It's no coincidence that elders and children are often marginalized in our society, frequently ignored, and perhaps, as a result, not entirely sure that we want to hear them. But while those at either end of life may not have the most strident voices, they often have more wisdom to share than anyone in their middle years. I discovered that a little patience and a little prodding were all that were necessary to allow the fruition of a very full issue, focused on our theme and remarkably balanced in the range of voices represented.
Of course, many voices are missing; what's here is just the tip of the iceberg. The more I contemplated the theme, the larger, the more encompassing, it appeared. How can we ever imagine or write about an "evolving ecological culture" without considering the voices of elders and children? How can we pretend to have a holistic perspective on life if we don't incorporate the wisdom and attunement that we find in those less pressured (or able to be pressured) into conforming to "adult consensus reality"? The arrogance and destruction that result from ignoring elders and children, forgetting ancestors and descendants, are evident everywhere around us in the society we have created. We are habituated to shutting out the worlds of elders and children in the same way we are habituated to shutting out the natural world. We impose our own reality, our own desires, our own delusions, on those we can dominate--our elders and our offspring, the natural creatures and features that make up the world around us--until the original people, the original landscapes, are barely recognizable, their essences silenced, paved over, contorted.
But those voices still speak, and have lifetimes of stories to tell. This issue is a reminder of how much we can learn by listening to those voices.
At first glance our lead article, by Paul Hawken, may seem off our theme. But that's only at first glance. Readers will discover that this stunning piece relates in every way to listening--to elders, to children, to all ignored voices, to accumulated wisdom, to plain common sense and experience. It and its short companion story on WTO also serve as previews to our upcoming "Politics, Change, and Ecology" focus.
The rest of the issue was difficult to divide into categories: every "Listening to Elders" story also mentions children, and almost every "Listening to Children" piece mentions elders. In the "Across the Generations" articles, that dual emphasis was so obvious that it created its own section.
I enjoyed not writing a major article for this issue, but instead seeking out contributions from others more qualified to speak here. With this issue I also discovered the magical world of magazine design and layout, and even some arcane business minutiae, as those parts of the Talking Leaves operation became parts of my responsibility as editor. They're fun! (at least the layout part...)
Nearly every day, I've been noticing how the youngest Lost Valley community members--an eight-year-old learning the piano, a two-and-a-half-year-old constructing more and more elaborate sentences and piles of objects, a toddler learning how to stand, and seven other children equally engaged with life--enrich my experience of the world around me in ways that no adult could. (See "Kids' Wisdom" for some of their words.) And while my contact with elders is much more limited, I notice how frequently my grandmother (the daughter of Grandma Percy, profiled in "An Environmental Family Tree") appears in my dreams--and how often my parents (currently setting a trend in Oberlin, Ohio, by switching from conventional sources to geothermal energy for heating and cooling of their house) contribute excellent ideas and articles to this magazine, and even get their friends to subscribe.
In the society we live in, we need to remind ourselves constantly, in whatever ways possible, that those in their middle years are not the beginning and end of the world. In some societies, we would never develop that illusion. Through writing, through story, through how we structure our lives, through song, we can remember what some people have never forgotten: that "it's the ancestors' breath, in the voice of the waters"--and in the voices of our own elders. And, equally, that children--including the children within each of us--come into this world in direct contact with those truths and mysteries that adults often forget. In the rituals of the Dagara of West Africa, if a child does it, no matter what it is--reversing the direction of the circle, upsetting the plan--it's right, because children are messengers of the sacred. We all are, too, if we will listen.
©2000 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
At Grandma's house, you learned not to take things for granted.
There was no indoor plumbing. We used an outhouse, overgrown with honeysuckle, during the day, and chamberpots from the cupboard under the washstand at night.
When we wanted a drink of water, we had to use all our small strength to wield the handle of the pump until cold water tasting deliciously of iron gushed out into the tin cup hanging beside it. It took much more pumping to fill the galvanized metal tub in which we children were bathed occasionally, sometimes two at a time.
Grandma's house had electricity, but I remember, at least in the early years of our visits, a large white ice box, cooled by an enormous translucent block of ice. The rugs on the floor were braided from strips of cotton clothing too worn to wear with decency; and Grandma, using the skill she had developed by sewing all the clothes for her growing family, made miniature versions of my worn-out dresses for my dolls.
Firewood from a fragrant woodshed attached to the house provided the energy for heating and cooking. A woodstove warmed each room in cool weather, and the big black cooking stove in the kitchen produced griddle cakes which have made all pancakes since then pale in comparison.
We thought that even the toys were exotically old-fashioned. With a small collection of small stone architectural blocks, colored blue, terra cotta, and cream, we built wondrous castles. We pored over yellowed Child Life magazines from the 1930s. A pin-bagatelle game with heavy metal balls lured me to sample one when I was small. The doctor advised my mother, "Don't worry; it will come out in the morning," and I assume it did, since I am here to tell the tale.
Outdoors, we were left to our own pursuits: exploring the barn; building houses of straw and grass in the adjoining fields; creeping into the vegetable garden with a salt cellar, which we used discreetly on newly plucked leaves of lettuce; playing with the garter snake that slithered across the front steps.
Visiting grandma took us back in history--exciting for us, although I suspect that our parents, struggling to do a family's laundry with water heated on a wood stove, found the journey challenging and fatiguing. Through our visits to Grandma's house, part of our lives touched the preceding century.
It was not only the sense of living in another era that enchanted us as children, however. It was Grandma Percy herself. Grandma almost always had time for us, despite what she called her "chores." The widow of a Baptist preacher, artist, and poet, Grandma was both preacher and poet in her own right. She loved to gather the grandchildren and set off like a pied piper into the woods. There, she would begin to weave her stories--about elves under toadstools, fairies in the violets, and woodland spirits in the trees. She convinced us that nature was filled with unseen wonders.
Grandma, a diminutive and frail woman, had lived a hard life, losing four of her eight children to illness or accident. She and my grandfather had raised the remaining four with a dearth of money and a plethora of love. When my mother was young, her principle Christmas gift was a hand-made booklet, carefully sewn together at the spine, which contained my Grandfather's poetry and drawings and was designed especially for her.
These frugal, imaginative, strong, loving grandparents left me a legacy, both through their lives and through my mother's. For my mother's values were irrevocably shaped by parents with rich interior lives who knew their dependence on the earth's cycles and resources. In the less affluent--and less hectic--time in which they lived, it was perhaps easier to appreciate the simple delights of day to day life, such as storytelling. Time and time again, we would beg Mother to "tell us a story about when you were a little girl." Our favorite was the story of her cousins finding a "kitty" in the woods and bringing it home to their mother, who was having tea with her friends in the parlor. The kitty turned out to be a skunk.
My grandmother and mother were part of both my biological and my ecological family tree. They did not know it, but they were teaching me environmental awareness. Their lives were firmly grounded in the belief that happiness is found not in material wealth but in relationship, and they passed on these values to us through word and through example.
When our own children were born, I began to ask questions. What kind of world would they inherit? If they were to have children, what kind of world would they live in? This was when I first recognized that I draw strength from the other end of the family tree--not the past, but the future. When I am tempted to despair, I find it is my own children now who point the way to hope.
Watching them as they grew, I found my own wonder reawakened as they discovered the world around them. Their play--hiding in leaf piles, building snow forts, seeking crickets on a summer evening with a flashlight, splashing in a New Hampshire lake--beckoned me back to my own childhood experience of nature. I have followed from afar, attentively (and prayerfully!) trying hard not to meddle, as they have experienced various relationships, from their companionship with schoolmates during kindergarten recess, to childhood baseball and soccer teams, the adventures of academia, and entry into an adult world ripe for exploration.
One son has followed the calling of a professional musician. With his wife, he is part of a community of sound with other orchestral or chamber musicians, as they contribute to the happiness and well-being of the human community.
Our other son creates another kind of harmony, through his membership in the environmental community at Lost Valley, where he teaches organic gardening, edits this nationally distributed environmental magazine, and continues to enlighten and educate his parents.
My grandmother's legacy continues, as the family tree, rooted in her life-giving values, reaches out towards life in the 21st century--a century when those values, far from being outdated, are the only hope for the future both of the human race and the planet itself.
Nancy Roth is a writer, dancer, musician, Episcopal priest, and, most importantly, mother, who hopes that her legacy will, like her grandmother's, be life-giving to the family tree. She lives in Oberlin, Ohio, with her husband, a retired musician.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
ND: A personal question: is Cook, your last name, a tribal band name?
KC: We all had Mohawk names only, until recent times. But as they did with other Native Americans, Indian agents would come and give us those names. My Cook name has a past to it. I have an ancestor Louis Cook who served in the Revolutionary War, and there's also a Cook in the family genealogy, a young Scots boy, who was taken out of Deerfield, Massachusetts. He survived a raid of the Mohawks on Deerfield, and they took him back to the Mohawk villages, because in those days that's what we did to replace relatives we lost, we would adopt non-Native people. And if you recall, in the colonial period, the Mohawk people lost about two thirds to disease and to war, and so we had adoption as the right of the women to make new relatives for the ones they had lost. This young boy, Skawerorane he was called, had red hair and long neck and when they would tease him he'd blush. The name Skawerorane means the comb of a turkey's head, red--when he'd blush he'd get red.
There are three families of Cooks. One of them they call the Boots Cooks, one the Turkey Cooks, and then another line of Cooks descended from Louis Cook, who was this character in the American Revolution. I have both those Cook lines. I have my family genealogy that goes back to the 1600s, thanks to records kept by Jesuit missionaries, and in there are all the family names. Very early on in the colonial period Mohawk people took on names for a variety of purposes or ways. Out East, we would just take the name of someone we knew, or however. Out West, though, they would shorten their Indian names, so some of the families have names like Smoke, Bush, Swamp. My sister-in-law, is Lakota from South Dakota; her maiden name is Afraid of Bear, after the name of an ancestor who was healed by bears. His name really meant "And he's not even afraid of bears," but the Indian agent shortened it to Afraid of Bear. Her dad tells the story of the Indian agent begging him to take on "Allen" as a last name, an English name. Thanks to him, that Bear name, and the memory of that grandfather who had the bear medicine, survives.
Names are very significant among our people. They're property of the women, the Indian names when you're born. We're not like in American society, where when you're pregnant you go get a baby book and look for names for a boy or a girl. In our ways, a traditional name is the property of the women of the clan mothers. They hold a bag of names, and the name isn't thought of until the baby's born, partly because babies didn't always survive, and still don't always survive. There was a time frame where the baby wasn't named, and they're not named until the next ceremony where names are given. There is a ritual giving of names that still continues in our families, old names that are held. And there's only supposed to be one person holding one name, so that you don't confuse the Creator or Creation.
For example, when you go pick medicines, you have to give the plant your Indian name, so it will know who you are. There's supposed to be only one Te Katsitsiakwa, which is my name, a Wolf Clan name. That name belongs to the Wolf Clan of mothers. When I die, that name will be removed from me and returned to that bag of names that are held by the clan mothers. You give honor and respect to the name you're given. Some names are retired, because they were dishonored names. There are a few rare names that they bury, because they were people who were bad people, and they don't want this name to go on. That's about one of the worst things you can do, is to lose your name.
ND: Are there a certain number of names?
KC: Oh, there are thousands of them, and there are so many people being named again now that they even come up with new names. Part of my job as a midwife is to help the family find the baby's name based on when the baby was born. Because you have to check with the clan mothers if it's OK to use a certain name, sometimes now the family will state a preference, they'll say well we really like this name. I don't like it when they do that, because of the old way of not even thinking about names until after the baby's been born. But recently I had a birth where they had already cleared through the mothers a name of a little girl that meant "She's shaking the door, she's at the door and she's trying to open it and she's shaking it, she's rattling the door," and I thought gee, you know, she's not even here yet and already they have a name for her.
And so it came that time, this baby girl was supposed to be born, and I remember being in my house not far from where the mother lives, and all of a sudden a big wind kicked up. I opened my kitchen door and looked out and I saw this streak of lightning that isn't the normal kind of lightning, but we call it electrical storm, electrical lightning. That's how jagged that thunder is, and the thunder beings are really important to us. They're the ones that purify the waters, and we're always grateful to them. We call them our grandfathers. When I see that in the sky I know that the thunders will bring a baby sometimes, or a baby that's maturing inside the mother, if she's driving down the road and she hears a strong thunderclap, that baby will even change position. I tell my mothers be careful around the time of a thunderstorm, you want to stay in your home and be real quiet, so that the baby doesn't get scared. Anyway, when I saw that thunderbolt in the sky, I thought one of my mothers is going to have her baby tonight, that thunder's going to bring that baby. And sure enough, that baby was born by the next afternoon. Through the night the mother went into labor and it was about three in the morning she called me, after that thunderstorm.
When I went to her home for a post-partum visit her mother was there, and she mentioned how gee, I saw this lightning hit this field behind our house and it was like the whole house was shaking and the door was knocking, it's just like this baby's name, "She's shaking the door or rattling the door." Already they had through some kind of way a knowledge that this baby was going to have this name that way, so I guess I kind of changed my mind--that sometimes it's OK to have a name if the parents are really of that mindset. The baby fit that name.
So names are a big thing, very serious business among my people. I have an English name that I never use, only my documents have my English name. I was named for my godmother's baby twin girl, who died at three-and-a-half. I was the next baby born in the family, so they gave me her name, Cheryl. Cheryl and Terryl were these girl twins. And my auntie was at my birth. My father really thought a lot of his sister and, knowing that she lost a baby girl, wanted her to be at my delivery. She's gone now, but she used to tell me about how I was born, how he gave her the right to name me, so she gave me that name, of the little girl she lost. Then they gave me the name Elizabeth after my grandmother, who delivered me, and then they named me Te Katsitsiakwa. It means "She's picking up the flowers or the medicines." So there's a lot of Katsi names--we shorten it to Katsi.
ND: There's a wonderful interconnectedness with the ancestors and with those not yet born, connection with nature, identifying people by action verbs or identifying them with other parts of nature and objects. These are things that are not prevalent anymore in modern Western culture. They seem to be a part of indigenous ways. Your talking about that brings a sense of interwovenness and interconnectedness, and a natural feeling of community.
KC: I've seen English names, Scottish names, German names...I have a chiropractor I know, Herziger. I said, "What does your name mean in your language?" He says, "It means sweetheart." (laughter) And so your names have a meaning, you just forgot. It's true you have to have that interwoven relatedness to everything, because nature itself causes the baby to be born. One of the jobs of a midwife is to look around at what's going on in the world when this baby's being born: what kind of moon is it, what's the weather like, are there any birds around? Sometimes a labor can be over the course of a day, a day and a half, even three days I've waited for a baby to come. During that time maybe you're going to see a snake cross your path, and that's kind of a warning to the midwife. Or you're going to see a bird come to the window and give you a message. It depends on the kind of bird it is: there's a big difference between what an owl is going to say to you and what a hummingbird is going to say. That's one of the jobs, to look around and to think about what the elders have said.
I remember being at one birth where the baby was a special person who was coming through a woman who is now gone due to her sacrifice for the people. At the time of this young boy's birth he had a mark on his chest. It looked like an eagle. I had remembered one of our elders talking about, someday a boy is going to be born and he's going to have this mark of an eagle on him, and you'll know that he's destined to be a leader.
That's one of the things that I feel compelled to do, to listen to the things that the older ones talk about. I've been doing that since I was fifteen years old and I'm forty-seven now. Over the years I've found that it's true--all our teachings, our prophetic tradition, the stories and the knowledge that get handed down in the context of ceremonies, of our longhouse culture and ways...
And we're just regular people too. We shop at P & C and supermarkets and take our clothes to the laundromat and drive in cars and live in houses funded by the Federal Mortgage Program, HUD, and watch the same satellite networks you guys do. But on top of that we have the reality of our culture around us, in us, and all about us. We try to pay attention to those things we were told from the beginning to pay attention to, and they're all about being grateful and acknowledging the life that we have.
We have a thanksgiving address that is recited by one of the men before any political, social, or spiritual doings is conducted. It's called "the words that come before all else." These words begin with thanking the Creator that everyone's in a good mind, and healthy, and everybody could be here in good shape, that we all got to this Bioneers Conference and nobody got in a car wreck, and everybody seems to be in a good way, and strong, and we hope that even after this meeting is over, everyone will go home and find their families healthy, and nothing bad happened to them or their property in their absence. That's how we talk to one another when we first get together. Then we start from those things on the earth: the water, the earth itself, the winds, the rains, the grasses, the medicines, the bird life, the trees, the berry plants, all of those things we give a greeting and acknowledgment to and explain the function of each one within the web of life. And from there go up like a ladder into the sky world: the stars, the moon, the sun, and the four beings at each of the directions, who hold our world up.
It's quite long to sit there listening to these beautiful words. In listening to this speech, that has a cadence and rhythm to it, it's almost an induction of a trance state, where you can get to that higher level of thinking and of experience and feel your relationship to all of these things. You hear that from the time you're in your mother's womb, she's sitting there in the longhouse. You hear those words until you're old, until they've put you in the center of the longhouse when you're making your final journey to the spirit world--those words are said. They're very comforting after a time, because of the beautiful way they'll thank the Mother Earth for continuing to follow her original instructions, that she continues to provide food and clothing and even laws to help us understand how to live as human beings in this world, that she gives us a place to put our feet.
And we thank the waters. The waters of the rivers and the waters of our bodies are the same water. Like David Suzuki was talking about, the mother's milk and the water and our blood is all the same water. It puts you in that state of relationship. In some families, when the baby is born, it's the job of the grandmother or the father to recite that thanksgiving address, Ahenton Kariwatehkon, to greet the baby into this world.
In my community, we've been organizing the families and the women to recover birth as the way to keep our people strong, to give our children a sense of continuity. Different families recite different speeches to the baby, and some will use the framework of the thanksgiving address to explain to the baby where it is in its relationship to this earth. There's a Cayuga speech to a baby that goes, "I give thanks, for peacefully you are born. I pray hopefully that peacefully your life will be ongoing, because it is that I think of you clearly, knowing you will always be loved." When you hear that speech--it came through a family through many generations--you begin to get a sense of how babies were born before we had hospitals. And the word peace is a very potent word. Especially in relationship to a birth, it already gives me a feeling of how that birth went.
I'm not against hospitals. I am for the ability of the women to make their own choices. Paul Hawken told a beautiful fairy tale at the Bioneers Conference. He talked about an almost "toad" woman who asked a prince to choose whether she would be beautiful at night and ugly in the day, or ugly at night and beautiful in the day. The prince's answer to her was, "You choose." Paul Hawken said, that's the way our culture has to go: to allow the woman to choose. In our community, our Mohawk culture and our very belief system have been denigrated, have been made against the law, have been the objects of government policies directed at them to eliminate them, to serve the interests of a production-based industrial economy.
We're now recovering from that time when we were told that who we are and what we know is of no value. In fact, we are responsible for a lot of the knowledge that is used in hospitals today. A lot of the anesthetics, a lot of the medicines that are used come from the traditional pharmacopoeia of native people. When the explorer Jacques Cartier came down the Saint Lawrence River, his boat was frozen in the ice and his men were dying from scurvy, which at that time Europeans believed was caused by bad air. It was my Mohawk people who walked across the ice and took them the tip of the pine needle, and made tea for them, and it was the antidote to scurvy. Our people knew and understood the nutritional basis of the disease scurvy, way back in the 1500s.
The Christian missionaries categorized us as heathens and savages, and Queen Isabella of Spain and her legions came to this world believing that if you weren't a Christian, then you didn't have a spirit, you didn't have a soul. They used that belief system to murder the native people of this hemisphere. It's a sad history, but our people are resilient or we wouldn't be here even now.
One of the ways in my own humble life that my own family has kept the power of the women is for the women to take responsibility for one another, to love one another enough that we would do that for each other. It's not the dominant way right now, I'm just holding onto it. We started the first birthing center in all of Ontario, called Tsinonwe Ionnakevatstha/Onograhsta, "the place where they will be born," and, with a grant from the Ministry of Health, Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy, started a birthing center. We're training four aboriginal midwives in the community, in the birthing center, through a direct entry apprenticeship model that is culture- and community-based. I'm trying to expand that model up the river in my own community, as remediation for Mohawk women who have endured the contamination of their bodies and their breast milk.
Our grandmas tell us we're the first environment, that our babies inside of our bodies see through the mother's eyes and hear through the mother's ears. Our bodies as women are the first environment of the baby coming, and the responsibility of that is such that we need to reawaken our women to the power that is inherent in that transformative process that birth should be. It's exciting to see a young woman enabled and working with her midwife to know how to make a decision, to learn how that's done. It's one of the best outcomes, to have a young mother tell me what it is she's decided she wants. My role is to support her choice. In that humble way, I try to keep alive the work that my grandmother did, she who delivered me in her big white iron bed at her farmhouse, and who learned what she knew from her mother. I'm third or maybe even fourth-generation midwife in my community. I'm delivering babies to children of babies my grandmother delivered, and so the continuity of that is very meaningful.
When you still have extended family as we have in my community, I watch these ones that I've delivered grow up, and always pay attention to them, ask them how they're doing. I think of one young man who came into an all-night ceremony that my cousin and I were at, sitting there. Here's this gorgeous young man who probably the last thing he wants to do is go sit by some older ladies. He sat in front of us all night in that place, in that ceremony, and honored us because he knew that we had delivered him eighteen years ago. And he always comes and greets me. It's nice to have that kind of relationship with young people. And so those are some of the ways that our people knew about and that we're trying to keep alive.
We have so much toxic contamination of our environment, we can't eat the fish anymore. There are places on our Reservation you can't even grow foods because of the uptake of fluoride in leafy vegetables or uptake of lead from the ground into corn. It's really stressful to live in a place where your teachings, your traditional teachings, have been violated in this way. Your very identity as Kanienkehaka or Mohawk people has to do with keeping the agricultural cycle alive. That cycle of continuous creation is the very basis of what we know as human beings. That's why we're here on this planet as Kanienkehaka, to keep the way of the teachings of our original ancestors alive, to continue to do those things, our original instructions. Birth is a part of all of that, and all the things we choose to work on as human beings are based on the gifts that we receive when we come into this world.
There are teachings in that birthing experience that can tell you about the purpose of that child's life. One of my roles as a midwife is to notice, from all the different signs in the birth, what this baby's here to do, and what ceremonies the mother and father have to do to make sure that baby grows a certain way, what attentions need to be paid to this child, any particular weaknesses or strengths. Based on the knowledges from different medicine ways, you have an interpretive framework to use. That's essentially what we're trying to maintain and build upon and carry with us as one of the things we use in our families so that our people can live.
ND: I was wondering how you teach resilience to children, that resilience to overcome.
KC: Our generation recovered enough from our oppression to form our own Freedom School, to integrate into public schools a culture-based curriculum and Mohawk language. Extended families are still part of children's everyday life, and so the resilience comes out of the culture itself. We know that while our environment is toxic, we do continue to relate to the environment. It's like David Suzuki was saying, we're not separate from it, it's inside of us. The air that we breathe is part of those four winds that we communicate with in our ceremonies. The fireplace and the sun, that heat, that life, is a part of us. My own prayer, niawen ohontsia, tsisaterientare tsi niio, thank you to the Mother Earth, she knows the way... niawen karakwa, tsi senoronkwa ne onkwehonweh, thank you to the sun, you love the people ... When our children grow, hearing these teachings and these things, they always feel related.
I know that when I was born, I was delivered at home by my grandma to a woman, my mother, who was told never to have children because she fell on the ice when she was a young woman and it damaged her mitral valve in her heart, because there were no antibiotics in 1927 on the Kahnawake Mohawk Reservation. Her father was the first Mohawk physician on the Reservation and he easily could have performed abortions for her to protect her life, but she chose to have four of us, and I was her fourth one born at home. And because my grandma was more concerned about the state of my mother's health after the birth she bundled me, put me in a basket, and put me aside. About an hour later, when she circled back around to me, the story is that I was bleeding, my bundling was bloody, and when she unwrapped me she saw I was bleeding from the cord stump. We know today that a baby can have a hemorrhagic disease of the newborn, because it lacks a clotting factor in its blood at birth, and the solution to that is a shot of Vitamin K. At that time my grandma used her common sense and took a needle and thread and sewed up my cord stump.
As I was growing up in her care, my siblings and cousins would tease me, you better not make grandma mad or she's going to take her thread back. So I always had this sense that something was there in my belly button that my grandma put in there at my birth. As I was growing up in her home, because my mother was often hospitalized for her heart illness, I would look for that thread. And when I was a young woman and became a mother the first time, I realized that that thread she put in me was the desire to serve my people that way as a midwife. And so I began my journey in life to train in that knowledge and to continue to build by family.
I have five children, all of whom were planned homebirths, and I found that the word in our language for midwife--because midwife is a German word, it means "with woman," mit wif--our word is iewirokwas. Of the words we have that's the one I find to be the most beautiful. It means "She's pulling the baby out of the water, or out of the earth, or a dark wet place." And that certainly represents the perspective of reproductive ecology that our people have about integrating the natural world in the birth process, because it's all natural, it's all nature. Birth itself is one of those closed systems that nature created over time so that the baby not only suckles at the mother for its survival, but that act of suckling, saves the mother's life, because it prevents the uterus from hemorrhaging. To see the system work in its natural ways is a beautiful thing. To be familiar with those aspects of it, and to know how it works, it's really scientific and it's really beautiful.
For example, we know that oxytocin scientifically is the hormone responsible for the contractions as the baby suckles at the breast, to save the life of the mother. Nurses in the hospital will tell women, oh honey, this induction we're going to do with pitocin--this pitocin is just like your natural hormone that makes you have a baby. But now we know that the pitocin, while it does go to the uterus and is taken up by receptor sites on the uterus and causes the uterus to contract, doesn't have the behavioral effect of the oxytocin naturally occurring in the mother's bloodstream. So the mothers are not learning that part of the birthing process from these chemical labors, from these inductions. That's not to say it doesn't have its place in the care of women. We know now that babies should be born about 42 weeks, and it's based on research of hundreds of thousands of probably mostly non-Native women. We don't have any research particular to Mohawk women. That's one of the components of the Iewirokwas Program under the organization Running Strong for American Indian Youth, funded by the First Peoples Fund of the Tides Foundation: we're working within the community to empower women one at a time through the transformative process and possibility that birth has to offer. They become active players.
An empowered community is made up by empowered individuals and empowered families, and to me empowerment is feeling at home with who you are, and that begins with the moment of birth. So my own birth story is a great source of strength to me. And so when you ask the question about our children I have to go the long way around and say it all begins with the way they get born. A mother can not pay attention to her child, based on the birth process, but when I give care to my mothers, I always work with them so that even if they end up with a "chemical" labor, they can understand that their first priority is their relationship with this baby, so that everything is done, that the family understands that they can't be having a home where there's a lot of stress, so that this new mother can focus on her baby.
Everything we know in midwifery we learned from the corn. All our knowledge comes from the corn, and inside of each kernel of corn is many generations of knowledge. Part of my training as an aboriginal traditional Mohawk midwife was to raise fields of our original corn. The songs, the ceremonies that go with the growing of corn in the field also have to do with the gestation of the human baby, and so the corn plays a big part in the birth process also, and is also a good quality protein when mixed with beans for the mother to eat. In this day and age when we can't eat our fish, it's a source of clean and easily available good quality protein. And so we're trying to find ways within our own tradition to survive.
The kind of environment that we all see around us weakens us over time. It's very hard in some of the scientific research that I've been involved in to use the tools of science, which require thousands and hundreds of thousands of cases to show cause and effect, in a community of 10,000 Mohawk people. Even with those higher numbers it's hard to show cause and effect relationships. We see from the research done on the animal people, the alligators of the Everglades, and the frogs and turtles and owls in nature, the things that have happened to them from their continuing to consume fish. It weakens all our physical systems: our reproductive system, digestive system, immune system. Our framework, our foundations are weakened because of these chemicals. So to minimize our exposures and to eat lower on the food chain are good ideas for anyone in this environment.
I sing prayer songs in my practice, in my community as a midwife. The words of these songs are simple thoughts, like saying aho, ionianare, it's good, it's good what happened here at the Bioneers Conference. Everything in our experience as human beings begins with a thought, and so many beautiful thoughts were shared that I want to express my gratitude for all the speakers and all the things that have been done and said, for the ways that they are and the work that they do. In these songs are the words unpaho wicapi wiakpapa miye yelo, which are Lakota words that mean "Shining bright is the morning star, that's you glittering bright," to strengthen the individual people in work and the things that they want for their people and their families and their country--that they can take these things that they've heard at Bioneers and use them in their everyday lives, and not let the moodiness and the despair and the hopelessness and the depression and the discouragement of hearing the realities of all of these things that are going on in the world threaten that sacred web of life. And so the words are simple, and all have to do with the strengthening of the human being.
Neil Harvey and Jeff Wessman are Associate Producers with New Dimensions Broadcasting Network. Synchronicity seated them next to two Talking Leaves staff members at the 1999 Bioneers Awards dinner; this collaboratively-published transcript is one fruit of that meeting (the other was fresh sliced apple). Visit www.newdimensions.org to find out more about their work. American Indian Youth Running Strong, of which Katsi and the Iewirokwas program are members, is headquartered at 8815 Telegraph Rd., Lorton, VA 22079; (703) 550-2123; [email protected]; www.indianyouth.org.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
With civilization's political and commercial development, however, the role of elder authority seems gradually to have diminished. The how and why of changes that have silenced the elder voice--the voice of compassionate wisdom--is a topic that has held my attention for some time. I believe that the rapidly growing population of older persons worldwide (the global "age wave"), and the increasing threat to Earth's ability to sustain future generations, set the stage for the return of a meaningful Elder Presence.
"Earth Elders" is a newly emerging national networking and educational organization dedicated to honoring aging, elders, and Earth. It was founded in 1998 in Sonoma County, California, and is a project of New College of California (North Bay), a 501(c)(3) educational institution. Persons who call themselves Earth Elders care about the restoration and sustainability of Earth's ecosystems, upon which our very lives depend.
Our culture's current strategy seems so curiously opposed to our own survival--in fact, the survival of any species--that an objective view from the cosmos would have us appear to be quite suicidal. As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and they are us." I feel certain that if more and more elders join together, with a willingness to take on responsibility for their common wisdom, we can strengthen what I have called "a mature lust for sanity." We must ask ourselves why it is that we have lost touch with the fundamentals of our own survival (or has this kind of sanity always been an illusive myth)?
Persons and organizations in contemporary society almost never develop the quality of attention necessary to test whether their purposes, strategies, and actual behaviors are congruent with one another. Thus, for all the vaunted "rationality" of modern bureaucratic organizing and of "economic" man, it should not surprise us that we experienced the twentieth century pre-eminently as an era of grotesque incongruities between espoused strategics and actual effects. [Torbert, William (1981, p. 437) Human Inquiry, John Wiley & Son, New York.]
In this current vacuum of forethought, Earth Elders call upon midlife and older persons not only to care about the sustainability of Earth, and the children, but to join together as a force for change. As the global market economy and industrial technology continue to gain ascendance in all aspects of the human experience, we lose an entire world--the children's world, which was entrusted to our safekeeping whether we believe it or not. And since we are creations of that more pristine world, we must realize that our tolerance for pollution in the family nest is an abdication of this sacred trust. At the same time, I am reminded of this statement by Martin Heidegger: "Everything works. That is precisely what is uncanny; that it works and that the working drives on ever further to a broader functioning, and that the technology more and more rips and uproots humanity from the earth."
On Sunday, August 1st, 1999, Earth Elders called into being its first Circle of Elders. Over the course of that first afternoon gathering, at New College of California in Santa Rosa, the twenty-five or so elders (of all ages) who showed up were soon engaged in a search for new understanding. We explored definitions and meanings of traditional Eldering in different cultures. We talked about a shared sense of need for an Elder Presence in the Twenty-First Century. In retrospect, the central emerging question seemed to be: How can elders gathering in circles like this help to create a sustainable future for the children?
Since that first afternoon our circles have evolved out of the interests and offerings (the prima materia) of those elders who have shown up. The courageous members of this growing group of chronological and spiritual elders have a great deal to offer as individuals; and, together, they are beginning to reach beyond themselves into the powerful realm of Community. Our strength stems from the life experience and wisdom, the honest, well developed uniqueness, that each of us brings to the collective--a blend of flavors that we are learning to savor. Over the past five months, a Circle of Elders protocol has emerged out of the give and take of our communication about purpose and what does and doesn't work. We begin with a moment of silence followed by this statement: "Welcome to this Circle of Elders. Our intentions are simple, but profound. Together we will create Sacred Space--a circle of safety where compassion and truth-telling can happen in harmony--where the medicine of honest communication with our peers may be taken in large doses. We are here to both give and receive wisdom, and to honor all of Earth, and one another, as Sacred." [Saip, Rabon Delmore, Circle Chair and Steering Council member, Earth Elders.]
After this statement we ask for brief one minute announcements: relevant causes, coming events, and requests for volunteers from those around the circle. We further set our intention with an opening ritual, usually in a standing, hand-holding circle. We invite the presence of Spirit, and Elders from the past, to join us. We use prayer, poetry, visualization, or brief interactive exercises. Our openings vary, but our focus remains on a deepening, inclusive consciousness that emphasizes sacred space, where we practice rigorous honesty tempered with loving kindness and pay homage to Earth, elders, and a sustainable future.
Next, since one of our primary goals is to provide a place where elders can be seen and heard, we go around the circle for brief introductions. This allows everyone present to hear a little something about everyone else. One thing that has become apparent in these monthly gatherings is the tendency of many of us to go on and on. And, with an average of twenty-five to thirty people showing up for each circle, unlimited check-ins could take all day. Therefore, strict timekeeping is observed. Given the challenge of delivering announcements and introductions in a limited time frame, we are inclined to focus on the most important information. Besides, we will have further opportunity for sharing ourselves in small groups and in our concluding full circle discussion.
Thus far, a slowly growing number of returning elders are creating a core Circle of Elders and a few are occasional or first time participants. What the future holds, I believe, is best determined by our capacity to dwell in the mystery of our questions, without the need for desperately seeking answers. Whatever emerges is then the property of the Community. A number of terms can be used to loosely describe this way of being together: dialogue group, brain storm, action inquiry, collaborative learning community, and so on. This kind of exploratory freedom seems to work quite well with elders who gather to share their wisdom and life experience.
Our questions for small group discussion have been fairly general, meant to stimulate group interaction and for us to become more familiar with one another. Examples are: How do we prepare to become Elders in the Twenty-First Century? What is an Elder anyway? What do Elders do? How are Elders related to Sacred Space? What is Sacred Space? What actions can we take to both heal ourselves and Earth? After a half hour to forty-five minutes in random discussion groups of five or six, we reconvene in our large circle for small group check-in and general discussion. As our closing time approaches, after roughly two hours, we stand in our hand-holding circle again and invite closing ritual. I usually have a quote or brief prayer that comes to mind, but also invite others to participate. We then adjourn to a buffet of goodies and informal conversation.
The resources that a Circle of Elders may provide the community depends upon the elders reaching out and the willingness of others to join hands. Our current projects are too numerous to mention here, but our presence in the community is definitely making a difference. I must say, however, that the greatest beneficiaries are already in the circle, sharing the affirmation and wisdom of a lifetime of learning with one another. Even though many in the circle lead busy lives, the mutual support of being seen and heard by their peers is a strong calling. Sometimes, in a brief moment of silence, the joy and power of our collective soul becomes an almost palpable experience.
Earth Elders invites readers to consider "Growing a Circle of Elders" in their own community, to join the growing network of Earth Elders around the globe. For more information about Earth Elders and/or starting a Circle of Elders, call 707-573-6070 or e-mail us at [email protected] or visit us at http://www.earthelders.org.
For most of his adult life (he's now sixty-four), Rabon Delmore Saip was a visually impaired woodworker/artist. In 1991, he discovered that a large monitor and computer technology could provide him a window into the academic world he had been missing, and he is now just a dissertation away from earning his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. He also enjoys facilitating the adult Learning Community model of education as volunteer faculty at Sonoma State University.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
Jenya Lemeshow is a gardener, artist, writer, and lover of children. A resident and garden assistant at Lost Valley for nine months starting in May of 1999, she is a frequent contributor to this magazine.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
Now he sits on the back of the couch, feet planted firmly on the windowsill, hands pressed against the glass, yelling out the colors of the cars as they whiz by. At two, he is still fascinated by that which moves, and how can squirrels compete with mini-vans? I want more for my son than sidewalks and parking lots and shopping, but his guides are as ignorant as he is, and more homeless.
My biggest worry is that this child of mine is growing up in a city, surrounded by asphalt and cable wires. Named for a bird and the forest, Silas Raven is so far away from the pleasures of their acquaintance. Living as we do, scraping by on barely enough, because both of us want to enjoy and share and guide his childhood, sometimes feels short-sighted. Shouldn't we be working, making money as quickly as we can, investing in his future? I want to live in the country, both for my child and myself, and yet we can't afford to move. Wouldn't a couple of years in day-care be okay for the ultimate end of financial clout--enough to gain a mortgage? I can't bring myself to lose his baby years, and yet I feel guilty for not giving Silas the freedom of country living--to run without fear, to explore wild places and make them his own, to enjoy all the tumultuous messy exuberance of life. I want it for myself too. I want an emotional and spiritual connection to the land. I want to inhabit a place. I want my child to grow up taking that kind of connection for granted instead of searching for it when he's thirty.
But where is that mythical place of friendly folks and honest work? Of natural beauty and healthy community? The country around here is big farms and dying villages. We, Silas' parents, are rootless folks, except for the little tendrils we've put down in this town. Both from anonymous suburbs, both children of immigrants whose stories lie in different lands. Any stories we have are the ones we're making up as we go. There are no places for us to be connected to, no family farm to inherit, no small town to return to, no home except the one we've made--here--in this place--a very urban sprawling place. Is this home? Without wilderness, without history? I can't seem to make connections to this land--they must be getting fried in the hydro lines.
Silas is unperturbed by worry, by guilt, by homelessness. His first summer he would sit in the garden and plunge his sturdy arms into the earth as if he were trying to root himself down, down, down. Hands would come up filled with soil, leaves, roots, ants, clutching it all to his chest, then scattering it like raindrops. Then he'd raise his hands above his head, a triumphant hello to the universe. I'm here, he said, every time.
Now that he can talk with words as well as body, every activity of note, from going to pee to the cats' eating is reported with equal weight, to mothers, to fathers, to friends, to himself. Every comment whispered quietly again and again, a chorus of remembrance. Not just to learn language but to learn life. Nona's making cookies. Nona's making cookies. Marc, Nona's making cookies. Pass it on. Pass it on.
In among the sidewalks and the buildings and the cars he finds important things. Rocks. Chestnuts. Leaves. Feathers. Pine cones. All are exclaimed over. Some come home with us. Rocks from beaches, gardens, driveways, playgrounds. All the chestnuts he can carry. Leaves clutched in one hand--flags waving. He holds them tight and lets them go a second later. "Easy, easy go," he tells me. Or brings them home to give to a father, presenting them with a quick carelessness as if duly passing on a message and now his work is done. Nature comes in and out of the house with nonchalance.
Silas has no problem making a home out of asphalt and flowers. After all, mice live in our walls, and squirrels live in the attic. He's eaten carrots straight out of the ground and pulled tomatoes off their vines. He's bought crackers at the store and samosas at the farmer's market. For him it all fits. All he has to do is pay attention and pass it on. His whole being is taken up with gathering and sorting information and experience and sharing it with the rest of the world. Pay attention and pass it on. Silas makes himself at home in this place I consider no place.
What is home anyway, but that intricate cobweb of relations between you and place and people and history and future? Isn't it made where you are every day, by what you do? Doesn't home get made in spite of yourself, by where you put your energies, by where you make your connections? Isn't just feeling at home someplace an accomplishment in our hyper-mobile society? Most people make their home through television, malls, and stuff--limiting their sense of home to tenuous connections with inanimate objects. I may not like this place--I may feel the lack of history, feel the lack of wildness, and feel injured by its ugliness--but I have made myself a home here, of sorts. My feet know these streets. And isn't nature always present, maybe just in the cracks in the sidewalks and the wind in the trees, but here if you pay attention? Silas reaches out to both the life and the asphalt, making everything shine. Why can't I?
Will it last? Will his connections with trees and garden and school buses survive? I don't know. Eventually his horizon is going to expand; perhaps then a few flowers won't be enough to ground him. Perhaps the concrete won't appear so friendly. He's certainly going to notice his parents only feel partly at home here; that we're not so happy with the construction and the cars. Will Silas Raven come to expect more than half-a-home? I hope so. I hope so.
What's the difference between being at home in nature, and nature being in your home? Can you have one without the other?
Standing on the couch, staring out the window, he reaches his arm around my neck and pulls me in for a hug. "Going to rain soon," he informs me looking up at the grey sky. "Going to rain soon. Going to rain soon." Then "fire engine!" as he hears the distant sirens. "Fire engine." "Fire engine."
I think what he is trying to tell me, is that just being at home in the world, whatever it is, wherever it is, is enough for now. Just pay attention and pass it on. Pass it on. Easy, easy go. Silas, Nona, and Marc at home. At home. Pass it on.
fiona heath is a writer and educator living in Waterloo, Ontario. A regular contributor to the regional publication WholeLife, she is currently developing a local study circle guide on simple living. She has a master's in environmental studies from York University where she focused on the experience of home in the western world.
©2000 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
We are the old people,
We are the new people,
We are the same people deeper than before...
(song)
There has been much discussion about the state of our society, our life, our planet: alienation, illness, destruction on all fronts. Many things are wrong, from the numbers of depressed people who on top of that are numbed by medication, to the destruction of the Earth's resources. The topic in this issue of Talking Leaves is another side of that discussion. Listening to children and elders is a natural thing, but somehow it happens less and less. It is another way in which we have strayed, and I ask: Why do we consider children and elders as somehow separate from us, in the first place? What are we doing to perpetuate this lack of relationship, of connection? What could we do to reach out and relate more, in a way that is fulfilling to all?
Four months ago when I came to live at an intentional community, home to many children as well as adults, I was struck by how long it had been since I last had any meaningful contact with children and babies. I sharply noticed both being moved by their innocence, their play, their openness; and becoming impatient every time some activity was delayed or interrupted because of a child.
So I began asking myself where that impatience that sometimes mounted to anger came from, and I concluded that it must be rooted in the times adults were impatient with me as a child, and how that left its mark in my intolerance of the childish parts of myself. Every time my conversation with a mom is interrupted by her daughter's needs, and she turns around to say: "What is it? What do you need?," I admire the mom's patience and care, yet I rage inside for the careful attention that I didn't get when I needed it.
A few weeks after settling into the community I took care of several of the children during whole mornings (something I was initially reluctant to do) and I rediscovered the pleasure of coloring scraps of paper, reading stories out loud, playing with building blocks or in the sandbox. I had great fun, but only when I dared to go into this other rhythm of being, only when my daily worries were obliterated by the exciting paper-folding project at hand or the intricate wooden-fort construction taking place.
I noticed the marvel of home schooling for children, the openness and flexibility that comes from avoiding the institution of school altogether. But I didn't realize the full implications of it until recently, when I started working at a residential home for the elderly and ruminating about the other side of the spectrum of human life and what it means to live it out in an institution rather than a family. Ever since then the intentional community I live in--where people are trying to reestablish deep connections with one another--and the residential home--that is becoming a symbol for the ultimate destination of people in our society--have shown me two very different ways of life.
Ironically enough, I once considered this the worst job in the world, the one thing I was never going to have to do, yet it has shown me things that I do not want to be unaware of, inviting me to make fully conscious choices in how I live my life.
I think it was Nietzsche who said: "Kitsch is the denial of shit." I would modify that to "All that is corny (or cheesy, as you say in America) is a doomed attempt to escape the scatological." Modern day nursing homes, and all institutions where the elderly or the mentally or physically challenged are safely tucked away, seem to have been created in the same attempt to smooth out a surface that is naturally uneven: that of humanity.
All it takes is a quick look around the media to realize we have created a fantasy in which only young adults are validated. The reason we even create categories dividing children, the elderly, and the rest of society must be found among the premises that we have ended up living by:
-- There is such a thing as the best years in life and they are to be found somewhere in young adulthood.
-- After that, rapid deterioration is imminent.
-- Raising children is difficult and burdensome and should be done as discreetly and noiselessly as possible.
-- Taking care of the elderly (or of anyone who is incapable of fully caring for themselves) is undesirable, let alone being one of those people.
-- Dying is horrible and must be warded off in any way possible.
And so on. These and many more ingrained negative beliefs have been effectively instilled in us by the media and its stronghold on us, with catastrophic results. Even those of us who are trying to exclude the media from our lives and to live guided by our innermost sense have adopted some of this negativity.
It is no wonder that the greatest difficulty we face in growing as human beings is accepting ourselves; no wonder that "low self-esteem" has become a catch-phrase for our self-destructive, dysfunctional behavior. How are we supposed to accept ourselves if we reject the fact that we are temporal beings who are born, grow, and die? And isn't it ironic that in our efforts to appear healthy, young, and slim we damage our bodies even more with chemicals, bad food, surgery, and psychological self-punishment?
For as long as we do not accept ourselves we will be trying to deny life's very rhythm, a rhythm we belong to.
When I started working at the home, the dirty diapers fulfilled all my expectations of horror, more so the stench of bedsores, and the subtle brush with death: spending most of my day with people whose only reason to live is their fear of dying, people who seemed to fulfill the prophecies of our culture and live the end of their days in dependent passivity. To my surprise, however, those soon became the least bothersome parts of the job. I learned that I am strong enough to be present in my work and to treat the residents there with a basic respect for their integrity and individuality. The fact that I change their dirty diapers and bathe them, that I see the scatological parts of their lives and have to deal with their sights, smells, noises, bodily fluids, has become smaller in the light of our common humanity. My body is not so different from theirs, and if I can go through life with my body, surely I can help them with theirs.
No, the worst part of my job is answering a phone call from Marianne's* son who doesn't want to talk to her because he's busy; opening the door for Gustave's daughter, who has brought the monthly check but won't step in to say hello. The worst thing is knowing that these people have been discarded, tucked away the same way we do "dirty" or "shameful" things: nobody from their families wants to look at them or spend time with them. The worst thing is feeding them out of a can or a frozen package, warmed in the microwave oven or in an aluminum pot (Who cares, right? They already have Alzheimer's anyway), and then giving them a dozen pills to counteract the effect of food that is lacking in fiber, vitamins, and, it seems, nutrients in general. The worst thing is listening to some of them say "I don't know why I'm here, when am I going home?," or "I haven't seen my family, I don't know where they are or why they left me here," or "Please don't let me die." The worst thing is knowing that they don't get any exercise, let alone physical therapy; that all they have is the television or the radio in the channel of the nurse's choice. The worst thing is being part of a system that is unethical and wrong: how can their life be worth living? How can they not deteriorate in circumstances that are so awry?
The system, however, is a natural consequence of our present society. The residents of the home (one of whom will be 100 years old this year) belong to the generation that built the 20th Century: surely they have some responsibility in it. Whether or not they deserve the kind of treatment they are getting is not for me to say, but the truth is that in some way or another they created their own lives.
I often wonder about their lives. Some of them have advanced Alzheimer's disease, some of them are lost in a world of their own, constantly talking to themselves an endless chatter, perhaps pieces of conversations from 50 years ago. Other residents have a quick mind and a fresh memory, but are nearly blind or deaf, or suffer from epilepsy, or severe emphysema. Some have incorporated the daily routine at the home as something natural, whether they are aware of the nature of the place or not; others fight every day to get out. Some say thank you when I change their diapers or put them to bed, while others try to punch me or call me names. Edward changes the television channel every time a black person comes on the screen, and Gretta turns her face in a frown when I tell her I come from Mexico. Ralph is forever wandering up and down the aisles, shouting out orders and mandates as if he was still the boss of the company he directed when he was younger: "Get out of the water, the water! Oh, yes, I like you, I like you. Good looking boy, ah yes. Fifty, fifty, fifty horses...." The other day he started chattering to David, who is always asking me for a ride home when I get off from work, and David got so upset that he punched him in the face. Another resident helped me separate the two of them. Maggie, who passed away last week, used to grab onto my sleeve when I came near and say: "Don't leave me, oh God, don't let me die." I know little of their families, but I hear similar stories from them: "My daughter hasn't called me in ten years," "My son lives on the other side of the country and never comes to see me." Although they all have pictures of their children and grandchildren on their walls, their family life is nonexistent.
I can gather from their talk and from the way they treat me that most of them were not very invested in creating good relationships within their families. Sometimes I can't help thinking that those residents who seem to exist in a world of their own, with no contact to the outside, must have denied their essence so repeatedly that they got lost somewhere along the way. Isn't Alzheimer's disease the epitome of escapism? I don't know, perhaps those diseases just happen and they could happen to me some day, and if they do I won't be able to do anything about them either; but, from the experience knowing them now, I can draw determination to take good care of myself, to express my truths lest they appear in 60 years' time as ghosts; to make sure my body gets good food, sleep, and exercise lest I spend the last years of my life without walking, reading, writing, talking to people.
In the creation of our reality and our world it is hard to know where our personal responsibility ends and others' begins. I think of the age-old myth and wonder. Oedipus pulled out his eyes when he realized he had killed his father and lain with his mother, and his actions had brought about the barrenness of his land and the plight of his people. His story has often been used to illustrate that we are responsible for our actions, even in our unconsciousness. But Oedipus's father Laius started everything: he was too scared of the oracular message that his son would kill him, and rather than sacrificing Oedipus with his own hands he left the task to someone else, someone who in turn had pity on the child and refused to kill him. Laius was responsible for Oedipus not knowing the man he killed at the crossroads to be his father. Aha!
The land is being destroyed and the people suffer; perhaps it is too late for my generation to do anything but pull out our eyes. Not only must we make ourselves responsible for our own lives, but if we aspire to create a world where nursing homes for the elderly are gentle places, or there is no need for them at all, we must also take it upon ourselves to mend the cracks between us. May we all come together in community and establish healthy relationships with our children, our parents, our extended family, and our friends.
Moira Alatorre, 26, is currently living with her husband at an intentional community, following her life's journey into alternative, kinder ways of living with people and the earth. She is looking forward to watching the gardens grow this and every year, as well as to aging enjoyably into an old, old, wrinkled and hopefully wise woman.
* All names have been changed out of respect for people's privacy.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children
My work, however, brings me to another aspect of elderhood. For the past few years I have been taking middle school classes of students into urban parks here in San Francisco, both to learn about nature and to engage in restoration of natural areas. Most of the students, whose ages range from pre- to early adolescence, seem to appreciate my being older. I have found that the African-American and Asian youth with whom I work predominantly still have a familial background that appreciates elders--aunts, uncles, grandfathers, and grandmothers often live at home with them. It is only rarely that I encounter being shouted at "Hey, you old coot!" as I walk past a group of anonymous students gathered in some schoolyard.
Preparation for this work with students also brings up another aspect of elderhood, that of the human study and observation of wild animals and plants. In my readings of the relationship of past cultures with the animal and plant world, especially in the works of Paul Shepard, it seems obvious that the development of human culture was dependent on mirroring the presence of flora and fauna. The undulating movement of cattails on the edge of a lake in a windstorm suggests human dance; the standing still of the great blue heron with poised beak is a lesson in spear fishing. Within the span of evolutionary life, the human species is a Johnny-come-lately, whose unique development of a sophisticated communication system known as spoken language carries with it definitive traits of stages of animal and plant life: "she blossomed into womanhood," or "he outfoxed those who were pursuing him." On any crowded street corner, amidst the bored adults waiting for buses, observe the small child studying the movement of pigeons, then perhaps his or her mimicking their awkward walk. Through the genealogy of species, humans learned much early on from their "elder" species.
In my experience of working with youth in order to familiarize (in the sense of making one part of family) them with the natural world, I have found the structure of ritual vital to introducing them to the teaching of animals and plants as elders. The ritual I most often turn to is the Council of All Beings, whereby boys and girls first observe and learn about the plants and animals in their neighborhood, then make masks of the life forms each chooses for herself or himself, and finally meets "in council," taking on the persona of the flora and fauna selected by each student. Instructions for what to say in this ritual are kept to a minimum, emphasis given to what each plant or animal present has to offer to the world as a unique gift. For example, a student representing an ant might speak of this creature's ability to carry an object many times heavier than the ant's body weight, thereby expressing a valued lesson to small children: how diminished size is no barrier to strength.
The format for the Council was created by Joanna Macy and John Seed, environmental activists working out of the deep ecology tradition. It also has implications for the bioregional movement, which focuses on enlarging the human sense of "community" by providing humans with a ritual context for knowing the various animal and plant species found in one's natural region. In my own work with students and teachers learning about the natural areas found in urban parks, I am constantly amazed how little they know about the flora and fauna that make urban parks their habitat. Often, this lack of familiarity on the part of young people takes the form of phobia, particularly when it comes to students encountering insect life. Much of this phobia, I suspect, comes from watching sensationalized movies and TV fare of the horror or science fiction genre, which reflects a long American- European-rooted cultural tradition of casting Nature as the "enemy" to be vanquished.
Our young people, particularly those living in highly industrialized urban centers, have lost contact with living nature, except what comes through to them on TV and in the movies, a celluloid replica of the real thing. For the Native American youth, living in nature meant being surrounded by teachers, by "Elders," whose form, whether cattail or coyote, told a story embellished by narrative. One of my favorite Native American stories, told often to my students in the park, is the one about coyote coming upon a bunch of cattails in a pond waving in the breeze. Not one to pass up the opportunity to dance, coyote begins to strut his stuff in unison with the movements of the cattails. As time passes, coyote's strength begins to flag, while that of the host of cattails remains unchanged. At last coyote collapses while the cattails dance on. The lesson is that in community there is a vast reservoir of strength, just as there is in the rhizomatous network of roots binding one cattail to another.
What nature has to teach humans, as elder to youth, given the evolutionary time span in which nature has created the human species, is that there is a much wider community of life than normally attributed to the word. The place of the elders in that community belongs to the myriad species of life that surrounds the human one. One etymological root of the word human is "humus," as of the earth, but also as of humility--knowing our place in the evolutionary birthing of life. As one coming to terms with my own elderhood in human life, I find myself more and more speaking on behalf of my fellow elders, the tall trees, the wavy grasses, and the birds in flight. It is their magic I want to impart to the city kids I teach in parks. A magic that is truly elder to any born of merely human kind.
David Graves lives in San Francisco where he runs a program called Kids in Parks. He also is an avid naturalist in his neighborhood. His comments on watching mockingbirds found a place in the Summer/Fall 1999 edition of Talking Leaves.
©2000 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children