Q: There is a renewed interest in Native ways, especially in this area. People are participating in ceremonies and rituals and attending, learning and doing things on their own that may not have been learned in the traditional way. How do you feel about this renewed interest?

A: Years ago there was a man by the name of Andrew Jackson, honored on the twenty dollar bill. He looked into the future, and he saw a time when the white people would have to share a place with the “heathen savages.” He was looking out for all the white people when he and Van Buren decided to remove all the Native people from this land and forced them to the other side of the Mississippi. The Cherokee, in their attempt to adapt to a new culture, were mostly Christians by that time and had their own newspapers, schools, and the first medical school in the United States that allowed women to become doctors. They were successful, and so people coveted their goods and property. Even though Congress declared that these people were not to be removed, most everyone was removed to the other side of the Mississippi. Now, generations later, the people who live here want to reconnect with the Earth; they want to connect with the spirit that is in this Earth. Without the Earth, there is no heaven. Everything is connected as one. The very people that you need to get this information, the ones who understand what I am talking about are no longer here.

People attend a ceremony, or they read a book, or because they have a degree in something, they think they can conduct a ceremony. In every school, whether it is a school of pottery or a school of music, everyone studies with a master or a teacher for many years. You learn the skills of your teacher. For some reason, because someone said that Indians are primitive, people think all you have to do is pour water on a stone in a lodge or imitate a ceremony and there it is. Few realize that all people who conduct ceremonies have spent many years leaning how to do the ceremony in a correct way. There are reasons and meaning for all aspects of ceremony be it Native, Christian or other. It’s part of a lineage and tradition that goes back many generations. It works because it has been unchanged for countless generations.

One of our important ceremonies is the Sweat Lodge. We don’t call it that. We call it the “Tunkanti,” house of the stone people or “inipi,” place where you renew your life force. If people want to learn how to conduct a ceremony such as this, what they need to do is find an elder. There are certain old families that have kept these traditions alive by enduring generations of persecution. Everybody who leads ceremonies knows who these families are, and everybody who pours water or conducts a Native ceremony is connected to an elder of one of these families. Everyone is responsible to someone. Everyone has someone who is looking over them to make sure that what they are doing is legitimate and true and that the ceremonies are being done right and no one is taken advantage of or abused. No one is an island in this, so if someone wants to learn how to conduct a ceremony, they need to go and find an elder and find one of their families. They need to cut their wood, and they need to carry their water, and they need to help these families. Over years, trust develops and maybe one of these elders will teach you something—something that you can use to help yourself and maybe share with other people. The ceremonies are passed on generation to generation. You can’t learn that from a book. You can’t learn that from a tape recording. You have to learn it person to person, because there are things that are transferred from human being to human being that are beyond spoken words, beyond written words. Everyone that has studied with a teacher, whether they are a potter, herbalist or martial arts instructor, knows that there is something that is transferred from teacher to student that is not said but given. The instructions to ceremony are passed on that way in a lineage over time and through history, and so everyone who does these things follows along with that line. There is never money charged for Native ceremony. This was given from the Spirit for free and is passed on as such. People will sometimes gift the elder for their time, but there is never any demand for money or donations.

I helped my father many years ago by learning his sweat Llodge fire. Then I started learning the songs. After I learned about a hundred or so songs, I decided that I wanted to learn how to “pour water” (conduct an inipi). And so my father said, “Okay.” He started teaching me, and it took many years to learn how to pour. I had to pour for myself for years, and then I started pouring for other people. It took a lot of years to learn all of the different types of altars and ceremonies; it just didn’t happen over night, it happened over a great deal of time. I got to a certain point when I saw the seriousness of the responsibility he had and what a toll it took on him physically and emotionally to do this for people. I realized that I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want the burden, and so I told him that I had changed my mind. It was at that point that he handed me his dipper and he said, “Now you are ready to learn how to pour.” So, people who pour do so reluctantly, and they do it with humility. No one in their right mind would want to conduct a Native ceremony because of the responsibility, the karmic responsibility. You start seeing the influence and the connectedness with all things and you wonder how much you want to influence people and be connected to that.

Our shortest prayer is “Mitakuye oyasin” which mean I’m related to all things. I am related to the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the creepy crawlers, the winged, the fish people, the standing people—the trees, the wind, the rock, the rain. There is no separateness, there is a oneness. And when you go into the sweat lodge, which is the womb of our Earth, and you come out that door you are reborn into this creation; it helps you try to understand and realize that you are no different than anything else. You are intimately connected with this life and this world, and the sacred is in all things. My grandfather picked up some earth once and showed it to us and said, “This is your altar right here, this is where you come to pray. This Earth under your feet contains the blood and bones of all of our people.” By ‘people’ he didn’t mean just the two-leggeds, he meant all the animals, all the trees, everything that ever existed, there it is under your feet—nurturing the Earth, covering it, protecting it. The lives of everything that came before us underneath our feet, feeding us, and so we will be a part of that too. We are intimately connected with this creation. We are intimately connected with our future because we put that in motion with our thoughts, our very thoughts. People say, “How in the world did I get where I am now?” Well, we’ve done that to ourselves—however good or bad; we’ve done that to ourselves by our thoughts and our creation. We are all responsible, so that’s a little part of what “Mitakuye oyasin” means and that connectedness to every being.

Q: What are your concerns about this renewed interest when it comes to actual practice for people?

A: There are two things that Native people fear most about non-Native people learning these ceremonies: The first is that they will sell them, and the second is that they will change them. These ceremonies have been repeated in a certain way for thousands of years because they continue to work. And if something works, we don’t change it. As two-leggeds we try to figure it out and we try to understand, and when we get close to understanding how it works, then we realize that we are still far from that understanding. I have to keep looking, and maybe I will never understand it in a physical world, how it all works. There is a great fear that non-Native people will try to change the ceremonies or pick and choose what they want and dilute the power of the ceremony. And some say, “Well, if it’s not part of my personal belief system then it won’t hurt anybody.” You have to have the right key to unlock the door. We are all connected. Mitakuye oyasin.”

Keep an eye out for another installment of the Paul Ghost Horse interview in a future issue of New Life Journal.

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