by Linda Tucker
Also by Linda Tucker
Mystery of the White Lions: Children of the Sun God
Praise for Mystery of the White Lions
“Linda Tucker has done a great job of chronicling the whole story and mythology of these sacred animals.… Through understanding the White Lion we will understand ourselves and our great role in the chain of being.”
—Deepak Chopra
“An entrancing story, told by a rare individual … a phenomenal book that comes at a critical time in environmental history.”
—Dr. Ian Player, internationally renowned conservationist
Copyright © 2013 by Linda Tucker. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher. For information, contact North Atlantic Books.
Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712
Cover image: still from video clip, by Rijk Keyser,
of Linda Tucker with Marah at nine months
Cover design by Jasmine Hromjak and Suzanne Albertson
Saving the White Lions: One Woman’s Battle for Africa’s Most Sacred Animal is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.
North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Tucker, Linda, 1963–
Saving the white lions : one woman’s battle to save Africa’s most sacred animal / Linda
Tucker; foreword by Andrew Harvey.
pages cm
Summary: “White lion conservationist Linda Tucker describes her perilous struggle to protect the sacred white lion from the merciless trophy-hunting industry”— Provided by publisher.
eISBN: 978-1-58394-620-6
1. Lion—Conservation—South Africa. 2. Lion—Conservation—Africa, Southern. 3. South Africa—Social life and customs—20th century. I. Title.
QL737.C23T757 2013
599.7570968—dc23
2012043019
v3.1
For Marah
Author’s Note
WHEREVER POSSIBLE, this is my most accurate account of events, allowing for the occasional adjustment in date or fact to assist the flow of the narrative. In certain cases, names have been changed to protect the individuals involved, and occasionally, identities have been combined, as in the case of Zeus, whose identity is a composite of two lions.
A percentage of the proceeds of this book is donated to the Global White Lion Protection Trust to ensure the White Lions’ survival in their natural endemic habitat.
Acknowledgments
MY HEARTFELT THANKS to the many lionhearted people who have made this book possible. First and foremost, Jason A. Turner, my partner, the lion ecologist who dedicated his life and expertise to protecting the White Lions through groundbreaking scientific research and by ensuring this rare animal’s reintroduction into its endemic habitat. Jen and Pat Turner for their unconditional support at all times. My sister Mae and my family for their unwavering enthusiasm and support for my cause throughout the years.
Sheryl Leach and Mireille Vince, my godmother, for supporting the foundation of the White Lion sanctuary and heritage lands, while also providing the “ransom money” to free the most sacred animals on Earth. Ray and Liz Vince for assisting me to build on these foundations. Udo and Angela Neumann, generous benefactors who have helped me secure more sacred White Lion heritage lands. Jane McGregor and Ileen Maisel, Hollywood experts who read the earliest draft of this book and helped me translate my life’s story into a motion picture.
Organizations and individuals such as Howard Rosenfield, Martin Bornman, Brad Laughlin, Leslie-Temple Thurston (Corelight), Maurice Fernandez, Ruth Underwood, Jen Gardy, Mike Booth (Aurasoma), Gillian Keane (Dandelion Trust), Vance Martin (Wild Foundation), Stephen Pomeroy (Remarkable Group), Stephen Leigh (Leigh Group), Diane Berke (OneSpirit), Jim and Claire Morrison (Wisdom University), Robert Powell, Karen Rivers (Sophia Foundation), Jeremy Ball, Kari Noren-Hoshal, Dorothy Shields, Jill Angelo, and Carol Pepper—leading lights among the many who have supported this book and its principles in establishing a safe haven for the White Lions in their natural and spiritual homelands.
There are many people who have selflessly assisted my conservation and community upliftment work. Among them, my particular thanks goes to the advisors of the Global White Lion Protection Trust, Dr. Ian Player, Philippa Hankinson, Don MacRobert, Paul Saayman, Harold Posnik, Marianne van Wyk, Coenraad Jonker, Princess Irene of the Netherlands, Advocate Nkosi Phathekile Holomisa, member of parliament Mninwa Mahlangu, Hosi Solly Sekhororo, Prince Jan and Princess Kabelo Chiloane, and other traditional leaders in South Africa. I would like to acknowledge with eternal gratitude, among the many indigenous elders from other continents who have given their approval to the content of these pages: Dr. Apela Colerado (Oneida people, Hawaii) retired High Chief Francois Paulette (Dene people, Canada), Dr. E. Richard Atleo (Nuu-chah-nul people, Canada), Mother Moon (Chippewa people, Ojibwa Nation, Native America), Jan Si Ku (Ku Koi San people, southern Africa), Angaangaq Lyberth (Inuit people, Greenland), and Ilarion lmerculieff (Aleut people, Alaska). I will always be indebted to the many shamans, primarily Maria Khosa, Credo Vusamazula Mutwa, Baba Mathaba, Selby Gumbi, Mathabi Nyedi, Wilberforce Maringa, and others, who have lent an authentic voice to the protection of the White Lions as a sacred animal of global importance. Wynter Worsthorne, Anna Breytenbach, Amelia Kinkade, Jackie Freemantle, Hazel Jeannes, and others who have supported this project and its principles by upholding and practicing responsible and loving animal communication techniques on White Lion territories. Yolandi van Jaarsveld, Karen-Jane Dudley, Connie Neubold, Berit Brusletto, Alison Effting, Jane Bell, Steffie Betts, Wendy Hardie, Linda Hall, Kathy Pierce, Mary Selby, Lianne Cox, Sharon Brett, Michelle Stewart, Stella Horgan, and the extended pride of dedicated lioness-like ladies who support this project from different corners of the globe. Nelson Mathebula, Nelias and Winnah Ntete, Amon Mashile, and Patrick Mkansi, the security officers, and our whole team and staff who serve the protection of the White Lions on the ground. Rob Thompson, Chris Job, Lindie Serrurier, Leander Gaum, Peter Rutsche, and the many dedicated envirolawyers who have generously given their time and expertise to the White Lion cause. A battle-weary thank you to the many individuals and organizations who have united over many years in campaigning for the abolishment of canned hunting, primary among them Greg Mitchell, Gareth Patterson, Karen Trendler, Paul Hart, Greg McKewen, and Mike Cadman.
Of all the zoos around the world holding White Lions in captivity, I wish to thank Ouwehans Zoological Foundation in Holland for following ethical principles and putting significant funds back into the conservation of this critically endangered animal in the wild.
As you will note, this is no longer “one woman’s battle.” There are many more who have played an important part, made a donation, written a letter of support—and still remain unnamed.
Finally, my very special thanks to Andrew Harvey, a dear friend and fellow Sacred Activist, who introduced this book to my publishers, and to Douglas Reil, Wendy Taylor, Eliza
beth Kennedy, and the whole team at North Atlantic Books and Random House for seeing the true value of the White Lions, and for taking my message to the world.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Andrew Harvey
1. Survival in the Bushveld
2. Accepting My Destiny
3. Ingwavuma, My Spirit Lion
4. Taking On the Mantle
5. Burden of the Lion Priest
6. Death of a King
7. The Queen Is Born
8. Marah’s Star Rising
9. Adversaries
10. Royalty in the Dungeon
11. Under the Camel Thorn
12. Reclaiming the White Lion Kingdom
13. Where the Starlions Came Down
14. Trust and Trustees
15. Law of Miracles
16. Suspense in Sante Fe
17. Highway Hennie
18. Presence of the Leopard
19. Return of the Lion Queen
20. Vernal Equinox
21. Showdown with the Safari Suits
22. Not Forgotten
23. Waiting Game
24. Unsettling Questions
25. Shock Tactics
26. Tsau: Starlion River
27. Canned Hunting, or Caged Slaughter?
28. Silent Stakeholder
29. Stonewalled
30. These Restrictions
31. Mireille Star
32. First Steps in Wonderland
About the Author
Plates follow this page.
Foreword
DURING THE LAST THREE DECADES, more and more of us have begun to understand that unless the human race listens to the voices of the first world—the voices, that is, of those original indigenous cultures that live in naked and reverent intimacy with nature—it will continue in its suicidal and matricidal path of destruction and die out. These voices still speak to us in those tribal cultures that have weathered tragic odds to survive into the modern era—in, for example, the Achuar of Ecuador, the Kogi of Columbia, the Aborigines of Australia, the Hopi and Navaho, the Eskimo of the Arctic Circle, and the Tsonga and Sepedi of South Africa, which venerate the White Lions as “StarBeings,” radiating by their presence a power of love and wisdom that keep alive the soul of Africa and the world.
What do these voices have to tell us that we so deeply need to hear? They tell us of our essential, primordial, interbeing with nature; they tell us of the mystery of the creation of which we are part, which they know to be everywhere sustained by and saturated with divine presence; they tell us of the laws of profound respect for all life that should govern our relationship with all sentient beings at all times; they tell us of a great all enveloping peace that is the birthright of those who obey this law; they tell us of the urgency of humility before the majesty of the universe; they tell us, again and again, of the depth of our responsibility as human beings to be wise guardians, and not stonehearted destroyers, of the natural world.
When Oren Lyons, Chief of the Onondaga, was invited to address the United Nations in 1977, he said, speaking on behalf of all the indigenous traditions:
Power is not manifested in the human being. True power is in the Creator. If we continue to ignore the message by which we exist and we continue to destroy the source of our lives, then our children will suffer.… I must warn you that the Creator made us all equal with one another. And not only human beings, but all life is equal. The equality of our life is what you must understand and the principle by which you must continue on behalf of the future of this world.
Oren Lyons then paused, scanned row after row of suited diplomats before him, and continued:
I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation. And we must continue to understand where we are. And we stand between the mountain and the ant, somewhere and there only, as part and parcel of the Creation. It is our responsibility, since we have been given the minds to take care of these things. The elements and the animals, and the birds, they live in a state of grace. They are absolute; they can do no wrong. It is only we, the two-legged, that can do this. And when we do this to our brothers, to our own brothers, then we do the worst in the eyes of the Creator.
It is this message of the “voices of the first world” that echoes throughout Linda Tucker’s heroic and magnificent book and radiates from the divine presence of the White Lions who Linda has risked her life, again and again, to protect. I know of no other book in which the poignant and devastating urgency of this message for our survival is more clearly and vividly embodied. As a sophisticated and Cambridge-trained white woman, chosen by the African shamanic tradition to be the guardian of the White Lions and instructed by many of its greatest luminaries, such as Credo Mutwa, Linda is, in her being and witness, a unique bridge between the “first world” and ours—one whose testimony and vision we ignore at our peril.
As any reading of this tremendous book will make clear, however, getting this message through to a world paralyzed by denial and addicted to corporate bottom-line fundamentalism is an exhausting and often dangerous business, because it challenges not only the arrogance of modern materialism, but also the anthropocentric hubris of the mystical and religious systems by which we largely live, and the lucrative systems of destruction of nature that our whole way of life corruptly thrives on. To give your life, as Linda Tucker has done, to be a champion of the divine reality of nature and the rights of all animals to live in security and peace at a moment of such genocidal rape of nature is to put yourself directly in the firing line of the darkest forces on Earth, with often very little to rely on except your own deepest convictions and the mysterious power of a divine grace that continues to will the birth of a new humanity out of a growing, and exploding, global dark night.
I have known Linda Tucker now for five years, visited her and her beloved partner Jason Turner many times in Timbavati, taught with Linda both in South Africa and the United States, and have been humbled and permanently amazed by the force and splendor of the message of unity and love that the White Lions, by the grandeur of their presence and the divine transmission embodied in them, are giving the world. Linda’s passion, dedication, total commitment to her cause, and humble wise heroism inspire me at the deepest level and show me what sacred activism in practice looks and feels like, and demands. Linda is destined, I am convinced, to be a figure on the world stage such as Jane Goodall, or Desmond Tutu—someone whose eloquence and sheer force of lived conviction can move millions to see the creation with fresh eyes and act on its behalf.
The wonder of this book—Linda’s first volume of autobiography—is that it can be read on many interlinked levels: as a thrilling adventure story, as an account of radical sacred activism in grueling and dangerous practice, and as a profound and deeply moving unfolding of a sometimes brutal but finally revelatory shamanic initiation into the glory of the cosmos. In her telling of her story, Linda is fiercely honest about her own struggles and mistakes, the agonies and disappointments she has had continually to face in the pursuit of her mission, and about the vicious ruthlessness of the powers that have to be confronted without illusion if the human race is to have a chance of surviving our current world crisis. And yet, for all Linda knows and has endured and suffered, no one reading this book could fail to be galvanized by the diamantine hope that shines from its pages, and the noble, passionate love of the creation in general and the White Lions in particular that inform everything that Linda does.
This is a great, blazing, lionhearted book by a great warrior woman of our times, and anyone who comes to it with an open heart and humble mind will be not only deeply inspired but also challenged to wake up to the immensity of what now confronts the creat
ion, and to do whatever possible to put love into action—calmly, persistently, urgently, before it is too late—to birth a new world.
As Rumi wrote, “You have been weak as milk, now become jungle lions. The greatest adventure of all awaits you.”
—Andrew Harvey
January 2013
CHAPTER 1
Survival in the Bushveld
IN NOVEMBER 1991, A BRUSH WITH DEATH changed the course of my life.
On a moonless night in the African springtime, my husband John and I found ourselves back in Timbavati, a regular haunt of my childhood. A group of us—eight friends and family members including John and myself—had driven out into the night from a remote tented camp in the middle of the bushveld wilderness, hoping to find a lioness who had just given birth. A rare genetic code in the golden prides in this area occasionally produces a cub with pure white coloring, and we hoped we might have a chance to see such a rarity.
Nothing could be more different from the world I had been inhabiting—the fashion jungles of Paris, Milan, and London, where the only lions I knew were frozen in marble and bronze in city squares, woven in fashionable designer clothing, or live but caged and roaring plaintively from the zoological gardens in city centers.
In my years in the European glamour industry, Africa always haunted my dreams. Now, back for a holiday, my African dream—or nightmare, rather—was about to come true. As our low, open-backed Land Rover crossed the reserve in the pitch dark, we suddenly hit a tree stump. The steering column was busted, and we were stranded in the black of night, with a nonfunctional radio and a fast-fading spotlight attached to the vehicle’s battery. We had no means of attracting help, but we did manage to attract the attention of the nearby pride of agitated lions.
Lions are nocturnal predators: they are programmed to hunt and kill at night; so my intrepid ranger friend Leonard, who’d gotten us into this predicament, assessed the gravity of the situation. The pride comprised as many as twenty-four members, including a coalition of five males who were notorious in the region—particularly a large and irritable individual known as Stompie. This male lion’s tail had been ripped off in a territorial fight; gangrene was steadily making its way up his stump and would eventually be agonizing and fatal. So he was known for his aggression toward humans and vehicles. I’m still not sure how many of the five dominant males were present that night; it was impossible to tell, but male and female lions were all around us—snarling. A flash of our spotlight seemed to pick out the imposing figure of either Stompie or the largest of the five males, Ngwazi.