In our Indigenous way of life we echo a continuous journey back to ancient wisdom and traditions. It is a spiritual and organic migration back to stories, legends, and traditional activities that we affirm against the dying winds of industrial machinery and so called “modern civilization.” Not all Native People have taken to modern materialism and currency economy whole heartedly. Many Native People endure this lifestyle as a secondary choice for survival and maintaining until the day comes when our storage of ancient ways can be properly redistributed. Wow! I needed to get that off my chest. Please entertain me as I try to validate what I have just said through our migration back to center.
It started for Joyce and I when we quit our well paying jobs to follow our hearts by growing our own food and raising our own livestock the way my Grandfather did. The steps took some tremendous heart searching and hope that seemed foolish to our friends. They admired our courage and stupidity which was never voiced out loud. We were restless and agitated prior to our decision but when we did make the plunge we felt a deep sense of urgency and peace. The decision to make this was not a linear and rational decision; it was a circular and migratory decision to begin the journey back to being fully human and connected to our Creator’s ways. It was a humbling acknowledgment of our vulnerability and forced us to hope and trust in our connectivity to “Mother Earth.” The migration toward center was now beginning and we felt we had walked to the very edge of our capabilities to live in modern society and with modern ideals of an industrial world which eventually made us tired and not ourselves.
The first couple of years we grew enthusiastically using the micro biology. Our harvest was fruitful and encouraging. The journey led us into seeing the biological layer that we have often overlooked or did not look deep enough. We saw friendly bugs and enemy bugs in the microscope. We saw whole worlds we did not know existed but did not see the importance… until now.
The journey took us into a path of seeing things and creating an environment we could use for our plants. We saw how the micro organisms help to heal our soil and how we could speed up “Mother Nature’s” desire to heal herself. The bugs (micro-organisms) simply needed a true environment to party and reproduce; consequently, came the need to use “the thermal composting reactor” to provide such an environment in our harsh climate. It wasn’t so much having the right seeds but the right environment to put the seeds in. It’s is all about the COMPOSTING! Amending the soil with the right biology was pinnacle in to our success: our migrating back to producing hearty and nutrient dense products.
I still was missing something important and amending the soil and having good produce was not enough. We had some friends come over and we were sharing our deer and elk harvest when I jokingly said that “vegetarians and vegans are bad hunters.” We all laughed!
I remember my mother who was a Native medicine woman say, “plants can not only heal you but you can talk to them.” Wow, another step in my migration with this revelation. Drop the dinner fork!!! I had to get back to eating only one cell organisms in order for me to communicate with the plants once more. My detachment with plants and animals, how I cultivated them and how I raised my animals was missing a key note in my migration to center. I’m not trying to convert anyone with being vegetarian and vegan, but for me I knew I had to detoxify myself from modern ways of eating and listen to a deeper language and voice in my environment. I began asking questions like, “Where do the plants want to be planted?” “What are the animals speaking to me today?” These were all questions that would linger in my mind as I stepped out to do my chores. I sheepishly spoke about this to my friends and native people of why now I had become a “bad hunter” and how the journey was a path of re-attaching myself to my surroundings in order to migrate back to center.
Because the converging ecological and social crisis has exposed the bankruptcy of an industrial age that is quickly coming to a close, we (the First Nations) have the gifts, preserved in our culture, to teach from our native ancestry with humility. We have the voice that will help others out of this darkness. The sun is setting and colors are becoming a grey shade of black and white. I know we have many that have begun the migration back.…
Red Cheek Clan – Born of Leaning Tower
