Black Hills Sojourn, published by Lakota Country Times, and the News Optimist
Journey was good for the soul
By Floyd Favel / News Optimist
July 25, 2013 02:00
Wanbli Win Red Cloud, Misty Sioux Little Davis and her Takojas (grandchildren) and Miranda Thunder Hawk in the teepee they occupy along the highway leading into White Clay, Neb. Those in the camp, that includes four other tents, are taking a stand against the sale of alcohol to the Lakota people. Photograph By Photo submitted
Old Indians say that a journey across Mother Earth is always good for the soul and the travel heals you from your pain and worries, and that is what I thought of as I left on the highway heading south from Saskatchewan, down to the land of the Lakotas and the sacred Black Hills.
The Black Hills are the centre of the universe to Lakota People and these hills were never surrendered by treaty, they were stolen by the U.S. Government when gold was discovered there in 1874. These hills are part of the Great Sioux Reservation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty signed after Lakota war chief Red Cloud militarily defeated the United States.
Indigenous People believe this world is sacred and created by long ago sacred and mysterious acts. Long ago, a race was run by the animal beings around these hills. This race was won by the humble magpie who rode on the back of the buffalo and just before the finish line the magpie had flown ahead of the buffalo to win the race. It was here that the Lakota originated, they say. As a Plains Cree, I am of Assiniboine ancestry. The Assiniboine's are part of the seven council fires of the Lakota and so these hills are part of my history as well. It was a return to the beginnings.
Bear Butte, Mato Paha, is a butte that stands by itself just west of Sturgis, S.D. just before you enter the Black Hills. This butte is sacred to over 30 indigenous nations. For the Lakota, this butte is where many of their spiritual leaders, like Crazy Horse, sought visions and strength. Our Lakota guide at the Bear Butte Visitor Centre said this butte is part of a larger story that is connected to Mato Tipila, or Devil's Tower in Wyoming 100 kilometres to the west, and the Bad Lands 150 kilometres east of this butte.
The climb to the top of this sacred site is arduous and the rocky path is lined with tobacco ties and coloured cloth offerings, evidence that this site is still important for indigenous people as a sacred shrine. The whites have sacred churches like Lourdes in France and the Vatican in Italy, this butte and others like it are our indigenous cathedrals.
The Pine Ridge Reservation, as vast as it is in comparison to Canadian reserves, is only a fraction of its original size. It is a magical and tragic place of heroes and warriors. On the reservation is the town of Wounded Knee.
Wounded Knee, site of a conflict between the Lakota and the U.S. Army, where unarmed Lakota men, women and children were gunned down. Jerilyn Elk sells her wares every day and lives along Wounded Knee Creek, not far from the actual site of Big Foot's camp.
"It's a sad place, but it's home", she said, after quietly sharing her stories and a tattered photo album of the history of the battle that her uncle had collected. A hot wind blew along the hill as we looked about and she pointed where the different army units were stationed and where Big Foot's camp was, a highway runs along the edge of the original camp.
Just south on the Nebraska and Pine Ridge Reservation border is the town of White Clay, Neb. This one street town lined with low decrepit and weather beaten buildings and beer stores is a sad place where the irresponsible sale of alcohol is ravaging those who are addicted. I went there to visit a camp that has been set up as you enter this town. A teepee stood alongside the highway, a little further in the grass and shaded by trees were four smaller tents. When I arrived there, the camp was staffed by three Lakota women and two small children.
I spoke briefly with Misty Sioux Little Davis.
"We are doing this for the children, so our children can grow up without having alcohol destroying their lives. We've been dealing with this town for a hundred years and it has to stop. This town does one million dollars a year from our people, and look at our people out there on the street."
Theirs is a noble fight. I wonder if they will succeed in their fight against alcohol, but I don't think that is the point, the main thing is they are fighting a battle for their people. I left Pine Ridge, deeply moved and inspired by my encounters with the common people. Their kind, eloquent and informative words echoed in my memories as I drove back home to my people.
One undertakes a journey, a sojourn to learn and open your mind and heart and I am grateful I undertook this journey to the land of the Lakotas. Pilamaya.
© Copyright 2017 Battlefords News OptimistSpirit Being Dialogue, published by Isuma Publications
There are some films that stay with us forever, the characters alive within us, like spirit beings. Years ago, I watched a film by Kurosawa, called Dersu Uzala, the main characters being a Russian surveyor on an expedition to the Russian Far East, and an indigenous Goldi hunter, Dersu, that he meets by happenstance and then employs as a guide. The dialogue between these two characters - one an educated European man and the other a complex man of the forest - became mine as I made my way from the reserve and urban ghettoes of Saskatchewan, and through the theatres and books of a European civilization. The relationship between the Russian and the Goldi lived within me as a tension between intellect and spirit, progress and tradition, city and the forest.
I watched this film as a young artist - so many years ago it seems. I did not encounter these characters again in any other films, until recently when I viewed the new Kunuk/Cohn film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Here once again, we meet the man of science in dialogue with an indigenous person, in this case, an Inuit shaman. This moment in life seems to be framed at one end by a film, the other ends by another film, separated by twenty years.
In The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the ethnographer Knud Rasmussen encounters the Inuit shaman Aua. The purpose of Rasmussen's expedition is to record as much as possible the traditions of the Inuit before they disappeared. One cold day they encounter Aua and his wild fierce party filled with life and vitality. The presence of Aua emanates from the pages of Rasmussen. Like an oracle, or a stone which speaks of the mysterious and creative relationship between humanity and nature, the words of Aua remind us of the passion and fragility of human life, that we are not rational masters of the universe. His words open us up to allow our soul to become itself once again, as if we have been lost and found again.
We remember.
Rasmussen encounters Aua and his party just at the moment when their traditional beliefs are being replaced by Christianity, and this is a dramatic moment in the lives of the Inuit. Each person seems to hold the fate of their soul and the world in their hands. Today, faith does not seem to play a major role in our lives as we seem to no longer depend on nature for survival - to depend on nature demands, skill, luck and faith.
I remember an old shaman telling me of the day he decided to convert to Christianity. He threw his rattle into the bush and the next day his rattle sat on the doorstep of his log cabin. He got the message and did not abandon his beliefs. It is this man's son who now holds all of his secrets, a man who lives alone in the forests of northern Saskatchewan. We went together once to a Pow Wow, and he said, 'Nephew, I would never have believed this, the elders used to say that soon all you will hear all around you is the English language, there will only be little islands of Cree. When this happens know that the world will change and it is not good. Nephew, I have seen this today.' And he wept.
I think it is people like him, like Dursu, and Aua, who have kept the world from slipping into peril. The less there are of them, the greater the peril. They are like the 40 just men of the Hassidim, men who live hidden in the world, but on whom the salvation of the world depends.
The world will not end once, but will end many times. As the forests die, the ice caps melts and rivers dry up, the languages and cultures of this area die, and with them a whole world view. No one knows when the world will end, not even the animals know this, the old Cree people say.
Faith, like belief, is not a satisfactory word to capture the complexity of shamanism - shamanism has more to do with direct contact with the spirit powers of the universe and the human soul and its tragedy. It is a desperate search for meaning, beyond being morally good or bad, but is a search which drives you deep into the tundra or the forest, to fast and pray for understanding. To ask why? Why must people be ill and suffer pain?
Why must we die?
Questions Aua asked himself in the lonely solitude of the tundra.
We cannot possess knowledge. To attempt to capture knowledge thru journals or films is nearly impossible.
In Dersu Uzala, the Russian brings Dersu home to live with him and his wife and child in the city. It is a cultured life of books, science and houses. Dersu spends his days despondently sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the stove, watching the flames of the fire through the grating. You can imagine what would have happened if Rasmussen brought Aua home to live with him in Denmark.
This is what happens I think when we place shamanism on the screen or written page. We are filled with grief and longing. Either we are the man in the front of the stove looking at the fire, remembering, or the man in front of the stove is the film or the written word. Looking longingly at the fire trapped behind the iron grating. There is hope though, hope is the fire, and that is the possibility. Perhaps it is this hope that allows our soul to turn backwards to the past, and to bring the past forward through our art.
It is important that these stories, from Kunuk/Cohn and Kurosawa and others, come to the screen, filling us with hope and despair. Never before in the modern history of humanity have we faced the destruction of our world. It is less abrupt than a nuclear war, it is a slow insidious destruction of global warming of which we are a part of due to our enslavement to modern technology, and to the world view which thinks only of the immediate present.
Suddenly modern humanity realizes how dependent they are on nature. No, no, these films by Kurosawa, by Kunuk/Cohn are not simply tales of the march of civilization encountering the autochthonous cultures of the taiga and tundra, these films are about life itself and the limits of rationality.
Eventually Dersu leaves and goes back to the taiga and the Russian is left with a meaningful encounter, more meaningful than a romantic tryst in a foreign land, for he has been possessed by the words and songs of the land. Words that slowly work their magic upon his soul. Now he can only remember, and then the lens of the filmmaker captures this remembering, and through them we remember.
The spirit beings of the surveyor/ethnographer and the hunter/shaman keep up their perpetual eternal dialogue, a dialogue which has no resolution. It is this tension that keeps us searching and moving forward. We, a people who have been washed over by civilization, then out of the depths, a sound, then a word, a song or a film emerges.
And we survive...
Peyote lands under threat from development
By Floyd Favel
Plains Cree
PAYNTON, Saskatchewan, Dec. 1, 2011
Kelly Daniels is the president of the Native American Church of Canada whose music has been nominated and won numerous awards, most recently for best album in the peyote music category at the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in November.
Daniel's CDs are released to help bring healing and awareness to our people about important issues and causes.
"We had a ceremony with our elders before we made CDs to ask for permission to record and the elders told us it's good but we have to work for our people," Daniels said.
Just days prior to winning the award for best album, Daniels attended the "Intercontinental Prayer for the Preservation and Sustainability of the Sacred Peyote Medicine" conference recently held in Chalmita, Mexico, from Oct. 28 to Nov. 1.
Daniels, along with other Native American Church leaders from the United States, attended at the invitation of the Huichol Nation of Mexico.
Huichol call themselves Wixarrika and reside in the northern region of Mexico, the heart of the sacred peyote lands.
Daniels' trip was sponsored by the Sturgeon Lake First Nation. The purpose of the conference was to bring awareness to the threat that peyote lands are under from mining and agricultural development.
Peyote is a sacrament that is central to the beliefs and tenets of many indigenous nations in Mexico as well as members of the NAC in the United States and Canada.
The Wixarrika are one of the poorest and most traditional of the indigenous people of Mexico. The Wixarrika's inherent title to land is not recognized nor have treaties been made with the Mexican government.
This lack of respect for their inherent title to the land, lack of treaties, and their poverty, makes the land and its resources easily exploitable.
The Wixarrika are launching a public relations and media campaign to bring international awareness to the threat to their peyote lands.
Daniels feels this is important, but also that other indigenous environmental and political leaders and artists need to be involved as, "This is not only an issue of concern to peyote people but to all indigenous people who are trying to preserve and save their lands and their people."
One suggestion is to designate the land as a world heritage site or be turned into a national park.
The Wxarrika seek unity among indigenous people but, as in Canada and the United States, the government is buying off or attempting to buy out influential indigenous political and economic leaders to open the doors into wholesale resource development on these sacred lands.
In Canada, resource extraction and economic development is the mantra of the Harper government, in other words, the rape of Mother Earth.
The Canadian government has succeeded in bringing many indigenous leaders into this credo and many leaders and organizations are working with various interests in the destruction of their traditional lands.
The tar sands in Alberta is one example. Uranium mining and tar sands development in northern Saskatchewan is another, and the construction of hydro-electric dams in northern Quebec is another example.
One of the major mining companies that has a lot to gain in development of the peyote lands is Majestic Mining Corp., a Canadian-owned company.
Mining companies in the past have contaminated the land and its surrounding and the Wixarrika fear for their peyote. Majestic is one of about 30 companies who are seeking mining concessions and permits in this region.
Mining development is threatening a way of life and worship and an indigenous religion.
Daniels is from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation but resides on the Red Pheasant First Nations, his mother's home community. His family has followed the Peyote Way for many generations and he is passionate in bringing awareness of the fate of the peyote lands to the people of Canada and to the world.
Long ago, the mythical being Wasakaychak created this world, this island - Ministik as its called in the Cree language.
When he had finished creating this island, he asked the wolf to run around the world to see how big the land was. The wolf was old when he finally returned and he reported back to Wasakaychak how big this island was.
Wasakaychak was satisfied that the island was big enough for the people who would reside therein. This island, Turtle Island as some call it, an island which rests on the turtle's back, is the land the indigenous people were placed upon.
The threat to the survival of the peyote in the sacred lands in Mexico affects all of us as indigenous people of this island.
Favel is a writer, playwright and film producer.
Back to top ^Sacred Visit-Lakota Country Times
Sacred Visit
By: Floyd Favel Plains Cree
Kelly Daniels, the President of the Native American Church of Canada (NACC) attended the International Congress on Sacred Medicines held in Mexico City, Mexico October 23 to October 30, 2010. The purpose of the Congress was to bring church members from Canada, the USA and Mexico, as well as doctors, researchers and academics, and Mexican officials to discuss sacred medicines and the preservation of the sacred Peyote lands from oil and mining development.
The Mexican government is trying to develop lands that contain sites sacred to the Huichol People. It was hoped that the Congress would educate the government about the sacredness of Peyote and other medicines. It took 10 years of planning to organize this international congress.
The Huichol are an Indigenous Nation of west central Mexico who live in the Sierra Madre range in the Mexican States of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas and Durango. They call themselves Wixiwitari, meaning The People. Their language is from the Uto-Aztecan language group. Other tribes that are part of this language family are Comanche, Kiowa and Shoshone.
Numerous presenters stated that the Sacred Medicine, Peyote brings no harm and promotes mental health. The Medicine Peyote is a doctor for many things and helps you to understand life around you and opens your heart of feelings. Presenters stressed the importance of living a positive lifestyle and that every plant has its purpose or the Creator would not have placed that plant here to benefit humanity.
Kelly Daniels resides on the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. He spends a lot of time educating society at large about Peyote so this conference allowed him to be able to access more information and recent developments in the discourse surrounding Peyote. He was able to talk with many Huichol People and some of the information they shared with him was that, “they call Peyote, the Divine Food. Peyote has to be used only in a ceremonial way and not anywhere else. A lot of people have misunderstanding about Peyote and it’s important to provide proper information. Deer and Corn are very important foods related to Peyote. The hunters hunt for Peyote as they would hunt a deer. For the Huichol, their Indigenous flag contains the bow and arrow. Local Mexican tribes are not allowed to use Peyote, who can and who can’t is decided by the government. At present only the Huichol are allowed to harvest and have in their possession this medicine. It appears that the government doesn’t want local tribes to use the medicine as then they would come together and do great things as the medicine lifts up People and Nations.”
The NACC is an incorporated church founded in 1954 by members from Red Pheasant, Mosquito and Sunchild reserves. Peyote was brought to the Battleford area of Saskatchewan in the late 1930’s by George Lightfoot and Paul Spyglass of the Mosquito First Nation. The NACC is the national body for church members across Canada and is affiliated with the Native American Church of North American (NACNA).
Armando Loizaga gave a presentation which traced the spread of Peyote from Mexico to Canada. He spoke about Quanah Parker, an early proselytizer of Peyote and James Mooney, an anthropologist influential in the creation of the Native American Church in 1918. Loizaga also stated that as long as you are member of a tribe from Mexico you should be able to use the Medicine.
Kelly was proud also that the NACC was recognized internationally when photos of a historic1956 meeting at Fort Battleford were used in a presentation. At the meeting led by Frank Takes Gun in 1956, local members from Red Pheasant and Mosquito opened the ceremony to government officials and world renowned researchers into mental health and addictions such as biochemist J. Hoffer, psychiatrist Weckowics, psychologist D. Blewed as observers, and one of the foremost authorities of the subject, Dr. Humphrey Osmond. The purpose of this ceremony was to show that the NAC was a good ceremony. Dr. Osmond later stated that NAC of Canada is a real church and must be protected. (Peyote Religion, a History of Peyote by Omer C. Stewart). “All the evidence that we have suggests that Peyote is wholly beneficial and no way a drug of addiction. It cannot even be defined in that way since it does not have the essential compelling qualities nor the withdrawal symptoms.”
While a delegate at the Congress, Kelly not only attended lectures, he also took part in two ceremonies. One Peyote ceremony took place in a tipi at the University of Mexico. The ceremony was led by Powhattan Mills, a Yakima from Oregon. In the morning, the Dean of the University of Mexico was fanned off with cedar and he was thanked for allowing the Congress to be held at the university.
The other ceremony involved a 9 hour bus ride north of Mexico City to the sacred Peyote Gardens, Wirikuta in the Huichol language. Delegates such as doctors and lawyers made this trip. “We were told by the organizers of the conference that it took 20 years to build the relationship with the Huichol who live in Wirikuta. We were told to act respectfully so as not to break the relationship with the Huichol as they are very strict regarding the Sacred Medicine.”
Kelly was chosen to be one of the few who were to be allowed into the Peyote Gardens, which was a great honor and privilege for him. “We had to be purified by medicine men then the Huichols went ahead and we followed in a line shaped like an eagle. So it was like were flying into the Gardens, we had to become one with the land.”
“We visited other sacred sites that day and finally towards evening there were three ceremonies. One took place in a tipi led by Crow Bear, a Huichol road man who resides in California. I carried drum for him. In the morning, the ceremonial food was brought in by the women. It had to be the women as it is women who gave life and they put some of that life into that food so we can get stronger and feel better. In those 3 ceremonies there were about 200 people taking part. There was ours in a tipi, then the Huichols had theirs, and the Aztecs had theirs nearby. This place at the Peyote Gardens is called The Belly Button, where all life starts. They believe that the root of the medicine is the umbilical cord of the Creator to our Mother Earth. They are very poor people but they showed a lot of commitment and respect for the medicine, towards morning, the Huichols sacrificed a bull. It was a very sacred visit that I had there.”
After the ceremony Kelly flew home back to Saskatchewan, from 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Mexico to a snow storm in Saskatchewan. A few days later Kelly gave thanks in a ceremony at Red Pheasant. “I wanted to give thanks to have been with the Huichol People, to witness what I had witnessed. Local people were present as well as members from Alberta to hear about what I saw and about my visit where all life begins at the Sacred Peyote Garden, Wirikuta.”
Sandor Iron Rope is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. He is a past President of the Native American Church of South Dakota and is now serving as Vice President of the Native American Church of North America. He is pictured here in Mexico where he respectfully represented the Lakota Oyate at the MAPS International Congress on Traditional Medicine and Public Health held in Mexico during October 2010.
Land of a Hundred Poisoned Lakes, published 2005 in Native People Magazine ( guest editorial)
Land of a 100 Poisoned Lakes
By Floyd Favel ( Cree)
(Originally published in Native Peoples Magazine ,2005, Volume VIII, issue VI)
I once was invited to Fort MacMurray in Northern Alberta to direct a theatre production at Keyano College. The Canadian North conjures up pictures of pristine forests and lakes but this is not what I found. Fort MacMurray, or Fort Mac in local parlance, is situated at the confluence of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers and is a sprawling oil town, a contemporary frontier town where there are fortunes to be made and lost. A mall and casino are recent developments. New hotels, franchise restaurants and bars line the streets traversed by four wheel drive pickup trucks. Ravens feast from overflowing garbage bins.
Like all northern Canadian cities, Indigenous people are very visible; from construction and oil workers and office types working as Aboriginal consultants to resource companies, to a dishevelled couple in faded denim and ball caps I saw harvesting cigarette buts from the sidewalks. The bars are the playground of the white workers who come from Newfoundland, Ontario and other places east. Many have left their families, and some are single, but here, money can buy anything, and the money flows like oil and very often it is our people who are the victims, be it here in northern Canada, the frontier towns of the Amazon, or the Siberian Taiga, our people always pay the price.
One of the actors in the theatre production I am directing, Charmaine, a Cree from Paddle Prairie, worked a 12 hour shift at the oil company Suncor, each day prior to coming to rehearsals. Although she is aware of the environmental damage the industry inflicts, it is one of the few employment opportunities in the area.
Fort MacMurray sits near one of the largest tar sand deposits in the world, supposedly rivalling the oil deposits of Saudi Arabia. The explorer Peter Pond, on his first visit in 1778 wrote in his diary, “ tar oozed out along the banks of the Athabasca.” Traditionally this tar was mixed with spruce sap and used by the Cree and Dene people as a sealant to repair birchbark canoes. Initially Fort MacMurray’s raison d’etre was the fur trade. Now it is the oil trade. In the last 20 years, rising oil prices and advanced technology have propelled the province of Alberta into one of the most dynamic economies in Canada.
Charmaine invited me to tour of Suncor’s tar sands projects. On a day off we left and drove north. Not far beyond Fort MacMurray we saw the 300 foot tall smokestack of the refining plant expelling its toxic discharge. Soon we came to the SUNCOR site. I was required to sign it and register my camera. Our guide, Les Marchand, was a local Metis man who has been employed with SUNCOR for almost 25 years. He has, he noted, “ pretty much done everything here, including driving the cats and the trucks.” He added that the workers shift during our visit employed the most Indigenous women, who drive heavy machinery and 50 ton trucks. We met a few on the roads and pulled over in our pickup truck to wait. “ Those things could crush us and they wouldn’t feel a thing, “ Les warned.
As we would through gigantic gravel pits, I asked, “ are these the tar sands?” Les replied, “ Oh no, you haven’t seen anything yet. They’re just scraping away the earth right now to get to the tar.” The walls of the pit are black sand and on hot days, the oil runs down these walls. To extract the oil, the poplar and spruce trees are cut down and about 200 feet of earth, called ‘garbage’ is removed. This ‘garbage’ is trucked away in
360 ton trucks. The valuable tar sands are then dug out and trucked to the plant where the oil is then separated from the sand. Unbelievable amounts of water, taken from the Athabasca River are needed for for the refining process.
to the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories borders, and then into the McKenzie River, draining one of the last large wilderness areas on earth. The severely contaminated refinery waste water is then pumped through pipes into tailings ponds.
Soon we came upon the tailings ponds which simmered into the distant horizon. Les casually noted, “ These will reach 500 feet in depth.” I asked if the water was any good. He replied, “ Someday, maybe, the contamination will sink to the bottom, but that will take a while, hundreds of years.”
These ponds, are not really ponds, they are lakes and these lakes are not on any maps. If they were, this area would look like a land of a hundred lakes. A fisherman’s and a hunters paradise.
Critics fear the waste water will eventually seep into the groundwater
and contaminate the natural river and lake systems throughout a 1000 square mile area. Sadly, this is just one project out of an existing 6 projects near Fort MacMurray with a potential of 20 more to be developed. One might rank it on an ecological disaster scale alongside the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Russia and the ongoing destruction of the
Amazon rain forest.
Upon my return from the tour, I await to start rehearsals once again. I think about what
it was that I witnessed that day and no words can completely describe the feelings and
thoughts that I had. No readings, no photos had prepared me for this experience, it was
the end of the world for our people and for this earth. On our way back to the city we had
stopped at the Dene community of Fort McKay. It was literally an island of forest, about
10 km square surrounded by the wasteland of the tar sands development. Yes, the houses
were modern and the roads were good, the trucks brand new and the band office was state
of the art and rustic looking. But at what price ? so that the people could not eat the fish
from the nearby river? Or that they could no longer hunt moose and must travel far in
order to access traditional food and medicines.
- An earlier version of this article was published in Native Peoples Magazine, Nov/Dec
2005.
