II. Sun Dance
If I had any doubts about my path,
being surrounded by the strongest people I know made it pretty obvious that I was doing something right, or that I should at least follow their lead until I figure it out.
*******
We geared up for the road, three car caravan, three oil burners to get us across the country for a sacred prayer ceremony, at least one of them was a hybrid, but still. Packed a cooler full of fresh picked snacks, always the chef, and sung an Abenaki protection song as we smudged and prayed for our safe travel. Prayed to remember to walk in prayer, or to drive in prayer, to keep our heads calm and our hearts full of love, to remind ourselves why we were here, and to keep us living in a good way. Even if praying ain't quite your thing, taking a moment to verbalize your intentions in the world and the ways in which you can progress your own internal evolution, is probably not likely to have too much negative impact on your daily.
Leela and I rode in her car, she was continuing west after ceremony, which contributed to the inflation of tires on the road. We connected in a big way, each sharing stories of similar transformation and excitement about the future, def meant to be companions for the three day drive. Like I'd expect anything less.
We talked about my growing belief in the telepathic telegraphs of a global communication system. She dug it. Mainly because she had already experienced it. We were talking about the science of plants, and how they communicate through electrical impulses, like us, except that they can listen without the need for the incessant babble that we insist upon. I already knew about this long time scientific knowledge, plants are alive and we know it, but she had actually had a conversation with one. Freakin hippies. Well, not really a conversation, more of a scolding really.
Leela had found a relationship with the spiritual side of the universe many years before Standing Rock. She'd been on this path for a while. But she was still young, and still had some youth to be reckless with, even though she had been awakened, it was still tempting to sleep in. Then, plain as day, one of the plants she was tending, spoke to her. Like, out loud and in english. Out loud in her head at least, or her heart, but direct and to the point, "What are you doing with yourself?"
That's a pretty loaded question. In what capacity? Not that it matters, I don't know much about any of it, but she knew exactly what it meant. It was meant for her. It resonated her insides as an overwhelming feeling of connection. So much more than just the words, but actual words too, and she knew exactly what they meant. She already knew that she was straying from the path a bit, allowing herself to grow complacent even though she knew that there was more important work to be done, just needed a little nudge from an older sister is all. And through an infinitely complex web of circumstances (as are all water protector backstories), following her intuition brought her halfway across the country to save the world, and to save herself, and here we go again.
We mainly just talked to each other though, such a good time, as do my fated excursions to the dakotas often work out. Heady star stuff, her experience living on the poverty stricken rez, and of course a good dose of old indian prophecies. Like the Hopi's 'myth' of a new era, a new abundant garden utopia, everything you could ever desire, just like in the cartoons. They aren't even too vague about the deets, basically, arizona is going to be an awesome island and the rest of it will sink like Waterworld. Noted.
And there’s the bit about mankind having a choice to make, to return to a natural way of life, or to continue down the technology spiral until the Earth flips the switch for good. And that same pictorial prophecy, the one that’s thousands of years old, included airplanes and the atomic bomb, guns, trains, long haired youth confusing their parents as they learn the indian ways, oil in the ocean, the first two world wars, and the next.
There's also themes that pop up repeatedly throughout the passed down stories of many indigenous peoples around the world. The Eagle. The Condor. What the Eagle means to the natives of north america, the Condor represents to our southern hemisphered counterparts, and they've been separated for a long time. Though each culture makes reference to the other’s totem, a sure sign that they once shared airspace, but now they are separated by a growing wall of madness. And, also, it's probably worth pointing out the many, many, many stories about the Condor people and the Eagle people being reunited as we transition into the next chapter.
*******
Buckle up. Cornfields for days. Rode through nebraska on nebraska day. The Corn parade. Best burrito in the state, plus a young couple thought that we were with the band, a reckless looking crew no doubt.
More Corn. Everywhere I could see. And then we passed a dead Deer. Poor guy. :( Where was he even going? No woods as far as the eye can see. Strings of barbed wire composed every corridor. And this dude, left without a de-fence mechanism, as he's locked into this Bowie-less labyrinth of modern day maize, not that it would ever hold up without him. Good luck convincing me that this fatality isn't at the leather clad hands of the fence contractor. Unless he just ate too much of a toxically modified lab-grown ear.
I swear that I'm not here to drag Corn through the mud, again, but it's hard to paint a complete picture without at least mentioning a few kernels of the truth. That Deer wasn't the only soul caught up in that cornfield, just imagine being a tiny little field Mouse who never travels far from home, and then that home's mowed over to make room for a Corn factory. No big, at least it's edible, somewhat. So Corn's what's for dinner, especially in america's poorer communities.
But kellogg's taught me that Corn flakes were healthy, so I'm not too worried about it, even if flaking Corn requires high heat extrusion, which destroys all nutrients, fatty acids, and even the chemical vitamins they added to the box top. Fortified with irony, is the bit about the laboratory Rats on a cereal diet, who actually lived longer when they consumed the cardboard box instead of the contents. And the last time I pretended to be a writer, I went over and over the caveats of corn-feeding cattle, and how it empowers E. Coli to enter the bowel stream. Oh, and an all Corn diet has been shown to cause cannibalistic diarrheal death.
In france, it's not the field Mice, it's the field Hamsters, wild Hamsters that aren't received as cute and cuddly by the farmers that ‘own’ their homeland. And then they started eating their young. Displayed a complete lack of maternal instincts. And only in the cornfields. But that's whatever really, they're probably just not as evolved to eat Corn as we are, sometimes we have to sacrifice another's young in the name of mindless expansion. Progress. Except that we also get deathly ill if over-consumed by Corn.
Pellagra, a crippling disease of stomach sickness and skin rash, followed by hallucinations, paranoia, and depression. Insanity. And death. A hundred years ago it was an epidemic, especially in my gritty south, and mainly in lower economic communities. Forty percent mortality rate. Hospital turned away patients and special "pellagrasoriums" were opened to quarantine the ill. Doctors knew that it was linked to Corn consumption. But how?
Time for some experimenting, just gotta find some willing test subjects. Ah, why don't we just use prisoners? They're not real people anyway. So we cornfed a cellblock, and surprise surprise, pellagra. A few science things later, and we figured out that Corn binds niacin, or vitamin B3, which stops the body from absorbing it. Which stops production of some essential amino acids. Which makes you real sick. But no worries, we don't even have to consider the absurd possibility of lowering our intake of a crippling crop, just take a B3 pill and you'll be good to go. Or use the passed down traditional methods of preparing the Corn, which use lime to break open the niacin. Or build an entire civilization on destroying the ecosystem, to plant a poisonous produce that keeps us sickly dependent on your western medicine, and too tired to think about an alternative.
*******
Guess an alternative route for Bambi was no longer an option though. An endless grid of Corn cages that becomes even more confusing as you eat your way through the maize. But even if the Corn wasn't there, say if maybe the post-apocalyptic survivors realized the reality of raising cane, those fences would still be cutting off an entire world from our precious planet. If the collapse happens tomorrow, an end to the jenga tower of destruction that we've 'dr. seussed' together, then it's nice to think about the return of the great species we've almost taken out of the game completely. Like the Buffalo. Without man to interfere in their livelihood, we should expect to see the return of great herds across the plains. But there's still a fence in the way. Millions of them. We had over six million miles back in the 1800s, doesn't take much to extrapolate our exponential expansion from there. We may not be around to do the mending, but it'll be a few years before they return to the dust of the Earth.
So I'm gonna start cutting them. Definitely in the scenario of a capitalistic cataclysm, I'm a hundred percent gonna be walking the Earth with a pair of bolt cutters, removing the sanctions of interspecies travel is one of the most crucial components of unbuilding Eden.
But what can we do about it now? You mean besides waking up all of humanity to the destruction we've plowed over? Assuming that we can't get through to the megacorporations that contain our crops, too caught up on cost to consider another's right of way, I say we just cut down the congestion ourselves. Let's start taking down fences. Like, legit guerrilla style covert cage deconstruction.
We already covered the caveats of freeing our four-legged family, but I doubt that letting Corn off the cob could possibly cause any more harm than it already has. Is the razor wire there for our safety or theirs? I always get confused by that one, especially when it seems to be primarily protecting profit. Why fence in a five mile wide Corn orchard? Hopefully they've not mutated to the point of escaping.
Guess it keeps out whatever creatures have managed to survive the agricide. Good thing too, I'd imagine they're hungry since there's no longer a lush landscape of libation, but could a few Deer possibly eat more profit than it costs to maintain the fence? So, I guess they must be worried about people. Corn hustlers. Members of their own species who are also struggling with not going hungry. Good God I hope they're not eating all that Corn.
I mean those fences were no joke, video surveillance and maybe even a few hidden dapl cops. So what if I cut a few links? If I figure out the migration path of least resistance, maybe right where the dead Deer was migrating, and just cut out a section. I want to cut it all down of course, and in due time, but my guess is that they might not be too keen on that one. But are they keen enough to notice a single breach? Some were high tech, possibly equipped with an electrical continuity tester, but there was plenty of old school barbed wire to go around. How long could a missing link go unnoticed?
We'll assume they regularly monitor this type of thing, but if we remove the evidence, will they really catch an anomaly in a drive-by? Or what if we replaced the barbed wire with a gray string? An illusion of fencing, but easily escapable by inadvertent inmates. They'd eventually catch on, some would fix it, others might not mind enough to mend, and then there's those who upgrade their fence systems with cameras and guns. Not that we're above removing razor wire at gunpoint, though it might be tougher when we come back for round two. Maybe my solo snipping only tipped my hand, but if the other hand held a more concerted effort of widespread fence removal, perhaps we could hit them before they saw it coming on their FenceCam3000.
*******
Rosebud Indian Reservation, south dakota, home of the Sicangu Oyate. Good to be back in indian country, though Standing Rock could hardly count as a true reservation experience. All I had known was beauty and love, but the reality of the rez is poverty, depression and addiction, aka, oppression. Far from the romanticized disney dreamworld assumed by a majority of the colonized, within minutes of entering this supposedly sovereign nation, I couldn’t help but feel the pain and sadness of a broken people.
It’s messed up out there, but also the most spiritually filling place I’ve ever known. We may have sentenced a people to being forgotten, but they are home, they are a part of it, they are indigenous to a place, they eat and breathe the energy of their ancestors buried beneath their feet, and they are living piece of their living planet.
And now, after a three day journey, I was living it. We rolled into a rez gas station with a hint of frybread in the air, and as we pulled into a parking spot, I made eye contact with two of my very closest family members. They had also just arrived, at the exact same time as us, though they had only been traveling from nearby north dakota. They had been back at Standing Rock, camping out and cleaning up whatever debris the national guard had left behind. So Cool. We hugged and cried and stuff, such an incredible feeling to be reunited after such a life changing adventure, but suck it up, we got stuff to do.
We rolled into the Sun Dance grounds and stopped by the cook shack to unload some groceries we’d picked up on the way. We walked into a circle of ten or so, and I immediately locked eyes with another bestie, and then a long intense hug as she worked through the confusion of actually seeing me here.
I disappeared after camp. During it actually. I'd been off-grid. Off the facebook. (In fact, I recently saw my FB year in review - "Dude, where are you?", memes of Where's Waldo, a bunch of new water protecting friends, a quick post to confirm my aliveness, and then a link to my first book. What a year.) My profile was the least expected to appear, although she had also been mia, perhaps a correlation between our disconnected connection to following our hearts, and a return to ceremony in such a big way.
A lot of people were lost after camp. We'd found this incredible meaning to our lives, a real sense of purpose that pushed us to be the best we could be, and then it was over. I knew it wasn't over, it had just begun, and then I left with a dozen of our strongest to begin a new life. But what about those that didn't have that support system? Those forced to re-assimilate into a world that they knew to be deadly. Surrounded by family and friends that don't get it, it really was a "had to be there" kinda thing, and then pressured back into the capitalism machine and the constant reminders of death on their live feeds. And even those I escaped with didn't have the easiest time, I was lucky to have been called to write, I felt anxiety any moment that I wasn't, and it eased my heart to know that I was doing my duty of effecting change. So without that, I might have gotten lost in the mix too. But I stayed in prayer. Stayed focused. Stayed committed to inspiring a new way of relating to Unci Maka. And now I'm at the most sacred prayer ceremony with my closest comrades. Knock it if you want, but I think I'll keep on praying.
*******
The circle held a few more reunions, including one of my closest spiritual mentors from camp, and his spiritual leader, Harvey, the Sun Dance chief. I handed him a pouch of Tobacco, a customary gift to someone holding ceremony, and I offered up my services in the kitchen. His wife, Beth, chimed in that she normally held it down in here, but she was out of commission with a hurt something or other, so heck yeah, get to work buddy.
The cook shack was a fifteen by thirty wooden building, a kitchen that as of this morning, had neither power nor water, working on it. Soon I would see another of my spiritual guides put some love into the breaker box, and let there be light. And then, the next day, another of the people who helped bring me to spirit, got the well pump working and mni wiconi. So this is for real. All of the men who played an integral role in sparking my spiritual spiral, everyone that had ever poured a lodge for me, was here at Sun Dance, with their spiritual leader, who is now my spiritual leader. Good thing I can cook.
I went to set up camp, Ben had his tipi almost up, some other Rosebuddies over there, looks like the spot for me. Don't have a tent or anything, left my last one buried in the snow, plus I'm traveling pretty light these days. I left a bag of stuff at the farm, lighten my load before heading into the unknown, figured I didn't need purple cords at a prayer circle, or my chess board (mistake), or a few other choice items that will make a nice score once we're in survival mode. Just the clothes on my back, a pair of shorts for sweat, a knife, a cup, the laptop, a stack of notebooks wrapped in a red prayer cloth, and a piece of rope to tie it all together. And my pillow.
That's it. All I need. I still had other stuff in storage, but I've since gone through it and given it all away too. I don't need a bunch of material things weighing me down. The less I have, the richer my experience. I also understand that I'm taking it pretty far. Plenty of people lead lives of minimal means and still retain a few creature comforts, like a change of clothes, and everyone's path is different, mine just so happens to include a complete trust in the universe to take care of me along the journey. Surely sounds selfish to the skeptic, depending on the kindness of others instead of joining a demolition crew in the real world, and wildly irresponsible to stumble through life unprepared. Of course, it's precisely my lack of planning that has led me here, and my homie has an extra tent for their brother, wopila tanka.
*******
The Sun Dance grounds cover a few acres, the cook shack was the only permanent structure, and everything else was getting put together as we speak. A crew was up the hill assembling the arbor, a huge shaded rig that enveloped the Sun Dance circle. Built with wooden posts and covered with Pine boughs, and then a shelter on the west side for the dancers to recuperate between rounds. This was going to be intense for them, maybe for all of us, but definitely for them.
The Sun Dance is a sixteen day ceremony, composed of four sections of four days each. Four being a sacred number, four directions, four doors in a sweat, four ages of man, four phases of life, four seasons, and four ninja Turtles. We were actually already in the first phase, hembleciya, and all Sun Dancers must go up on the hill before the main event. They could have gone earlier, like Ben and Charlie, or they could go on their vision quest here in the days leading up to ceremony. It would prepare them for the journey ahead, and then we would have four days of purification, a chance to acclimate to the land and wash any remaining civilization off of us, a daily sweat, and plenty of sweating to do as we finished up preparations for...
The Sun Dance. Four days of intense praying. I guess I'm ready? And finally another four days of purification, a chance to stay in our prayer circle, in the bubble of good energy, allowing the positive vibes to really sink in before venturing out into that other world of filth. Who knows what'll happen after all that? I'm a free agent. Done with the book, except maybe another edit or two, and reunited with so many close allies. I could really end up heading in any direction. Fun.
*******
Then we had yet another reunion. On the back side of the Sun Dance grounds was the camp of a certain school bus full of a tipi making family, the Erenbrooks. I'd only briefly met them at camp, never really hung out, and after a few minutes they started to remember our brief interactions. How could this whole family have survived the winter out there without making friends with the chef? They cooked for themselves, as did a few of the families that I did manage to get close to, because they understood the importance of good food.
Now hold on, don't get riled up for my sake, they weren't saying my food didn't taste good, as if, but they knew the quality of the inferior foods we had stockpiled. Some really heady and healthy stuff in there, but mainly packaged and processed and modified products of the american dream of agrinomic suicide. Or the native nightmare of minimal rations and commodity beef.
And they cooked on an open fire whenever they could, my kinda bus hippies for sure. They prefer to sleep in the tipi, but the bus is fully capable of housing them all, plus room for a few guests to have a cup of tea. Oh yeah, and there were seven of them. Mom, dad, and then a tipiful ranging from toddler to tween, a new generation of water protectors. The future of our planet.
They'd been living in indian country ever since camp, fully immersed in both the traditional ways, and the modern struggle on the rez. Finding clean food was one of the big ones. And water. Funny that I was coming from a place of the clearest water and realest foods, and now that I'm in the land of the most connected to the Earth, at a most sacred prayer ceremony, it's back to eating garbage. Actually, that's not really that funny at all.
Only a convenient store in Rosebud, the closest grocery store twenty miles away, and good luck finding anything organic. Then there's the commods, commodities, the minimal provisions that our government agreed to give them after we destroyed their entire way of life. This is not quality stuff, a clear level below generic, but exactly what I would expect the meals to look like in a POW camp. Considering the standards that they feed us by, I'd hate to see their official policies of adequate nutrition for a broken population of enemies of the state.
I can't imagine that it felt too natural to depend on government farmies for food, when the dakota plains you grew up in were one of the most biodiverse regions on the continent. Medicines growing everywhere, Sage, Rose Hips, Echinacea, Mullein, but tons of actual edibles too. Purple Potatoes, a turnip-like veg called a Timpsila, Plums, Grapes, Choke Cherries, Buffalo Berries, and so much other stuff that the local menu could hardly be called plain. It's not that they're all gone, though the fences and farming and ranching that was pushed on these people did greatly reduce the size and quality of gathering grounds, it's more like they've forgotten their way of life as they were forced to assimilate or die.
Well, we did reserve them a place to exist however they want, is it really our fault if they don't live long and prosper? Yes. Sure, we saved them a spot, of the most infertile land, but we didn't exactly just hand over they keys either. We still control the reservations. They are concentration camps. Period. We set the policies of land distribution, which only fracture the land further with every passing generation. We control their police, the BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, a united states government agency started by the war department. We poison their food. We poison their water. We continuously tighten the borders around them as we supply their depression with alcohol and meth. And that's just the basics.
Luckily I'm pretty good at working with what I got, and praying over processed produce, plus I wasn't nearly alone in the kitchen. I wasn't even in charge, thank God, Leela was gonna handle all that stuff, I just had to cook dinner. It was suggested at one point that I could do breakfast, luckily in my absence, a Rosebuddy who knew the deal spoke up for me, "He's really more of a dinner and late-night snack kinda guy, he'll do whatever you need, but that's where he really belongs." Nice. And the strangest thing - She wanted to plan out the menu, like, with recipes and stuff, and even wanted to write them down. What? Well, that just takes all the fun out of it. And the magic. Then a mention of a schedule, no indian time, freaking colonizers. But I was in the zone, humility and patience kicking, I got this. Plus, Beth loved me, especially after dinner.
The cook shack was the place to hang out, the late-night chill spot, we may have been here to pray, but we still know how to have a good time. The energy was pretty poppin between all of us water protectors, a much anticipated day of reunion for sure, but we also needed to remember where we were at. Once again guests of the Lakota, but this time not here to help them, instead here for the sacred honor of attending Sun Dance. So we should watch ourselves, our energy together can get out of hand at times, a magic magnetism between this band of merry misfits, but possibly a bit overwhelming to someone who has been coming to this Sun Dance forever and finds the cook shack overrun with hippies. It all felt good, and we were readily accepted into the family, but I've overstayed my welcome enough to know how to avoid it.
And then, after about two minutes of deliberation, and the assumption that it was inevitable anyway, I went for it. Yep. Rolled a smoke. Did I think I could actually survive a trip to the rez and not pick 'em back up? C'mon.
Next day, purification began, really just more of the same preparating, more people showed up, and after dinner we sweat. Four sweat lodges, one in each direction around a giant stone fire pit. We sweat in the east-facing inipi, all of them being much larger than the six-person lodge at the farm. I was pumped. For some water protectors, this was their first return to ceremony since camp, hate it for them, but glad they're here now. I had been in a non-stop lodge though, getting deep in prayer and picking up songs. The lodges at camp had been life changing, but were generally filled with newbies and just a couple of strong singers. And then at Ben's we sweat with our hearts, but not always in key. Here though, ceremony filled with Sun Dancers who have been singing these prayers for a lifetime, next level stuff for sure. Oh, so that's how they're supposed to sound.
*******
The cook shack was outfitted with a couple of dilapidated ovens, the two of them almost combined to make one, then Beth offered up cooking on the fire out back. I think it may have been intimidating to some of the crew, cooking for a couple hundred on a campfire, but you know I was all about it. We had a big metal grate kinda thing, half inch thick bars running in one direction, wide enough for a bunch of big pots and stuff, yet another iron cage to contain our flame. There was a whole new level of finesse with this setup, rotating pots and stoking the fire, though I do think that Ben's wood stove had given me a leg up.
So, cooking directly on the fire, why that must be the ultimate in living with the land. But I've spent all this time thinking about cleaner ways to cook, you mean I could have just built a fire? Yeah. Now, it's not necessarily the cleanest method, it can actually be quite messy, in fact. You're sitting around in the dirt and constantly digging in the coals, though I'd probably be doing that anyway. The pots gets hella charred up, at least they did with whatever black soot Pine logs we managed to scrape up, and then the black soot gets all over your pants as you try to move a massive pot of goulash. No worries, not like they're my only pants or anything, and I bet if it rains it'll wash it all down.
Oh, the rain, guess that might dampen our fire pit kitchen, huh? I think that's the biggest downside, a downpour, or maybe a forty below lightening blizzard. So could we build a shelter kinda thing? Perhaps, might get smokey though, so maybe we put the fire in a metal box and pipe the smoke outside. Nope, yep, think that one's already been invented. Though, the most primitive of technologic tipis is perfectly designed to house an open flame, go figure.
*******
So I was sitting by the fire, grilling some Butternuts and some meat or another, when all of a sudden I hear the motion of commotion coming from the cook shack. I jump up to see a mob of people escorting out an uninvited guest. Exclusive indeed. He'd even taken to hiding under the shack to evade detection. Or maybe he'd been living there since last year. Either way, he had more rattles than a mariachi band.
Yeah, a big long Rattlesnake shot out from under the kitchen, scared a few, but we're a family of warriors. A brother started to handle it,