American Indian spiritual politics
Vecsey, Christopher
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n i i i I l i l l i I I I I THE ROUNDHOUSE AT THE MIDDLE OF THE EARTH American Indian spiritual politics CHRISTOPHER VECSEY N THE HEART of the American...
...Indian kinship with the earth plays a crucial role in these major political resolutions...
...Indians see there is a Great Mystery in those living beings that hold us in life...
...We were taking ours...
...Even some of Mr...
...We can say that the Great Mystery is a tree or an animal, but we mean that there is the spirit of the Great Mystery in them...
...We are all on display," Ms...
...Youngsters provide ladles of water for speakers and listeners alike...
...The major IITC document is the"Draft Principles for Guiding Deliberations of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations" for the U.N...
...From her land and the autonomy the land affords, come her son's spirituality and his sovereignty...
...At this moment it is the ritual middle of the earth...
...they are tired of everpreSent surveillance by troops of anthropologists, government employees, and tourists...
...As such, HTC is an "expert consultant" to the U.N., giving Indians a "voice" internationally...
...For close to an hour Mr...
...Deere's relatives are what his son calls "real Christians" who worship at the Nuyaka Indian Baptist Church two miles north of Mr...
...neither does he...
...The Indians in council at Phillip Deere' s roundhouse hope to gather to themselves the spiritual traditions of their people in order to retain and regain an autonomous identity, serving in the process of renewal as guardians of the environment and contemporary prophets who can lead Americans, and perhaps the peoples of the world, to their spiritual center...
...Finally, it attempts to prohibit states from polluting earth, air, water, and other nature materials upon which indigenous peoples depend for their survival...
...Children play duck-duck-goose and swim in the pond...
...Despite the Indians' understandable reticence to divulge secrets to whites, an observer can gain some understanding of current Indian religious values...
...They do not feel comfortable about whites...
...In 1977 HTC gained consultant status within the U.N...
...Almost in tears, she confesses these wanderings from the Indian road, and reaffirms her Indianness by recalling her late grandmother's advice: "Don't try to be what you are not...
...An observer might find the resulting mood somewhat uncritical toward the speeches (one hears romantic notions like, "We never had any problems until white men arrived here," but nobody challenges them...
...representatives of the Northwest Indian Women's Circle from British Columbia...
...They come with their families and their friends, in vans loaded with camping equipment which they set up all mvund Mr...
...This summer clay in 1983 these Indians have congregated in Phillip Deere's roundhouse to complete two meetings: the Youths and Elders Conference (June 8-11) and the International Indian Treaty Council (June 12-15), both of which -they hope -- will help restore to them their identity as autonomous peoples, an autonomy that appears to rest on a foundation of spirituality expressed as palpable kinship with fellow humans (both living and dead), the non-human environment, and the great mysterious sources of existence...
...A young Muskogee complains that the tribal chairman's idea of ritual is the annual softball tournament, and no one from the Creek Nation government comes to Phillip Deere's roundhouse, even though he is the speaker for the Muskogee traditionalists and perhaps the most respected Muskogee medicine man...
...Armadillos are more apparent as road-kills than as living presences...
...The sweat bath ritual constitutes a chance at reunion with Mother Earth, the Great Mystery, other humans, and one's own ideals...
...they opposed the destruction of the tribe and individual allotments of land...
...and the survival of the environment -- under attack from transnational corporations, agribusiness, energy developers, governmental agencies, and an underlying value system that finds nature devoid of worth except as a resource -- depends on Indians' continuing ability to tend their Mother Earth...
...The penalty for frivolity in the United States today is a fine of $500, plus accumulated interest in the event of failure to pay promptly...
...They serve their local communities, as they should...
...As the International Treaty Council begins, Phillip Deere's roundhouse undergoes a change...
...the type of pressure that traditional tribal societies bring to bear against their members in the absence of police forces...
...Therefore the preservation of the society and culture of indigenous populations represents a means of protecting and preserving the natural resources of the earth, including the air, water, land, flora and fauna, and those natural ecosystems contained within the territories of the indigenous populations [emphasis mine...
...There was a need for youths to listen and for elders to speak...
...But to spiritual leaders like Phillip Deere, an understanding of the concept leads to a crucial insight regarding contemporary Indian religiosity and the translation of religiosity into political rhetoric and action...
...T HE TREATY COUNCIL gets to Work, drafting resolutions to be presented at the U.N...
...Deere and the other men remove their clothes and return to the womb of the earth, naked as they emerged in mythic times...
...Most non-Indians probably see nothing unethical in this practice...
...We wrote back assuring them that we had never been more serious in our lives...
...I N 1979 r'HILI.JP Deere held his first Youths and Elders Conference at his roundhouse...
...The whole structure is a mound, the form of a pregnant woman's belly, and it evokes the ancient mounds in which Indians of the Southeast used to bury their dead --- to return them to their mother after life or...
...Therefore, the document supports the fight of indigenous peoples not only to their religious beliefs but to free "access to areas of land or natural formations" that they deem sacred...
...These politicized Indians -- many of whom are now in their middle age -- felt left out of the traditional ways, many of them having grown up in the cities, and they were looking for values to guide them...
...It may be that the evocation of this earthly sustainer is a clichk to some of the Indians (and non-lndians) in the movement -- more stance than substance...
...They informed us that our tax returns had been declared to be frivolous, and that we now owed the government $500 for being smart flecks...
...Elders, on the other hand, felt neglected by the militants who were demonstrating and going their own way without consulting the tribal authorities, the elders themselves...
...Deere's were held last summer on the Duck Valley Shoshoni Reservation in Nevada and in Tacoma, Washington...
...At times the men pray: for each other, for members of the American Indian Movement, for the Earth herself, for Indian children and for all people...
...They created institutions, like boarding schools, prisons, and Indian Territory, where Indians from various tribes have met...
...For him, and for the several hundred people who are with him this summer day, the fire is central not only to the roundhouse and to Mr...
...Deere regularly invokes "the Creator" and "Mother Earth" as co-equals in sustaining human life...
...Deere travels w!dely in the United States and Europe, lecturing to diverse groups about Indian religion and politics -- which are to him thoroughly intertwined...
...But Mr...
...Instead, they are removed from their mother and placed in crates and on shelves in museums...
...When the time came to file our 1982 returns we told the IRS what we had done, and that we considered the money we had withheld from them to be a "war - - i ___ . . . . . . TIM LANGLEY is a tax resister and the director of the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center...
...And yet there are some whites in attendance...
...an elderly Yakima couple from Washington...
...The Creeks established a capital at Okmulgee and persisted in their sovereignty until the United States squashed it by fiat and force at the turn of the twentieth century...
...Some Creeks refused to give up, Phillip Deere's Muskogee relatives among them...
...T HE CEMENT OF commonality is a sense of common oppression...
...Whites have brought Indians together doubly...
...He is also the spiritual advisor to the political American Indian Movement (AIM), whose leadership helped establish the International indian Treaty Council (IITC...
...They were the last to give up in the Red Stick War...
...As long as they continue to pass the pipe and smoke its contents, they will hold onto their way of life...
...a Canadian Mohawk sporting a button, "Born Again Pagan...
...As a result, AIAD was formed and a study was conducted, the results of which indicate that anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 remains of Indian people are in museums in this country alone...
...I __ ~ - 2 1 _ l l l l l . ! l L t l / I J _ _ _S].aai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _ . . . . THE RELIGIOUS MEANING OF TAX RESISTANCE I i...
...In speech, Mr...
...When he reminds us that we come from the earth and will return to it, he is not trying to humble us as a Christian might ("Dust thou a r t . . . " ) ; rather, he is exalting us by recalling our connections to our material (or, if you will, spiritual) ground of being...
...Her land, predating as it does the state and national jurisdictions, is untaxed...
...Okemah, the nearest town to Phillip Deere's place, is too small and poor to get nationally advertised fast food joints...
...From his mailbox with its adjacent sign, "Roundhouse' COKOPOLOKSE," you look out under a dusty blue summer sky at grasslands and scattered woods, the receding hairline of the Eastern Woodlands at the rim of the Great Plains...
...Deere arranged his conference for them as much as for the youths, fulfilling the elders' need to speak...
...The IRS was not amused...
...The smoke from the pipe represents prayers to the spiritual forces that promote all existence...
...The whole pipe represents the life, Means explains, of the Indian people...
...The earth's lodge is always here for us...
...Deere carries on the work of his militant forebears...
...they fit in harmony as one pipe, united as should be humans and the earth...
...Nothing was left out," he notes...
...Because science is God in this country," because science -- which has the uncritical support of non-Indian America -- devalues everything it looks at, "takes the spirit out of everything it studies...
...Scissortails swoop from the telephone lines, across stands of box elder, pecan, and persimmon trees, past small rigs pumping oil from the fields where herds of cattle grind their grassy meals...
...A young Creek woman from Atlanta at the conference bemoans her boarding school upbringing, her flirtation with Baptist and Mormon churches, and her subscription to the Dale Carnegie course of study...
...On not rendering "i to Caesar TIM LANGLEY crime~ deduction" There is an article in the IRS Code which T HE STERN PURITANS of the Massachusetts Bay Colony would have smiled...
...He designed his Youths and Elders Conference to heal those fissures...
...I feel I can't...
...They have taken four pipes from beaded drawstring sacks...
...Without this voice, Lefevre says, the world would never know what happens to Indians and what IndianS think...
...Deere built his stone-fronted home, he built his roundhouse, and he built his roundhouse around his fire...
...as a non-governmental organization (NGO...
...A young Shoshoni man is trying to explain Indian spirituality is grounded both in the supernatural realm and in the physical rituals that humans perform, the physical community that lives through interaction, and the physical world of nature that supports us...
...One by one they leave the lodge, uttering," All my relations...
...At the same time he speaks: When people first came out of the earth, they had no language, no way of teaching each other...
...In the middle of Phillip Deere's 160 acres, in the middle of America, is his roundhouse, made of logs, planks, and shingles...
...Billy Redwing Tayac, chief of the Piscataways in Maryland, connects the issue of desecration to the foundation of Indian spirituality: "I was always told by my elders that heaven is reuniting with your kin, your ancestors, in the spirit world...
...Consensus is the goal, and unanimity is requested and received on every issue...
...The popular view of AIM," he notes, "is that they're radicals, troublemakers, bombers, but that isn't so...
...These are men made of words -- stories about old ways, advice about new problems, and Mr...
...or other nations which purportedly mistreat indigenous peoples and the land...
...Babies today cry the same cry when they emerge from the birth canal, and the mother responds to their cry of need by placing them to the breast, just as Mother Earth forever hears our cry of need and feeds us with the foods and materials of the world...
...At Mr...
...The Indians tolerate them when they must and avoid them when they can...
...The cars and trucks travel the local roads to Henryetta, to Okmulgee ("Big Enough to Serve You, Small Enough to Care"), or beyond, to Tulsa in the north or Oklahoma City to the west...
...Moreover, whites disrupt the proceedings by asking too many questions, by arguing, by showing off their knowledge, and simply by being there...
...He states that he has always thought that in the Christian creation story (among others), humans are created last, not because they are the crown of creation, but because they are the most dependent of creatures...
...Or rather, they would have approved...
...The agency of enforcement is the Internal Revenue Service, a branch of the government which presumably knows frivolity when it sees it...
...Among the Muskogees he is a spiritual leader, and he says that he knows most of the Muskogees in his state, but he feels the need to reach beyond his own tribe to all Indian people...
...At Okmulgee, the Creek National capitol -- with its modem buildings, its air-conditioned, concrete offices, its Coke machines and advertisements for Bible schools, its men in polyester pants and shiny black shoes, amidst the highways and factory outlet stores -- has an agenda that does not include the keeping of Muskogee spiritual traditions or the militant reclaiming of ancient autonomy...
...We used to carry our ancestors' bones with us...
...I'm not Christian...
...Deere, is connected to all life on earth, as well as to celestial bodies and the bodies of the dead...
...When asked to explicate further, he replies that for himself as an Indian, materialism -- the idea that what matters most is matter itself -- Is not so different from spirituality, a reverence for the sources of human life...
...At night the youths joke and sing as they settle into sleep...
...we gain balance and harmony with other humans, with the world...
...they hid Crazy Snake during his resistance...
...a contingent of Ojibwa children from the Heart of the Earth Survival School in the Twin Cities, Minnesota...
...To supplement his local subsistence, and to help support meetings like the ones he has just hosted, Mr...
...Through the U.N., liT...
...To be an elder is to have an audience, a community of respect with a desire to learn and remember, to pass on tradition...
...The atmosphere turns festive...
...One of the elders, a Hopi named Tom Banyacya, has been traveling around the States since 1948 on the behalf of Hopi traditionalists who want him to express their points of view to other Indians and to whites...
...He had already been associated with AIM for close to a decade, yet,"We got so involved with big things -- committees, treaties, governments -- that we forgot about the children and the little stories that we have to tell them...
...a Seneca from New York, hoping to find a cure for the paralysis in his legs...
...Since the United States is a party to any number of human-fights and warfare-limitation conventions which appear to proscribe the indiscriminate killing of noncombatants, and since the same United States nevertheless finances with tax monies a global warmaking system which is designed to do precisely that, my wife and I reasoned that the portion of taxes collected in support of this system was being collected illegally, and that all Americans were therefore entitled to a substantial deduction...
...PhiUip Deere's lodge is a mud-lined, excavated, cave-like mound in the side of a hill...
...In mundane terms, a sweat lodge is a sauna or steambath: an enclosed area in which people sweat under conditions of intense heat and steam...
...threatens that integrity...
...Indians should respect the white man's road (despite the dangers it brings to Indians and to the earth herself), but they should walk the Indian road as Indians...
...The sweat lodge reminds us of that relationship by returning us to the womb -- the hot, dark, wet womb which was our original home...
...Tom Banyacya has been circulating a Hopi prophecy scroll for over three decades now, featuring pictographic narratives with the message that Indians and whites have separate roads to walk, separate ways of life to lead...
...Deere explains that Indian elders do not like to come if they think they will find a "hippie camp...
...We reiterated that the money we had held back had been placed in an escrow acCommonweal: 208...
...Jess/ca Lefevre, IITC's young white lawyer, describes the Treaty Council's nine years of progress in placing issues important to indians before an international forum at the United Nations...
...These humans were totally dependent upon the earth, and so they cried...
...our flesh was their flesh...
...Deere prohibited them from attending until two years ago, and other spiritual conferences bar all whites except for those 6 April 1984:205 married to Indians...
...You never will because they stay with their people and never leave them...
...has a modicum of "social pressureenforcement," Lefevre notes, causing "embarrassment and ridicule" to the U.S...
...With this the men pay their respects to the water, without whom life would be impossible...
...law, especially regarding issues concerning indigenous peoples worldwide and the environment, its two main areas of "expertise...
...His mother's family were followers of Crazy Snake (Chitto Harjo), the Muskogee who - - beginning in 1892 and lasting almost twenty years -- led the opposition to U.S...
...As evening comes, Mr...
...He says that when AIM began in 1968, it had no spiritual base...
...Moreover, the breaking of tribal insularity over the centuries, especially in the last hundred years when tribal networks have fractured, has encouraged Indians to build new continent-wide associations where, as an Indian elder named Coyote notes, "You can go anywhere on the continent and somebody knows you, somebody welcomes you...
...Deere looked around at his own people...
...I say, how can we embrace our ancestors in heaven if we don't protect them now...
...Deere takes down some religious paraphernalia from the center of his roundhouse, while the recognizable personages of the American Indian Movement -- Russell Means, John Trudell and others -begin to arrive...
...It seats as many as ten men (the women have a separate lodge made of willow and canvas), seated around glowing volcanic rocks upon which sage-scented water is poured, creating steam...
...If the participants are members of a family -- and they seem to regard themselves at least as cousins -they will not openly criticize their kin...
...Phillip Deere is a Muskogee, or Creek Indian -- the Muskogees being the principal tribe in the Creek Confederacy of Alabama that in the eighteenth century was the major political and military power in the American Southeast...
...His articles on the arms race and other subjects ranging from homiletics to religious formation in parochial schools have appeared in various journals, including the National Catholic Reporter...
...The Okemah pentecostal church is a squat, windowless, cinderblock box...
...Government troops defeated his movement, but his spirit and the spirit of the old Creek Confederacy live on in Phillip Deere, who has two photographs of the Muskogee patriot hanging in his house...
...Deere's place, Indians constantly invoke the image of Mother Earth, so much so that a non-lndian skeptic might regard it as a slogan, as ubiquitous and empty of meaning as "comrade" to a Russian Communist or "freedom" to an American...
...Virtually every Indian participant takes at least one" sweat," and it is the sequence of ritual sweats -- even more than the rhetoric in the roundhouse - - that provides the grounding for the religious and political activity of the Youths and Elders Conference and the International Indian Treaty Council...
...Most beings require only a few substances to continue in life, but humans need all types of flora and fauna in order to survive...
...The one restaurant in town is called, simply, "Restaurant...
...Deere hopes to forge a new family of Indians out of disparate tribal Commonweal: 204 groups, a pan-Indian consciousness that would incorporate and also transcend particular tribal traditions and loyalties...
...I'm an Indian and I have to live like one...
...Their advisory: "No drugs, no alcohol, no weapons, and no arguing...
...I N THE LAST decade Indians have come back to their pipes, as well as to their sweat lodges, sun dances, and vision quests...
...Shoshonis from Nevada, Comanches from Texas, local Creeks, Cherokees, and Seminoles...
...Deere is different...
...Deere's land, but to America, and beyond...
...Consciously and actively, Mr...
...The young woman speaks emphatically, "i'm not white...
...In the early nineteenth century, factions of Creeks resisted mightily and even fanatically --- calling for supernatural powers, for example, in the Red Stick War of 1813-14, to defend them against a white invasion that was destroying their people, their land, and their traditions...
...There is a mystery in the beings of the earth, and "we must give thanks to the earth," he concludes...
...Indians have been mining Pipestone catlinite for a thousand years or more...
...Deere was not trying to nullify regional tribal ways...
...Hammill states,"and why...
...Deere was reaching beyond his AIM activities, but he was also concerned about those radical Indians who remind him of Crazy Snake...
...Deere saw gaps developing among the various segments of the Indian population: between the young and old, the radical and the traditional, and between one tribe and another...
...But after a few years the people in the movement saw that they could not have a political movement without knowing what their ultimate goals were...
...This pan-Indianism has deep roots and is embedded in an Indian spirituality that aims to see and maintain relations amongst all beings...
...Little known by the non-Indian media and virtually unknown in white America, this man embodies the joining of traditional Indian spirituality and active Indian politics, and his words find respect among Indians wherever he goes...
...Mother Earth still follows the original instruction of life...
...they exist and function but you hear nothing about them...
...It states that "in no case may an indigenous nation or people be deprived of its own means of subsistence" and it defends the "fight" of these peoples "to protect the environmental integrity of their territories by refusing to allow any form of development which...
...In planning his annual conference, Mr...
...We don't exist without these things," he affirms...
...Jan Hammill of American Indians Against Desecration (MAD) recalls that in 1978, during the AIM-sponsored Longest Walk to Washington, D.C., Indians discovered that every museum they saw had Indian remains in them, both on display and in warehouses...
...acknowledges the precedence of international law over the Code itself, and which forbids the collection of taxes where that would conflict with any treaty to which the United States is a party...
...a North Carolina Cherokee who comes every year "to remember what it's like when I go back into society out there...
...His Youths and Elders Conference, then, was meant to join young and old, radical and traditional, and various tribal backgrounds into one grand confederacy...
...Kinship with one's ancestors creates one of the most emotional issues at the council: a report and resolution concerning the desecration of Indian graves...
...I can never speak honestly...
...aggression toward Creek nationhood...
...Indian religious freedom depends on contact with particular areas of land, the material and spiritual sources of life...
...9 I I III IIII I III I~ I CHRISTOPHER VECSEY teaches American Indian religion at Colgate University...
...But the text goes on to stress that, "Indigenous populations are the people of the land, in that the way of life of many indigenous populations is intimately related to the natural environment, as manifest through beliefs and practices which hold this relationship to be a primary consideration in the determination of the form of ownership and manner of use of the land...
...Deere reminds them that, "we sweat to seek and find our relatives...
...Indians have faced white racism...
...At the front gate a group of men and women serve as security...
...the surface of her body...
...These propositions appear secularly pragmatic -- Indians are trying to protect their future by protecting their environmental land base...
...Despite their resistance and their f.amed abilities at forging alliances with other Indian nations, they suffered forced removal to indian Territory (now Oklahoma) with the other four "Civilized Tribes" in the infamous "Trail of Tears" of the 1830s and 1840s...
...Attending his conference are a few hundred Indians, Chicanos, and non-Indians...
...Its bowl, made from catlinite, a red stone mined in Pipostone, Minnesota, represents "the ear~ from which we come and upon whom we depend...
...Phillip Deere comes to the issue in a different way...
...Now everyone stands as the pipes make the round in a sunwise direction, each person smoking the pipes in his or her own ritual manner...
...Their host is an Indian in his mid-fifties...
...They were our identity, our human source of life...
...Seeing the disharmony within his own family, and perceiving similar factionalism between "progressives" and "traditionalists" among other Indian nations, Mr...
...There are some whites at the Youth and Elders Conference...
...I admit it, I never feel fight...
...Deere loves to tell about Indian elders who can talk and talk until white reporters run out of tape for their recorders, men who defeat machines with their capacity for speech...
...the overall effect is to produce an environment of Indian spiritual commonality (some critics call it mystical mush), where Indians from many backgrounds try to remember the most important common knowledge of Indian spirituality: the moral lessons of relationship with fellow humans, animals, plants, the earth, and the universe as a whole...
...Secondly, in the view of Indians, they continue to oppress all these people and cream for Indians an easily recognized "'us/them" distinction...
...IITC takes part in the drafting of U.N...
...however, the Indians at Phillip Deere's roundhouse are outraged by the archaeologists and museum directors who earn their careers by having a "well rounded collection of human beings" under their domain...
...No one is lonely who is in the sweat...
...however, if knowledge consists of some criticism and some appreciation, these Indians have determined that in the family circle appreciation must override critique...
...Deere repeatedly spills hot water on the stones, creating a hot, wet, perfumed oven...
...They are searching for their spiritual center and they have turned to the elders for direction...
...It insists on secularism and won't respect religious points of view...
...as they cross the threshold, out to the dusk...
...A Sioux named William Means explains to the congregation the symbolism of the pipe...
...At the end Mr...
...We set ourselves aright...
...Even after removal, however, the Creeks continued their confederating ways, frequently serving as advisors to Indian nations of the West in their struggle against white encroachment and domination...
...His books include American Indian Environments and Traditional Ojibwa Religion and Its Historical Changes...
...Deere says, "The white man will never understand the spiritual ways of the Indians," and he explains the Indian reticence to speak freely in front of whites...
...so, they come to his place for refuge...
...It is natural that they should merge once again with the soil from which they sprang...
...Spiritual gatherings like Mr...
...In the process of this Commonweal: 206 primal renewal -- required more of men than women, since the latter are able to cleanse themselves with menstruation -- we purify ourselves of our wrongdoings...
...The Indian audience includes a Shawnee-Delaware from Tulsa who wants "to learn something about my people...
...Prayers can be heard, along with the crackling of the sage in the fire and the fluttering of a swallow nesting in the roundhouse roof...
...Whether Indians are dead or alive, they are objects on display...
...During the last decade when he has seen whites helping Indian causes, he has tried to reevaluate his estimation of whites, but "I have yet to find a white man I can trust," he claims...
...I say we must protect these ancestors today, even if it takes combat against grave robbers...
...They enter the pond for a moonlit swim, then a smoke by the fire, and a return to the camp...
...As for the Great Mystery, no one has ever seen it, and it is useless to try to unravel an unknowable, invisible thread of being...
...Jackrabbits and tortoises move to their respective paces in the low brush, and deer can be seen grazing at muddy creeks...
...Elders deliver speeches while slipping their grandchildren candy from their pockets...
...our blood was their blood...
...To Mr...
...We elaborated on the religious basis of our convictions...
...She still provides . . . . " Human life, for Mr...
...They don't travel around the country...
...IITC is depicting Indians (and by extension, other indigenous peoples) as guardians of their Mother Earth, whose strength of defense rests upon their spiritual tradition and political autonomy...
...No one has ever done anything so wrong that a sweat lodge cannot purify, and if we leave the lodge and do bad things again, we can always come back to the lodge and renew ourselves...
...In the face of this control by modern nation states, the document reaffirms the "selfo determination" of indigenous peoples, emphasizing the need of these peoples to "land as the territorial base for the existence of indigenous populations as such...
...He says that there are medicine people and elders all across North America...
...She takes care of us, as she always has, ever since we emerged...
...At the same time, by entering the lodge, we seek our grandfather, the Great Mystery...
...The earth is sacred and so are our bones...
...His mother held onto the 160 acres allotted to her family when the U.S...
...Also, she indicates, whites think of Indians as a captive population, like animals in a zoo, to be observed despite their objections...
...Deere the lodge is the womb of Mother Earth from whom the Muskogees emerged in the beginning of human history...
...broke up the Creek tribal lands, refusing to sign any agreement with the newly established state of Oklahoma or the feds...
...The ambience is that of a great summer family reunion, a campout on a friendly uncle's lawn, a gathering of the clans, as a context for the words being spoken in the roundhouse...
...Many of them do not even speak English...
...For Ms...
...i n i i i I l i l l i I I I I THE ROUNDHOUSE AT THE MIDDLE OF THE EARTH American Indian spiritual politics CHRISTOPHER VECSEY N THE HEART of the American heartland of Oklahoma, alongside a hardscrabble Okfuskee County dirt road, lie Phillip Deere' s 160 acres...
...Commission on Human Rights...
...Deere's place, and who will not come to meetings at the "pagan" roundhouse...
...Last year my wife and I decided not to pay half the income taxes on my salary...
...they see holiness in them, and that inspires awe and respect...
...g ACH EVENING PHILLIP Deere conducts a sweat lodge for his guests in the woods by his pond...
...The bowl and stem go together...
...They sit in fetal position around the red rocks, their backs to the cool interior mud walls...
...Non-lndians would do well to understand the currency of Indian spiritual politics, its vitality today and the power it can generate...
...Drawing on previous IITC statements like the 1981 "International NGO Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Land" as well as the "Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environ6 April 1984:207 ment," it defines indigenous peoples' present-day situation as one of "neo-colonialism...
...Before Mr...
...With his mother and his children he tends his land: planting crops, raising a few 6 April 1984:203 head of cattle, fishing in hispond...
...IITC's power consists of influencing potential allies, and then applying "peer pressure" on the U.S...
...Fourscore feet in diameter, open to the east, with a ceremonial fire lifting its grey breath from the dirt floor through the central smoke hole in the roof, the roundhouse is the focus of the land that immediately surrounds it...
...The only sound they could make was a wolf-cry, and that cry was an utterance of need...
...Deere's acreage: tipis and ripstop nylon foldups, old army surplus tents and sleeper vans...
...He perceived a need on the part of Indian youths to sit at the feet of Indian elders from all tribes and listen to their wisdom...
...Dangling from the stem is an eagle plume, representing steadfastness, clarity, and fidelity, because the eagle flies the highest, sees the farthest, and takes one mate for a lifetime...
...Hammill and the other Indians, this is an example of "science versus religion," white values versus Indian values...
...The stem is wood, and it represents the generations of people who have grown and lived on the earth...
...Moreover, our bones and our ancestors' bones became one with the earth...
...Around the central fire a gathering of American Indians representing dozens of tribes from North, Central, and South America is enacting the ceremony of the pipe...
...Deere says that his people have always been the resisters...
...He says that he regards the people at his conference as well as members of AIM and IITC as "all one family...
...Our bones were their bones...
...This is why Christians have thought that Indians worship trees, animals, and other nature-persons," he explains, "but that isn't so...
...Everything was put on earth to sustain life...
...In the womb the Indians sing like full-throated wolves, crying out their prayers and their devotion to each other and the earth...
...Deere decided to hold his conference every year for militant~ and traditionalists together, so no one would feel excluded...
...activists from Oakland ("spirituality is possible in the cities, with a sweat lodge in the backyard...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
