The Wisdom of Our Inter-connection Beyond Culture
Intro
When I was 25, I met a Navajo artist — muralist and silver jewelry maker named Chester Kahn, who invited me to visit his reservation in Houck, Arizona.
At the time I was fanatical about my raw food diet, and he served me fry bread cooked in Crisco. I loved the roundness and eight-sided construction of his Hogan home.
The land was flat and dry and went on forever. At one point he gave me directions for getting to some place on the reservation. It sounded to me like: Go Northwest Southeast West, then East. I had no clue as to how I would be able to find any place in this vast desert on my own.
So I write to you as a somewhat clueless non-Native person, who has had brief and depthful experiences with Native American custom, wisdom, prayer, and arts. In writing and researching this article, wanting to honor National Native American Month in the U.S., my soul, or perhaps my mind is woven in there, and my heart, for sure, is inspired by what I discovered, because native or not, the soul has no divisions. The heart is the heart is the heart.
Native American Wisdom
How to be brief? I will try. In Lakota, the greeting “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” means ”all my relations” or “we are all related.” This reminds me of a quote from Valarie Kaur, “Revolutionary Love is the call of our times. It is to look upon the face of anyone and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know.”
The understanding of the Lakota Sioux extends to the squirrels, ants, plants. (I try to tell my dog that the squirrels are her cousins but she doesn’t quite get it yet). There is an understanding that I have not fully integrated — that everything in our universe is interconnected. This is very deep.
As is their understanding of the circle. Everyone belongs equally and deserves respect. This is where we are headed folks, so we might as well start breathing it in now. It might take some time for our planet to achieve this sense of unity. And become an elegant circle. And we can seed it now.
It contrasts with a paradigm of me first, and separation. It reminds, at this crucial moment in American elections, and with the polarizations in many nations, that those with opposite political views are, somehow, deep somehow, my relations. This is not easy to swallow. And this, I realize now, can be a cause for compassion and openness.
But don’t take it from me. Let’s see what traditional hoop dancer and storyteller Kevin Locke, of the Lakota lineage, has to say about it. He will speak about the sacred vision of Chief Crazy Horse, which the chief’s relatives conveyed to him:
Kevin Locke Hoop Dance, Wish You Were Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-mloCMSSdM
Crazy Horse fasts for four days and nights in a place called Bear Butte in South Dakota in the United States. He cries to the Great Spirit for a dream. Then a vision appears to him.
In the vision, he is despondent when he sees corrupt leadership trying to take advantage of people, but finds a way out of that dark cloud to see and hear of the amazing beauty of each of you, each of us, if we can only see it. The storytelling in this video is eloquent and not to be missed.
“Through my music and dance, I want to create a positive awareness of the Oneness of humanity.” — Kevin Locke
Native Women’s Music: The Balm of Their Chants
The vision of Crazy Horse included incredible music he heard. While we cannot know exactly what he heard, I would like to share some music of Native women chanting. To me, hearing this music is a type of balm midst scary times. And yes, we could consider it as medicine, even for our neurology.
The Sacred Feminine Within, Songs of Native Women, link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yx3zIHcFPo
Here is one of the songs sung by Joane Shenandoah:
Watch Me Through the Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P53amOo3eyM
In the next parts of the series I will step into Native Reverence and Grounding.
You can find my other recent articles about National Native American Heritage Month at the following links: “Why Native American Heritage Month Matter Now-Part One: Folk Art Connects Beyond Culture”, “Native American Heritage Month Helps Spirits Soar” on Substack, and “Native American Heritage Month: We all have a place in this design,” with more personal reflections, on Medium.com.
This is Claudia S. Gold AKA Penofgold, writing on the ancestral land of the Tongva Hahamog’na on the Arroyo Seco in San Gabriel Valley, California. Thank you for reading. Enjoy.
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