At the time I was the coordinator of the Bering Sea Council of Elders, composed of some of the most revered Elders in seven regions of Alaska, a Mapuche messenger delivered a message to the Alaskan Elders. The message was delivered personally because that was the protocol, and because they had no means of communication. They were physically very poor. The Argentinian government had forcibly removed them from productive lands in the 1950s to the desert where they barely eke out a living. The Council deliberated on who should be sent to South America. They had decided, for whatever reason, that I should go, but the Mapuche messenger had already left, so there was no way to let them know of the Council’s decision.
I arrived in Argentina and traveled to the place where I was to meet my guide, a young Mapuche chief. I was explaining why I came instead of the Elders when he put his hand up, saying that the explanation was unnecessary as he already knew.
I asked, “How do you know?”
“Because the Elders told us it would be you coming,” he said.
“How did the Elders know?” I asked.
“They talked with the Earth and the Sky,” he said nonchalantly. Then I knew these Elders were real human beings who talked the Language of One. This language allows the person to communicate with everything, and especially with Mother Earth and Father Sky through use of what I call the “inner net,” not the internet. It is a way all peoples communicated a long time ago. There are still some people left who understand this language, and the Mapuche Elders clearly kept this knowledge.
My interpreter and I received instructions on how to get to the ceremonial grounds two days from any civilization. As we were leaving, the chief explained that “there was a delegation of Kechua/Ayamara spiritual leaders that will be there to greet me. They came by horseback and traveled for two weeks just to meet you,” he said. As we drove to the sacred ceremonial grounds, I wondered why they would travel by horseback for two weeks just to meet me.
When we got to the ceremonial grounds at a special sacred place, the spiritual leaders were there, just like the chief said. When we got out of the car we had rented, the delegation of seven spiritual leaders approached. Through two interpreters we were able to talk. “We heard of your traditional name. Could you please tell us how you got the name, how you pronounce it, and what it means?” the eldest of the leaders asked.
I responded, “The name is Kuuyux. It means an arm extended out from the body, like a messenger from the Aleut to the modern world, a bridge. I got the name when I was four years old by the last Kuuyux. He gave me his name, which is a name given to one person in each lifetime amongst my people,” I explained.
They were visibly excited. The Elder spiritual leader responded, “We have exactly the same name, given in exactly the same way, and it means exactly the same thing. This confirms our stories that we were go-betweens for your people and those in South America thousands of years ago,” he said. And that is how I found out that our people did indeed go to South America thousands of years ago as I had heard from my Kuuyux.
The ceremonial grounds were in the high desert, where the temperature got as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 25 below at night—a hundred-degree temperature difference in one day! It was quite an experience for an Alaskan. I also saw firsthand how the Mapuche were forced to live a life of bare subsistence. The Mapuche people were concerned for their Elders because it gets very cold in the winter time, and they live in small shacks with one wood stove for heat. The stoves barely keep the shacks warm.
The region had not had rain for at least nine years or more, so a lot of Mapuche people were gathered to conduct ceremonies—at least a hundred. Each day of ceremonies would begin at 6:00 a.m., when the sun would rise, and end at 1:00 a.m. the next day, and this went on for four days. The ceremony was begun by someone who had to be the oldest person in the world at the time, 123, plus, years old. Her name was Rosa, a blind woman who could only speak the Native language. She changed the way I look at “being old” because not only would she lead the ceremony, but she also stayed the entire time, day and night for four days! My assigned role along with many others was to give energy to the dancers, who danced day and night for four days, by standing next to them, focusing my energy on them, and chanting.
At the end of the ceremonies, we saw some incredible things. Two snow eagles flew clockwise, spiraling upward at one end of the sacred grounds, and two condors were at the other end, flying counterclockwise. As the wondrous birds flew out of sight, it began to rain. The Mapuche were fulfilling their part of the eagle and condor prophecy that every Native nation in the western hemisphere knows about. The prophecy says that when the eagle and condor meet and shed tears, a great healing will take place on Turtle Island. The Mapuche Elders were very happy, and we celebrated the finish of the ceremonies with a feast. The people offered what they had; it was the first (and probably the last) time I had horse, the only thing they had that could feed so many people.
There have been many eagle and condor gatherings before and since the Mapuche ceremony. Unbeknownst to me, the Mapuche had been concerned that the ceremony would die because the young ones didn’t see the value in what the Mapuche Elders practiced—until they came to the ceremony and witnessed my role in this event. They saw that someone from atop the world had come to be in their ceremony and that if someone from so far away saw value in the Mapuche ceremonies, then there must be something of value to learn. So they are participating in the ceremonies once again. Rosa died about six months later. I found out when an English-speaking Mapuche friend called from Argentina saying that she had left the world because she felt her work was done.
I had a chance to meet with their young people, who told me how poorly they were treated in Argentina. One seventeen-year-old boy sobbed as he related his experiences in the city with racism. My heart went out to the boy, and I told him, “Be thankful that you can still cry. It is a gift that you should never let anyone take away from you even if it is crying about your treatment. If you don’t cry, your heart will be hardened. If your heart gets hard, the racist people can declare victory because you will not be of use to yourself or anyone else.” That young boy and I became good friends, and he would go with me everywhere while I was in Argentina. I gave him the flute that I cherished. Later, when we said our “so longs,” he gave me a flute in return, made simply out of a branch from a tree.