WISDOM OF THE ELDERS:

by: Black Bear from the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana--an artist/scholar


The drum stopped and the plaintive song ended.  The circle of dancers slowed and came to a halt, looking at each other with bright shining eyes, still breathing hard, not wanting to cease.

Napi knew in his heart that a healing of the people had occurred.  This circle had come together in pain and fear, wanting to pray and lift the darkness that covered their community.  Now elders and young people hugged and laughed, and for a moment thoughts of those relatives who had taken their own lives were gone.  Napi knelt before the altar and smudged himself with the pungent sage and gave thanks to the Creator.

The curling smoke carried him to a night years before, to the Chuska Mountains of Arizona.  A wizened Navajo elder squatted over a crackling juniper fire and sipped his black coffee.  Napi asked him, "Why are our young people taking their lives?"  Napi waited for him to respond.  Some fifteen minutes passed before the old man replied, "We do not talk of death."  Napi waited for more, but none came.  His mind raced, thinking of the many young lives lost to the people of the Wind River reservation.  How could you not talk about death?

Napi remembered talking with a Wind River social worker about the clustering of suicides--all young people. There were many reasons given--alcoholism, poverty, joblessness, abandonment, loss of culture, sexual abuse and other forms of violence.  Napi knew that these were superficial and only symptoms of a deeper hurt.  The social worker said that many experts on suicide and prevention came to Wind River offering assistance and money for studies.  The tribes began turning away outside offers of assistance--unless there was something offered that the people did not already know.

The tribal government tried to mandate that there would be no more suicides.  There were many community meetings, but nine young lives were lost in two months!  It wasn't until they became very afraid that they began looking "inside" for the answers and turned to their traditional ways.  The spiritual leaders and pipe carriers performed a ceremony that had not been performed for sixty years.  The pattern was broken.  There have been suicides since then, but not the hysteria or clustering.

Suddenly, Napi understood what the Navajo elder had told him about not "talking about death".  Our traditional ways give us guidelines for living and for dealing with death. Our elders tell us that "to speak it will make it happen".  Death is such a powerful symbol that it is not good to speak casually about it.  There are ceremonies to help the people grieve and honor the passing of the spirit to the other side.  When the grieving is over, the people are to get on with their lives.  There are other ceremonies that help the people to heal.  There are also ceremonies to celebrate life and its passages.

But, we seem to have forgotten our ways.  Today, we mostly talk about them--we no longer live them.

With a rush, Napi came back into the circle of dancers now.  Tears came to his eyes.  Thank you Creator, thank you, for showing us the way.