How could I ever find the words to capture the magic of this moment?
*******
It's cool and all that I just fulfilled a personal goal of survival preparedness, no longer wondering if I'm actually ready to live, but now I gotta come up with something else to daydream about. Has to be a good one to top the last, not just another ground score, might as well go for broke. I'm getting me a Buffalo. Now that's an easy way out, said no one ever, except that I know the odds of actually crossing paths with a wild and free member of the Tatanka Oyate.
There are still 'wild' Bison around, like those in captivity at a few of our national parks. What? Well, some do get a little grain to supplement their shrinking gathering grounds, and it's probably even better quality than they give the indians for the same reason. Even the grain-free guys are certainly impacted by the humans driving through yellowstone, but that's miles away from the Buffalo ranch down the street.
The Bison are making a comeback, Bison farming is at least. People tout the boon to their population that us noble humans have selflessly aided in, but we've only increased our stock on the ownership of another. Plus, domesticated Buffalo have had tainted bloodlines ever since their original path crossed with the prodding cattle. A species meant to roam over vast expanses, but now confined to the cage of capitalism, looks like we have more in common than you'd think.
They're coming back though, in a big way, but I guess that's really the only way they do anything. At least that's the indian rumor, probably heard through a grounded ear or something, and the prophecies tell us of a day when the sacred Buffalo will once again fill the great plains. Hard to imagine that kind of comeback, there were millions and millions of them before the mass extermination, of indians. But this is obviously not a vision that will come to fruition within our current administration, this will only happen once we've begun the work of deconstructing our codestruction.
Now, if a fence melting meteor came through, clearing the land of both cage and cager, I could see a pretty rapid incline of Buffalo on the horizon. Even the east coast fakelo, given all the room in the world and a few years of solitude to re-assimilate, I could totally be barbecuing blue ridge Bison burgers for brunch. We know that our fences are gonna hinder the return of the Tatanka, at least until I get my team together, but I can't give them credit for eradicating not only this majestic creature, but an entire ecological way of life that was intimately connected to the herd.
Buffalo are nomads, following the food for a seasonal menu of foraged freshness. Massive Buffalo herds migrated, closely followed by Deer and Elk and that kinda stuff, and then a wave of even smaller creatures. But why would they all follow each other? Wouldn't it make more sense to split up? They don't follow the Bison because they're besties, they're actually not following them at all, they're running from us. "Us" in a pretty broad sense of the word, I mean all of the carnivores.
The Buffalo roam, predators pursue, that one is pretty basic. The entire Lakota way of life was built around traveling with the herds. A pack of primates trying to fancy a feast, but I bet we'd settle on the second string running back. I'm sure any animal that's hunting Buffalo, has also got a taste for the rest of his entourage. So the Buffalo migrate, we follow them with our stomachs, and as we move through the landscape, our wave of arrows nudge the other animals to follow suit. There are predators at all the different levels, so they jump on board to follow their food, also hunting smaller snacks, which effectively gathers the entire circle for this cyclical journey. Today's doplar radar would display this natural flow of energy much like a wind blown weather pattern across the face of our fluid planet.
But, was it really just us? C'mon. Everybody running from the two-leggeds? We haven't even been here that long, and might not be much longer, certainly this is bigger than the self-centered human genome. We like to think we’re the ultimate top of the food chain, killing or caging anything that might prove otherwise, but at best, we’re tied for the title in our weight class. And I’m just talking about Cats and Dogs. There’s the large Cats, like Tigers and stuff, avid big game hunters, especially abroad. Capable of killing anything we could. Or us. Luckily they’re not as involved in our parade, though I’m sure some Mountain Lions were up in the mix. And definitely Wolves. Right up front. Wolves are our equals, our peers, our brothers, our competition. We share the same slot in the circle of life. Even if I could rank humans supreme among most, there’s no way to justify reigning over their parade.
Are you not buying this? That a wild dog is comparable to a perfect person? I guess knowing that you could murder it, or enslave it, gives you a little peace of mind, but a piece of a native's mind could never consider either. So what is our natural dynamic then? Well, we’re both hunting the same food. That’s the big one. Sure, the Wolf may not topple a Deer alone, but could you without a projectile? The Wolf is part of a pack, a hunting party, and who do you think catches more Rabbits? They are our competition. If there was only one Deer in the woods, whichever of us got to it first, would survive. Following the herds, there’s probably a lot more to go around, and a lot more competition, but we also love our brothers and want them to partake in the feast.
So they eat the same food as us, does that really make them our equals? Maybe not, especially considering my breakfast of Beetles, but the Wolf is closer than you think. We can run beside each other on the hunt, although I bet they have us topped on top speed, but eventually the prairie dries up. And ices over. And we all get hungry. It’s not hard to imagine a snowy scene of man vs Wolf, and once you do, it’s easy to understand our parallel positions.
Straight up battle might be a toss-up, whoever gets the first lick in maybe, though I bet he comes out biting. Big human vs wimpy Wolf, finally a point for the home team. Big Wolf vs wimpy human, that’s one I don’t want to have to witness. Pack of Wolves vs any human, their preferred hunting method, and most efficient, and you’ll be plenty to go around. Of course a pack of us could easily do the inverse. There’s a few other scenarios, but they all fall pretty flat, seems our brains and thumbs are pretty even with their speed and jaws, attenuated by whatever environment we happen to be in.
We eat the same things, they can eat us, we can eat them. How again are we anything but equals? Brothers? Or is it enemies? Competition certainly, although the competitive markets of capitalism would never allow for another to enjoy people food. Ah... got it, we’ll never have to hear about not being number one again, we don’t compete with them, we’ll capture them. Just like the missionaries did, we’ll eradicate the elders, and kidnap some babies, breed out the biters, teach ‘em how to work for us, take away their livelihood, and make them literally beg for a snack. Certainly no competition now, except in the Wheat based Dog food aisles.
Commoditize our food, commoditize our food’s food, commoditize our competition, commoditize our competition’s food, commoditize us. A complete food wallet chain consumed with human consumption. And destruction, as the processing plants demand of natural resources, far exceeds their output of anything nearing on natural.
*******
How about we forget about natural resources for a minute, like the actual term, the words, the phonetic representation for a concept that has no linguistic rooting in anything of this Earth. Let’s look to a language evolved with the land, in-tune with Unci Maka and all of her babies. In Lakota, there is no word for ‘nature.’ In a world of symbiotic relationships evolved from the dawn of time, where we are clearly all related as we each play our part in this great mystery, it’s not possible to differentiate humans from the web of life around them. It would seem absurd to any culture still living in harmony with the rest of everything they’ve ever known. So a natural resource? What’s that?
Merriam-Webster dictionary - 'Industrial materials supplied by nature.' “Industrial materials?” What’s that? Oh, I see, stuff for building things to build other things. Well I’m quite happy living in my tipi at the moment, but it’s cool that this ‘nature’ thing just gives you stuff. And you say this is a ‘cell phone,’ something this small that takes lots and lots of these ‘natural resources’ to make, but now I can look up anything anywhere anytime, instead of letting life happen at its own pace. Well, I guess we could try looking up ‘natural resources’ on the google to test it out. 'Materials and substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain.'
Oh hey, now these are some words I know, see, there’s not too much of a language barrier here. You’re talking about Unci Maka, the planet, the Earth, our home, our mother. But what’s ‘economic gain?’ Money? What’s that? So it’s these little scraps of paper, that everyone wants, because they can make anyone do anything for them at anytime? Neat, I guess? Don’t see the point really, we already have everything we could ever want, but you do you, boo. I’m confused though, how do you use ‘nature,’ or what we know as Unci Maka, to make these paper scraps?
YOU DO WHAT!?!? You dig the minerals from my mother’s veins? You murder entire villages of my brothers in the tree nation? You deplete and destroy the water of everything that has ever lived? And this fertile farmland? You put my mom in a cage, exploit her fertility, enslave her children, and force them all to produce food for your single species, which my mom was happy to have made for you in the first place? Why are you killing Unci Maka? For money? Those little paper things? How many paper scraps will it take to bring back our mother? She’s the only thing we have.
How much money is our planet worth? Maybe if we stopped looking at everything as dollar signs, realized that the concept of 'natural resources’ was simply a commodification of something that no one can ever own, maybe we’d look around and see that we already have everything that we could ever need.
I do it on a small personal scale, but on a deep level. I know I have what I need, to such a degree that I’ll take off across the country with what I can carry, knowing that wherever I am, I’ll always be with Unci Maka. Might not have everything I want, though living without expectations alleviates a lot of that, plus I’ll get to see so much that I would never have known otherwise. I give up plenty of luxuries, but once I realized the true cost that others were having to pay for my convenience, it made me sick to imagine renewing my subscription to civilization.
I just want to disappear into the woods somewhere, build a cave hideaway and find me a mountain sweetie to retire with. That sounds nice, I’m so ready to get back to the old ways, a life entwined with the rest of life, but I know it’s not time to relax yet. There’s too much work to be done. And I know that the old ways might not sound as nice to you normal folk, as they do to my idealistic nature, so I recommend working on a future that doesn’t include a return to primordial ooze. Either we admit there’s a problem and start reversing the destruction immediately, or it’s getting ready to be too late, and I might see some old time mountain music after all.
*******
But no mountains here, in a land that makes the flat Earth a believable theory, plenty of music though. Indian music. Drums. So good to be back near a drum of proper singers, the heartbeat of the Earth, and that’s where I feel it. I kinda know a few songs, and the better I learn them, the more it feels like praying. Still working on the translations. That’s part of the sacred responsibilities of being a drum carrier, of being the protector of an inspirited instrument of prayer, sharing the songs with the people, and being able to translate the words into a context they may understand. Plus, if I know what they mean, both a simple translation as well as a deeper understanding of the conceptual beliefs, able to feel the words in my heart as I feel them in my throat, it’s gonna take my pray-singing to a whole new level.
Most Lakota don’t even speak Lakota, between boarding school beatings and generational genocide, this language of the land is dying with our planet. On three different occasions throughout Sun Dance, I was offered the same piece of advice - “Learn Lakota. At least learn to Pray in Lakota.” I already wanted this, picking up words here and there as I learn the traditional ways, but I also knew that it doesn’t matter how you pray. I’ve always prayed in english, and it’s still been working, so is it actually that important? Praying works anywhere in english, but it works even more so in the inipi, a Lakota ceremony, led by a Lakota speaking medicine person, so I can’t discount the idea that speaking Lakota would connect me even further.
This is God we’re talking about here, the alpha and omega, certainly he’s multilingual. And what about all the other tribes? It’s obvious that they have the same connection to Wakan Tanka as we do, and a totally different language. Albeit a language grown out of the Earth, intertwined with the most basic building blocks of the world around them, and physically in the same audio tuning as every natural sound, ever. My language on the other hand, has no such connection, not even in england, it’s a purely arbitrary set of symbols with no grounding in reality. It is a colonized attempt to capture the magic of the infinite universe, and to wrap it up into neat little finite containers.
The Lakota had no spellings for their words, no need, their physical representations were among them in the living world. Their language was never written down, because it was also alive, evolving its breath alongside those who spoke it. As their culture developed, so did their tongue, only once a language is permanently recorded does it lose its ability to adapt with the changing times and dialects, becoming archaic and irrelevant to a new generation.
Look at the first version of our alphabet, the original semitic “aleph-beth”, a collection of 22 consonant sounds only, leaving the reader to interpret the fitting vowel shapes, or breaths. The breath of course being the conscious influence of divinity, as the first word vibrated, and as yogis find their way om. The start of a phonetic language, but they were only developing a way to write the words that had come to them through their homeland. The spoken word still resonated with the planet, and their chosen symbology was still rooted in the physical world, much like the pictographic languages of china and egypt. 'Aleph' - the Ox, certainly a precious animal to their way of life, and if you upturn our ‘A’, you might see the resemblance to its real life counterpart. Or their letter 'mem', meaning water, whose waves can be seen in our letter 'M'.
Then the greeks got ahold of the aleph-beth, or our alphabet, the first written representation of the human voice that has nothing to do with anything but humans. The letters no longer bring the reader to a specific place on the planet. The abstract words now seem to float in empty space. The made-up symbols now symbolized nothing, except a way to encrypt the magic of the planet into spells, which could then be used to glamour a society into being civilized.
This was remarkably noticeable to those still speaking with the Earth, who were unwilling to convert, so the proponents of phonetics had to sneak their way in. Homer did it, doh. Not simpson, I mean the Iliad and the Odyssey, the most classic epics, and epic classics, and he didn’t even author them. Yeah, he wrote them, in a phonetic language, but these had been long passed-down spoken tales for generations. An oral tradition that held many details of their way of life, morality lessons and cultural taboos, tales to keep the people safe, and they changed with the times. Retold continuously, updated with current knowledge and understanding, these tales were relevant, and occurred in the particular landscape of the people being engaged. Until Homer wrote them down. Locked them in. Made the story static. Dated. Outdated. No longer flexible, unable to move with the wind of changing times, or locations, clearly a text of some archaic primitivism, and after a few generations these were just some old-timey stories.
Hmm... Some really old mythological stories, teachings of morality, meant to guide an entire culture in a good way, pretty epic stuff really, but it’s written about a people who lived so long ago that their way of life makes no sense to us. These stories can’t be anything more than myths, and they don’t make sense in modern times, so we can either only follow the bits we want to, or we can try to force a literal interpretation of a text that we literally can’t interpret.
Imagine if the bible had never been written, instead only passed down orally, as it had been for many generations prior. Each generation tweaking the details, crafting a narrative that connected you to the journey of the characters, through both the land and through the culture. No new scientific discovery could cause question among the believers, the story was rooted in an up-to-date understanding of the world around them. But write it down, and the next thing you know, we’re killing people who say that the Earth is round.
And when you start writing stuff down, you start forgetting it. You’re no longer on the hook to memorize your cultural knowledge, to understand the stories that teach your people, to stay connected to the land as you rely on it for guidance. You can read it whenever, so you’re now free to forget all about Unci Maka. Plato himself, one of the earliest adopters of writing, which allowed the abstract way of thinking that empowered his philosophical pioneering, he even warned about the implications of the practice. “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls.” Coincidentally, the collective soul of man has seemed to have forgotten about any type of connection with anything.
Except money of course, which is coincidentally not only the root of all evil, but of writing too. The written language was conceived of as a way to keep tabs on people, debts, to cook some books, only in a disconnected language of nothing Earthly, can the language of currency accrue interest.
*******
Well, with all that in mind, maybe there’s something to it. Maybe it’s not just silly advice from some senile old native. A member of the last generation who can remember the old ways, who spoke this disappearing language fluently, who may have seen the disconnection that followed as their family was forced to learn a new way of speaking. A new way of sharing their heart vibrations with the world, but in a language that only humans understand. And he might not have thought about any of that, he might just remember some story an elder told him once, warning of speaking a tongue other than the one given to you by the land. A passed down oral tradition whose stories guide the people, so interwoven into their culture that it would be an absurdity to separate the humans from ‘nature’.
I’m not giving up on english yet, after all, I am writing a book that requires its abstract thought processes, but I am also gonna learn as much Lakota as I can, and once I’m ready to find my cave, Unci and I are going to have the best conversations.
So I learn the names of my brothers in a language they can understand, common courtesy, though I also know that there is a deeper web of communication that transcends any audible frequencies. Sunkmanitu Tanka - my brother Wolf; Sunka Wakan - the Sacred Dog who is my brother Horse; Wanbli - the Eagle above; Zuzeka - my dear brother Snake; and Tatanka - the most sacred Buffalo.
*******
The White Buffalo Calf Woman, giver of the chanupa to the Lakota people, bringer of this way to walk in prayer, and she brought us a warning about the coming crossroads: If we choose to live in a good way, harmony will be restored to Earth, and if not, the Earth will be destroyed. I’d tell you the rest of the story, but I’d have to write it down, and after that last bit, I’m thinking that’s not something I’m wanna do.
Point is, the Buffalo is sacred, and understanding the way an entire ecosystem packs up and follows them on tour, really starts to explain the gravity of their pull. Of course the Buffalo is sacred, they lead this entire parade of life, and if we’re honored enough to kill one in the hunt, their energy will propel us to great heights.
Well, if that’s the case, we should probably be eating one at Sun Dance, right? You know it. We eat meat.
Word on the prairie was that we were getting a whole Buffalo, should be enough to feed the fam for a while, but we’re not talking about a box of frozen steaks here. We drove to a nearby Buffalo ranch maintained by the reservation's equivalent to our fish and game department.
They may not have been the most feral of Buffalo, but they had a fairly sizable range in which to freely roam. Like ten thousand acres. We may have essentially eradicated the vastness of the local food supply, but the Buffalo are coming back. And I get the honor of riding along with the ranger, as we secure this sacred sacrifice that will feed the family for weeks. If we can find them.
The hunting party rendezvoused on a nearby hilltop, the herd had been spotted across the way, so the four of us loaded up and we were in hot pursuit. We hurried the truck across the river, the modern marvels of mechanically separated Buffalo facilitate a different experience than the bareback Bison encounter. And maybe not any more efficient, as we neared the herd, they were gone. We set out to head them off at the pass, but they evaded our advance with each approach, we traversed the terrain for hours with no sight of the Tatanka Oyate. There may have been a fence around the borders of the Buffalo Nation, but they could probably go days without running into the cages of a captive audience.
Still can't be down with the fences of ownership, but the stewardship of the Sicangu as they empower the Buffalo to rise up, is probably the closest to cage-free that I've ever encountered. Even in places of wilderness, borders are still defined by neighboring entitlement, you run far enough and you'll hit a wall. And here, in a proportionately miniscule nation, a people who once cared for vast landscapes of migration now condensed into compact cells of forced assimilation, walled into this prison camp of poverty where it's a daily struggle to ensure their own survival, and still they understand the importance of letting their future run free. Allotted a mere fraction of the land they once tended to, yet they've still reserved such a large portion of their home in order to preserve the bloodline of another. They know that the more we enable the garden to grow, the more we'll all benefit from the bounty. They understand that we are all related.
So sure, maybe a ten thousand acre woods with a picket perimeter is still a little too cagey to contain the boundless beauty of my infinite mother, but even though it may not do her much social justice, it certainly seems a viable step of transition as we evolve our way of living, and rejoin the planet that we are a part of. Maybe the infrastructure of road hazard prevents us from letting all Cows break loose, but what if we reserved vast swaths of territory for their sovereign nation, in which they were free to follow their stomachs? And as we deconstruct the cages of our society, we could begin to link together the evolution of migration, as we share the space necessary to free their way and to feed our own future.
It'll feed a lot of others too, and I'm not so sure that we're even the most evolved predator, but that's no cause for illegal interference against our friendly competition, it's simply a prerequisite to participate in the game of living life on Earth. Living life as Earth. You are the planet, and the planet is your brother Wolf, and only through a diverse web of symbiotic relationships, will we regain our footing in the equilibrium of our liquid planet's evolution.
We'd also have to adapt to sharing with each other, a species-wide shift of consciousness away from the fear of scarcity, and into the love of abundance. And we should probably stop eating so much beef, shopping at your local grocer will reduce the export tax on the digestive system, and if you just must have a daily dose of ribeye, then you could always go on tour with the band. Herd that.
*******
I'm here to tell you though, tracking a Buffalo herd isn't as easy as a band of highly evolved indians might make it look on tv. But we were tooling around in a four wheel drive oil burner, emitting an unnatural vibration with every move, and Buffalo probably have bigger eardrums and the capacity to perceive lower frequencies. Plus, their instincts haven't been bred and beaten out of them, like ours have, so they probably just put an ear to the ground and heard us coming a mile away. Woulda been way cooler on Horseback, probably easier, and certainly sounds far more sporting. And even without a posse of the Sunka Wakan to take us out to dinner, I bet that our evolutionarily superior pea-brains could probably figure out a way to outsmart a herd of followers.
We couldn't even find them though. Our tracking guide was about ready to call it quits, we talked him into another go at it, perseverance, and then we looked up to make eye contact with the leader of the pack. Our path had finally intersected with that of the most sacred Buffalo Nation. So the ranger pulled out his rifle and shot one.
I can't quite determine how I feel about gun control, though I do know that I don't like it when the police are shooting at me. And I know that no amount of amending our 3D blueprints will bear the arms necessary to outgun our hijacked government. Peace and prayer are the only way to overthrow the tyranny of oppression, but bullets can certainly take down the biggest game in town.
But guns are the easy way out, kinda. Takes a lot more work and material to manufacture, gunpowder tea may grow on trees but its namesake does not, they're physically jarring and earsplitting to operate, and that same blast of artificial vibration tips off an entire forest full of food. Obviously I think arrows get straighter to the point, far more efficient than the casings of convenience, they actually do grow on trees, and they level the preying fields as they don't drown out the sacred vibrations of life. And I've personally taken to carrying a throwing stick gifted to me by my brother Charlie, a boomerang, handcarved to take out a Kangaroo or a Deer, but let's circle back to the Buffalo bites for now.
The bull was down, so I pulled out a pinch of Tobacco and shared a prayer as my brother's vibration moved between worlds, also sang him a little outro music. We got to work, undressing his wounds, bagged and tagged the inside parts for further investigation, took a bite of the bleeding heart, and dragged the rest of this story back out to the Sun Dance grounds.
*******
Even one vegetarian got in on it, seems her beef was mainly with the commercial cattle industry. Steaks, loins, roasts, wings and two racks of ribs that could double as a Flintstone’s marimba. A couple fridges packed, and a freezer, and we gotta cook some right now.
I made a massive pot of Buffalo stroganoff on the fire, it had to have been thirty gallons, a crowd favorite even with a few stray Buffalo hairs. There’s a little art involved in cooking Bison to the desired tenderness, especially without aging the meat at all, mainly slow and long, and I found a good combo of boiling and grilling to be pretty effective. And then the ribs. Who even knows? I brined them overnight in vinegar, pickle juice, and apple cider, then we boiled them in that big pot over the next night. Was gonna blacken them on the fire, but before we knew it, they were falling off the bone delicious. And that bone broth. Thick and concentrated, so flavorful, and such good medicine.
Bone broth, so important, and easy. Just put some bones and cartilage and marrow in a pot of water and broth it up, takes at least twelve hours to break down the good stuff, but just takes a few cents of your precious moneys, must be why it’s not that famous at your local grocer. And it provides the essential amino acid glycine, which we don’t receive from consuming meat alone, but once unlocked from the bones it is free to build new ones, and skin, and it’s essential to digestion, circulation, hor