YELLOW. A group of young women from Japan who participated in the healing ceremony for the earth pose for a portrait with new friends. Mount Shasta, California. April 2007.
STEWARDS OF THE LAND
Thanksgiving the holiday is thought to be based on a three day harvest feast shared by Wampanoag Indians and Puritan settlers in late autumn of 1621. There is debate about whether this feast is historically factual, but what is beyond debate is the four hundred years that followed: the broken treaties, broken communities, forced removal and integration of entire populations, and the countrywide genocide of North America’s indigenous people.
Since 1970, a group of people have marked Thanksgiving Day as a Day of Mourning with a spiritual ceremony and political protest on Coles Hill, overlooking one of the first landing places of the European settlers, Plymouth Rock. On Thanksgiving Day, we celebrate family, friendship, and the bounty that the Earth provides for us. For those who wish to remember, this day can also become a holiday to honor the memory and continued legacy of those who called this land home long before the signing of the Constitution. To those who continue to carry the torch of the spirit of the land, shining light on the history of our country, we thank you and honor you on this day.
Behind the story of the Indians teaching the Pilgrims how to plant corn, grow it, and survive by the labor of one’s own hands is an entire history. Today and into the future, we the people who call the United States home can continue the example of sharing knowledge and shared reverence for the land. We can choose to plant kernels of equality, compassion, and peace. Let us reconnect with the true history of the land and its people. Let us remember to honor the stewards of the land upon which we walk, feast, and live.
Winona LaDuke at Honor The Earth Benefit, 1-12-07, pt. 1
