Indian Paint Brush

This summer has been a learning experience for me personally but also for the whole community, all the neighboring tribes, and strangely enough, even those who did not have the same collective experience as I will share in what was learned.

The summer began with our annual Spring IHUK ceremony which is held to recognize the coming of the ceremonial spirits back to our land. The spirits leave from this world during the winter (according to our beliefs) leaving us, the humans, to our beliefs, cultural livelihoods and knowledge. We are left alone with the fierce and mean spirits during the winter months. It is our time to face our fears and to face our doubts and to challenge the spirits that might make our lives miserable. So we look forward to the Spring IHUK ceremony to remember the good spirits homecoming.

This year we had the hardest time finding the girl to perform as IHUK, the spirit girl who owns the girl’s puberty ceremony. Several girls were recommended to us but in the end were not selected for differing but important reasons. We found a girl and she agreed. The day of the ceremony she came and said, I can’t do it. We proceeded with the ceremony leaving it to the spirits. A girl was called and she agreed and was prepared both mentally, spiritually and physically to take on the job. And she did a good job giving all a boost of spiritual strength and sense of gratitude for being a girl who lived according to our beliefs.

Young singers helped make the Brush Dance ceremony for us. So many elders passed in the last few years so that there was gap of singers—all deferred to the elder singers. So many of them passed on and then the young men singers began stepping forward with their songs. Nice songs. Those of us in between saw our roles emerging as the “elder” singers. So the ball was set in motion—there was a natural evolution happening. This observation gave us a renewed hope and sense of joy.

During a youth camp that we organized we brought together youth in age 8 to 13 to begin relating the behind the scenes look of what it takes to put on a ceremony. It is not a matter of arriving and standing in the circle to see if you might be selected to dance or not. The ceremony requires many hands to make it happen. Those hands often differ from one ceremony to the other. Yet there are things that can be learned: from packing water, gathering and making wood for the several fires: the cook fires, the dance fires, the men and women’s house fires. There is gathering that must happen. There is also the time to practice singing and dancing. As we stepped back to observe the camp we saw so many young people working together in unison, helping each other and accomplishing several great feats: The young girls made some of the best acorn soup I tasted this summer, new singers were created during the camp, Indian law and maintaining our beliefs was achieved (even if only in a small way).

We presented at a G.O.N.A. (Gathering of Native Americans) for youth. Thiswas a new experience and we realized how important the sharing of our tribal ways can be to young people. We reserved the ceremonial experience to teach. The GONA taught us that we need to reach beyond and outside of our ceremonies—sadly, many young people are unable to attend ceremonies. Still the teachings are not only meaningful for the ceremonies but for our everyday lives as well. Our positive and beautiful ceremonial experience informs how we live throughout the year. It gives us strength. So we began exploring ways to share that ceremonial experience.

Finally we participated by working for the White Deerskin ceremony held at Weitchpec and at specific sites up the mountainside of Kewet Mountain (aka Burrill Peak). It had been 6 years since we last attended. The elder singers are all gone now. So it was a delight to hear the new singers: young men with fine songs. A 10-day ceremony, the Deerskin dances are arduous and require a high degree of coordination and cooperation. Again the ceremony revealed a scene of people working together to fix the world. Each dance site was more beautiful than we recalled. The generosity and willingness to sacrifice for the good of the world and the people was awe inspiring.

It was a good summer with many precious gifts. And it was a good example of the Right Way to live.

Ikxaramkûusrah was not a well liked man. Now his house returns each month (the full). In his house we see his 3 wives: Rattlesnake Woman, Frog and Grizzly Bear. The following video vignette is WIFE 1 revealed. Go out and see if you can find Pirishkâarim, Grizzly Bear.

Full Moon’s Wives

Working at night

This year’s ÍHUK was for a young lady, Ty Ithreeha Allen. She is beautiful and strong. I emphasize the strong because she is able to focus so perfectly. It was 13 years since we had our first ceremony, a renewal of the old ceremony in our modern times. Geneva Shaw and Kim Moon were the first 2 girls to have the ceremony since its last known occurence (historical records reveal it was in 1873). Ty’s ceremony in June occured 13 years after that first one. In the interim we have been conducting what is known as The Spring ÍHUK. Similar in so many ways, it is, neverthless, more a celebration of our heritage, our beliefs as modern Native peoples. A beautiful ceremony, as well, the Spring ÍHUK is a shorter version of the full ÍHUK.

The ceremony was held mid-June after an excruciating pre-ceremony period when there was so much to get together: the food, preparations of the grounds, the bringing together of the regalia, and the teaching of the songs and the dancing to so many different folks. Most will not have seen the ceremony prior.

As the ceremony began the family, the invited friends and extended family, and the place combined to create a renewed dance. Itself now 13 years old the ceremony is a new “person” with a unique power that transforms all who are involved. Nowadays there are more singers who know the songs and sing with passion than when we started. The place, along the Salmon River in northwestern California, is well managed to a picturesque and obvioulsy loved site.

With each new day the ceremony builds an emotional head. The girl, meanwhile, is working, conducting ritual work that reflects her life to come. So much is happening is several places simulataneously. It is quite amazing when finally after the ceremony concludes we sit and compare notes. Cousin so-and-so did this, the visits by wildlife, the weather, the place’s revelatory power, the stories combine to contribute to the ceremony that became a milestone of who we are a individuals, as families, as relatives by tribal heritage, and, to coin a phrase, ‘believers of the old ways.’

Leaving such a ceremony is not easy. And most likely it was never an easy task in the past to leave the place where so much love occured. We love who we are, we Native People. Not only that we are recommitted to a life that is bigger than our wants or aspirations as individuals. We love that we are grounded by ceremony to a collective purpose.

Sign created by Ty's uncle Brian Tripp

Ty watches on as they make her maple bark skirt

The magic of the place

The new woman and grandmother

The idea of peaceful communities being overrun by terrorizing hordes is, in my opinion, completely unbelievable and unacceptable for this time of hope. It seems that my belief in peaceful communities in a peaceful world is the only real pipe dream here. I’ve always been one for ending genocide. It will not happen unless there is a massive change in our minds and our hearts today.

Today’s NY Times article reminds us of the disheartening but unique position that indigenous peoples continue to hold in this matter. Indigenous peoples continue to suffer when outlaws and government officials decide to duke it out. They find a place inhabited by people who are living in the kind of harmony with the environment that can only be dreamed of, or if you’d like, they find a Garden of Eden, and then spill as much blood as is possibible (my misspelling).

Finding peace is a misnomer. I was challenged by a Vietnam veteran, pro-George Bush, coffeshop denizen who blithely suggested, there’s always been wars, but peace doesn’t exist.

It’s true. Harmony and balance don’t have much of a chance to exist either if the coffee drinker is right. One thing that our indigenous philosophies remind us is that such abstract notions as peace and harmony and balance are not real, per se. They are nouns representing a little more than a picture. The true vitality of the word PEACE is realized when we think of it not as a noun but as a VERB.

Balance is an effort not by one but by the whole community. We see Peace and Harmony and Balance as the end-product of a community coming together in a ceremonial way and jointly working to create a moment when all time stops. It is the wisdom of our philosophies that we should undergo these transformations into the good and balanced world on a yearly basis. It’s the most important act of our year.

The NY Times article reminds us that the Garden of Eden still exists, albeit perilously, in the furthest reaches of this huge physical world. It also reminds us that WE are it’s greatest threat.

Our expressed desire for a world of peace and balance is perfectly contrasted by our actions. We place ourselves at the apex of life instead of as a single player among many. We give our power to the leaders and not to the earth. We give our notions of peace over to greed and our desire for balance to excess. We listen to anyone with something to sell and look past those who believe in the Earth.

Our future Earth needs new humans, or better yet, old-way humans. We need to know how to believe in the world again. We need to remember that the Center of the World is a place not a city or institution or word–a place to be protected and sheltered from the “outside” world.

Julian Lang

See a great audio slide show here.

Once again we can point to a story that reflects what happened to our own Native children from tribes across America: the forced removal of children from their families to indoctrinate our culture out of them and substitute a newer, foreign culture into them. Countless stories from across Native America reveal the trauma to our Native children of this touted federal policy of last century (1900′s). It is a trauma echoed by the Spaniards featured in the NPR story. Both groups speak of the abuse meted out by the hands of the institutions charged with their care: rape, beatings, exploitation.

Today we tend to gloss over or even forget the tragedy that befell the thousands of Native children who were forcibly removed from their families. This type of trauma lives with you your whole life and, sadly, is also passed to successive generations by attitudes, by outlook, by psychology, distorted values and confusion. Today our communities are, in part, rife with a dysfunction that can be traced back to those days when our children were forcibly removed from the family fires.

Julian Lang