Later the Council elected an Elder to chair the meetings, Walter Austin, a Tlingit from Southeast Alaska. He was chosen for his wisdom and ability to teach young people. In earlier years he had made his mistakes that he regretted, but he had learned from them and now was on a good path. The Council then took on a form I had not envisioned. People started to attend as observers, and some even brought issues for the Council’s guidance and consideration. One time the great-great-grandson of Chief Sitting Bull spoke before the Council, dressed in his traditional regalia. He had made a staff out of wood and placed a real raven on the top. A wolf’s tail was tied on the bottom. He presented this staff to the Council and asked them to receive it as a gift. The Council accepted it.
The Council of Elders had several messages they wanted to share throughout. They were very concerned about the younger people, who do not know how to survive through difficult times because they have learned the Western ways and ignore their own ways. We must stop trying to “save” the Bering Sea and instead concentrate of learning how to live as a real human being. They feel an urgency to prepare young people. They want to find ways to interact with the young people. The young people don’t know their own language, and the Elders speak more in their own language, making it difficult. Another difficulty the Elders recognized is that the young people are chasing the Western ways with their technologies, such as the computer and mobile phones, and their fast pace of modern times. These ways take the young person away from learning their language and their culture. The Elders recognized that the young get a Western education and pursue that, but it is done at the expense of learning their traditional ways that should come first or at least concurrent with learning the Western ways. They recognized that the Bering Sea is changing quickly, and that these changes may cause great difficulties in the future for coming generations. The coming generations need to be ready, and the only way to be ready is for young people to learn their own language, their traditional ways, and to become a real human being. Only being present in the moment and in the heart will the coming generations know what to do. It cannot be solved by the mind. This is the way of the real human being.
There will be hard times according to the Elders. And many people may suffer. The only way to prepare for these times is to be a real human being because the real human being is guided spiritually first, then physically and mentally. The heart will tell the real human being what he or she must do. Then, the mind figures out how to accomplish what the heart says to do. The heart never lies and guides us impeccably.
The real human being knows how to be present in the moment and in the heart. In the old days, everyone was a real human being, in harmony with all in Creation. There were no prisons, no male-dominated hierarchies, no violence. There was peace, love, understanding of Mother Earth, and harmony with oneself and everything in existence. The Elders said that to be a real human being we must get out of the head and into the heart so that we can hear what the heart is saying. They were concerned that the younger generations can’t tell the difference between messages from the heart and from the mind because these generations were schooled at an early age to think and that thinking is the mainstream society’s idea of human intelligence.
It was an honor and a privilege to listen to and learn from these Elders. They conducted themselves with dignity and grace that was taught to them by their Elders before them. I now use what I learned from that day forward—how to listen, how to conduct oneself in meetings, the wisdom of the talking circle principles, and how to achieve consensus and prevent conflict. Society needs this wisdom today.
Chapter 31
The Mapuche of Southern Argentina
At the time I was the coordinator of the Bering Sea Council of Elders, composed of some of the most revered Elders in seven regions of Alaska, a Mapuche messenger delivered a message to the Alaskan Elders. The message was delivered personally because that was the protocol, and because they had no means of communication. They were physically very poor. The Argentinian government had forcibly removed them from productive lands in the 1950s to the desert where they barely eke out a living. The Council deliberated on who should be sent to South America. They had decided, for whatever reason, that I should go, but the Mapuche messenger had already left, so there was no way to let them know of the Council’s decision.
I arrived in Argentina and traveled to the place where I was to meet my guide, a young Mapuche chief. I was explaining why I came instead of the Elders when he put his hand up, saying that the explanation was unnecessary as he already knew.
I asked, “How do you know?”
“Because the Elders told us it would be you coming,” he said.
“How did the Elders know?” I asked.
“They talked with the Earth and the Sky,” he said nonchalantly. Then I knew these Elders were real human beings who talked the Language of One. This language allows the person to communicate with everything, and especially with Mother Earth and Father Sky through use of what I call the “inner net,” not the internet. It is a way all peoples communicated a long time ago. There are still some people left who understand this language, and the Mapuche Elders clearly kept this knowledge.
My interpreter and I received instructions on how to get to the ceremonial grounds two days from any civilization. As we were leaving, the chief explained that “there was a delegation of Kechua/Ayamara spiritual leaders that will be there to greet me. They came by horseback and traveled for two weeks just to meet you,” he said. As we drove to the sacred ceremonial grounds, I wondered why they would travel by horseback for two weeks just to meet me.
When we got to the ceremonial grounds at a special sacred place, the spiritual leaders were there, just like the chief said. When we got out of the car we had rented, the delegation of seven spiritual leaders approached. Through two interpreters we were able to talk. “We heard of your traditional name. Could you please tell us how you got the name, how you pronounce it, and what it means?” the eldest of the leaders asked.
I responded, “The name is Kuuyux. It means an arm extended out from the body, like a messenger from the Aleut to the modern world, a bridge. I got the name when I was four years old by the last Kuuyux. He gave me his name, which is a name given to one person in each lifetime amongst my people,” I explained.
They were visibly excited. The Elder spiritual leader responded, “We have exactly the same name, given in exactly the same way, and it means exactly the same thing. This confirms our stories that we were go-betweens for your people and those in South America thousands of years ago,” he said. And that is how I found out that our people did indeed go to South America thousands of years ago as I had heard from my Kuuyux.
The ceremonial grounds were in the high desert, where the temperature got as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 25 below at night—a hundred-degree temperature difference in one day! It was quite an experience for an Alaskan. I also saw firsthand how the Mapuche were forced to live a life of bare subsistence. The Mapuche people were concerned for their Elders because it gets very cold in the winter time, and they live in small shacks with one wood stove for heat. The stoves barely keep the shacks warm.
The region had not had rain for at least nine years or more, so a lot of Mapuche people were gathered to conduct ceremonies—at least a hundred. Each day of ceremonies would begin at 6:00 a.m., when the sun would rise, and end at 1:00 a.m. the next day, and this went on for four days. The ceremony was begun by someone who had to be the oldest person in the world at the time, 123, plus, years old. Her name was Rosa, a blind woman who could only speak the Native language. She changed the way I look at “being old” because not only would she lead the ceremony, but she also stayed the entire time, day and night for four days! My assigned role along with many others was to give energy to the dancers, who danced day and night for four days, by standing next to them, focusing my energy on them, and chanting.
At the end of the ceremonies, we saw some incredible things. Two
snow eagles flew clockwise, spiraling upward at one end of the sacred grounds, and two condors were at the other end, flying counterclockwise. As the wondrous birds flew out of sight, it began to rain. The Mapuche were fulfilling their part of the eagle and condor prophecy that every Native nation in the western hemisphere knows about. The prophecy says that when the eagle and condor meet and shed tears, a great healing will take place on Turtle Island. The Mapuche Elders were very happy, and we celebrated the finish of the ceremonies with a feast. The people offered what they had; it was the first (and probably the last) time I had horse, the only thing they had that could feed so many people.
There have been many eagle and condor gatherings before and since the Mapuche ceremony. Unbeknownst to me, the Mapuche had been concerned that the ceremony would die because the young ones didn’t see the value in what the Mapuche Elders practiced—until they came to the ceremony and witnessed my role in this event. They saw that someone from atop the world had come to be in their ceremony and that if someone from so far away saw value in the Mapuche ceremonies, then there must be something of value to learn. So they are participating in the ceremonies once again. Rosa died about six months later. I found out when an English-speaking Mapuche friend called from Argentina saying that she had left the world because she felt her work was done.
I had a chance to meet with their young people, who told me how poorly they were treated in Argentina. One seventeen-year-old boy sobbed as he related his experiences in the city with racism. My heart went out to the boy, and I told him, “Be thankful that you can still cry. It is a gift that you should never let anyone take away from you even if it is crying about your treatment. If you don’t cry, your heart will be hardened. If your heart gets hard, the racist people can declare victory because you will not be of use to yourself or anyone else.” That young boy and I became good friends, and he would go with me everywhere while I was in Argentina. I gave him the flute that I cherished. Later, when we said our “so longs,” he gave me a flute in return, made simply out of a branch from a tree.
Chapter 32
What the Elders Say
Over the years, I have been blessed and honored to know and hear many Elders from many traditions. I have learned a great deal from them about what it takes to be a real human being. My only regret is that I cannot place individual names to all of the following wisdoms; suffice it to say that their communities include Unangan, Yupik, Inupiat, Tlingit, Athabascan, Maori, Hopi, Sioux, Cree, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Maya, Tarahumara, Mapuche, Inca, Metis, Zulu, Hawaiian, and Inca.
“Nothing is created outside until it is created inside first.” We are angry at others because we are angry at ourselves. We criticize others because we are critical of ourselves. We are separate from others because we have separated from our hearts. We may hate others because we hate ourselves. We trash the environment on the outside because we trash the environment inside. We judge others on the outside because we are judgmental of ourselves first. This statement probably had more effect on me than any other wisdom. When I took those words to heart, I began my healing journey in earnest. Now I remind myself of this simple but profound wisdom. The Elders knew that “the most unselfish thing we can do is to focus on healing ourselves first. We can’t offer the world that which we do not have.” If I want peace, I must practice, think, feel, and know peace within, then I can offer it to the world. If I want to eliminate “separation” in the world manifested in such things as wars, violence in all its forms, racism, destruction of the environment, and all such ills, I must first heal the separation within myself.
Healing separation within myself requires recognition of what it means. The Elders say that “we must look to the root causes of anything before we can heal.” The root cause of separation is separation from the heart. A wise Yupik, Harold Napolean, recognized this in himself. When he was a young leader with a wife and children, the pressures were too much for him and he took to drinking himself into a stupor. One day while he was drunk, his little boy died under his watch. As a result, he lost his job and his marriage. While in prison, he looked deep within himself. What was the root cause of his drinking? It wasn’t that it was an addiction or that many of his friends drank. He realized that this drinking was killing his people and himself. His people had suffered much, beginning with the Russian fur traders’ arrivals to his land, and then the U.S. government. He coined the words “Great Death” to refer to his people’s suffering, which included diseases brought in from the outside that wiped out as much as eighty percent of a village.
What was causing the drinking, suicides, drug abuse, domestic violence, and depression in his community? He then came across the story of Vietnam vets who returned home by the tens of thousands taking to drug abuse, addictions of all kinds, and depression. Many took literally to the hills not wanting any human contact, and many committed suicide. The doctors finally put a name to the condition—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He realized that his people were suffering from PTSD. His people, like the vets, did not want to remember the days of horror, when as many as eight out of ten people in the villages died in a matter of months. The survivors did not want to smell, hear, dream, or experience anything that would remind them of the horror. Vietnam vets did not want to remember, think, feel, smell, or hear of anything that would remind them of the horrors they experienced either, and so they worked at not feeling, which meant disconnecting from the heart and taking to addictions that altered the mind. One definition of an addiction is a “strategy to escape the present moment.” The present moment, however, is when one can listen to the heart without any mental interference.
Harold realized that he was carrying a legacy of spiritual sickness that his ancestors, survivors of times of horror, had to have had. The survivors had developed behaviors, attitudes, and feelings borne of those dark days and passed them along to the next generation, until it is here with them today. Harold put his realizations in a book called Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being. We need only to think of the wars and events of horror around the world that occurred in the past and are occurring today to realize that we all suffer from this spiritual sickness. Clearly, a majority of the world’s population has had or is experiencing traumas that affect them mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Yupik Elders say that this is the reverse society, or inside-out society, where we have reversed the laws for living. “Before, we used to teach how to live, now we teach how to make a living; we used to honor the Elders, now we honor being young; before we used to contemplate death in order to fully live and now we contemplate life; before we used to honor times of darkness and now we are afraid of it; before we used to teach how to be present in the heart, now we are in the mind; before the heart used to tell the mind what to do and now the mind tells the heart what to do.”
We contemplate the mystery of life in many ways, because we no longer contemplate the mystery of death—perhaps because of our subconscious fear of death. Death is the unknown, it may mean darkness, and it is mysterious. Perhaps we put our seniors in pioneer homes or assisted-care facilities, out of sight, out of mind, because we do not want the reminder that getting older means being nearer to death. Perhaps we light up our cities so much that we can no longer see the stars because the darkness is unknown and mysterious, reminding us of death. Perhaps we honor youth because being older means being closer to death.
The mind now tells the heart what to do. We are schooled from infancy through adulthood to think. It is a belief that human intelligence rests in the brain. When we attend school, we are taught what to think about, how to think, and what the correct answer is to a problem, all geared toward preparing a student to be productive in the economy. We are taught to give away our “authority” to the one in control, in this case, the teacher. One must obey the teacher and must receive the teachings from the teacher. This system is linear, from kindergarten through post-doctorate, and everything less than post-doctorate is considered “inferior” in some way. It
is a way that has circumscribed out intelligence, where we are not allowed to think what we think but to obey those who tell us how we must think. And this way takes us out of the present moment into the past or the future. Wise people throughout the ages say that “the point of power is in the present moment.” Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment,” and to be alive in the present moment is a place of no thought.13 What takes us into the past or future and away from the present, according to the Elders, is hate, shame, guilt, remorse, anger, rage, jealousy, pride, and others, which take us into the past, and fear, which is only a projection into the future of something that has not happened yet. It is, according to the Elders, when time began. These are products of the mind.
We are so trapped in our minds that we do not consider how this has colored our world. There seems to be no other way to be, and this way has created the social, political, economic, and physical realities in the world. Einstein said something like “we can’t solve the problems with the same consciousness that created the problems,” and in the thinking of the Elders, this consciousness is the mind telling the heart what to do. Consider, for example, our thoughts about solutions to climate change: let’s convert our cars and trucks to hybrids. It will lessen the amount of CO2 we put into the air, right? So, we convert farmlands to growing corn for ethanol, exacerbating food shortages around the world and making foods more expensive because there are less food-producing farmlands. We do not consider what we are going to do with the batteries in electric cars when we are finished with them. The batteries are filled with exotic minerals that are toxic. If we do with them what we have done with our computers when thrown away, we might ship them to Thailand, or some other developing-world location, as garbage. The poor people of those countries, needing money for food, mine these modern-day marvels for parts that they can sell, poisoning themselves and the Earth.
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