In October 2007, New Life Journal’s publisher, Erin Everett, was honored to interview Cherokee elder Grandmother Red Leaf. Grandmother provided a wealth of information, and we’re happy to bring you the continued interview this issue.

NLJ: Many people in our area are descended from the Cherokee. For those people, what is their responsibility with regards to their lineage?

GRL: I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to find your past, because without your past, you have no future. To me, it is so important. I don’t care if you’re German, Irish, Scottish or whatever you are, you need to know what your roots are, because that helps you define yourself as a person and also helps to define what your path will be. You find out so much when you begin to search your family.

[With regards to ancestry], science tells us that my people, the Cherokee, crossed the Bering Straits 13,500 years ago. Now, they are finding remains that date back 17,000 years old on this continent. But, you know, the indigenous people have said we didn’t all migrate—maybe the Athabaskan-speaking people who crossed from Asia and were the forebears of the Navajo and the people who spoke that language group, I am sure some of them crossed at some point, but there was an ice trail that connected the continents even before the land mass was seen when the oceans dropped. So, now look, they’re telling us something that our people have known for lots of years.
My family has also talked about the “red thread,” so I wrote a book—I never published it—but I wrote a book called The Red Thread Runs Through Us. Then just a few years ago, here comes information about the myocardial DNA, the red DNA. Hello! Where have you guys been? We’ve been telling you this forever! Isn’t that fascinating?

NLJ: Where did you grow up?

GRL: All over the place. I was abandoned. I was born in North Carolina. I have lived in seven foster homes. During the fourth grade, I had three half siblings that were left with me. I was seven years old, and so I stole food for them. My brother still calls me “mom.” I didn’t see him for 20 years. We were all separated; this happens to so many Indian children. And then my mother died of acute alcoholism on the street in Detroit, Michigan. She was 41 years old, and of course she had no identification. Indians didn’t carry ID; we know who we are. You know, that seems like a very silly thing; you have to carry a card to say you know who you are!
We’ve got the highest alcohol rate in the country, highest teenage suicide rate, highest infant mortality rate, lowest per-capita income. You know, people don’t know these things about us. Our livers don’t process alcohol in the same way it does for other people; [alcohol] has caused terrible destruction.

And, of course, alcoholism is a means of escape from the terror of loss of our children, the loss of our culture and our languages and our beliefs. And it always struck me as odd that the Europeans left Europe to escape religious tyranny and they came here and did the same thing to us.

A saying I read somewhere defined that so beautifully. It said, “And the feather floated on the water, and Coyote sat above the flood and sang his song, and Eagle and the Hummingbird answered, and together they made the People, and it was a sacred time. And then the ones with the crosses came from the South and the children began to die.”

Wow, what an impact that has, you know, because there is a thing called the Great Death, where eight out of ten people died during a very short period of time. And, of course, the dissemination of smallpox—that was “germ warfare” long before the phrase came along.

So, we lost entire tribes through that. The people called it the “spotted death.” And there was whooping cough and measles. We think today those things are not big concerns, and yet thousands of our people died from those very things.

NLJ: You live very close to Mount Mitchell. Can you tell me about Mount Mitchell?

GRL: I was up there yesterday all day. We had a wonderful day. Of course, the mountains, according to our old legend, were created by the great buzzard who came when the land was wet. And when his wing raised and lowered, it created the mountains.

We call him the Medicine Eagle, by the way, and [he] is used in many ceremonies. I have a Medicine Eagle feather on my back porch. It is used in healing ceremonies.

All through here is what, for lack of a better word, is a power vortex. There is a great deal of medicine here because this was the home of our forefathers. When I go out to my circle in the back to pray every morning, I give thanks for every footfall upon this land, every prayer that was ever prayed, every song that was ever sung, every beat of the drum that has ever been heard here, every ceremony that has ever been done here, and every bone that lies beneath the breast of the Mother. Because it all happened here, and there is great wisdom here.
Wisdom doesn’t walk up with a 12-foot sign and sit down in your lap. You have to make supplication, you have to be willing to show intent. You have to be willing to give away your whole self and to become immersed. There is a Navajo blessing, and their word for “spirit” is “beauty.” It’s the same word. They say, “Beauty is before me, beauty is behind me, beauty is above and below me. I am surrounded by it, I am immersed in it. In my youth, I am aware of it, and in my old age, I will walk quietly the beautiful trail.”

What a beautiful prayer! You know, to say that my life is spirit, my life is filled with spirit, I live for seeking the wisdom, I live so that I will bring honor to my people, and when I step into the stars, people will speak my name with respect. It’s a very big thing to be accountable, to be aware that when people look at you, they see your family. It’s a big burden, but people don’t want to accept that because it means you have to be careful, it means you have to be selective in your choices. Actually, you have three choices: you can choose to do something, you can choose not to do it, or you can choose not to choose. If you choose not to choose, then the will is not activated and nothing is manifest. That’s a big lesson.

So, those are just a few of my guidelines. My commitment is ceremony every day in the coming of the full sun and right before the dark time, because life goes on in the dark. So many wild animals come here to help me celebrate spirit. There is a huge safety here because of how I perceive it. It’s not a physical thing; it’s how I perceive it. So I am protected, I am safe.

New Life Journal’s original interview with Grandmother Red Leaf appeared in the October 2007 Native Healing Paths issue. To read “It’s Time to Celebrate the Medicine,” visit www.newlifejournal.com/oct07/cherokee-spiritual-leader-grandmother-red-leaf.shtml.

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