Longhouses
Monday, January 29, 2007
It was in a longhouse. A great longhouse. There were eagle fans there. There were condor fans there. There were medicine fans of the macaw there. There were sages from all over Turtle Island, North and South. They were standing there, the medicine people of many nations, in a great longhouse. When from the heavens there came a giant Lingam, on iron links, stretching into the heavens. The pendulum was like a great iron tower. And as it swung into the longhouse all the longhouse went to shards, and as the pendulum swung into the longhouse there stood at the head of the longhouse, a group of medicine people from all over turtle island with their fans and their sages, particular to their own homeland, their own hoop. And this pendulum swung into the face of the medicine man leading that ceremony there, standing there.
The lingam pulled up into the face of the man, and then stopped, just as he leaned forward to kiss it. Then the songs rose up. And the smokes rose up. And all the various fans pumped the smoke up and up and up that lingam. Then it turned, it groaned as it turned, and it began to fall back upon it’s own track. And all those things that had come up in the wake of it’s movement, now began to be ground down in it’s returning. As the pendulum took it’s sweep back across that expanse, all of civilization melted away. A great renewal sprang up in the people. The smoke, the smoke of the sages, clung to the lingam, and as it swung back upon itself, the smoke strung there like a spider web across it’s own track. I know this thing. I was there. I am that smoke.
Here in this place with Turtle Island there was always a people. The longhouses here knew they lived in a world peopled by what the Longhouse of the Nez Perce called “heart eater people.” This term defined a difference between “human beings” and those who did not walk in balance with creation.
Heart-eater people were the farmers & pueblo people who were sedentary and not semi-nomadic. Into this scenario came the Europeans, a seemingly all powerful white brother who saw their own image in these native city builders and aided them in a generations old conflict with the Hunting & Gathering children of the Sun.
As the symbiotic peoples of the west saw their resources literally devoured by the new invasion, many saw open warfare as counter productive. These Long Houses met and knew their direction was to only watch and see how this new magic or medicine worked and then only then work to unspin it. We were not to fight. The Crow got the picture early when Plenty Coup was given that message from the dwarf nation. Joseph was right to come to a place where he said “we will fight no more, forever” and we agree.
Our response is in answer to Joseph’s dilemma; how to fight no more forever, and still go on. The response must be to simply return to a way that is symbiotic with the Mother. Our reason is our conscience. We must be that symbiotic Child of the Sun, giving life instead of death in our individual life paths. Our hearts, souls, and spirits cry out for this, and only this. Even the Bible story is the same. This is our vision.
Who then is the child of Creator? Is it the one who lives in Creation as Creator gave it, or is it those who destroy that creation by not living in it, instead separating from it and choosing to live in one of their own creation. The story of Cain and Abel is the same story throughout ten thousand years of conquest. Cain was a city builder, owning the land and farming; Abel lived by following the wild animals of creation. With mankind divided that way, even the Hopi were Heart-eater or Cain’s children in that way.
The invader came to this land and just as described in Revelations of the Bible, forced the children of creation/creator into joining them in their destructive rebellion and assimilate or be murdered. Here this is a strange thing. The Christians came fulfilling their own prophecies, even forcing the last of the Children of God into the image of a beast or die. They knew what they did and to whom it was done. They made it evident when they called their victims “In Dios” or people of God. Now these same servants of destruction wait for this thing they’ve done to others to be done to them, because in all this they think they are righteous and are, themselves, the children of God. Again, who has more right to claim this name, those who refuse to live in the creation as God made it, or those who even in the face of such oppression choose to live in that good way.
Now, all of nature cries out for a different people; all the Mother is in travail waiting for the birth of this. We see our brothers and sisters everywhere, living things tortured and crying out for relief from a beast devouring everything knowing its time is short. We then, on this leveled playing field, we only have two choices – become the destruction or become that “child of God” - that Human Being. One’s conscience requires one to become the latter.
Who are those working to make things more abundant? If one eats berries, and plants those seeds back in one’s defecations, then that planting is occurring. If one collects the seeds of the plants one eats, and plants them back, then that one is working to make things more abundant. Much of Nevada, where once currants were abundant, the berries have all but disappeared. Ask the natives of Reese River, Nevada, those rubbing stones -those sacred bundles, “who are the ones planting back those berries?” they would tell of a Coyote Camp. In Idaho, they have started a nature preserve called Silver Creek near Sun Valley, where the Camas was rooted out years ago by the Mormon’s pigs. They will not return to Silver Creek on their own. If no one plants them back deliberately, they won’t be seen again. One hundred years ago, they were the dominant plant in the Biome. If one asked the people of Silver Creek “who plants the Camas back?” they would tell about Coyote Camp.
We are not ignorant of what the Christians promise to all those who do not do as they do. We are not ignorant to the fact that we propose to walk through a ten thousand year old firing range. We are not ignorant that for ten thousand years, these Heart-eaters have targeted we who walk in beauty until we are no more while worshipping the image of a beast, the failing society that is our world. Yet still, still we are going back. We invite any with courage to join in their own walk in this way.
Gandhi had a conflict with the British Empire over salt making. The people of India were to buy their salt from the English and not make their own. Gandhi and his friends went to making salt. They were beaten, jailed, and killed, and still they didn’t fight or divert from their purpose – they went and made salt only! We will be doing the same. We go back to the sage, the breadroot, and the bitterroot. They may jail us, beat us, or kill us, but we will not fight them. We only go to the sage; like Gandhi’s salt makers, we go.
We write this to you, so you know what we do and who we are. We are that returning to balance. We are the Rainbow Warriors choosing life and not death, and we are those walking that red road, inviting all to do the same.
All this, we hear in Coyote’s song. All this we sing to you. “Come away! Come away!” Heed Coyote talking to the children of Creation about the world heart-eater created. “Come out of her, my people, come out!” Coyote sings “Come away! Come away! Come walk in beauty again!”
Finisia Medrano
www.pullingforwildflowers.org
P.O. Box 113
Arco, Idaho, 83213