“Hold on to what is good” — Blackfoot, Chief Crowfoot
🌿 You may enjoy listening to music from the Native American Music Awards, especially the song “I am” by winner Kelly Derrickson while reading this story.
I am grateful to write while living on the ancestral land of the Hahamog’na, a Tongva Gabrielino tribe.
Groundedness
I step gently into telling about the “Many Winters Gathering of the Elders” in the early 2000s when I lived in San Pedro, California. When I visualie the event, sensory memory comes back of scents of plants, herbs and wood smoke from the fire, hearing drums, and sitting under an arbor overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Because I lived a few blocks away, I walked up a winding hill from Gaffey Street past the Angels Gate Cultural Center sign to the nature area to the left of the museum where I saw men cut branches and reeds and weave eucalyptus leaves through those branches to create a circular arbor.
Rows of seats were arranged in this circle. A Native home was built as well as sweat lodges and dwellings for people sleeping there.I would sweat in that lodge in a men and women’s clothed sweat where i would be touched to hear men’s prayers as I endued the heat. A kitchen was set up where I worked with Native women for i don’t remember how long during the event.
Native American elders from Gabrielino, Shoshone, Tongva, Acjachemen, Fernandeño Tataviam, Chumash, and other tribes travelled from various states to this area near the Angels Gate Cultural Center that sponsored it.
When the gathering began people also arrived from California and other states. When we listened to wisdom talks by elders from various tribes and locations, the eucalyptus leaves blew gently in the wind. We smelled their freshness mixed with sage, cedar and sweetgrass burning in the center fire. I wish you and I could be there now. It was like transporting to another more natural and sacred dimension.
We could peek through the arbor that embraced us like prayers to Grandfather did. The ocean surrounded us, and we could spot a tipi to the left on the cliff. While there, I met a Lakota Sioux elder and invited him to shower at my nearby apartment. He shared with our family and community by giving a presentation to my daughter’s kindergarten class at the gathering site.
During one ceremony, a speaker guided people to walk counterclockwise and step to the center to place tobacco in the central fire, while offering a prayer. We were given tobacco. A line of us one by one placed our prayer offerings. After the four-day event was over I would walk that circle in early mornings.
I believe that Native American groundedness, wisdom and prayer can have a balancing effect on people in the world now, to soothe our heart-beats, even daily, during challenging times in our local and global situations.
Prayer
A sensory contribution at the Gathering of the Elders was the sound of the drums throughout the day. After the Gathering was over, and especially in recent months, I have been inspired by Native prayer and its grounded nature. I feel that sensory sacred vision is needed now to assure me and others and lift us up higher than the dark clouds.
Joaquin Rojas of the Red Hoop Singers in Sacramento described drumming in a video that can be found here.
It represents “our connection to Mother Earth,” he explained on the video produced by ABC 10 in honor of Native American Heritage Month. The drums are used for healing, prayer, postive energies, and connection with ancestors, Rojas explained.
Humility, gratitude, and reverence for the earth weave through Native American prayers which are typically offered through drumming, song, and dance. Here is a portion of a Lakot prayer:
“When one sits in the Hoop Of The People,
one must be responsible because
All of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honor of one is the honor of all.
And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.”
-passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman, found on “Pearls of Wisdom.”
Participating in Native American Heritage Culture
I appreciate you participating in Native American Heritage Month by reading this story and, if desired, discovering more through the links woven through it. One source for reading more inspiring Native American Prayers is EarthPrayers.org.
If you want to participate close-up in remaining Native American Heritage events in the U.S. you can look up Native American Pow wows, museum exhibits and American Indian and Indigenous film festivals online. California events are listed at Visit California. Listings of exhibits and events held at the Autry Museum of the American West in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, including an International Native American Film Festival (held until November 30) can be found here.
To read more about Native American arts, culture, history, and veterans, you can read at NativeAmericanHeritage Month.gov. For wise quotes from Native Americans see “20 quotes that honor Native American Heritage Month” by Perri Ormont Blumberg on “Today.” The “Open Education Database” offers articles on Native American authors on “20 Native American Authors You Need to Read.”
Here are several examples of quotes you will find on the “20 quotes…” site that are relevant for our times:
Famous Native American author and poet Joy Harjo wrote in “I Give You Back,” “I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear./ I release you./ You are my beloved and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you as myself.”
Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota Chief said, “We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”
And from Chief Joseph, of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce tribe, “It does not require many words to speak the truth.”
The sharing of Native wisdeom at The Many Winters Gathering of the Elders” events in San Pedro, Califonia has continued over the years, most recently in October, 2024. Such gatherings are held in various locations in the world. I will end with wisdom from Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot, reminding people to hold on in challenging times.
“..Hold onto what you believe, even if it’s a tree that stands by itself. Hold onto your life, even if it’s easier to let go. Hold onto my hand, even if someday I’ll be gone away from you.” — Blackfoor, Chief Crowfoot
🌿 Thank you for reading! I invite you to see below links to other stories I have recently written honoring November’s Native American Heritage Month. I am excited about the vision of Crazy Horse told by storyteller Kevin Locke which is woven into some of these stories:
Native American Grounding and Prayer. Another version of the above story was published on Medium.com’s “Weeds and Wildflowers.”
Native American Heritage Month: We All Have A Place in This Design
Why Native American Heritage Month Matters Now
🌿 Claudia S. Gold AKA Penofgold
Leave a Reply