III
INTROSPECTION
I woke in the rain. Sometime around dawn the clouds had moved in and the rain started pouring down in sheets. My little circle quickly became muddy. My blanket was sopping wet. My hair hung over my eyes, plastered to my face by torrents of water. I shivered. There were trees a footstep away from the edge of the circle and I wanted to step over and sit beneath their branches for shelter. I craved shelter as much as I had hungered for food the night before. It rained and rained and rained. I felt miserable. I pitied myself. I bemoaned my decision to come here and the difficulty in learning this way, its senselessness, its hardship. The trees and the bright dry spot beneath them looked like a palace to me. I agonized over whether I should step out of the circle and into the trees. I wanted to stay where I was and learn whatever I was going to learn about myself, about the Native way, about the world, and about my right place within it. But I was cold, shivering, miserable, alone, and afraid. Once again, I did as John suggested and admitted my feelings to Creation. I talked about my agony and I felt the rain grow warmer. As I stomped around I vented my frustration and I began to feel more at ease. Then I realized that the rain felt good. For two days I had sat in the sun, wind, and dust, sweating out all kinds of things my body had absorbed. The rain was washing all of that away. The more I focused on that fact, the less I wanted to abandon my circle. Soon I was holding my face up to the rain and feeling the cool water splash against my eyelids. It was refreshing. Not just because it soothed the dust and dryness of things, but because it seemed to wash away the purple stain I felt inside, the one that revisiting myself and my life had created.
I thought about the reasons John might have had for bringing me to this point in his teachings. I needed release. I needed to be free from the stranglehold in which my past held me. I needed to cut the ropes of shame, guilt, and fear, to see my life for what it had been and walk forward to a better way. Those were the reasons he’d decided to bring me here. And as much as I understood, though, I still felt the cold nuzzle of fear in my belly. The habits that nearly killed me were still my crutch—and I could not imagine life without them. I didn’t know how I was going to acquire, or even if I had the ability to acquire, new skills, new tools, new ways of being.
The rain slacked off to a drizzle, then to a light mist. Finally it stopped completely. I was relieved. I lay my blanket flat on the ledge to dry. It was cool but I removed my shirt, too, and did some jumping jacks to get my blood flowing and warm myself. When I felt the goose pimples disappear from my arms I sat down again and looked outward over the trees. My eyes came to rest on something so commonplace, so ordinary, that it had escaped my attention all the times I had visited that ledge.
It was a tree, no more than a twig really, sticking out from a small cleft in the ledge. It was sparse and dry and twisted. It looked as though it should be dead, as if its roots had no soil to grip that rock. But it lived. There was a tiny clump of foliage near its tip and the fresh rain glistened on it. I don’t know how I could have missed it all along but right then I was riveted to it. Strange as it seemed to me, I felt as though that little tree was trying to tell me something. So I sat and watched it, studied it, and waited for its message.
I began to think of how hard I had sought a footing in my life. I thought about the struggle. Then, I remembered a time when the battle had grown too hard and I had given up, surrendered, capitulated, and become willing to allow the world to toss me where it would.
I was twenty-three years old. That summer I had taken off again and headed into the west. When I arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan, I stopped to look around for work. The only place I could afford to stay was the Salvation Army, and I hated it there. But I needed to earn money to keep on travelling so I gritted my teeth and held on. But I was never too good at holding on and eventually I went to the bars in search of those things I knew how to deal with. And I found them. It wasn’t long before I was in the company of a group of young Native people who were just like me. They were drinkers, hardcore and remorseless, and they were lost, dispossessed, and angry.
They welcomed me as a brother because of the colour of my skin, and if I didn’t know anything about my language, culture, or history it didn’t seem to matter to them. All that mattered was that I was another “skin”—short for redskin—and that I would do as they did. We drank. Lots. There were fights, brutal ones sometimes, that even the women joined in. Fights with baseball bats and knives, broken beer bottles, and even a rifle once. But there was camaraderie, laughter, and a caring that reminded me of the winos I’d hung with years earlier. They helped each other when they were sick with the drink, and nothing was too much to ask if you needed help. I wanted to be a big part of that so I listened and learned.
Many of the young men in our group had grown up under the influence of militant Native groups like the American Indian Movement. They wore their hair long, in braids or long ponytails, and they weren’t ashamed to wear colourful patches bearing one message of solidarity or another. They were pro-Indian and anti-white. There was no middle ground or room for negotiation in that. From them I learned about the genocidal policies of governments in Canada and the U.S. I heard for the first time the story of the residential schools and how generations of our people had been abducted from their homes and sent to learn the white man’s way. I heard how language had been lost, ceremonies outlawed, how Indians had needed a pass from the Indian Agent in order to leave the reserve, how it had been illegal for them to meet in groups, that we hadn’t even been allowed to vote until 1960, and that recent government policy had been directed at making Indians a part of the mainstream, abolishing the Indian Act and the reserves—the heinous “White Paper on Indian Policy.”
I heard all of that and more. It wasn’t long before I had a red headband, the colour of AIM, and was reciting the rhetoric I had adopted from my new “brothers in the struggle.” I became racist in my thinking and it was easy to blame the white man and society for my ordeals. In fact, it made more sense than anything I’d thought of or heard before. It had never been me that had caused my troubles—it had been the bigoted hand of the white man that yanked me from my family, tossed me into a foster home, adopted me, tried to make me white, and then threw me into prison when I couldn’t or wouldn’t assume his colour or his thinking. My life finally made sense to me and I had a purpose.
Unfortunately, I continued to drown that sense of purpose in alcohol. Trying to fit in with this new group meant that I believed I needed to prove myself. I drank even more to screw up the courage to be outrageous. Somehow, during a blackout, I managed to get hold of a credit card. When I came to, there was a large group of us in a motel room somewhere outside Regina and the party was in full swing. It scared me to think that I’d done something I couldn’t remember and I grew fearful of being arrested. The next morning I left. I used the card to get a plane ticket and fly back to Ontario where I used it to keep on drinking, stay in good hotels, buy clothes, and keep on drinking. Finally, I was arrested, charged with fraud, and jailed for ten months.
Over the six months I spent in custody I continued to read pro-Indian material. I devoured Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, God Is Red, and The Indian Manifesto. The only friends I allowed myself to make in jail were other Native men with whom I shared my beliefs in the wrongs of the white man. I came to the belief during that stretch of jail time that being an Indian meant being a warrior, fighting against the power structure, fighting to bring that power down and restore the people to their rightful place as owners of this land. My hair grew longer as my resolve deepened. This, I remember thinking, is what I had been looking for all my life.
I decided to live without the few privileges jail offered. The white guards and the white warden wouldn’t get me to buy into their cycle of dependency. I went without canteen supplies and saved the incentive allowances we were allowed at that time. When I was released after six and a half months I had a few hundred dollars in my account, and my plan was to head back west where I imagined the heart of the Indian rebellion was centred.
But I’d made a friend while I was inside and he had talked endlessly about the hot rod he was fixing up in his mother’s garage in Toronto. He’d shown me pictures, from the day he’d bought it at a junkyard, right through the restoration process to the point where it was rebuilt, fitted with a new engine, and primed for the paint job he wanted to do once he was out. So I went to visit him and see this car before I caught my bus to western Canada.
We had a great visit. It was good to see a “brother” on the street. I met his family, we drank some beers, and we tinkered with his car. Early that evening I left to catch my bus. As I was leaving he tossed me a black denim jacket. The back was emblazoned with a bright red fist clutching an eagle feather. “Red Power” was written boldly beneath it.
“You’ll need this,” he said, and he smiled.
“Thanks,” I replied. “It’s great. You sure?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Besides, it looks better on you than on me.”
We hugged and I left him. Walking down the street I felt filled with pride. The emblem and the words on my back gave me strength. I believed that I walked taller and prouder just wearing it. As I passed store windows I looked at my reflection: a tall, lean, long-haired Native man with a headband and a Red Power jacket looked back at me. For the first time in my life I felt fully dressed.
I was lost in the thoughts of what I would do once I got back to Regina and I didn’t notice the police cruiser until it was blocking my path across a laneway. The two officers got out and stood in front of me.
“Where you headin’, Chief?” the one asked.
“Bus station,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?” his partner asked. “Where’d you come from?”
“I came from Burtch Correctional Centre,” I said. “I just got out this morning. I’m heading home.”
“That right? Well, you won’t mind if we search you then, an upstanding citizen like yourself.”
I had nothing to hide and I’d been honest, so despite the anger I could feel boiling in my chest I leaned against the wall and allowed them to frisk me. I figured I’d be on my way in a few minutes.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” I heard and I was twisted around to face the two of them. In his hands one of the officers had the small screwdriver and two thin wrenches I’d been using in my friend’s garage and forgotten about.
“Tools,” I said. “I was working on a friend’s car and I forgot that I had them. If you want we can go back and ask him.”
“That where you got the three hundred, too?” the first officer asked.
“That’s what I saved during my bit,” I said. “You could check that, too, I guess.”
I was put in the back of the cruiser while they ran my identification on the computer. It came up clean, as I knew it would. No wants or warrants. But it also showed my record.
“Seems you’ve been a pretty busy boy. Break and enters, too. You know this area’s been pretty bad for B&E’s lately and here you are with burglary tools in your pocket and a bunch of money,” the second officer said, turning back in his seat and fixing me with a hard glare.
“I told you. I was helping a friend fix a car and that money’s what I earned in Burtch.”
“You been drinking, too, Chief. So I think we’re going to take you in for possession of burglary tools. What do you think of that?”
I was stunned. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when all that was needed was for them to drive me back to my buddy’s and things could get straightened out. Then I remembered all the things I’d read and learned over the past year. That was my mistake.
“I think you’re both a couple of pigs and if I was Joe White Guy walking down this street you wouldn’t even have bothered. But you see an Indian, you gotta pull a move. Pigs,” I said. “Couple of fuckin’ pigs.”
Twelve hours after I’d been released I was back in lockup. When they closed the door to my cell that night I laughed. It was all so ridiculous that anyone with an ounce of comprehension would see the situation for the charade that it was. My anger boiled over and by morning I’d decided that I would make a mockery of the whole thing. I’d plead guilty and once the facts were revealed, the judge and everyone in that courtroom would see how ridiculous it was. I didn’t need a lawyer. To me, at that instant, a lawyer was just going to be one more white man I didn’t need and this whole thing was silly anyway.
I was sentenced to six months.
For a whole week I spoke to no one. I paced the cell block and I thought. I thought about how I’d been judged on the way I looked, on what I represented. I thought about my place in the world—a place and a world that seemed beyond my control, defined and arranged by an order of others, comprised of anyone who had ever done me harm, that I could think of only as they. I had been tossed away as something unimportant, something inconsequential that their system wanted out of the way. I was an Indian and because I chose to express my identity through long hair and clothing they decided I needed to learn my place. My place apparently was not on the streets of their city. I was a threat to their peace of mind. The anger over the injustice of what had happened to me felt hot and rancid in my throat. I burned with it.
In the end I decided that I wasn’t going to play nice any longer. If they were responsible for the struggles of my life, if they were to blame for everything I’d gone through, for my sense of being lost, for not knowing about myself or my culture and heritage, then they were going to pay. If they could say that I was a criminal and put me where they figured I belonged, then I would prove that they were right. I would rebel, and hard. I would cease to care. I would get out and get all that I could for myself without regard for anyone else.
I needed a symbol of my rebellion. Until then I had never had a tattoo, although “tatties” were considered strong symbols of a rebel heart. My next-door neighbour was a tattoo artist, and he’d rigged up a homemade needle that he’d used to tattoo other men. It cost me a couple bales of tobacco, but one night he drew a marijuana leaf on my right forearm. It hurt. The needle was made out of a thread-wrapped pencil that held a darning needle. The needle was dipped in ink and then jabbed continuously in the desired emblem. It took about an hour, and with each jab I clenched my teeth and allowed my anger to numb the pain. Then it was over. I was going to war. I would be a warrior and screw anyone else, and especially screw them. They could do what they wanted with me. As long as I could know that I was fighting back, tossing it all in their faces, showing them that they had created me, that I was their invention and their punishment.
The sun came out. It flashed on that little tree in the rock like a spotlight and I snapped back to the ledge. That little tree was rebelling, too. It was refusing to die. It was choosing life despite its desperate circumstances. No matter how difficult the climb, that little tree was reaching for the sky, reaching for all that it could be, for its truest expression of itself. I admired that little tree. I had never had that kind of courage. And as I looked back at those days of my imprisonment I saw that I had been willing to cling to any cleft in any rock at any time. I’d been willing to become a militant warrior. I’d been willing to be a rebel, a career criminal, and a revolving-door inmate as long as I didn’t have to face myself as I really was. And the truth was that I had been a scared little boy all along, terrified that someone would uncover my secret, know me as flawed, unworthy, and send me off alone again. Because I had been that little boy, the only cleft I clung to that lasted through everything was the cold, hard rock of alcoholism.
I didn’t become a warrior criminal. I didn’t become an activist. I didn’t become a passionate upholder of Native rights. I was released and became what I’d always been, a drunk. My prison anger didn’t save me. It didn’t transform me. Neither did the rhetoric of rebellion or militancy. They just made it easier to pop another top and drown the confusion, pain, doubt, and fear that drove everything, even the anger.
I was grateful for that little tree and I made another tobacco pouch for its teachings. It was showing me that there is courage in merely hanging on. It was showing me that nature—life—will always find a way to its truest expression of itself. It was showing me that growth happens invisibly, where we least expect it, in forms that sometimes surprise us.
I thought about the rain I’d endured. It had shown me that the gifts of the world—the wind, rain, snow, heat, humidity—all work to a purpose. Beforehand, I could only see the discomfort they caused me. My discomfort led to being critical, complaining about the lack of comfort in my life. I saw now that it was always going to be either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too dark, too bright, or not enough of any of them. The rain, like the ants before them, was telling me that I am a part of Creation whether I like what’s happening or not. My purpose, like that of all Creation, is to continue. Creation is intent on continuing towards its best possible fulfillment of itself—because that is the reason for life. I saw then, in that tree in the rock and the rain, that I needed to continue on towards the best possible fulfillment of me—the best I can possibly be—despite what was going on around me. The rain taught me that and I was thankful.
There was no longer a need in me to be anywhere else, to surround myself with strangers so I wouldn’t feel alone, or to want to run to some other place so that I could lose myself in the running. Instead, I belonged on that hill. I thought about all the places I had travelled to, all the people I had known, all the things that I had tried to feel like I was in the right place. And I made a tobacco pouch for all of them because they had all led me to that hill. I looked up at the universe and found all my favourite stars. I listened for the sound of the owls as they flapped their heavy wings through the night in search of game. I waited for the coyotes on nearby hills to begin their shrill yipping at the moon. The night was inhabited by many beings, and I was one of them. And that was when it hit me. I belonged. Just as I was, I belonged. And the truth was, despite the feelings I had carried around about myself all my life, despite the beliefs that I wasn’t enough, I had belonged all along.
When I was twenty-four, jail ceased to be a place where I lived regularly. Instead I found work in the Native community as a reporter on a small Native newspaper. It was there that I began to find the parts of myself that had been missing all my life. I found elders who knew of the old ways. I found traditional people who knew and followed the teachings. I found young people like me who were making the journey back to themselves. I was not alone in being alone. It had not occurred to me that I was not the only one ever adopted, the only one who didn’t speak the language of his birthright, the only one who knew nothing of his tribal self, the only one who felt ashamed, unworthy, and afraid. But just knowing this wasn’t the whole answer. It still didn’t make the hurt go away.
I went to ceremonies and gatherings where the ancient teachings were discussed and passed on. I went to powwows, feasts, exhibitions, festivals, and celebrations where our cultural way was shown to thousands. I was given the opportunity to learn about myself, my history, culture, language, and belief system. For once, I put myself in a place where there was someone to teach me and I came to understand.
But understanding is not healing.
I had never been to a Sweat Lodge. It was something I had heard about and found myself wondering about at times, but I had never participated. I was afraid. Afraid that this ceremony would expose me. But one day someone showed me a glow in the darkness. The glow was the traditional teachings of our people. The more I engaged with the Native community, the more I began to see people who were trying to live as close to traditional teaching as possible. I watched them closely. In their actions I saw kindness, generosity, warmth. I listened when they spoke and in their words I heard understanding, empathy, compassion, and love. They showed me, by the power of their life as they lived it, that traditional ways were powerful ways. And I was attracted to the glow of their lives. When you’ve lived your whole life in darkness a glow, a light, is something you can’t resist.
I met some of those people after a while. We became friends. They talked to me about our way. They showed me by their example how someone can live well and happily by walking our path. Bit by bit I began to understand. Then I began to put that understanding into practice in my living. Not in a huge way, because I wasn’t ready or strong enough yet, but I made some small progress. After a time I started to feel connected, rooted, tied to the tree of tradition, and I knew that it was time to start my journey to the light.
They told me that choosing to stay in the dark, as I had up until then, was not wrong. In our way, we can choose anything. In fact, our whole path is a pathway of choices. When we choose we create, they said, and our purpose here is to create ourselves, to experience ourselves, our souls. Choice is the power the Creator gave us to be able to do that.
They told me about the Sweat Lodge. They told me how they had made the same journey I was on and that the Sweat Lodge ceremony had helped them get past the pride and fear that held them back. That was good news to me—that people I admired had battled the same pride and fear. I wasn’t that different after all. So I agreed to learn this way.
Under the guidance of two men, Cliff and Walter, I began to try to open my mind and allow a teaching to enter my life. It wasn’t easy, because stubbornness is quite often the bulwark of fear and it took a lot of convincing to get me to the point where I could begin to see how much this ceremony offered me. Cliff was a Sioux and Walter was a Plains Cree man. Despite their different tribal backgrounds both men respected the Sweat Lodge ceremony for its ability to help people heal themselves. For them it was the basis of a tribal life and they were eager to help me to learn.
The first thing they taught me was that the Sweat Lodge ceremony is about humility. The word humility comes from the same root as “humus” or “earth” and the way Cliff and Walter saw it, humility means to be like the Earth. The Earth is very humble. Humility allows others to pass, to grow, to reach for Father Sky from the same arms of Mother Earth. Humility allows everything to be as it was created to be. So the Sweat Lodge begins with the Earth.
I was told that the beginning of the ceremony required me to go out and walk upon the land. These first steps through the bush were the beginning of a long journey. As I walked I was to try to pray and meditate upon the ceremony I was about to perform and ask for the humility to see it through to the end. While I was performing this “Spirit Walk” I was to look for rocks to be used in the ceremony. These rocks are called Grandfathers, because they are ancient and have been upon the Earth a long time. After these countless lifetimes spent upon the Earth the Grandfathers are wise and have many teachings that they will reveal in the ceremony. When I came upon a rock that seemed right, one that caught my attention, I was to offer a pinch of tobacco, say a prayer of thanks and a petition for strength, and gently carry it to the site chosen for the Sweat Lodge. For my first Sweat Lodge I made forty journeys for Grandfathers. Each trip is like a day in your life. In the early morning I went to and fro, back and forth, for hours.
As I walked I fought a lot of battles with myself. And all the walking made me feel that the Sweat Lodge was senseless. I wanted an instant fix, as though finding a spiritual way of life was like some drive-thru where you could make an order, pay for it, and continue on your way. I wanted to be able to order a double humility burger and get going. But I began to see that this walk was a lot like life itself. As long as I focused on the repetition life became stale. I lost my creativity—the spark of life—and my focus dulled. But like the process of that walk, if I concentrate on picking up something eternal, ancient and healing on each day of my Earth Walk, something that could teach me how to become who I was created to be, then my walk is en-lightening. That’s why the Sweat Lodge ceremony begins with a walk upon the Earth.
Cliff and Walter and I talked about this idea when I’d collected all forty stones.
“Everyone wants to live a Shake ’n’ Bake life,” Walter said. “Nobody wants to have to sacrifice anything to learn. But sacrifice is always the price of admission to another level.”
“You’re giving up your day to do this,” Cliff said. “That’s a sacrifice. You’re letting go of your pride, you’re willing to let someone teach you, you’re admitting you don’t know. Those are all sacrifices. Without them, without making them, you wouldn’t have reached this point.”
“Now that the Spirit Walk is completed we’re going to build a fire. We’ll lay logs down like a bed and pile the Grandfathers on top of them. Then around and over the Grandfathers you will sprinkle tobacco and pray in your own way to ask for the help of those Grandfathers. Then we’ll place more wood over all of them.”
We set to work. They were very methodical, very gentle and easy in their movements, and I took special care to be as attentive as they were. We worked in a silence that was scary to me. It gave the whole process a liturgical quality that spooked me, as though I were making a commitment I might not be able to keep. I felt a thin coil of fear wrap itself around my belly. But whenever our eyes met, Cliff or Walter would grin at me and it helped ease the anxiety I felt.
Once we’d built the wood and stones up into a high pile I was sent to gather some dry birch bark from the bush while they sat and smoked. When I returned with an armful they were waiting, laughing, and joking casually. Under Walter’s direction I placed hunks of bark randomly amongst the stones and wood.
“Rock and fire were the first elements the Creator used when he created this world and so they are the first part of the ritual,” he said.
When the fire got going we picked up a shovel and Cliff directed me to dig a circle in the Earth—a small, fairly deep circle.
“Can you tell which direction is east?” he asked.
I looked around, suddenly ashamed that I was as good as lost in the woods. I made a guess and pointed.
“Good,” Cliff said. “East is the direction where the light comes from each day. So, with the light as your guide, you make the fire the point that fixes the direction east. Then, you walk back and you place the earth you dug out back on the ground. This will be the altar where the pipe and the medicines will sit. In the pit and on the altar you place a small pinch of tobacco—the first medicine—and pray for the humility to complete the ceremony.”
Once we’d placed the altar a few paces back from the fire we headed off to a marshy area to gather red willow saplings. Again we said a quiet prayer for each sapling we cut down and offered tobacco to honour its sacrifice.
“The saplings make the frame or the ribs of the lodge. We usually use red willow because the nature of red willow is humility—it always bends but keeps its shape anyway,” Walter told me.
“What do you mean, the ribs of the lodge?” I asked, thinking that it was a strange way to describe it.
“Well, the lodge is built round, like the wombs of our mothers. It’s round like the Earth. Both of them give us life. So when we put the saplings together we refer to them as the ribs because the womb is sheltered by the ribs. We treat them respectfully, gently, as though they were the ribs of our own mothers. It teaches us to be gentle,” he said.
When we found a copse of saplings we laid pinches of tobacco down to thank them for allowing us to make use of them in the ceremony. Then we stripped the branches from the saplings and carried them gently back to the site of the lodge and lay them carefully on the Earth.
Next Cliff pointed out where I should dig small holes that the ends of the saplings would sink into. In each hole I placed a pinch of tobacco and said a prayer for guidance and one of gratitude. It felt strange. My prayers were awkward. Language seemed to fail me when it was called upon to address something other than the everyday. I wondered whether these prayers were being heard. Then, starting from the east, we worked our way around the Four Directions, carefully bending each sapling over, placing each end in one of the small holes. Using bark we stripped from the branches we bound the ribs together while Walter sang a prayer song in his language. It sounded eerie to me, in a cadence and vocabulary I couldn’t understand.
“What was that song about?” I asked when he’d finished.
“It was a song asking for the willows to lend us the humility to gain strength from what we are about to do,” Cliff said. “Strength comes from humility. Most people get it the other way around, but the lodge teaches us the right flow.”
Over the frame we begin placing canvas tarpaulins.
“In the old days they would use hides to do this, but in the modern world there aren’t a lot of hides around anymore,” Walter said. “The hides represented the Animal People, our greatest teachers, the bringers of the light. As you place the hides on the ribs of the lodge you say a prayer of gratitude for the many teachings of our animal brothers and sisters. Once the frame is covered I want you to take a smudging bowl that is filled with sweet grass, sage, cedar, and tobacco—the four medicines—and walk east to west around the lodge and smudge it with the medicines and offer up a prayer of gratitude and a petition for the teachings needed to help you on your journey. Then put the smudging bowl on the altar at the front of the lodge.”
The words felt clumsy, dishonest almost, as I walked around the lodge. I wasn’t convinced that I was ready for this. The strangeness of the smudging bowl, with its pungent smoke and the lightness of the eagle feather they’d given me to pass the smoke over the top of the lodge, felt like the most foreign of tools. I felt awkward using them. Unnatural. I wasn’t sure I could get past the fear that, should I fail, I wouldn’t measure up as an Indian—though I had only the vaguest sense of what success or failure might mean. But I finished the smudging and laid the bowl and feather lightly on the altar.
We were ready. Cliff’s nephew arrived to act as the Fire Keeper—an honoured role in itself. The Fire Keeper’s responsibility is to tend to the Grandfathers—and to those who share this ceremony—by having water ready and following the directions of the leader, who on this day would be Walter. We stripped to our skin and washed ourselves in the river that ran by the site. Then we smudged with the medicines. The smudging process is like washing. You bring the smoke from the medicines over your entire body, top to bottom, and Cliff and Walter even smudged the soles of their feet.
“The reason for the washing and the smudging is so that you will be as clean as you were when you arrived here. You’re pure,” Cliff said. “It’s a stripping away of all the worldly things we hide behind—clothing, possessions, jewels, money—and we’re completely open to the world again. Completely ourselves, just the way we are. This is humility. The Sweat Lodge is about going back, returning to the Earth, to humility, and your nakedness is a symbol of that humility.”
All I could do was look at him. His words seemed so calm, so assured, but all I heard was that I’d be required to forget everything that had helped me to survive, that I’d be helpless once I entered the lodge. That prospect frightened me badly. But I kept up a brave face as we walked around the fire and offered tobacco to the Grandfathers. We walked around the fire, going from east to west, then got down on our hands and knees to crawl inside the lodge.
“You’re placing yourself on the Earth and crawling into darkness,” Walter said. “The darkness is a symbol of all our doubts and fears. We face them humbly on our hands and knees. It’s a good way. Pride keeps us on our feet a lot of times, thinking we can fight them off. We can’t.”
Walter began to prepare the sacred pipe. We smoked. The pipe felt odd to me, sitting there in the half-darkness, looking towards the open door and the world that looked more inviting right then than it ever had before. I smoked. Deep down I felt proud that I was smoking a ceremonial pipe with other men. But I also felt the creep of fear along my spine.
The Fire Keeper began to bring in the Grandfathers. Walter placed each gently into the pit. Each time, my two friends greeted them—“Ho, Mishomis,” meaning “Hello, Grandfather.” When the proper number of Grandfathers for the first round of the ceremony were present Walter signalled the Fire Keeper to close the door of the lodge.
This was darkness. Pure, utter, and complete. There was no light at all except for the red glow of the Grandfathers. The smoke from the pipe and the burning sweet grass, cedar, and sage burned my eyes and I felt choked and unable to breathe. I was afraid. A part of me recognized this darkness. It was the darkness I had felt inside me all my life. Now, here I was, sitting in its very middle, naked, powerless, and feeling very, very small. I concentrated on the symbol of the womb that my friends had talked about. I was in the womb of my birth mother and I was in the womb of the Great Mother, Mother Earth, and for a moment that thought calmed me. But when Walter and Cliff started to sing, all comfort disappeared.
Then came the first splash of water on the Grandfathers. There was a loud hiss as the water was transformed into steam. The heat in the lodge rose sharply. I could feel it settle over every part of my body like a sheet of fire. More water was splashed onto the rocks and the heat became searing. My lungs felt scalded. Sweat coursed down my face into the corners of my eyes and burned them. My hair felt so dry and brittle that I was afraid it would burst into flame. I brushed sweat from my face and neck onto my hair to wet it down as the heat grew more and more intense—as did the singing and chanting. The prayers continued as more and more water was splashed. The intensity in the lodge was frightening. I found myself beginning to pray. I prayed like I never had before, talking, beseeching, moaning, and crying words I never thought I would say. I asked for things like strength, courage, faith, and outright help from the power of Creation to protect me and see me through. I asked for forgiveness for all the things I suddenly knew were wrong. I asked for help to try and live a different way.
One of my friends had a rattle now and was shaking it in time with his singing. The stream of sweat coursing down my body was like all the tears I had ever wanted to shed. I could feel the grief, anger, fear, jealousy, envy, pride, guilt, and shame seep out of every pore, every ounce of my being, and that’s when the real tears began to follow them down my chest. I heaved great sobbing bunches of them. They coursed down the front of my body in what felt like waves and I felt washed in the great flood of my experiences. I was a little boy. I was a teenager. I was a young man. I was me. And in each I felt the burn of bitterness and shame, smelled the stink of fear, and tasted the rancid breath of loneliness. It felt great to cry and wail. It was a release. Then, when it seemed like the heat and the energy in the lodge could climb no higher, Walter called for the Fire Keeper to open the door.
This was the coming of the Light.
From the darkness, heat, and discomfort, I was instantly transported to a world of light, cool air, and ease. The burdens, so cumbersome in the darkness, were light-ened. I sat there, breathing deeply, drinking the cool air into the very depths of my spirit. All I could think and feel was gratitude. The only thoughts I could hold onto were those concerned with the difficulty of the ceremony, of this ritual journey, and how the light represented the easing of that difficulty. We laughed now as we relaxed in the coolness and light. Walter told a few funny stories about Sweat Lodge ceremonies he’d been to in the past and the laughter felt good. My heart felt alive inside my chest. My mind was clear.
Then the signal was given for the door to be closed and we were thrown into darkness again. Three more times I would be plunged back into darkness to feel the hardship, to release the effects of my history, my choices, my hurts, wounds, scars, secrets, and self-harm. Three more times I would confront myself in all humility. Each time the door closed I was filled with fear. I swore I could see things move in the darkness. I saw faces in the glow of the rocks. I saw the image of a bear, a great black bear, form where the roof of the lodge should have been. It hung there for an instant, then dissolved. During the third round I heard the frantic flapping of the wings of a great bird over and around me. All of it frightened me. By the fourth round I could feel myself sapped of all energy and I had to lie down upon the floor of the lodge and press my face as close as I could to the earth. It felt cooler there. I lay there spent, crying in shallower gasps, my fingers curled into the soft earth. When the door was opened for the fourth and final time and I crawled out of the lodge and back into the world, I felt lessened and enlarged at the same time.
There was a feast afterwards at Walter’s home. Thankful prayers were said. When I offered mine the words didn’t feel as strange and awkward as they had earlier in the day. The food, water and juices tasted more wonderful than anything I had ever had and I could feel my body sing with the acceptance of their goodness. I was tired but energized and when the time came to say “farewell” I did so with a heart brimming with well-being, kinship, and harmony.
I don’t know how long that feeling lasted once I went back into my regular life. I do know that I felt a deep sense of honour over being included. I also felt a touch of pride in myself for completing the entire journey that day. I had endured. I had defeated the urge to quit, and in the process I had heard myself say, in the sweltering darkness of the Sweat Lodge, things I had never thought I would ever say.
“This is healing,” Walter said. “This is spiritual. You learn that the lesson of humility is that when you give away, surrender, you receive in equal or greater measure. You have surrendered yourself and increased yourself on this journey. You have brought the Light into your world.”
An Ojibway child was born in a small village. He was very different from any other baby that had ever been born there. This child, this boy, was born with a face that was twisted and misshapen. His body was bent and crooked and he could not walk or move about like the other children. All the people felt great pity for this child, and even though they honoured him and protected him as they did the others, they never believed the boy would be anything but a burden to them.
But his mother and father loved him very much. When they looked at him they did not see a misshapen body or twisted face. Instead, what they saw was a beautiful baby boy who was a great gift to them. They named him Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming—Light in the Sky. To his parents the boy shone like a great, bright light in the sky of their lives and they adored him.
As he grew, it became apparent that he could not talk like the other children. His throat was twisted like the rest of his body and when he tried to say anything it always came out a throttled croak. When they heard these strange noises coming from the boy some of the people laughed, some of the people cried, and some felt ashamed, but no one except his parents sat down and tried to talk with him. He grew excited when they did. His eyes got large and his crooked arms waved about and he croaked happily.
When the other people heard these sounds they scuttled off quickly to another part of the village. They believed the boy was stupid. They believed his mind was as badly made as his body. But his parents had hope, and they encouraged him to talk even more, and more loudly, too. When he did, the others became even more ashamed and embarrassed.
Light in the Sky knew what he wanted to say. He could feel the words in his body. He could feel them in his heart, could feel them trying to work their way upwards through his lungs to his neck, his throat, his mouth, but his tongue betrayed him. And some of the people laughed, some of the people cried, and some felt ashamed. But no one sat down and tried to talk to him.
As he grew older he was cast out by the other children. They did not try to include him in their games and he contented himself with lurching about on his crutch amongst the trees, watching the magnificent world around him. He wanted very badly to express the joy he felt in the wonders of the world, but he could not. Still, it did not stop him from heading out each day to watch the world and learn even more about its ways. He learned to stand very quietly and respectfully amidst the trees, rivers, and rocks. He learned to feel a part of all of it. Whenever he went out he could feel the words forming in his chest like a great cloud ready to rain blessings on all that he saw. But the words would never come and Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming was sad.
His parents often spoke with the wise woman of the village. They told her of the great love and affection they held for their son. They told her of the dreams they nursed for him and the sadness that came when they realized that he might never achieve them. The old woman was touched deeply by their honest love.
“He speaks a language of his own,” the old woman said. “All of us need to learn how to use our ears again in order to hear it. Someday we will.”
When his parents pressed the old woman for more details, for more reassurance, she smiled and said simply, “Be patient.”
They were patient a long time. In the summer of the year that Light in the Sky was ten, a great drought descended on the land. There was no rain for months. The forest grew dry and the waters grew shallow and warm. Animals and fish were rarely seen and the berries were skimpy and thin. The people worried. With the coming of the winter months they would need great supplies of meat, dried berries, and fish. They prayed and prayed to Gitchee Manitou for the Thunderbirds to bring the rain they so desperately needed.
But none came. Some of the men had travelled by canoe to the furthest reaches of their territory but they returned with nothing. The drought seemed to have withered everything. All around him Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming could see and feel the cloud of worry that spread amongst the people. When he stood amongst the trees he felt a great silence. This silence did not frighten him, though. It seemed to be a pause in the flow of energy he felt there, like the rest that comes between breaths. But he couldn’t tell anyone. The words would not form.
One night, unable to sleep, Light in the Sky crept from his family’s wigwam. It was a clear, hot night and he felt like wading in the shallows to cool his feet. As he hitched his way along the narrow path that led to the lake he thought about the people and the way worry had fallen upon them. It was a huge weight. He could feel its heft in the way people spoke to each other these days. He could see it in the pinched way their faces moved, how forced their smiles were. It saddened him. He wished for a return of the bubbly joy and humour he loved so much about them.
He waded slowly into the water. Above him the moon shone bright and full, throwing deep shadows across the land. He raised his face to it, closed his eyes, and said a silent prayer for the people. The water lapped at his ankles and he felt calm, peaceful and unafraid. He kept his eyes closed and imagined that he was the Moon, hanging so full and silent above the Earth. From there he could see everything. He felt like a protective brother watching over his people and the land.
Suddenly, Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming heard a sound. It seemed to come from the Earth itself and rose upwards into the sky like the sudden grey explosion of a heron from the trees. Then it was gone. He opened his eyes and looked about him. All he could see was bush and trees and the Moon upon the water. Across the small lake a huge cliff rose, and he looked over at it. The sound came again. It was high and shrill. Within its piercing trill was a loneliness he recognized, but there was also a note of praise, of jubilation and freedom he recognized, too. It was captivating. He closed his eyes again and raised his face to the Moon as though the very act could summon the sound. It did.
When he heard it, Light in the Sky opened his eyes and looked at the cliff across the lake, for that seemed to be where the sound was coming from. There, high on the cliff raising his snout to the Moon, was Myeengun, the Wolf. He had never seen Myeengun before or heard his call, but he’d heard stories. The Wolf was a very respected animal amongst the people and Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming felt honoured to be standing in the water watching and listening as Myeengun sang his song to the Moon. He thought that the Wolf must be on a journey to find food for his people, too, and when he heard his song again he could sense Myeengun’s desire to provide for his family. He could sense his worry. He could sense his love. He could sense that Myeengun felt the same high regard for his people that Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming felt for his own, so that when Myeengun raised his voice to the Moon again, Light in the Sky raised his voice, too.
“Ow-ooo ooo-ooo-ooo,” said the Wolf.
“Ow-guh-guh-guh,” replied Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming.
Time and time again Myeengun called, and time and time again Light in the Sky tried to imitate the voice. But his throat would not move in the right way. The notes were strangled in his throat. Still, each time Myeengun called, the more desperately he tried to respond. The Wolf’s call was like a prayer and Light in the Sky wanted more than anything in the world to echo that prayer. He wanted his voice to carry his love, compassion, concern, and respect for his people upwards to the Moon, to the universe, to the invisible.
Gradually, slowly, his voice changed. His throat stretched. The desire he felt in his heart began to slide upwards through his lungs to his throat, his tongue, and into his mouth.
“Ow-ooo-ooo-ooo,” said Myeengun.
“Ow-ooo-ooo-ooo,” replied Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming.
There was silence. Then, slowly, Myeengun raised his voice again, and slowly Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming replied. A pause. Silence. And then, again and again and again, Myeengun sang out to the Moon and each time Light in the Sky answered. The boy’s heart was filled with incredible joy. This was an experience he had never imagined. Here was another being who heard him, spoke with him, felt his words and understood him. Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming felt like his heart would burst with the sheer joy of it.
Then, as mysteriously as he’d arrived, Myeengun was gone. Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming stood in the shallow water and looked upwards at the Moon that still hung fat and silent and watchful over everything. His heart was light and he raised his face to the heavens and called out on his own, “Ow-ooo-ooo-ooo, ow-ooo-ooo-ooo!” Every bit of joy, celebration, praise, love, and honour that he felt welling up inside him went into that call, and when its last note faded off into the air he turned and hitched his way back up the trail to his family’s wigwam and slept.
Each night he crept out of his wigwam and went to the lake to sing his song to the universe. Each night he thought about his people, his mother and father, his friends, and he put every ounce of care and concern and love for them into his voice. His song was pure. It was a prayer and he felt every word.
The people thought it was Myeengun they heard those nights and they could not figure out why the Wolf was staying so close to them.
“Maybe to pick our bones when we drop from starvation,” someone said.
“Or maybe he’s crying for us because there is no relief in sight,” said another.
“Or maybe he’s teaching us a mourning song,” said someone else.
Only Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming knew the truth but he could not tell anyone. Every night he went to the lake and sang his prayer song to the universe. Every night he felt the motions of love in his heart and every night he sang that love to the stars. His voice grew stronger.
The drought continued and the people grew tired. Soon there were arguments and shouting around the campfires, and people began to hoard scraps of food rather than share as they were accustomed to. Jealousy and judgement were everywhere. It began to seem as though someone would die from the hunger. Bitterness grew among them.
One night a loud argument erupted. One family that had some food was trying to keep it away from another family going without. Accusations and threats were shouted. A fight started and soon everyone was involved. People were invading other wigwams, tossing things around in attempts to find food they were certain was secreted away somewhere. The entire village was in an uproar and everyone was angry.
Suddenly the people heard a mournful cry raised up among them. It was Myeengun’s voice, but it was coming from Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming. He stood square in the middle of the village with his face raised up to the universe and sang the song of the Wolf. It was pure and strong and loud. Everyone stopped their running about and turned to see this magic.
“Ow-ooo-ooo-ooo,” sang Light in the Sky. “Ow-ow-ow-ooo!”
Slowly everyone walked towards the middle of the village and stood in a big circle around the bent and twisted boy who sang so beautifully in the night. He sang and sang and sang. When he was finished he looked around at the great circle of his people and tears shone on his face. It saddened him so much to see them fight amongst themselves and forget the teachings of sharing and community they lived by. He walked around that circle and took each person’s face in his small crooked hands and looked deeply into every pair of eyes. There was not a single member of that village who did not feel the message that Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s eyes carried that night. Not one member of that tribal family was not touched by the depth of the love and concern they felt flowing from that small crooked boy. Every person felt spoken to. Comforted. Loved.
When he’d completed the circle and looked into every face, Light in the Sky moved into the centre of the village again. He motioned his parents over to join him and when they did he took their hands in his own, raised his face to the sky again, and sang. His mother and father were very proud and they cried openly in love for their son whose voice rang so clearly over everything.
“Ow-ow-ow-ooo!” he sang. “Ow-ow-ow-ooo!”
Then, someone gasped and pointed to the east. There, above the treetops, the Moon was rising full and round and orange against the night. As Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s song continued the Moon rose higher and higher into the sky. And then, as if that magic weren’t enough, the people heard another voice raised up in song to mingle with the boy’s. Myeengun. Together the boy and the Wolf welcomed the Moon back to the sky. Together they praised Creation for its blessings, its mysteries, its guidance. Together they sang a song that reminded the people of all the teachings the drought had forced them to forget.
They began to cry. They poured out all their hurt and disappointment. They poured out their anger, resentment, jealousy, fear, and indifference. They poured out their love and concern for each other. The Wolf song continued and the people felt their energy returning, felt their faith rekindled, and their belief in the kindness of Creation take hold again.
When they opened their eyes again they saw a wondrous sight. Bathed in the silver glow of the moonlight was Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming. But it was not the bent and twisted boy they’d known all their lives. Instead, in his place stood a beautiful, straight, strong youth with eyes that shone like the Moon itself. He was radiant and perfect. Beyond them the people heard Myeengun’s relatives join him in song. A chorus of wolves raised their songs to the Moon, and in their shrill keening Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming walked around the circle of the village again and looked into every face. Not a person did not cry in joy and awe at the beauty of this youth or the pure, splendid light of love they saw in his eyes. Not a person felt unheard, unspoken to, unloved.
And when he’d made his way around and faced his parents again, the Wolf song grew louder and louder. Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming looked adoringly at the two people who had loved him all his life and celebrated the beauty they had known he carried within him. He reached out and touched them and then, as the Wolf song rose and fell, a wonderful thing happened. He began to glow, silvery, ghostly, like the light of the Moon, and as he spread his arms in celebration of the song that filled the night he began to float upwards and upwards away from them. As the people watched in humble awe Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming rose higher and higher and higher until finally they saw him float right up into the face of the Moon.
And suddenly the Wolf song died away.
Silence. A pause, and then, very quietly in the distance, the people heard the rumble of thunder. The air cooled suddenly, and against the horizon they could see the edges of rain clouds scuttling towards them. The clouds moved in very quickly and surrounded the Moon where Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming had settled. When the clouds were thick with the promise of rain they blanketed the Moon and its light winked out just as the first wet thick drops of rain began to fall.
The people cried in joy and celebration. They danced amongst the raindrops. They danced and danced and danced, grateful for the rain, for Light in the Sky and the magic they had seen. It rained for four days and after that the berries flourished, the fish returned to their pools, and game became plentiful again. When winter came the people had more than enough to see them through the cold months. And each of those cold winter months brought a brilliant silver moon to the sky and the people sang in celebration of the boy who had reminded them that faith would always see them through the toughest of times, that feeding the spirit was as important as feeding the body, and that they needed each other for survival.
But there were two who were confused, who felt a deep sense of loss for their son. Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s parents went to see the wise woman. They wanted to know why this had happened. As grateful as they were for the events of the past summer they wanted to know why their son could not stay with them, why he needed to live in the Moon.
“All of his life your son felt the words he wanted to speak. He felt them in his heart, in his spirit. He knew them as truth and he wanted to share this truth more than he wanted anything in the world. He wanted to speak the language of his heart. Myeengun gave him the gift of song and he found his voice. When he did, he put all of his love, compassion, forgiveness, loyalty, kindness, truth, and wisdom into it and the universe chose to honour him for that. He lives in the Moon to remind us always of the lesson he was sent to carry to us,” the wise woman said.
“What lesson is that?” his parents asked.
The wise one smiled kindly. “That only with the heart can we truly speak, and only with the heart can we find and become who and what we were created to be. That is Wass-co-nah-shpee-ming’s gift to us all.”
The night was deep and dark. High above me the stars seemed far brighter than they ever had and I saw shadows thrown by their intensity. Memories of the Sweat Lodge had made me very thirsty and I slaked that thirst with two huge gulps from the canteen. That ceremony had been a great gift. For a short time after that first Sweat Lodge I felt that anything was possible and I dove into my life wholeheartedly.
But I still carried around the old feelings of shame, hurt, and unworthiness. Despite everything that was given to me I still held onto those old beliefs. I could not shake them loose no matter how desperately I desired to. I still chose to believe that I did not belong, did not fit, and did not deserve all the good that our way and our people offered me. They could not fix me. They could not heal me. They could not take away the great hurts and bruises inside me. I felt that if my people knew that I had been to jail numerous times, if they knew that I had lied, cheated, and stole, that I had hurt a great many people, they would not welcome me into their circle. So I did the only thing that I knew how to do: I hid myself and my feelings. When those feelings got to be too much to bear, I drank again.
I drank a lot through those next years. Even though I started to find success in my work, even though I was a participant at ceremonies, even though I appeared proud, strong, and capable, I felt none of that. I always felt like a liar, a fraud, a con. I was unable to forgive myself for the way I had lived my life, for the choices I had made, and my inability to forgive myself left only blame in its place. So I blamed other people. I blamed foster homes, adoption, the white man, society, history, government, sexism, racism—and I blamed myself. It always came back to my own unworthiness, the fact that I was unlovable, unwanted, a failure. And so I drank. I’d stay sober for months at a time but always the feelings arose and I would have to drink to kill them. I would have to, despite the experience of the Sweat Lodge.
When I drank again after being sober for a long period the guilt I felt was unbearable. I felt guilty that I was disrespecting the teachings, guilty that I wasn’t living the way I knew was the way to live, and guilty that I was weak and afraid. So I drank even more. When it got so bad that I was sick from drinking, shaking, sweating, vomiting, seeing things, hearing things, I drank so I wouldn’t be sick and wound up drunk again. Then I would lie, cheat, and steal all over again and the guilt would continue. And so would that circle of pain.
I was in that vicious cycle a long time. Time and again I would get sober and do something positive. Time and again I would have people in my life who were there only to help me. Time and again the way was offered me, and I came close to grabbing for it sometimes. But fear always held me back. Always. I was afraid that if I made the journey to inside all I would find was the liar, cheat, and thief I knew I was. I was afraid that I would discover the me I was always afraid existed. So I faked it. I became what a lot of unhealed Native people become. I became an Indian of convenience.
An Indian of convenience is an Indian who knows of the teachings and the way, but doesn’t really know them. An Indian of convenience picks the parts of our teachings and of our way that don’t cost too much in terms of sacrifice and uses them. Displays them. An Indian of convenience chooses to display attitude over knowledge, appearances over humility, and cultural activities over traditional teachings and living. Mostly though, an Indian of convenience is a person who gives the impression of belonging, fitting, knowing, and being but who hasn’t found the courage to begin the greatest of all journeys: the journey to inside.
That’s who I was for a long time. I had the hair, the dances, the drumming, the clothes, the head knowledge and the skill to speak of all of it, and the greater skill to write of it, but that’s all I had. I had the outside down pat but my insides, where I really lived, were in turmoil, pain, and confusion and they always got me drunk, always drove the people who cared for me from my life, always helped me create more guilt. My working life was becoming a success, I’d been involved with several beautiful, talented women who genuinely cared for me, the Native community was welcoming and generous, and I had money in the bank. But it seemed that nothing was ever enough to ease my pain. Nothing.
As I watched the sky and thought about the agony I’d endured as a young man searching for himself, the agony of the Sweat Lodge ritual, the agony of my alcoholism, and the agony of four days of solitude on a ledge facing the mountains, I realized that I had never known the most crucial of teachings: that nothing in the world was ever going to be enough for me until I was enough for me.
I smiled at that. So clear, so simple, so true.
The night sky was a huge purple bowl of sky dotted with the icy points of stars. And as I sat there drinking it all in I thought about how those stars represented so many possible worlds. I wondered if there were travellers like me in each of those worlds, wanderers, nomads, who might have been graced with a friend like John, a night like this and a universe that felt close enough to touch, so that finally, sometime before sleep grabbed me in comforting arms, I imagined I could see a rover on one of those worlds, sitting on the same kind of hill on the same kind of night, on the same search as I was. I waved to him. Wished him well. Then, as sleep descended, I imagined him waving back. I smiled.