Making 2012 a Food Resolution Year

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Cheryl

With the popularity of New Year’s resolutions, it is irresistible to write about their meaning and usefulness. In past years I did elaborate and long lists in the human hopefulness that writing it down would help them come true,

Last year I did a self care resolution that was fun and I acquired lots of nice fabric and more good books. I recognize that I am in a position to continue this without a resolution because I work and have a good income. So this year, I gave more serious thought to what would be a productive and useful focus especially in light of all the ways that my friends and relatives are struggling throughout Indian Country. I wanted to do something that has a long term impact on the wellness of children and their families.

This year my resolution is to pay more attention to food and to issues of food sovereignty and access to food for tribal people. There are all kinds of remarkable community based tribal foods programs throughout our tribal nations and in urban and rural Native communities. Resources and strategies from organizations such as First Nations Development Institute, Indigenous Environmental Network and Seventh Generation Fund, and from governments such as the USDA tribal college extension programs fulfill dreams of restoration of tribal food practices including gardening, medicine making and preparation and preservation of foods. Practitioners share their work through publications, workshops, websites and blogs. Our connection to our sources of nutritional foods are part of our DNA, we need buffalo, salmon, rice, and corn to be fully Native. Technology, conferences and workshops and our already generous network gives us increased opportunity to share what we mean when we say as indigenous people – we are of the land and we are part of the land.

Search indigenous food sovereignty on the Internet and you will find wonderful stories, recipes, and community projects.

In support of food sovereignty (visit www.nwic.edu to see what Northwest Indian College is doing or visit the food sovereignty blog of Valerie Seagrest), my family is also supporting the establishment of a healthy snacks program at NWIC, donating to our local food bank and paying more attention to food in our home. We are working to reduce food waste and to focus on eating healthier meals and snacks. It’s great that we can do this and encourage others to do the same. Personally, I am no longer drinking soda except maybe as an occasional treat and I am reducing the amount of processed foods that we eat.

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Our Native calendar – Our own passage of time

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Cheryl

As the new calendar year starts, I am reminded of all the ways that people keep track of the passing of time and when we look hopefully toward what the future brings. The calendars for indigenous people are as varied as we are, some mark the passing of each day, some are based on the moon’s cycles, others come from the seasons. Still others come from ceremonial events often tied to natural occurrences. Wicahpi, the stars of the night sky and wi, the sun, guide our understanding of time. Our understanding of time is evidence of our profound knowledge of the universe and of the conception/ birth to physical death cycle. Our deepest connections to the spiritual world are contained in our understanding of time. Although we have adapted to the use of the Gregorian calendar to mark time in our contemporary lives, most of us are still connected to seasons, ceremonies and the natural world as the markers of our calendar. We might make resolutions, go to New Year’s Eve parties and watch the 2012 ball drop, but we are waiting for the thunders, hunting and fishing seasons, and when the timpsil or camas bloom.

The first days of school were my calendar year when I was a child. The new year beginning on January 1st has little meaning to a young person. When a child goes to school, that is the beginning of a new year – there are new clothes and shoes, new books to read and new things to learn, new friends to make and old friends to see.

Lakota people mark the passing of time with ceremonies for the new moon, with our Sundances, and with the seasons. In our grandparents’ day, in the days of horses and feathers, the wakinyan, thunder beings, returning in the spring told of beginning of the new cycle of seasons. Our people prepared during the spring, summer and fall seasons for the winter. Hunting and harvesting and preparing foods, sewing warm clothing and fixing our shelter were the focus of time. Gathering together to trade, celebrate and pray are the events which marked the seasons. The summer was the time of our most powerful personal and communal ceremonies, the wiwang wacipi and the hanbleciye, our sun dances and our vision quests.

When I was older, the wiwang wacipi became the beginning of the new passage of time for me, it became the calendar that marked one year to the next. At the end of the sundance, we would begin to get ready for the next year. It takes all year to be ready spiritually, mentally and physically. Like my ancestors before me and my relatives today, I still mark the passage of time through connection to the ceremonies of the summer.

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Celebrating Christ and Being Native

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Cheryl

Each year during the time surrounding the Christian days of the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I find myself thinking about how I became a person who still goes to church. My father’s family is deeply immersed in Lakota religion and his grandparents became Episcopalians who had baptisms at their home. My great grandfather noted important religious events throughout his life. My grandmother, Alice Cadotte, felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in her life everyday. They were Episcopals in the Catholic town of St. Francis. My mother was raised in the Catholic Church and graduated from St. Francis Mission. She and my father were religiously tolerant which I witnessed many times throughout their lifetimes.

During my childhood and my teen years, I voluntarily, even eagerly, practiced my Episcopal faith. I went to church regularly, attended youth fellowship and even taught vacation bible school and Sunday school. All the young people in Rosebud participated with the Catholic and Episcopal youth organizations. The churches were who hosted events and dances and the priests and our families worked hard to keep us busy. As a result, for many the highlights of our childhood and teenage lives were connected to the churches. Grandma Ellen Quick Bear ran the Church of Jesus rummage room and saved me the coolest clothes – maxi dresses and a suede coat with a fur collar stand out as memories. Father Richard Pates was the confidant of many young people who hung out at the CYO building playing basketball, pinball and board games. Our first dances were live bands at the CYO.

When I finally was able to fully come home to my own Lakota religion, there was a period of time when my anger over the experiences of so many of our relatives caused me to turn away from Christianity and the rituals of my youth. I practiced a little radical Christianity and had communion in my home with others who rejected organized religion but wanted to honor and be one with Christ’s teachings, I argued the reasons to reject the church, and ignored my mother’s desire for her grandchildren to be baptized.

Throughout, I have been with many, many Native people whose faith in Jesus and his teachings are easily and readily accepted as a natural part of who they are as Natives. With most people, they like my grandparents and great-grandparents, are immersed in their Native ways while integrating their Christian lives. They are able to look beyond the experiences of mission schools and the policies and practices of organized religions into the teachings of Jesus Christ who brings the message of peace. They do not forget, they go to a deeper place seeking understanding. My adopted mother, Doris, one of most knowledgeable practioners of our religion, loved to sing Dakota hymns during the holidays. At every celebration and death in our family we would have both Lakota and Christians ceremonies. We would load our pipe and smoke together and say a meal grace. We had the prayers for the dead from the Episcopal prayer book and buried our family members with songs and prayers from the iyeska, medicine man, and his helpers.

One day many years ago, I had an insight that I was trying to hard to reject my own personal history of having a relationship with the familiar church of my childhood. I learned to live in the dichotomy that is being Native and celebrating Christ. I know that the White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the cannupa to us with a message of peace and teachings for our daily lives, I believe Jesus did the same, he brought a message of peace and guidance for behaviors for ourselves and with each other. When I go to church I pray to Tunkashila, the grandfathers, I believe Jesus as a teacher is there with them. When I go to ceremony, Sundance, or the inipi, I pray to Tunkashila, our relatives in the spirit world, and to Unci, our grandmother for good health and support for all. I do not search my Lakota beliefs for a place for Christ, the religion of our people is much older then Christianity, and it does not need Christ to be true and real.

This is the first time, I have written about the place of Christianity and church in my spiritual practice. I cannot forget to mention that I really appreciate and love the rituals of my practice and the intimacy of my relationship with the church is part of that.

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Another Step: Accreditation as an Indigenous Process

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Cheryl

On the 16th day of December, a working group of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) took a leap forward in the development of our own independent accrediting agency. In the U.S. higher education institutions generally participate with what is known as regional accreditation, with agencies that are federally recognized and which are comprised of member institutions. While the tribal colleges and universities (TCU) have enjoyed good working relationships with their accrediting bodies, there has always been a disconnect between our tribal missions and how our communities view success and effectiveness and the accreditation process. Having it’s own accreditation body has been a goal of AIHEC since it was established in the 1970s.
We agreed that we want an accreditation process that arises out of our tribal knowledge. While a substantial amount of research and design has occurred, the connection to our place-based knowledge needs to be strengthened. AIHEC used a process of community input and analysis in the design of the Indigneous Evaluation Framework so we decided on a similar process. Members of the working group will be reaching out through focus groups and community gatherings into our tribal constituencies.
As a person who has always sought ways to bring our traditional knowledge into our contemporary environments, I am thankful that we remembered that we are taking this journey with our tribal people instead of for them. It is a fulfillment of the vision of the TCU founders and a step in support of sovereignty and self-determination. We can make the contemporary experience of formal accreditation as a process of public accountability meaningful as an indigenous experience. We have already proved that we can be accredited through the existing system, now we can prove that we can create a system that honors who we are as tribal nations.

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Native languages and TCU technologies

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Cheryl

On Thursday, December 15, the anniversary of the tragic and untimely death of Hunkpapa leader, Tatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull and several of his tribal people in a confrontation with tribal police, the citizens of many Plains tribes gathered in the sacred He Sapa, Black Hills. The night we arrived from the Northwest the cold north wind welcomed us under a starry, clear sky. The hills were dark with night mist and the shadows beckoned us into the past where our ancestors wait, watching our work and how we care for each other. I love to come home to the prairies and hills that are the homelands of my people. We saw two falling stars.
I love to come home during this time of the year, when we are gathered in meetings, greeting each other in passing and watching our young people display their cultural and academic knowledge and athletic skills. Our children and young people are magnificent in their beauty. The Lakota Nation Invitational celebrates 35 years.
On this day, tribal college presidents and staff met to discuss the opportunities that the National Tribal University concept provides for more direct collaboration. Our focus for our meeting was on how we could deliver Native language instruction using distance learning technologies. Among presentations, Little Big Horn College’s creation of key word DVDs with written supplementals in Crow combined with Indian sign language and Sinte Gleska University’s story-telling DVDs with an emphasis on makoce, land. LBHC worked with other tribal colleges including Fort Peck to convert the materials to their languages so the demonstration we saw was in Dakota. Everything we saw is such an impressive use of technologies to teach our languages. We especially appreciate the language teachers who joined us, they are who will teach us our languages, technology is only tools for access.
Creating a shared virtual university complements and supports the efforts of SGU Prsident Lionel Bordeaux to develop a National Tribal University with campuses in the four directions and in the center of Indian Country.
Tatanka Iyotake told us to take care of the Wakanyeja, our children. Our language work honors that.

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In appreciation of the Spirit

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Cheryl

Today is my birthday. I celebrate being a Sagittarian because we are known for our optimism, we are sure everything is going to be all right, and that others are deserving of our trust and support. I celebrate having a good family and a successful career. I feel like the mother and grandmother I always wanted to be – present and in love with my children and the rest of my descendants and relatives. I accept and love each of them for who they are just as my parents did for me. I celebrate my wonderful friendships and being able to have a good stash of fabric and books I like to read. I am thankful for words and being able to share them.

Today is my birthday and it is the day I miss my Mom and Dad, Vera and Elmer Compton, the most. I used to dream about my Dad, in my dreams he came with guidance and advice. One time he looked like a young version of himself and he had one of my grandsons with him whom he said he was watching out for. Another time he was driving the car even though he was blind. He hasn’t come for a while so I think he must be reborn somewhere, perhaps in one of our grandchildren, maybe somewhere else. I have only seen my Mom in my dreams a couple of times. Once she was very elusive, hiding but I knew she was there. This summer when I was in SD, she came to my room, I could feel her and it felt right. She is staying closer to home. She visits her grand kids more than me, which is just like her.

My Mom is the one who first told me of spirits coming in our dreams. She was healed of a serious illness by medicine given her by my father’s grandmother in a dream, she saw her walking away when someone gave her a bowl to drink from. She said it was Grandma Taku, she recognized her dress and long apron. She told of the wanigi coming in the night and calling my dad, giving him a paralysis on his face that they had to go to ceremony to heal.

Spirits live with us, they rest in our hearts and memories, come physically into our space, share knowledge with us in our dreams. Our parents give us that gift of knowledge of the spirit when we are born. They let us know that our spirit exists, more real than our physical self.

On this day, when I pause to reflect on what it means to be one of the People today, I celebrate the Spirit that my parents welcomed and thank them, wopila tanka, a big thank you, for accepting me into their family.

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Collecting Indian stories about DC

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Cheryl

Our elected tribal leaders and many of our community and traditional leaders spent last week in Washington, DC visiting the Great White Father and the Halls of Congress. President Obama is generously in support of us – perhaps tied to his own experiences as a mixed race African/European American, perhaps because he really believes in our claims for justice and reparations, perhaps because he recognizes our rising political resources as tribal nations, perhaps because it is the right thing to do. I saw pictures in both the news and social media of the events and meetings. I was reminded of the narratives and pictures we have in our family records, in our tribal archives, in the Smithsonian museums and the Library of Congress, commemorating the visits of our ancestors in the capital of the emerging United States, looking for allies, often eloquently speaking of our values and people, sometimes pleading for the resources needed for our survival. We have pictures of my great grandfather, Felix Crazy Bull, posed in front of a backdrop of the Nation’s capitol building, and copies of the transcripts of his speeches before Congress. There are many stories in our families of the sacrifices made by our chiefs and warriors as they protected us and our rights through their nation-to-nation meetings in Washington, DC. Look around you in the coming weeks and gather the stories of our leaders who travelled to the Tribal Nations gathering. Collect those stories in your family memory and in your photo albums. Send copies to the tribal archives. These personal stories are our story.

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