asking permission
in ancestral homelands
Poems poured out of the snow this morning -
- the soaked remains of a dying sagebrush pouring over the earth like an ocean wave; the frosted-white tips of a new-found forest dweller coating my fingers in a fragrant resin only my ancient blood memory remembers; Scotty pulling our child up the mountain in a sled full of mistletoe, while we identify the gentle tracks crossing our path: deer, mouse and goat.
These wispy snow clouds sometimes cover the sun and make her look silver, blue light emanating out of the condensation circle around her glowing self and for a moment you wonder if it’s really the moon you’re looking at. The valley too, looks blue out there, beneath migrating clouds and I wander home alone, oscillating between being a holy being, and being the space in which a holy being appears.
I was going to write a piece this morning entitled How Wide is One’s Power: “Vacationing” in Indigenous Territories, reflecting on the past week spent vacationing with family in a tropical land where my entire being craved to hear the tongue and know the dance and taste the food of the original peoples of that land. I wanted to give gifts upon arrival and be received in the old way. I wanted to participate in that ancient form of cultural exchange, of formality - of acknowledging the true honor it is to arrive in the homeland of another people.
But what I found were Subways and KFC’s, tourist trinket shops, plastic and fast Toyotas. Booze. Amnesia. I went to the ocean and dug into the sand, calling out to the lifeway shaped by the jungle here, calling to the permutation of human-ing that evolves out of deep relationship with this living land of orchid, palm and sea, and let her know that we remember her. We give viva (life force) to that lifeway, to those people, to those traditions decorated by peace and generosity; we give viva to your languages, your dances, your culture. We give viva to your villages, however buried beneath concrete they may be. We give viva to your sacred sites now owned by corporate interest and to your ancient pathways now overgrown or polluted or forgotten. We give viva to your children, to your companions in the forest and in the sea, to your ancestors, to your relatives; we give viva to your ability to endure the confusion that has fallen upon the earth, a sickness that still to this day echoes of rape and slaughter.
So I walked then as a conscious beacon to the First Nations, as a living memory, a frequency, through the glistening hotels and airports, coffee shops and along the beach, among the chaos, saying with all my being, I know you are here. I honor you. I honor you. Wherever you may be, I honor you.
It was in the airport then, heading home, that I asked Scotty: How wide is my power? Why? Because I’m tired of this amnesia. I’m tired of the rape. I’m tired of being associated with a culture that takes and takes and takes and never gives anything back. But most of all, I want, I demand, I require that First Nation’s peoples have a seat at the table. Especially those who speak the old languages, those who remember the ways of their great grandparents. I want those leaders to have a seat at the global round table, making decisions of what happens where and how and when. Who builds and how fast and what about the birds? It’s for these reasons I call upon power. For the sake of human decency, respect and reverence for life. How subtle and distant can this intention infiltrate?
So all that is what I was going to write about this morning, more or less, in a nutshell. But then, as usual, I went for a walk in the snow and how everything changes, disappears. What is there to say anyway? It’s here in an instant, gone in another. This moment is full of beauty and unfathomable mystery. The chaos goes on and we continue to remember how the integrity of land is inexplicably tied to the integrity of a people. A living people. A people required to ask permission to enter, to take, to move. We watch the churning oceans, the landslides, the avalanches. We watch the floods and the disappearance of life. We watch how homogeneous culture implants itself all across the face of Mother Earth, leaving so much suffering in its wake - the heartbreak, the trauma, the loss - what to do? All lands are indigenous homelands. All life is sacred. My path is a prayer in the direction of riches. Richness of culture, diversity, wildlife. Richness in water and food and health. Richness in the family, the children, the feeling of belonging. Richness in wisdom. Richness in faith. Richness in miracle and purity and integrity of flowering Life on Earth.
An old temple on the side of a mountain. Flags flapping in the wind.
Someone, ring the bell.
