native american healing - special...

Native American Healing: Special Sites & Links

Bowl with Rain LizardsAcoma Pueblo

diameter = 78 mm.

Below are some unique sites related to Native American Indians or their healing ways. Someare sites of friends or neighbors, and others are resources that I have found to be very creative,useful or comprehensive. If you wish to make a suggestion to add a site to this growing list,please contact us here.

Native American Healing - Special Sites

http://www.healing-arts.org/nativelinks.htm (1 of 7) [9/22/2007 5:42:12 PM]

http://www.healing-arts.org/healing-center-contact-form.htm

[ Also, please see our many other pages on Native American Healing. ]

DiscoveryPath

Each of us is given spirit gifts (totems) at birth to help usdiscover our path on the "Good Red Road." You candefine your path and serve yourself and others whileenjoying the trip, for the journey is more important thanthe destination. All members of creation - animals,plants and minerals - have unique characteristics,energies and lessons giving you direction. Your pathconsists of the gifts of those with whom you share theEarth combined with your choices and spiritualenergies. This site contains wonderful digital creationsby the DiscoveryPath artists, unique gifts, birth totemprofiles and Native American creations.

Aboriginal (NativeAmerican) Star

Knowledge

This is a wonderful and inspiring and rich site. Containsinformation on Lakota Stellar Theology, a Lakota sacredstar map, the sun's seasonal path among the stars andwhat it means for Lakota elders, Bighorn MedicineWheel: stone, sun, stars on a mountaintop, early SunDance instructions, Ancient Geology of MedicineMountain, 1st Magnitude Stars Table in order ofbrightness, with conventional and Lakota names, Bookson-line (and reviews) on Native Star Knowledge andmuch, much more.

IndigenousEnvironmental Network

The Indigenous Environmental Network is an alliance ofgrassroots indigenous peoples whose mission is toprotect the sacredness of Mother Earth fromcontamination and exploitation by strengtheningmaintaining and respecting the traditional teachings andthe natural laws. IEN is unified in their recognition thatthe traditions of our people and the survival of our futuregenerations depend on our respectful relationship withthe natural world and our responsibility to the sacredprinciples. Environmental Issues related to: Earth -dumps, logging, mining ... Fire - nuclear.. Air - toxicemissions... Water - fishing, dams, oil spills... A welldone site!

Association ofAmerican Indian

Physicians (AAIP)

Since this site deals with the many aspects of healing,it is important to know that AAIP members are veryactive in medical education, cross cultural trainingbetween western and traditional medicine, andassisting Indian communities. The mission of theAssociation of American Indian Physicians is to pursueexcellence in Native American health care bypromoting education in the medical disciplines,honoring traditional healing practices and restoring thebalance of mind, body, and spirit. Tom Whitecloud II,M.D. (1914-1972), a Chippewa, was a FoundingMember of AAIP.



http://www.healing-arts.org/nativeamerican.htm

http://www.ienearth.org/

http://www.ienearth.org/

Wind Spirit Teachings

Lench Archuleta is a Yaqui Indian from Southern Arizonawho has worked with individuals and small groups in theSonoran Desert for nearly twenty years. He has worked withnumerous Native American Nations, and since 1980, withDr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, author of the book CoyoteMedicine. In his healing intensives, Lench focuses onhelping people improve their wellness. He is guided by thebirds, the winds, the animals and whatever the presence ofthe desert reveals. His belief is that certain places of powercan reconnect us to the voices of creation and restore ourphysical and spiritual equilibrium. He also conductsdrum-making and rattle-making workshops and giveslectures on Native American medicine and spirituality.

Native Rituals:The Sweat Lodge

The Sweat Lodge is probably the most important NativeRitual. The "inipi" or "sweat lodge" usually occurs beforeand after every other major rituals like the "Sundance"and "Vision Quest" for example. It is also a "standalone" ritual meaning that it occurs whenever it isneeded. It's original purpose was to cleanse or purifyindividuals. Mother sweat lodge essentially translatesinto returning to the womb. After I was appointedfire-builder by a Lakota Medicine Man who came here,my friend Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, author of the bookCoyote Medicine, told me about his friend here, RainingThunder Wolf, who had this site. It was a very goodintroduction and overview into the many spiritual andpractical aspects of this native ceremony, but has beentaken offline by the Christians. Instead, we now link youto a wonderful description of an actual Cheyenne sweatlodge ceremonies by the legendary photographerEdward S. Curtis. From The Curtis Collection.

Rainbow Eagle:Seventh Fire Peace

Shield Teacher

Rainbow Eagle is an Okla-Choctaw American Indian. Heis a Wisdom Keeper, honored with the responsibility ofan Ancient Native American Peace Shield. Now that theSeventh Fire of the Anishinabe/Ojibwa traditions hasbeen lit, he is responsible for teaching the traditions ofthe peace shield. At this time, all of the traditionalwisdom and truths which he has been given are to beplaced into this Peace Shield to increase its power andrestore peace on our Mother Earth. In the last 25 years,he has visited over 35 reservations in the United Statesand Canada, sharing with traditional people, andlearning from their most respected elders. As astoryteller and teacher, he has shared his native truths inboth traditional and non-traditional ways with manycommunities across North America. He is a leader oftraditional ceremonies and is responsible for manySacred bundles.



http://www.healing-arts.org/mehl-madrona/index.htm

http://www.healing-arts.org/mehl-madrona/index.htm

http://www.curtis-collection.com/

http://www.rainboweagle.com/



Mesa CreativeArts

and HealingCenter

The Mesa Creative Arts Center and TheMesa Healing Center have myriad offeringsof hand made fine art and craft (many ofwhich are tools for personal transformationand energy healing), art classes forchildren and adults who want to expandtheir creativity and spiritual awareness,Native American Medicine WheelCeremonies and other holistic and naturalhealing services and workshops.

Brad and Kate Silberberg founded theCenter in 2004 and have long been bothwidely-known art teachers and respectedhealers in their communities. Havingstudied many religions and healingmodalities, Brad is certified as a ReikiMaster, in Teleios Technique, MagnifiedHealing, Hypnotherapy, Past LifeRegression Therapy, Sound Healing, andMelody Crystal Healing. Brad is alsointernationally known for his metal art andhas taught blacksmithing to groups acrossthe United States and around the world.His artwork has been featured in AmericanCraft, Architectural Digest, and The Anvil'sRing magazines and several books onmetalwork and is in the permanentcollection of the Renwick Gallery of theSmithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Brad's metalworking skills enable him toconstruct functional works of art in a greatvariety of metals, and in a very preciseway. He continues to expand his expertise,combining sacred geometry to create toolsfor transformation that generate or channelhealing energy, including Heliospheres™(a form of Genesa Crystals), Enspirels™,Energy Portals, Borromean Tubes andhammered brass Singing Bowls, originallymade and used by the ancient monks ofTibet.

Kate has been interested in NativeAmerican art and traditions since she wasa young girl, and helped design andimplement the West Allegheny MiddleSchool Environmental "Earthkeepers"Project where she taught Native Americancrafts and culture to the sixth gradestudents. She is also an accomplishedartist with special gifts for beadwork,painting, drawing, calligraphy andleatherwork. Kate has gone on to study



http://www.mesacreativearts.com/





http://www.mesacreativearts.com/Main%20pages/medicinewheel.html

http://www.mesacreativearts.com/Main%20pages/medicinewheel.html

http://americanart.si.edu/renwick/index.cfm

http://americanart.si.edu/renwick/index.cfm

http://www.mesacreativearts.com/Main%20pages/helio.html

http://www.genesa.org/

http://www.westallegheny.k12.pa.us/



Reiki, and is certified in Melody CrystalHealing, Magnified Healing, andSomaEnergetics™ Sound Healing.

EarthWays Academy |Dreaming Shaman

Robin Tekwelus Youngblood, Okanagon/Tsalagi, has been astudent of her heritage for many years. She has studied withIndigenous elders of her own tribes, along with Siberian andAboriginal shamans. Says Robin: "I believe that the only wayto create harmony and avoid disaster in these times is tore-educate ourselves in the natural rhythms of our EarthMother through ritual and ceremony. Many people have lostaccess to the DNA knowledge passed down through ourancestral lineages. It is my hope to share what I have beentaught in ways that will help each student to 'Re-Member 'themselves and their innate heritage."

Over the years - finding that she can be a bridge betweenancient Native American traditions and European cultures -Robin has assisted many on their spiritual paths. TheEarthways Academy's intention is to help people realize andfulfill their life purpose, to share a sacred body of knowledgewith people who will use it to help heal the earth, and tochange the present destiny of the earth by bringingourselves into harmony and balance. Robin is also a skilledand respected drum and shield-maker, as well as being anartist in other realms.

"...Robin is brave enough to bring out these teachings in agood way in this time... not many medicine people are willingto bring out these teachings to anyone with an open mindand heart. This is necessary in this time of great earthchange."

__ Beaver Chief,Lummi Nation

The Path of theFeather: A ShamanicJourney, MedicineWheels and Spirit

Animals

This is one of the best sites I have found so far fornon-"native" peoples who are on a healing path with theearth. The Path of the Feather as a teaching, is aboutbecoming a contemporary shaman by seeing andhearing the voices of the living earth. It is about findingout who you are by making medicine wheels andlistening to the voices of the spirit animals and ancientones. It is about you living your ordinary life as yourvision quest, as your shamanic journey. It is about youbecoming one who sees and one who heals the earthwith intent. We know that some first nations peoples donot want the terms shaman and medicine wheel used bynon- first nations peoples. They have told us that theyfeel it is being stolen from them like the land. We aresorry that they associate our saying the earth is sacredwith the way our ancestors treated them. We apologizefor the way our ancestors treated the first nations peoplebut we have been taught that the sacred earth belongsto all peoples and now needs all peoples working to healher body.



http://somaenergetics.com/

http://www.pathofthefeather.com./index.htm





Ghost Wolf:Out of the Abyss

GhostWolf is Choctaw, Cherokee and European. He was born inthe Mojave Desert, and not only does he have quite a story to tell,but he has also created one incredible and resourceful website. Ibecame aware of him through Professor Charles Figley'sTraumatic-Stress Forum, where many of the leadingtraumatologists try to converse with each other about the latestand best therapies for healing the scars of trauma and abuse andthe psychoneurological, emotional and spiritual damage thattraumatic events inflict, especially on children in their earlydevelopmental stages. GhostWolf seems to have found his ownvery courageous path towards his healing, and that includesartwork, making a narrative of his traumatic memories, being anAmerican Indian, and sharing his resources with others - in otherwords, most everything this whole Healing Center On-Line isabout - and so, I am most honored to acknowledge him herethusly for not only telling his story, but also for doing so muchmore.

Visions: Centre ofInnovation

Visions is a Centre of Innovation committed todeveloping and communicating a deeper understandingof Aboriginal population health. Aboriginal identity,traditions, culture and relationship patterns areintegrated in the delivery of the Visions mandate.Visions focuses upon the priorities of Aboriginal peoplefor improvement of Aboriginal population health with ahealth promotion focus; how Aboriginal people and theirorganizations can address these priorities throughinnovation in health promotion; and how the healthsystem and the private sector can expand and supportthe development of Aboriginal population health.Funding for the Visions web site project was provided bythe First Nations & Inuit Health Programs DirectorateM.S.B. Health Canada.

ThunderHeart Drums

John Millen's finely crafted ThunderHeart Drumsoffers a blending of traditional design andcontemporary craftsmanship.Each drum has beenthoroughly researched to be faithful to the culturaltradition from which it has emerged; then, whereappropriate, modern materials and techniques havebeen applied to make a better sounding, versatileand trouble-free drum. Each drum is a one-of-a-kindcreation. John's life path has been varied andexciting: a conservatory education in music, a periodof adventuring, followed by years of designing andbuilding in wood, have led him finally to his vocationas a drum-maker with sensitivity to spirit. NativeAmerican drums, Siberian Shamanistic drums, CelticBodhrans, Council drums and African and Japanesedrums are available.



http://www.visions.ab.ca/

http://www.visions.ab.ca/

http://www.thunderheartdrums.com/

The MedicineWheel

Using the Medicine Wheel to Bring Balance to the Earth:Within each of us, male and female, are male andfemale elements. For the past few thousand years,since the rise of settled civilizations in the West, theenergy of the Earth has been tilted toward themasculine, a patriarchal power. This is not bad. This sitefrom the Manataka American Indian Council explainsthe colors and directions of the Native Americanmedicine wheel (East, red - newness, beginnings, newawareness, dawn; South, yellow - healing, growing,vigor, youth; West, black - inner vision, reflection,soul-searching, endings; North, white - wisdom ofancestors, higher power, guidance), its use in prayer (ormeditation) and how to actually make your own sacredwheel (or hoop).

Nomadics TipiMakers

The tipi makes it possible to experience on a daily basiswhat a nomadic culture experienced hundreds of yearsago. Since 1970, Nomadics have made more than12,000 tipis including all the tipis for the movie DancesWith Wolves. Our project is self-styled and integratesour love of the wilderness with rural life and thedemands of tipi making. We regard our project as aservice and a learning experience. It was born out of ourinterest, enthusiasm and respect for this magnificentshelter of the Native American cultures of the GreatPlains. This site has sections on: Architectural Design ofthe Sioux Tipi, Tipi Fabrics/Ceremonial Tipi, HandPainted Tipi Liner Designs & Tipi Covers, How to set-upa Tipi, An 8' Tipi for Kids and Tipi sizes and prices.

Four WindsGallery

This wonderful gallery is in my hometown, and I alwaysfind authentic and valuable work here, both historical andcontemporary. Established in 1974, Four Winds Gallerypresents the finest available southwestern AmericanIndian material. Known throughout the world for theirquality, they have assembled a collection ranging fromeighteenth century masterpieces to today's mostinnovative artists. In addition to providing rare pieces of artfor collectors, they also seek to purchase. An outstandingcollection gathered together by some very respectful andknowledgeable people in this field.



http://www.manataka.org/page694.html

http://www.manataka.org/page694.html

http://www.tipi.com/

http://www.tipi.com/

http://www.fourwindsgallery.com/

http://www.fourwindsgallery.com/

http://www.healing-arts.org/index.htm

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"SPIRITGuides will help you discover the marvel and mystery of thegifts that reside within you and enable you to find that place of silenceand focus, so you can make a connection to the knowledge deep withinyour being." -Jack Scott, SPIRITGuides Author

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ABORIGINAL STAR KNOWLEDGE

Native American Astronomy

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San Francisco Exploratorium 10 CoolestSites for July, 1996. Astronomy got specialmention. The whole Exploratorium is cool

for neat interactive science exhibits anytime

MIT Astronomy Educationresources Native Astronomy, Site ofthe Day 9/1/96

Buy Posters at AllPosters.com

Shop at our online poster store! We have selected a great group of posters with images from theHubble Space telescope, Deep Sky images, the Earth from Space, the Solar System, and Men inSpace. Take a look and decorate your room, or find a great gift here.

ABORIGINAL STAR KNOWLEDGE MENU

If you get lost -- or return in other sessions --at the bottom of each page is a button to return to this menu.

Astronomy Magazine Almanac: Current month night

sky--constellations at early evening. Good moon phasesdiagram if you click on Sky Events at the bottom of thealmanac page.

Aboriginal (Native American) Star Knowledge: Menu

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starmenu.html (1 of 5) [9/22/2007 6:02:11 PM]

http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/sciencesites.html



http://www.exploratorium.edu/index.html

http://web.mit.edu/asante/www/

http://web.mit.edu/asante/www/

http://affiliates.allposters.com/link/redirect.asp?AID=252029192&PSTID=5&LTID=16

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/posters.html

http://www.kalmbach.com/astro/SkyEvents/SkyEvents.html

http://www.kalmbach.com/astro/SkyEvents/SkyEvents.html

Lakota Stellar Theology: "As above, so below" spiritual

philosophy that unifies Lakota star knowledge -- a book thatputs together star knowledge gathered from elders over manyyears. You can get from Sinte Gleshka Rosebud ReservationLakota University

Lakota sacred star map, and Earth mirror sacred map in

Black Hills of star-timed ceremonial round

Arvol Looking Horse Announces Worldwide June 21 Prayer

Ceremony, date based on Star Knowledge

Equinoxes, solstices , ecliptic plane for sunpath among the

stars during the solar year. Constellations. The 26,000 yearprecessional cycle of the stars

Sun's seasonal path among the stars what it means for Lakotaelders to say sun is "in" a constellation; what is special aboutconstellations of the Zodiac. Starmaps

Lakota winter solstice: all the sacred constellations are at the

zenith of the sky. Large starmap suitable to print for classhandout.



http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starkno4.html


Bighorn Medicine Wheel: stone, sun, stars on a mountaintop,

early Sun Dance instructions, best-known Wheel, on MedicineMountain

Up on Medicine Mountain with Dr. John Eddy, June 21,

1972: Sunrise lineup with Bighorn Wheel stone observatorycairns

How Medicine Wheel works. Lots of other wheels. StoneMedicine Wheels began 2,200 years ago on the northern plainsof Alberta and Saskatchewan

Ancient Geology of Medicine Mountain: Roots of the

Continent, rock folds of all eras from the first to now, climbingto the peak: backward in time.

1st Magnitude Stars Table in order of brightness, with

conventional and Lakota names, constellation locations, andnorthern visibilities.

Star knowledge study with naked eye; simple skywatch

party, learning the sky, using hands as measuring instruments

Books on-line (and reviews) on Native Star Knowledge.

On-line Bookstore selects for credit-card cordering fromAnazon.com.









http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/1magtab.html

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/1magtab.html

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/stareye.html

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/stareye.html

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/books/amazonlinks/star.html

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/books/amazonlinks/star.html

Teaching and learning resources on internet, in catalogs,

books for the beginning hobbyist or teacher.

Stone Medicine Wheels Bibliography●

AMERICAN INDIAN ASTRONOMY TEACHER GUIDE, TEACHERINFORMATION, STUDENT ACTIVITIES, (Middle School, grade 5, seebook review); By Priscilla Buffalohead illustrated by Robert DesJarlait --covers lightly for elementary level ideas treated in more depth here for olderstudents and teacher science background

●

Crab Nebula Supernova, 1054 was visible in the daytime for 20 days. It wasrecorded by Natives in Chaco Canyon and elsewhere. Check out the rest ofthis Anasazi site.

Von Del Chamberlain one of the early discoverers of many CrabNebula supernova petroglyphs, says too many people are now sayingevery petroglyph is astronomical -- thus discrediting the ones thatreally are

❍

BRIEF PERCEPTIONS of Astronomical Phenomena, Menominee, recordedby Colleen Waukanchon:

The Moon --❍

Aurora Borealis -- In Anishnaabemowin, this is jibayag niimi'idiwag,Ghosts Are Dancing, jibay is ghost of a dead person

❍

Meteors -- finding little star-marked stones.❍

Meteors and Native Americans -- as an astronomy guy researched andpresents this.

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Center for Archaeoastronomy explains what it is, has some very shorteditorials and articles from back issues of its bulletin. Perhaps there willbemore content to the website later

Ethno-archaeoastronomy brief article by Claire Ferrer aboutdifficulties of collecting star knowledge from Mescalero Apache -- onlya couple of old men knew it, and they were religiously forbidden tospeak of it to women.

❍

●

History of Astronomy including ethnic and archaeoastronomy, web site●



http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starclas.html


http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starbib.html

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/books/science/s802.html

http://www.chaco.com/park/nebula.html

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/ae14.html

http://www.menominee.com/tales/moon.htm

http://www.menominee.com/tales/aurora.htm

http://www.menominee.com/tales/meteors.htm

http://medicine.wustl.edu/~kronkg/metlegends.html

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/ae7.html

http://www.gamma.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~hcs/history.html

mostly for astronomers, Max Planck Institute, Germany.

CREDITS: I drew the Lakota-style quilt sun-star in FreeHand and converted it toraster for these pages -- but to get it right, I had to look at the star on my actualquilt (by Elaine Brave Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota from Standing rock rez). The 3natives marvelling at the moon -- some kind of eclipse -- was drawn by JohnFadden (Mohawk artist) in 1970 or so, to illustrate a book of traditional stories byhis father, elder Ray Fadden (Tehanatorens), several of which are star legends. Itwas then published in Akwesasne Notes. I scanned and traced it in FreeHand, touse with Heart of the Earth AIM Survival School Indian-centered science materialprepared in 1993.

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Awards given to this Aboriginal Astronomy section

Page prepared by Paula Giese , text and graphics c. 1995, 1996, 1997

Last updated: 16/4/97



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http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/boastin.html

LAKOTA STAR

KNOWLEDGE

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Arvol Looking Horse's call for a world-wide sacred sites prayer ceremony June 21, 1996,

mentions deciding on the time and place by star knowledge. This knowledge is very ancient,and has been recovered in considerable detail by Lakota scholars working with elders.

One of the most interesting books I've ever read -- I bought a copy to keep for myself as

well as for the Heart of the Earth School library -- is Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies inLakota Stellar Theology, compiled by Ronald Goodman of Sinte Gleshka University,Rosebud Reservation. I strongly urge everyone who is moved and inspired by Arvol'sdeclaration above not to make up their own science-fiction ideas of "star knowledge", and"six stars in the sky denoting sacred places in Paha Sapa". If you are interested (and if youare Lakota, I think you must be interested in this!) get the book and learn the realknowledge, rather than making up travesties. If you do obtain and study this book carfully,you will understand why Arvol called for world-wide prayer, and wanted to focus itthrough a group at the so-called "Devil's Tower", actually as he says, Grey Horn Butte, butsometimes also Mato Tipila.

For more than 15 years, dedicated people from Sinte Gleshka University

interviewed elders about star knowledge. They also searched old records,and they made computations based on actual apparent motions (i.e.precessional cycle of the earth's axis) that established ancient dates. Thepurpose of their book is "to return the skies to the Lakota youth" byshowing what the ancient, traditional constellations are, and their

significance in relation to a sacred or consecrated round (Ki Iyanka Okanchu, theracetrack) in the Black Hills, Paha Sapa. They learned that constellations -- those picturesthat stars paint (woniya of Wakan Tanka, holy breath of the Great Mystery) for the receptivemind in the night sky -- they mirror geological features, places, and ceremonial occasions."We can see now that many Lakota ceremonies were timed to mirror celestial movements,"the authors write.

Lakota Star Knowledge Book

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starknow.html (1 of 4) [9/22/2007 6:07:00 PM]

The book that compiles the knowledge they recovered over the years "demonstrates that

knowledge of our star and sun-watching practices is very much alive in some tribalcontexts, despite centuries of acculturation and attempts by the dominant society to rootout such pagan sacred observances." It also provides important lessons for other tribalgroups who wish to retain more of their traditional practices for their descendants.

The authors dedicate the book "To the Lakota people -- who have for decades hidden the

star knowledge in their hearts, but who are now reaching over the walls of prejudice toshare it with their brothers and sisters of every continent."

Yet there remains special meaning in this star knowledge for Lakota people, because of

the way that Lakota star knowledge mirrors, in the sky, the sacred round of life andancient beginnings in the Hoop of the Black Hills, Paha Sapa. Perhaps especially for thoseLakota who are away from the traditional homeland, the authors have collected knowledgethat will let you look at the night sky and be in the Hills of Home:

"Wakan Tanka intended that we must always hold the Black Hills

special to our hearts, so we are reminded every night that we have asacred home. And all one has to do to be in the Heart of Everything ThatIs, is to look at a star pattern and be spiritually with the Black Hills. Aconstant renewal of relationship by travelling home, to that special palce,with the stars. So tonight, walk outside and look up. See the Black Hills

sacred ceremonies of Spring, and you will understand and know why this place is specialand stands first among all places of Maka. And return, in the manner the Lakota have donefor thousands of years, to the Heart of Everything That Is, to the heart of our home and thehome of our heart.

"Then when the sun passes through each part of the star pattern, prepare to travel

home and renew the circle once more, that the four children of the earth may all live well,altogether -- and with their generations, walk on the sacred red road in a dancing manner."

Mitakuye Oyasin. They said it well.

It is in this spirit that I very strongly recommend purchase of Lakota Star Knowledge, $15

(please send check or money order with your order) to:



Bookstore, Sinte Gleshka University Rosebud Sioux Reservation Mission, SD 57570

Black Elk said:

Ho! -- and so it is that Ikche Wichasha from long ago have known the thoughts of Wakan Tanka, and his rules. They do the will of Wakan Tanka on earth What is done in the heavens -- that too. And so because Wakan Tanka made everything they believe these things are wakan And so what Wakan Tanka made, we speak to in ceremony.

"We say that Wakan Tanka created the Heart of Everything That Is to show us that we

have a special relationship with our first and real mother, the earth, and that there areresponsibilities tied to that relationship. Wakan Tanka placed the stars in such a manner sowhat is in the heavens is on earth, what is on earth is in the heavensw in the same way.When we pray in this manner, what is done in the skies is done on earth in the same way.Together, all of creation participates in the ceremonies every year.

"A group representing the entire (Lakota, Dakota, Nakota)

confederacy would make the annual journey and complete theceremonies. It was not always possible for all members of the nomadicpeople, who ranged from Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes and fromthe Canadian Shield to the Republican River to travel to the Black Hillsevery spring. So a certain planet's movement gathered the nations every

seventh year....When the sun passes through each part of the star pattern, prepare to travelhome and renew the circle once more, that the four children of the earth may all live well,altogether -- and with their generations walk on the sacred red road in a dancing manner."



Star Map and Black Hills--Tables identify stars, constellations, andsacred sites for spring ceremonies, ending with Sun Dance at "Devil'sTower" the Grey Buffalo Horn Arvol mentions in his Prayer Ceremonyannouncement.

CREDITS: I drew the Lakota star quilt pattern in FreeHand and exported it to a rastermap for these pages. I drew the moon/star long ago. The symbol (based on a dream I hadwhen I was 15) has been beaded on my Pipe bag for 16 years. All quotes here are from theLakota Star Knowledge book whose purchase is very highly recommended. The logo by theordering info for the book is the Sinte Gleshka University logo; it symbolizes the 4 Lakotacardinal virtues: Woksape (blue), Wisdom; Woohitika (red), Bravery; Wowachintanka(yellow), Fortitude, endurance; Wachantognaka (white), Generosity. I scanned it from theback cover of my copy of the Star Knowledge book to use here.

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Last updated: Monday, July 08, 1996 - 7:27:47 PM







Lakota Star - Earth Maps

and Tables


Star Map ofBlack Hills

CeremoniesTablebelow

identifiesstars, for

correlationwith

WestCivstarmaps.

Jump to

Hills Map

Animal constellation (1,2,3,4,5 plus bright Aldebaran in the head/neck) in a conventionalnight sky pic. We face north and as on all starmaps, the left side is east (face north and

hold a star map above your head to see why). In November, Orion's Belt rises (andremains) south of the southerly ecliptic. You'll have to pan this big pic. Download (sav

as local file) and print skypic -- use laser printer, not ink jet..

Numbers on the Star Map refer to stars and constellations. The red track --Ki Inyanka Ochanku, the Sacred Hoop -- is traced by certain bright stars:

the Pleiades (7 sisters), Rigel, Sirius, Castor-Pollux, Auriga B, Capella.

No. Name Astron. name Represents

Lakota Star Knowledge 2, Constellations, Names, Maps

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0 ---- AldebaranFirst magnitude star lying in the bright

Hyades cluster (Taurus) on backbone lineto Pleiades (Animal's head)

1 Tayamnipa PleiadesHead of constellation "Animal" (perhaps

Buffalo)--Harney Peak. Also known asWinchincala Sakowin (7 little girls)

2 Tayamnituchuhu Betelgeuse With Rigel, Animal's ribs

3 Tayamnichankahu Orion's Belt Animal's backbone

4 Tayamnituchuhu Rigel Animal's other rib, Hoop marker

5 Tayamnisinte Sirius Animal's tail, Hoop marker; Animal'sname means "born of 3 relatives"

6 ---- Procyon A Hoop marker

7 Matotipila marker Castor ("Twins") Constellation is Bear's Tipi, aka Devil'sTower

8 Matotipila marker Pollux ("Twins") Mato Tipila and Hoop marker

9 Mato Tipilaconstellation

8 of the 12 stars inGemini

Constellation is Bear Tipi, now GreyBuffalo Horn (aka Devil's Tower), place

of solstice Sun Dance

10 ---- Beta Aurigae Hoop marker

11 ---- Capella Hoop north marker

12Part of

ChanshashaIpusye

Triangulum Part of Dried Willow constellation,Spring Equinox, Pipe ceremony

13Part of

ChanshashaIpusye

AriesDried Willow, People are in the wintercamps, Pipe Ceremony begins round of

spring ceremonies

14 ChanshashaIpusye ----

Standing for Pipe (red willow used insmoking); spring renewal ceremonies in

Black Hills



--Sun and Star Constellations and Time--explains how sun is "in" aconstellation, and how the age of these ceremonies can be known from that.

"What is in the stars is on earth and what is on earth is in the stars." This idea

unites the ceremonial map in the circle of stars, not only with sites in the BlackHills, but with a round of ceremonial actions at sacred sites there, ending with aSun Dance at the Bear's Lodge (Devil's Tower) June 21 (summer solstice). "Asabove, so below" that is, what occurs in the stars is mirrored on earth is a very oldidea now forgotten by Western culture. It is expressed in Alchemy and the evenolder idea that humankind and our events are a microcosmic mirror of themacrocosm. The Lakota elders believed this, and some of that knowledge didsurvive.

Below is a sacred map of the Black Hills within the sacred hoop, the

earth-mother ceremonial home that mirrors the circle of stars in the skies. Actionsof the people, not just places, are the sky-mirror -- the ceremonial roundperformed by the people or their representatives. "As the sun movedcounterclockwise through the constellations of the ecliptic, the Lakota movedclockwise through the Black Hills from one ceremonial site to another; each sitecorrelated to a constellation. The ceremonies mirrored the sun's path on the plains.After the Sun Dance and National Councils (held at Bear Butte) the 3-month ritualof incorporating the powers of the Wakan Washte (the ideal Good Life) wascompleted. The people were on the Red Road. Their will, individually andcollectively, was now attuned to Wakan Tanka."

Sacred Hoop, ChanGleshka Wakan, redclay valley which circlesthe Black Hills, site of arace whose tumult liftedthe hills higher andformed the valley. Starsmirror Spring



ceremonies.Jump to Starmap

Numbers on the Black Hills Map refer to sacred sites. The red track --Ki Inyanka Ochanku, the Sacred Hoop -- was created by a race run by

2-legged and 4-legged.

1 Ki IyankaOchanku Race Track Valley Race Track or Sacred Hoop bounding

ceremonial area, mirrored in stars.

2 Mata Tipi PahaBear's Tipi, also

Grey Buffalo Horn(Devil's Tower)

Site of June 21 Sun Dance that concludesSpring Sacred Ceremonial round.

3 Paha Zipela Slim Buttes ----

4 Paha Sapa Black Butte ---- .

5 Pe Sla Old Baldy

Center of Black Hills, Welcome back alllife in peace (Okislataya Wowahwata --

Peace at a Bare Spot, 2nd stage of springceremonies

6 Hinhan KagaPaha Ghost (Owl) Butte Spirits of dead start path on Milky Way.

7 Mato paha Bear Butte Sacred underground emergence origin;desecrated by park site

8 Mnikata Hot springs For sacred purifications, now desecratedby tourist operations.

9 Pte tali yapa Buffalo Gap Sacred entrance/exit to Hoop

10 Wakinyan Paha Thunder ButteWelcoming back thunders (Wakinyan)ceremony, when sun is in Pleiades, Yate

Iwakicipi ceremony

11 ---- Harney PeakWhen the sun is in Pleiades, the sacred

round starts from Harney Peak, or any ofseveral buttes.



MAP CORRELATIONS: If you jumped back & forth between Star and Hills mapsand were puzzled, you're being too literal, looking for a mirror that's like a 1-to-1matched diagram. Both the stars in the circle and the Black Hills contain time intheir mirrors of each other, but not in the same way. People and their ceremoniesare a part of the time-of-the-hills. The relative motions of the sun (and moon andcertain planets) are time-in-the-stars.

When the sun is "in" certain constellations, it is time for certain ceremonies tobegin. Old Baldy, a bare place in the Hills marks the center of the ceremonialgeography -- but there is no star or constellation to mark the starry circle's centerin the sky, the correspondence is 2 different kinds of empty places. (Although inthe 11th century, when the light from the Crab Nebula Supernova reached earthso the star was even visible in daytime, it occupied this empty center.)

There's a red clay valley round the Black Hills (not so neat a circle as the eldersdrew above) but the Red Race Track in the star map is only indicated by certainbright stars, and is imagined. Constellations for any culture (all have them) aren'toutlined by stars like so many connect-the-dots pix, they are imaginativeprojections on scatters of bright lights. The Lakota sky/earth mirroring isspiritual, metaphorical, symbolic, artistic -- not a literal mapping of 2 diagramsonto each other.

HISTORICAL NOTE: Knowledge that is in part scientific was the most vunerableto loss during the long, genocidal conquest. It is usually subject to all the hostilitydirected against what the invarders consider a false religion they attempt toeradicate, because they won't recognize it as science. Too, the invaders wereignorant men, and their interpreters, usually sell-out half-breeds, even more so.They lacked the knowledge from their own civilization to understand andappreciate that of the Native peoples.

Iindigenous peoples generally integrated their knowledge differently than WestCivcame to, so it was all considered "just some native superstitions" and activelyattacked by the Christians. Naming a sacred spot "Devil's Tower" is all toocommon across the continent. In fact if you see such religiously pejorative namesattached to any geological features, you can be pretty sure the site was sacred onceto some indigeneous peoples.

As can be seen from the Lakota book's re-vivification of Lakota star knowledge(which took many years of work by native scholars), attacks on Native religionwere really attacks on entire lifeways, since religion wasn't something separate, allforms of knowledge were at risk, and all methods of preservation had to beclandestine. It didn't change when non-missionary anthros started showing up. Inthe 19th century (and well into the second half of the 20th), how many of themknew any science, anyway? If they were trusted to be told anything, how many ofthem could understand it?

Much astronomical knowledge would never have been commonplaces, known toall; most of it would be known only by tribal s"experts" who had made long



studies of the phenomena. Imagine some Blue Blob Thing anthros from the farstars dropping by.

They collect some "data" from such earth-primitive savants as Einstein andMandelbrot. Their interpeter is a 20-year-old couch potato who is a big Star Trekfan. What they're going to bring back to the Blue Blob Thing University is going tobe mighty strange. In fact, Einstein's dead, so they get all the lowdown onrelativity, certain evil gods called "nukes" and such from their braindamage caseTV fan. I think the situation for Native knowledge is quite comparable to whatthey're teaching and writing, now, at the Blue Blob campus of U Sirius.

CREDITS: Star and Black Hills maps scanned and colored from recommended SinteGleshka University book, Lakota Star Knowledge. Star quilt drawing by me, patterncreated and popularized through Indian country by Lakota quiltmakers. Tabulateddata is summarized from Star Knowledge book, and all quotes come from there.

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Page prepared by Paula Giese, copyright 1995, 1996

CREDITS: Aftr scanning, I had to redtraw the blurrily-printed constellations and BlackHills maps from Lakota Star Knowledge, then colored them for this website. The big"night sky photo of the Animal constellation" actually was generated by Astronomy

simulation software called "Dance of the Planets" (for PC's only). Tabulatd data camefrom Lakota Star Knowledg but I'm responsible for assembling and tabulating it and

correlating it with conventional astronomical names.








Time, Sun and the Stars


We are the stars who sing, we sing with our light; We are the birds of fire, we fly over the sky. Our light is a voice. We make a road for the spirits, for the spirits to pass over. Among us are three hunters who chase a bear. There never was a time when they were not hunting. We look down on the mountains. This is the song of the stars. --Passamaquoddy Song

The earth,

moon andmajor planetsorbit the sunin a commonplane, theecliptic.

The earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23 degrees to this plane, as itrevolves around the sun. So the earth tilts at different angles to the sun,as it revolves in orbit, shown here for the 4 seasons. When the earth'snorth polar axis is tilted most toward the sun, it's summer in thenorthern hemisphere, tilted furthest away, winter.

Of course this tilt affects the sun's pathacross the sky -- furthest north insummer, south in winter, and the fixedstars in the night sky rise at differenttimes and places, too.

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Whether they know this cause or not, all peoples

who observe the skies know this relationshipshown for the sun's path across the sky at 4 keydays during the year -- days sacred to mostindigenous peoples.

Landmarks can be used if a people are always in

the same place to mark the sunrise and sunsetpoints of these four days. On a compass rose --which looks very much like the traditional star quiltpattern -- the line between the northeast andnorthwest tips marks the summer solstice, whenthe sun is farthest north, and the line betweensoutheast and southwest tips the winter solsticesunpath. The line across the middle -- from east towest -- is the line of both equinoxes.

The Lakota were nomadic and didn't always camp at the same spots. The angle

of direction and length of the sun's noon shadow can be determined, and providesa simple way to identify these 4 key days that mark the earth's seasons. There arepainted hides usually identified in museums as "war bonnet" or "feather circles".These resemble elaborate compass roses used by mariners, and would be handyand portable for making solar shadow time measurements, if a stick with aplumb-bob (an arrowhead, say) were placed upright in the center of the pattern.

Of course there are stars in the sky in daytime; we can't see them because of the

sun. This brings us to where we can explain timing of the start of the Lakotasacred spring ceremonial round. It begins, the elders say, when the sun enters theLakota constellation Dried Willow. This includes Triangulum (which isn't toobright) and the brighter stars in Aries, the Ram. This was traditional in Westernancient astronomy too; spring, the vernal equinox, began when the sun was inAries, and that was the start of the astronomical year for star-watchers. An easyway to tell when this has happened is by the first-magnitude star Antares ("theopposite of Aries"). Here's what happens when the sun is "in" Aries or DriedWillow:



So early evening rising just south of the ecliptic (sunpath horizon point) of first magnitude Antares (I

don't know its Lakota name) indicates the sun has entered the Dried Willow constellation. Some timeago, this happened around March 20-21, the spring equinox, and was the signal for the PipeCeremony at winter camps that heralded a ceremonial round in the Black Hills, ending with a SolsticeSun Dance at Devil's Tower, (Grey Buffalo Horn) when the sun entered the Bear's Tipi constellation(part of Gemini) that represents it.

You can compare with the Lakota starmap, then return to here with your BACKbutton.

N ow, though, everything in the skies happens about a month

later than when these ancient observational calendars --Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese, as well as Lakota -- weredrawn up. This happens because the earth's north-south axisrevolves around the center of the earth, so the poles slowlysweep out 2 cones in the sky, joined at their tips in the earth'scenter. This cycle is called the precession of the equinoxes orprecessional cycle. (Its cause is a gyroscopic effect of themoon's gravitational attraction to the earth's tidal bulge.) Ittakes about 26,000 years for one complete revolution to sweepout the double cone. During this time, the pole star changes, towhatever stars lie on the circle swept by the north-pointing end of the earth's axis.The Pole Star -- Wichahpi Owanjila, star that always stands in one place -- wasThuban (Alpha Draconis) in 3000 B.C. Around 7500 AD, Alpha Ceiphei will be thepole star, then Deneb, then bright Vega (14000 AD), then it'll swing around toThuban again. For many centuries there has been and will be no bright star closeenogh to where the pole is to serve as pole star; the bright northern stars andconstellations then seem to revolve through the night about an empty center.

Now, the constellations are all displaced by about a month, a little more than

30 degrees, as regards when the sun enteres them (i.e. where/when they rise). Thesun is in Dried Willow (or Aries) now around April 23, instead of March 21; it getsto the Pleiades (Animal's head) about a month late, and it's about a month lateentering Mato Tipila, for the Sun Dance at Devil's Tower. From this, we can datethe most probable origin of this knowledge and these ceremonies. It takes 26,000years for the poles to precess the big double-cone 360 degrees for the great PolarSky Circle, so it takes about 72 years to precess one degree. Since the poles haveprecessed about 30 degrees, (30 x 72 = 2160) years ago the stars were in the rightplaces at the right times to guide the ceremonies as Lakota elders still recall. ManySun Dances have tended to be held quite late in the summer in recent years. Wherethese are guided by knowledgeable elders who make star observations, it seemslikely those elders follow the stars, even though that puts them a month or morebehind the sun.



It's the same dilemma astrologers face. None of the constellations that represent

animals of the monthly zodiac corresponds any longer to the birth month you seein those little horoscopes in many newspapers. The original observations are tooold; the earth's poles have revolved too far. It will be more than 20,000 yearsbefore they come back around again, and the traditional constellations are onceagain in synch with key solar dates that determine the earth's seasonal round.

Be aware that the dates for solstices and equinoxes are approximate. For

example, in 1996, the vernal equinox is March 20, summer solstice is June 20, fallequinox is September 22, and winter solstice is December 21. So the dates on mydiagrams are a "within 2 days" approximation.

Details of the sun's path through the starry skies over a solar year, and a

large chart of the major constellations, ends with a comparison of how thesun's current apparent path relates to the cosntellationsd at the time these

astronomical observations were made, 2,000 years ago (still used for horoscopechartings in the discredited science of astrology). Check it out; return here withBACK or a menu icon at the end of that page.


Sunpathin Stars

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CREDITS:The poem is an Abenaki-Passamaquoddy song collected in Maine by Charles G. Lelandaround 1882; he gives a phonetic version of it in the language-dialect of that time, "Glint-wah-gnour,Pes Sausmok,"This is the Song of the Stars, in Algonquian Legends, Dover reprint (1992) of Leland's1884 book pubished by Houghton Mifflin. Some solar system drawings were adapted from a DOShypertext teaching program, ORBITS, by WinterTech, 1992. Others were drawn by me (first inFreeHand) from data in several astronomy and Earth Science textbooks.

Page prepared by Paula Giese, c. 1995, 1996












Arvol Looking Horse:

Keeper of OriginalLakota Sacred Pipe

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Purposes of Arvol's section -- permanent Native historystudy materials, as well as ceremony background;updates

World Peace Prayer Ceremony June 21, 1996 -- atsacred sites world-wide; & "Devil's Tower," Wyoming

How to get to the Devil's Tower ceremony site -- Mapsand site info; Planning Updates as received

Arvol: What's Been Done So Far ... and Why Worldindigenous spiritual leaders, Canadian Native leadersand elders support June 21 ceremony

Miracle, the White Buffalo Calf -- born in August,1994, fulfillment of prophecies? Sign?

Ptesanwin: White Buffalo Calf Woman's Story -- astold by Lakota elder Joseph Chasing Horse, 1994

Pipe Story as told by John Fire Lame Deer, 1967.Lame Deer's version is gives some different details, butis the same.

How Arvol Started on His Path --The Bigfoot Ridersand the First Bigfoot Memorial Ride video

Lakota Star Knowledge -- sacred constellationsmirrored in Black Hills ceremonies -- why thisceremony is to be held when and where Arvolannounced; also stone Medicine Wheels, 2200 year-oldorigin of Sun Dance instructions in Alberta, Canada(long section, Native-centered science)

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Text and graphics copyright Paula Giese, 1995, 1996. Photo of Arvol and one of theBigfoot Riders' horses by Dan Budnik, from The Book of the Elders, Sandy Johnson,Harper SanFrancisco. c. 1994.

I drew the plain little graphic of the white buffalo last summer. It was recently"honored" by theft and plagiarized by some character calling himself Duster, whosewebsite is supposedly "Cool Stuff for Native Americans." We don't think it's cool,Duster, we've been through this thefts business with you waschichu for centuries.While stealing my graphic, Duster steals the rest of his white buffalo contentmaterials-- that and football are what his page features -- from other websites. I hadbeen thinking of finding a real artist to draw a better buffalo for these redesignedpages, but decided to keep this little stolen image for a while, as a kind of reminderabout, oh, stolen land , broken treaties and cool stuff like that.

Last updated: Thursday, June 20, 1996 - 3:47:24 AM

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Lakota Winter Solstice Stars


Almost everything the Lakota scholars brought together from elders in the

Lakota Star Knowledge book is about observations leading to the summer solstice --where the sunpath will be at its farthest north, the days are longest, and the SunDance is held "when the sun is strongest and the power of growing things isgreatest" as Black Elk said, around June 20.

But what of winter? At winter solstice, the nights are long, days shortest. Will the

sun stop its southerly travels and return north ever? The sacred circle of stars thatrepresents the Black Hills told the people that Yes, it would. Around the end ofDecember, the sacred circle of stars climbs to the very zenith of the skies -- directlyabove the viewer around midnight on December 20 -21, and for the week of wintersolstice, the longest nights, it rises due east, sets due west, and stands directlyoverhead with its promise of spring, summer's warmth and good living.

I wasn't aware of this, and it may be the elders no longer know it either, for it is

not mentioned in the Star Knowledge book at all. Tjhese winters, people are not outhunting, or sitting out on windlss nights in winter camp, learning star lore. On theinside back cover of the Star Knowledge book is a star map -- unfortunately itprinted rather smearily -- that shows all or almost all the Lakota named stars andconstellations. The unidentified artist chose a conventional star-finder map andshaded the Lakota constellations to help locate them.

As I examined this map to create a copy of it for these pages, I realized it is a mapof the winter stars. Looking at my conventional star-finders, I realized that theartist had chosen to copy a star-finder map that showed almost all the starsdiscussed in the book simultaneously. Checking, I found that this happens onlyonce a year: in late December, winter solstice. The skies of that season will rotatethe sacred circle from eastern rise right to the zenith or center of the sky-domeoverhead! It will rise due east, set due west; this happens at no other time of year.

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There is no mention of winter solstice ceremonies. (Farming peoples usually have

them, to persaude the sun not to stay south, but to begin its journey north again.The Christian Christmas holiday is imposed on the date of an older winter solsticecelebration, for example.) Perhaps there were none. Yet it seems likely that if therewere a calm, relatively warm clear night during the last week of the year, therewas likely an observance of the skies, with these sacred stars directly overhead,from some sheltered place. Perhaps storytelling and star-teaching took place then.Winter solstice is the best time of year for all the Lakota constellations to beobserved from rise to set, as well as the sacred circle -- the Racetrack/Black Hills --at the zenith.

A large starmap (96K) shows all the Lakota constellations shaded in red. Stars

important in Lakota philosophy are colored bright yellow.. Other stars are palewhitish yellow. Conventional consatellations are connected in blue. Starsizes havebeen drawn roughly proportional to magnitudes, (for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) with starsshown down to the 5th magnitude. The conventional constallations' places arelabeled with their names, to help you locate yourself in the skies, using purchasedstar finders.

This starmap follows the usual starmap convention: east is on the screen left andwest the right -- the opposite from paper maps of land. The reason is that starmapsare meant to be visualized as if held overhead, with the top -- north -- pointingnorth as you face north. You look up at a skymap, opposite of a land map. Whenyou do that or mentally visualize it that way (which you have to train yourself todo) the east-marked side of the map will be on your right, west on your left, theopposite of looking down at a paper map of land.

You can download this map (which is 16-color gif, but also prints legibly in black

and white, especially at 600 dpi) and print it locally for a winter solsticeobservation starguide. You can use the big starmap of the ecliptic sunpath pagehere to help ID the conventional constellations, but a late December starguide fromSky and Telescope or Astronomy is recommended, see Teaching Resources page forsources.

If you are Lakota, Dakota, Nakota and the skies are clear for the several days

around December 20-21, try to make a sky observation away from city lights ifpossible! This year's winter solstice is quite special in another way: the moon isdark for it, it will wane to a narrow crescent just before the solstice, and waxthereafter. An absent moon means the Milky Way will be visible, traversing thesacred circle northerly. Too, you will probably be able to see ia second-magnitudestarlike object that -- now -- is in the former empty center of the Racetrack,



http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/images/lakotbig.gif

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/images/star2map.gif


corresponding to Old Baldy in the Black Hills ceremonial land map. That's theCrab Nebula -- bright, hot expanding clouds of gas left from a supernova star thatexploded in 1054 AD (or rather that's when the light of its initial explsion reachedus). It was so bright that for 3 weeks in July of 1054, it was visible in daytime. Formany years afterwards, it was by far the brightest object in the sky, though it hasgradually faded as the hot gases expand, so now it is not very spectacular -- unlessyou look at it through a telescope (or certain kinds of good binoculars).

Below is a reduction of the big Lakota December starmap, in which the

constellations (shaded red) are numbered. You can't really make out the stars ortext labels on it, except for the big red numbers, which are a key to the bigstarmap. Following this smaller map, here, is a table that gives names, andstar-locations. Meanings, in Lakota philosophy, are briefly discussed after that,though this has already been covered for the "Racetrack" sacred circle thatmirrors the Black Hills ceremonies and Sun Dance.

Lakota Constellations in Winter Solstice SkyNo. Lakota name Meaning Constellation

1 Wichapi Owanjila Star that always stands in oneplace Polaris, north polar sky rotation star

2 Wakinyan Thunderbird13 stars beginning with

gamma-Draconis, including 2 stars ofUrsa Minor's "bowl"



3 Wichakiyuhapi Big Dipper Ursa Major component, 7 stars, Polarispointers

4 Fireplace --- Component of Leo called "sickle"

5 Mato Tipila Bear's Lodge8 of the 12 stars in Gemini (including

Castor and Pollus, the bright twins thatare markers on the Racetrack)

6 --- CapellaLucida of Auriga, Charioteer, formsnorthernmost marker on Racetrack

Circle

7 Tayamni Animal (Buffalo?)

Large constellation inside racetrack,composed of Betelgeuse, Rigel (ribs),

Orion's belt (backbone), Aldebaran andPleiades (head), and Sirius (tail)

8 Canshasha Ipusye Dried Willow Triangulum and Aries

9 Hehaka Elk 5 stars in Picses that outline elk's hornsand head

10 Keya Turtle 4 stars of Pegasus square, plus a headand tail faint and poorly identified stars

11 Zuzuecha SnakePuppis rho, xi, gamma, 7 minor stars incanis major, all stars in columba; this

southern snake appears in winter

12 Wanagi Ta Chanku Spirits' Road Milky Way. In winter, this is asouth-to-north road

11 (Below the number) Fomalhaut Very bright southern star, marksextreme south horizon at this season

M1 Crab NebulaCenter of Racetrack,

corresponds to Old Baldy onBlack Hills

Crab Nebula was a supernova in 1054,now a 2nd magnitude object visible in

formerly empty circle's center

So on my large map, Boötes, the herdsman, is just rising in the northeast (upper

left of the screen). Its lucida (brightest star), Arcturus, is still beneath the horizon.Lakota names for Arcturus are Itkob u (going toward), and it's also namedWichapi Sunkaku (Morning Star's Younger Brother), and Oglechkutepi, Arrowgame.

Another name for Arcturus, Ihuku Kigle (It went under) explains the

relationship to Venus -- Anpao Wichahapi -- the morning or dawn star. Arcturus isjust setting as or shortly before Venus rises just before dawn. Of course thatrelationship only applies at certain times -- indicating a sophisticated relativetime-reference. These are not just object-names.



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4 key bright stars are visible at this time: Aldebaran, Rigel, Sirius, and

Fomalhaut. These 4 have (in centuries past) risen "heliacally" i.e. just flashing asthey rise before the summer solstice sun when all the lesser stars have gone out inthe brightening pre-dawn sky. These 4 first-magnitude stars stars are marked bysighting rock cairns on the ancient rock structures of the northern high plains --structures called Medicine Wheels, early solar-star analog computers, the first ofwhich was built around 2,000 B.C., and the most elaborate of which is on MedicineMountain in the Wyoming Bighorns.

The Lakota Agleshka (salamander) constellation which represents powers of a

boy-baby preserved at birth by traditional midwives, has just set in the northwest(upper right of starmap). You can still see part of Keya (Turtle), the girl-babyconstellation, which is the 4 stars that form the square of Pegasus,

Big Dipper -- Wichakiyuhapi -- (which means Dipper) has several other names

that relate to different ceremonial or star knowledge functions. Very interesting isthe 2 different functions of all 7 of its stars as mnemonics for Win oye ya (theLakota Woman's Lifepath) and Ca Oye Ya (The Lakota Man's Lifepath). Thereare different starnames and different teachings for for the men's and the women'sways, which together make up the whole Lakota way of life, Lacol Wichoh'an

Charlotte Black Elk has recorded all of the Dipper-related women's knowledge,

as told to her by her grandmother, She recorded the spiritual, moral, artistic, andsocial attainments of each of the 7 stages in a woman's maturation representeed bythe 7 Dipper stars. (Less is known -- mainly the men's starnames -- about men'steachings regarding the Dipper.) The Dipper also has meaning for beginning andend of Lakota life. According to Lakota midwives, To Win, Blue Woman spirit,who helps with births, lives in the sky-country behind a hole in the dipper's center,where Fallen Star's mother pulled up a turnip in the star-world, creating the holein the sky through which Fallen Star came to bring light and higher consciousnessto Lakota people, when his pregnant mother fell through the hole.

The Dipper is also literally a dipper, to carry water for sweat lodge and Pipe

ceremonies in the sky. At the end of life, under a name meaning "stretcher" or"body-carrier" the Dipper carries a dead person's surviving spiritual essence tothe Wanagi Ta Chanku, the Road of Spirits, which is the Milky Way, for its finaljourney to its ultimate spiritual destination.



So if there is a mild, clear, windless evening around the week of winter solstice,

when the sun stands still in the extreme south, a night starwatch is a good learningexperience for any Lakota or Dakota person or family. The sacred starmapmirroring the Black Hills will be in the very center of the sky and this center willrise almost directly in the true east and set in the true west during the night. Trulythe "hills of the home of the heart" are pictured for you in the sky.

Late December observing (around midnight) you should be able to spot the

easily-located bright Sirius (Animal's tail, southerly point on the Black Hills ring).The 3 bright stars of Orion's belt (Animal's backbone) are easy to spot, too. Thenlocate its 2 end-ribs, Betelgeuse and Rigel. Run your eye along the 3 backbone(belt) stars, which point to bright Aldebaran on the Animal's neck (in the Hyadescluster of Taurus), and further along that same line, the Pleiades cluster (animal'shead, which is an easterly marker on the Black Hills circle). If your horizonpermits (mine doesn't, buildings in the way), you can spot bright Fomalhaut at theextreme south when the Racetrack is at the zenith.

Depending on seeing conditions and the absence of a

bright moon, you may be able to see the 2nd magnitudeobject in the center of the racetrack which is thespreading gaseous remains called Crab Nebula of thesupernova that occurred (became visible on earth) inearly July, 1054 A.D. This star was so bright at the timeof its explosion that it was visible for about 3 weeks indaytime. When first visible, it was quite close to acrescent moon. It seems to have been recorded on manypetroglyphs in Arizona, New Mexico, and California. TheCrab Nebula -- a beautiful oject for telescopic gazing andphotographing -- is Messier nebular/cluster/galactic object M1, first in this18th-century French astronomer's catalog.

You can find out mor about the supernova crab nebula as recorded by

rock-markings called petroglyps or petrographs by the ancient Anasazi civilization(ancestors of today's Pueblo people in New Mxico and Arizona). A StarMenu linkto Chaco Communications web page on this is worth exploring. Chaco plans toprepre further material on this.



Be sure to check out info on naked-eye stargazing and a table of 15 first

magnitude stars visible in the north (including all the key stars here) if you plan awinter solstice stargaze.

This is at present the end of the Lakota Star Knowledge sequence. Return to the

Stars Menu for more aboriginal native astronomy. Or from the mnubar below, startlearning about the stone medicine wheels which were this Turtle Island Earth's first(analog) computers..

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CREDITS: I drew the sunburst starquilt logo for these pages in FreeHand, using astarquilt by Elaine Brave Bull (Hunkpapa, Standing Rock) as a model. I colored andredrew the large winter solstice star-finder map, showing the Lakota constellations,using both the map in Lakota Star Knowledge and a winter starfinder as guides. Thesmaller maps are reductions of it. The Crab Nebula telescopic photo was taken by hobbyastronomers Bill and Sally Fletcher, scanned from Astronomy Magazine Observer'sGuide for 1996.

Page prepared by Paula Giese , text and graphics c. 1995, 1996

Last updated: Tuesday, July 09, 1996 - 12:16:36 AM








MEDICINE WHEEL: SUN &STARS


You can't see it as I did, the night of the 1978 summer solstice, which was also

the night of a full moon. I spent that night alone on Medicine Mountain, Wyoming,at the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. After many unexpected experiences during thenight, I saw the expected solstice sunrise line up with an old tree branch I'd placedwith tobacco, sage and cedar in the central cairn. Usually I have no voice and amno kind of singer, but then I faced that rising sun, then suddenly stood up and sanga song loud and joyful in a language that I think no one knows any more. (But Iknew what it meant while I was singing.) I never sang like that before, never since.

You can't do that (and I can't again), because the U.S. Forest

Service has developed it now as a tourist attraction. There arenow 30,000 visitors during the short summer period it can bevisited. Interpretive presentations are now given under ForestService sponsorship by people from nearby Crow andCheyenne tribes.

It was white men (discovering it at the end of the 19th century) who named it

"Medicine Wheel," terminology they applied to anything Indian observed or toldthem they didn't understand. White men of the Sheridan Chamber of Commerce --particularly as tourism in the Bighorn National Forest got underway aseconomically significant to the town -- made a huge mystery of it, and ignored thefact that there are at least 40 other wheels on the high plains (mostly in Canada),as well as some sites far removed, both spatially and culturally.

One of these (Cahokia in Ohio) has been called "An American Woodhenge"

because of similar astronomical sightings from a large circle of postholes, all thatremains. The "-henge" and the interest of astronomers in solar, lunar and starsighting relationships, comes from a 1960's analysis of the famous Stonehenge inEngland. In the late 1960's British astronomer G.S. Hawkins showed with

Star Knowledge 5, Bighorn Medicine Wheel, 1


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astronomical computations that the ancient circle of huge megaliths was asolar-lunar and stellar analog computer made by pre-historic Celtic tribespeople.This gave Eddy, then an astronomer (whose speciality was the sun) at the HighAltitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, nearBoulder, Colorado, the idea to make an exact survey of the Bighorn wheel, andobservations and computations following the methods used by Hawkins. To see ifthe rocks, the mountain, sun, stars and the spatial directions could tell ussomething people have long forgotten. He found that they could, that nature itselfspeaks to those who know how to interpret, via astronomy, geometry, andmathematics. Generally, the methods used -- at least until the excitement thisdiscovery occasioned -- are not known to anthros.

--Here -- on a Wyoming tourist map -- is where the Bighorn wheel

is, west of Sheridan, on Alt 14-A, which used to be a poor 1-lanebulldozed into an old travois trail. You used to have to hike about a

mile to get to the Wheel, It's on a high, bare shoulder, at about 10,000 feet, abovethe tree line, with almost a full horizon view all around. There's a precipice not farbehind the main sun-sighting altar dropping to the Bighorn River valley. A steepbluff with some sharp drop-offs slopes down to a lower ledge on part of theshoulder that's still above the tree-line and overlooks the broad valley to thesoutheast.

--This color photo of the Bighorn Wheel, was supplied by theU.S. Forest Service Bighorn district office is taken (probably inthe late 1970's) looking due east (there is a red east marker at theedge of the windswept bare shoulder's stepped drop-off). Snow is

still visible on the distant ridges and forest below, but has been blown clear of theshoulder here. The wheel is about 90 feet in diameter, though it's not a perfectcircle. The central cairn (solar backsight) is about 12 feet in diameter. It was about4 feet tall when I visited it in 1978. The sunrise sighting cairn is at the lower rightfrom this photo angle, separated from the wheel's rim by a 12 foot spoke extension.It is U-shaped, longer than wide, and open at the end toward the circle's center.You can stand or sit in this cairn -- I slept in it, lying stretched out in my sleepingbag, then I sat up -- to sight the solstice rising sun along the spoke and through anold dead branch I placed in the central cairn. Behind you will be a steep precipice,down to the Bighorn River valley, across which there are visible snowy summits ofhigh peaks that bound Yellowstone National Park, 100 miles away. On the frontlower left of the wheel is the starsight cairn. Across the rim, on its eastern side, arethe cairns used as backsights for sighting the dawn-rising stars Aldebaran, Rigel,and Sirius, as calculated and discovered by astronomer John Eddy in 1972-4. Atthe right is a cairn that lines up with dawn-rising of the southern bright starFomalhaut, as discovered by Jack A. Robinson, in 1980.



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The ancient geology of Medicine Mountain has formed a very

special place, perhaps unique in all the world. Regardless of whenthe Wheel was built up there, there is every likelihood it hasalways been sacred to Native peoples, because its special character, an acientsacredness long predating the existence of humankind and even animals, can befelt. That's probably why the Wheel was built there, actually.

Tourist desecrations might have been worse, probably would have been, except

for years of determined protective efforts by the Medicine Wheel Alliance, anorganization that got its start through the Northern Cheyenne CulturalCommission. In 1988, the Forest Service made a developmental proposal for thewheel, which was protested by people from Northern Cheyenne, Crow, Arapaho,Sioux, and Blackfeet tribes, who later formed the protective organization.

Anthros seem mainly to have asked the Crow about the wheel (their reservation

in Montana is nearest, and there is a small, damaged wheel near Fort Smith ontheir present rez land), Northern Cheyenne may know more about it. The Wheelfigures in an unsuccessful treaty-based land claim filed by the Northern Cheyennein 1929, just inside (its shoulder precipice forming part of) the boundary of landincluding the Bighorns and Powder River country they maintained the U.S. tookillegally).

According to Northern Cheyenne Bill Tall Bull in 1988, "I've had to hide myself

up there (from the Forest Service) while conducting ceremonial prayers on themountain. Rangers have been known to kick Indians off the mountain. Many timesI had to hide from them and the tourists while there for prayer."How sad, when Ihead this, just 10 years after I was up there all alone, it wasn't famous then

After my night alone up there seeing the solstice sun rise right on the ancient

altar's lineup I went to the home of a traditional woman elder friend at the nearbyNorthern Cheyenne rez. No one there could tell me much about it, then, exceptthat "It was up there that the instructions were given for the first Sun Dance." TheWheel itself was said to be those instructions.





Sundance lodge, with entrance to east and 28 rafters

for the 28 lunar cycle days. This, according to Lakotaelder Black Elk, was the original form of the Sundancelodge, which he says was Cheyenne, though nowadayslodges may be made with fewer rafters. The diagramfrom above is similar to the basic shape andorientation of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, which has28 lunar day spokes from its central cairn. Accordingto Forgot name??? it's similar to a Cheyenne Sundancelodge created for a masama ceremony.

They were having a Sun Dance at theNorthern Cheyenne rez -- I was invitedto stay for it, and take part in some ofthe preparations. This Sun Dance wasbeing made by the father of a young manwho -- while drunk -- had killed another

Cheyenne and received a long prison sentence. He hoped it would help his son, buteveryone knows it helps all the people, as it renews the earth. Cheyenne SundanceLodge Painting by Wah-pah-nah-ya (Richard West, Northern Cheyenne), 1949

In 1988, the Forest service wanted to put a

parking lot and latrines right next to the Wheel,with some kind of interpretive center building, anda big platform overlooking the Wheel itself. Theywere going to pave the rough road up there toimprove access, and take that road all the way tothe site. (I had to hike in. That was part of it.) InMay, 1991, the Forest Service issued anEnvironmental Impact statement. The Allianceresponded "There is no consideration of the NativeAmerican in this document; it is designed fortourists."

There was no plan to restrict tourist access during ceremonies, although the

Forest Service said they'd ask the public to voluntarily stay away at solstice orequinox ceremonies. MWA coordinator Nicol Price said that in the summer of1991 such voluntary restraint was shown to be quite futile, when curious touristseven snapped photos as Indian elders tried to conduct ceremonies, Tall Bull, whowas one of the leaders in the many-year negotiations of the Alliance said "Thefederal government has no respect for our shrine, or the Indian people whoregularly worship there."



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Some compromises have been made -- the parking lot was built a mile or so away,

they have to go that last mile on a foot trail -- all 30 or 40 thousand of them.Indians lead the interpretive presentations. Major structures the Forest Servicewanted weren't built (the latrines are at the parking lot). I'm glad of these things,but quite sorry to hear of the many tourists who come, gawp, then go away. I amvery glad I followed whatever it was thatled me up there to that then-desertedplace 20 years ago. I would not have wanted to "attend a ceremony" up there thatwas being conducted by any peoples at all. Though I'd read a scientific articleabout its use as a solar and astronomical "analog computer" and written aboutthis and other medicine wheels of the high northern plans for Akwesasne Notes in1974, I didn't know much about it when I drove 1,000 miles for that solstice, noteven where it was, really.

--To start with, the Bighorn Wheel is not unique. These stone structures-- observatory cairns or altars of stone, circles, with some spokes -- seemto be located only on the front range high plains area of the RockyMountains, and most of them are in Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The map shows some 28 of them that are still in fairly good shape today. None areas high as the one on usually-inaccessible Medicine Mountain, but all are on thehighest point (usually in an area of rolling hills), with a full observational horizon.On the map I've marked Medicine Mountain's wheel in red, and another I'lldiscuss briefly, Moose Mountain, in blue. That one (or maybe one even older)seems to be the original or prototype of the star knowledge that went into buildingthe Bighorn wheel's star sighting cairns 1200 years or more later.

At Fort Smith, on the Crow reservation, is a small wheel , whose longest,

southwesterly spoke and central altar-cairn form a sight on the summer solsticerising sun. West of Great Falls, Montana is a wheel whose southerly spokes arepartly destroyed by erosion from the Sun River, but suggests a similar alignment.At the top of the Continental Divide, near an old travois trail, on Trail Ridge Roadin Colorado is a huge, rough cairn with two long spokes that line up with summersolstice sunrise. Not shown on the map, in Minnesota, on the open grasslandprairie of Blue Mounds state park there is a 1500-foot line of quartzite boulderswhich is a northeasterly sighting line for solstice sunrise, though the HistoricalSociety mistakenly identifies it as equinoctial (which would be direct east-west;many non-scientific people are confused about the words equinox and solstice). Notfar from it (not in the park) are the enigmatic Jeffers Petroglyphs -- thousands ofmysterious signs pecked into flat red rocks which may include astronomicalrecords.

CREDITS:I redrew (from the 1980 cover of the Bulletin of Archaeoastronomy andcolored an artistic version of the wheel seen from just in front of the sunsight altarjust as the solstice sun has risen although the 3 speical stars are not visible then, I



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placed them in the sky roughly where they could be sighted from the starsightcairn. The black and white drawing of an eagle spirit, Pipe, mountain, crescentmoon and dipper stars was drawn in Indian ink in 1978 by Tissonie, Johnny CreedCoe (Cherokee) who was art instructor at Red School House AIM Survival Schoolthat fall. He gave it to me one evening when we were both trapped there by a bigblizzard, I told him it seemed emblematic of the experience I'd had on MedicineMountain that summer.

The buffalo skull centering the Bighorn Wheel is the logo of the Medicine WheelAlliance, which continues to work with tribal people to save sacred places fromdesecration.

Prints of the black and white photos of the Medicine Wheel were given to me by aU.S. forest service secretary at the Bighorn National Forest office in Lovell,Wyoming, on the day of the solstice, 1978, when I visited that office before goingup on the wheel for the night. It was apparently taken by Roger M. Williams of theForest Service from a low-flying plane, around 1972. I have re-oriented it so thedirectional alignment is correct. The side view of the Wheel was also a black andwhtie print th Forest Service gave me in 1978. It was taken by an anthropologist in1926, some time before the Forest Service put up a high steel fence around thewheel, but after they had built a low stone wall around it. The color photo of thewheel was recently sent me by the Bighorn office of the forest Service, but seems tohave been taken some years ago, perhaps in the late '70's or early '80's;photographer and date were not identified.

The diagram of a Sun Dance lodge, and the explanation of it, are from The SacredPipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, as told by BlackElk to Joseph Brown, University of Oklahoma Press, 1953. Richard West, wellknown Northern Cheyenne artist, likes to explore artistically themes of traditionalknowledge. This painting, "Cheyenne Sundance, First Painting of the Third Day"is from the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK.





Wheels:Dawn Stars

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CREDITS: Page logo (also used for icons) was originally a cover of the Winter, 1980,Archaeastronomy Bulletin, a photocopy of which was attached to some articles from itthe Dr. John Eddy sent me in 1993. The artist isn't credited on the cover, and otherBulletins are not available. I scanned it, tracd it in FreeHand, made some rearrangmentsfor btter design, and colord the picture, which was used as a cover on a unit about theBighorn Meedicin Wheel for Heart of the Earth Indian students in 1993-94. It wasrasterized for use on this web page. The black and white drawing was given to me by theCherokee artist Tissonie (Johnny Creed Coe) in 1979, when I told him it reminded me ofmy experience there, and told him a bit of what had happened. Though its framed now, Iwas able to photocopy, scan, then do a lot of touch-up correction for this web page. Thecolor photo of th wheel, taken from a nearby bluff, was furnished by the U.S. ForestService, Loveland (Bighorn National Forest) office. The Sundance lodge drawings arefrom Joseph Epes Brown Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, as used in Dr. Eddy's originalarticle about the Wheel in Sciwnce, 1974. Richard West's painting of a CheyenneSundance lodge was scanned (and cropped slightly to remove areas which could not beproperlys canned because of curvature) from (the Turner book based on the 1993 videoshow). The ad for the Medicine Wheel Alliance was scanned, traced in Freehand, andcolorized by me from some literature for the Alliance (to which I at one time belonged).The map locating many Medicin Whels, mostly in Albrta, Canada, was scanned from anarticle by Dr. Eddy; I added labels and color coding.

Page prepared by Paula Giese , text and graphics c. 1995. 1997

Last updated: 3/29/97









...restoring mind, body and spirit...

Association of American Indian Physicians

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Welcome to the AAIP 36th Annual Meeting & National Health Conference 2007!

Link to PDF Agenda (revised Agenda - July 19th, 2007

AAIP will host its 36th Annual Meeting and National Health Conference in Nashville,TN from July 26 – 31, 2007. Save time and money! Advanced registration is nowavailable online. Find the 2007 Annual Meeting & National Health Conferenceinformation by clicking here.

2007 Tentative Conference Schedule Health Professions Pre-Admission Workshop July 26 - July 27, 2007Technical Program July 28 - July 31, 2007Exposition July 28 - July 30, 20077:00 AM - 5:00 PM Saturday8:00 AM – 5:00 PM Sunday8:00 AM – 3:00 PM Monday

Special EventsGolf Scramble Friday, July 27, 2007Women’s Retreat Friday, July 27, 2007Family Night at the Grand Ole Opry Friday, July 27, 2007AAIP Gourd Dance & Pow Wow Saturday, July 28, 2007Presidential Reception Sunday, July 29, 20075K Run & 1 Mile Walk Monday, July 30, 2007

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Welcome to Wind Spirit Teaching - Sharing the Wisdom of the Old Ways

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I have outlined a DESERT INTENSIVE PROGRAMS in the context ofthe Yaqui medicine traditions as well as those of other indigenousNative peoples. They incorporate age-old methodologies that havefacilitated wellness in individuals of all cultures, ages, and gender. Eachprogram addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual integrity ofeach person who participates.

Lench is a Yaqui Indian and traditional native healer from SouthernArizona who has worked with individuals and small groups in the SonoranDesert for more than twenty years. He collaborates with numerous medicaldoctors, health practitioners, therapists, and other traditional healers as acounselor, consultant, advisor, and spiritual guide.

Lench’s background includes work with numerous Native AmericanNations, as well as fifteen years as an advisor for Department of Defense onEthnic and Human Relations with an emphasis on Native Americantraditions and philosophies. He has worked as a counselor and teacher forover twenty years and lectures throughout the United States. In the fall of2000, Lench represented Native American Peoples before Pope John Paul IIat the World Mission Conference at the Vatican in Rome, Italy.

Two weeks after the events of September 11, 2001, he was invited to guideand assist Manhattan residents in a workshop dedicated to the healing ofemotional and spiritual trauma, which concluded with a ceremonial healingcircle held at Ground Zero.

Some of his work has been in cooperation with Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona,author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing and Coyote Wisdom. Dr.Mehl-Madrona is in private practice in Tucson, Arizona and is currentlyCoordinator for Integrative Psychiatry and System Medicine for theProgram in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College ofMedicine in Tucson. He has been referring patients for Desert Intensiveswith Lench for over twenty five years.

About Wind Spirit Teaching

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Since 2003, Lench has been working with Caroline Myss, New York Timesbest-selling author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Sacred Contracts. He wasinvited to introduce her most recent work, Invisible Acts of Power at itspremiere in Fall of 2004. Lench is included in the Experts Forum atCaroline’s website, myss.com. He is also a frequent Guest Speaker at theCaroline Myss Institute in Chicago. See calendar of events for upcomingdates.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ABOUT WIND SPIRITLench Archuleta: A Walk of Awakening in the Desert●

Lench Archuleta represents American Indian people at WorldMission Conference 2000 in Rome.

●

A Walk of Awakening in the DesertSusan Randall, Casa Grande Dispatch

He's not a doctor, but doctors send him clients. He's not a medicine man,although he uses stories and traditions learned from his Yaqui grandfather.His clients describe him as a friend, a teacher, a facilitator, a spiritual guide.

If you ask Lench Archuleta what he does, he'll tell you he takes people intothe desert and helps them journey within to understand and unlock parts ofthe self.

"Many people feel very, very detached from life," he said. "And they don'tknow how to find their way back.

"In 20 years of doing this work, I have noticed one common denominator,"he added. "People come to a time and point in their lives when they begin toask questions about their personal spirituality: 'What is spirit about? What ismy destiny? What is my direction?'

"Wise men and wise women and sages and mystics all come to this point intheir lives. And a lot have been drawn to the desert - Jesus, Moses, manyothers."

There is a special energy felt only in the desert, he said.

"And it helps us get in touch with who we are. Through the silence we feelthe profoundness of our creation. Because we are never alone. We are inconstant communication with creation in various ways. Animals, plants,events, weather - wind, rain - all speak to us and can be revealing."

Archuleta said his goal is always to help people become whole and morebalanced in their lives.

He was trained for the task by his Yaqui grandfather and the U.S. Army.

The oldest of 13 children in a family of migrant workers, Archuleta had a



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special relationship with his grandfather.

"He singled me out and taught me things he didn't teach the others,"Archuleta said. "'You need to know,' he told me. 'You're the one who'sgoing to need this information.'"

Archuleta joined the army in 1967 and served as a "tunnel rat" in Vietnam.

"I decided to stay in the army to put my life in the Creator's hands and seewhere it would take me," he said. "It's been an incredible journey."

After Vietnam, Archuleta was assigned to the Department of Defense'sEqual Opportunity Management Institute in Florida, where he taught humanand ethnic relations.

'Coyote Medicine'

While still in the army, he met Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, who later wouldwrite "Coyote Medicine," about integrating Western medicine andAmerican Indian healing traditions.

Mehl-Madrona, now clinical director of the Continuum Center for Healthand Healing at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and clinicalassistant professor of Family Practice and Epidemiology at the Universityof Pittsburgh School of Medicine, described his friendship with Archuletain the book.

"He took those of us lucky enough to know him out into the desert to learnwhat he knew. ...

"I learned to walk barefoot in the desert from the crazy man. I learned totalk to the animals and the insects I found there. I learned to talk - veryrespectfully, I assure you - to scorpions, Gila monsters, and rattlesnakes.Lynch (sic) had songs and mantras to sing, to let these beings know wewere there, and coming through. Lynch had no fear of these creatures. Howcould he after Vietnam?" (p. 246)

"Most people could benefit from working with him," Mehl-Madrona saidvia e-mail.

"I don't send him people who aren't motivated and who wouldn't benefit.But seriously, what person wouldn't benefit from sitting in the desert withLench and connecting with the earth?"

"... it is the individual with a compromised spirit who invites illness andinfection. Feelings of spiritual emptiness, depression, and doubt generateconditions that encourage internal cellular breakdown." (p. 237)

After venturing into the desert several times with Archuleta,Mehl-Madrona, who is half Cherokee, decided to take clients into the



desert.

"Lynch proved a willing accomplice: the two of us eventually led a numberof supplicants into the desert on quests such as these. The results were oftenremarkable." (p. 249)

Mehl-Madrona reported that 56 of the 116 people he led into the desert forintensive healing experiences reported cures that lasted at least five years.

"Ailments. Mostly cancer it seems. Also arthritis, angina, diabetes,depression, bipolar disorder, multiple sclerosis," Mehl-Madrona said in thee-mail.

"Lench was involved in many of those intensives."

(The full report of the five-year outcomes of Mehl-Madrona's desert healingintensives is available atwww.healing-arts.org/mehl-madrona/mmtradionalpaper.htm.)

"Conventional Western medicine stops with drugs and surgery,"Mehl-Madrona continued. "Lench goes further toward the soul. That'swhere real healing takes place."

When Archuleta retired from the Army in 1987, he tried other jobs, butpeople kept asking him for help, seeking direction or understanding of thelessons brought by illness.

"They came with cancer, AIDS, heartaches, body aches, mental andemotional aches," Archuleta said. "Finally I asked myself, 'What am Idoing?'

"Three years ago, I took a leap of faith. I wondered how we would survive,but people came more and more and I began lecturing and givingworkshops."

Room to change

Anne Gaudio, 64, was the first client Mehl-Madrona sent to Arizona City towork with Lench.

She had been in public relations in Pittsburgh, working mostly withnonprofit organizations. But in 1993, she began experiencing job stress thattriggered a post traumatic stress disorder, causing erratic fluctuations in herblood sugar.

"I was living my life through a cloud," she said in a telephone interview.

Her blood sugar would drop suddenly, causing vision problems, fatigue,terror, confusion and nightmares. If she was driving, she had to pull over.



"It's impossible to tell people that you spend every other day in bed," shewrote in her journal. "No one believes you are too exhausted to work orplay. And I, like many, discovered during the years of trying to get well thatthe 1993 onset was the retriggering of an earlier episode that had neverhealed."

"In 1995, I tried everything I could to get well," she said, "acupuncture,acupressure, Rieki, massage. They helped, but they didn't cure it."

Gaudio had been training to be a holistic health practitioner before the onsetof the stress disorder and began practicing in 1996.

In the fall of 1997, she attended a workshop presented by Mehl-Madrona inPittsburgh. Impressed by his approach, she became one of his patients. Hesent her to Archuleta the next May.

Gaudio said she drove to Arizona with a friend because she was not strongenough to drive alone.

"After I drove up to his house, I was terrified."

"Don't ever think being in a shaman's house is a piece of cake," she wrote inher journal. "Somewhere along the line the nature of reality begins tochange. And cause and effect move from the domain of philosophical andscientific conjecture into your daily life. Everything has meaning."

In the evenings, when the temperature dropped, Archuleta and his wife,Patricia, and infant son Elijah took Gaudio into the desert.

"Lench has no agenda of any sort," she said. "He's always looking for signsof Spirit and how to work with a person.

"That's fortunate," she added, "because I'm really a stubborn person. But hewas always willing to try something else. When he works with you, there'sroom for the unexpected. There's room for Spirit to come in."

Gaudio said she slowly began to change her perception.

"The quiet of the desert and the solitude of the desert reached me at a placewhere nothing else reached me. When you go deep into the desert, it is soquiet and so still. Something inside me shattered, so something new couldbegin to grow.

"What happened is that things began to shift inside me. By the time I leftLench, I had a totally different view of how life works. And I knew thatthere was room for me to change, there was room for my stress disorder tochange.

"I began to believe I was not alone. I had friends in the natural world -birds, trees."



After Gaudio left Lench, she went camping in the mountains of Colorado.

"And I've been wandering since then," she said. "I got rid of my life inPittsburgh when I came out here. My life is so different. I am so different."

Gaudio said it took about a year for her blood-sugar level to return tonormal. Now she lives most of the year in a tent, winters in the desert northof Yuma, summers in the mountains of Colorado.

"I drive into town and work out in a gym three days a week. I run again. Isleep a lot. I eat carefully. I spend a lot of time alone in the desert. I takegood care of myself - and I'm super."

'A metamorphosis every time'

Veronica Harris, 40, of Kent, Ohio, began working with Lench seven yearsago.

"It's a metamorphosis every time I've gone down there," she said. "It'samazing the influence he's had on my life."

Harris was sent to Archuleta by some friends, one a physician, who toldher: "It's time for you to go to the desert."

Recently divorced with three small children and back to work full time asan addiction therapist, Harris felt she no longer could cope.

"I felt like something awful was going on," she said. "I was very depressed,very scared, very lost."

Harris called Archuleta and wanted to visit, but she had just started a newjob and had no money.

"There's no way I can come down," she told him.

But within 48 hours, her employer offered time off with pay, her motherand ex-husband offered to care for the children and she had charged a planeticket.

Harris said she had no idea what to expect in Arizona, but brought her newhiking boots and a backpack full of self-help books.

"Hermana (sister)," Archuleta told her, "if you need to read something,write it down and then read it. Put those books away." And when they wentto the desert for the first time: "Take those clod hoppers off and walk inyour bare feet."

Harris said Archuleta taught her, "Creator wants us to do four things: tolove, to dance, to sing and to create."



She began to see herself as a channel, and working with Archuleta as aprocess of cleansing the channel, so the Creator's love and creativity canpour through.

"Lench woke me up," Harris said. "He was like my spiritual midwife.Lench helped me remember how to live in awe."

Harris said she has been a full-time student now for the last three years (shegraduated with honors from Kent State University last year and started amaster's degree) and is now a research assistant at KSU's Institute for theStudy and Prevention of Violence.

She never has been as broke, Harris said, but she still manages to come toArizona City two or three times a year.

"Spiritual growth is hard work," she said. "It's a process of letting go of alife that no longer fits."

Harris said Archuleta taught her not to allow fear to rule her choices, thatshe will always have what she needs.

"I've learned to listen to my heart and do the next right thing," she said."Sometimes doing the next right thing is very difficult."

The first step in her healing was to be seen.

"Lench speaks to the father wound," she said, explaining that we all need afather or father figure who has seen us as we really are and appreciates us.

"The power Don Lorenzo (a term of respect) gives people when he seesthem and they feel seen can be both frightening and liberating," she said.

"I don't think he knows the full impact he has on people. It's on a cellularlevel. To recognize that you are being seen is felt in the heart."

'An ancient solution'

"In all traditional medicine, Native American, Asian - even naturopathic,which is European - you can't separate mind, body and spirit," said Dr.Vance Inouye, supervising physician at the Southwest NaturopathicMedical Center in Scottsdale, the clinic for the Southwest College ofNaturopathic Medicine.

In the West there is a large gap between medicine and psychotherapy, hesaid. A patient with a chronic condition may go from doctor to doctorwithout success before someone eventually sends him to a therapist.

"But that's a large gap in which a lot of good work could be done," Inouyesaid.



"When someone has an obstacle or challenge in their life, and I don'tperceive they will benefit from psychotherapy - they really aren'tdysfunctional, they just need some guidance - that's pretty much when Idirect them to Lench.

"What Lench does falls into the gap that we tend to ignore in the West. Hehas an interesting way to go about getting an individual beyond hisobstacles."

Inouye, who also teaches martial arts and health training at the Heaven andEarth Institute for Health and Longevity in Tempe, said every two to threemonths he finds someone who can benefit from Lench's work.

"He has produced exceptional results with many of the people I've senthim," Inouye said. "He's very committed to the healing process, sometimesto his detriment financially. And as Dr. Madrona described in 'CoyoteMedicine,' Lench ekes out a living doing things that benefit so manypeople."

Inouye said Western medicine, the way it is practiced today, is probablyless than 100 years old. Native American and Chinese medicine are severalthousand years old. And while conventional Western medicine hasundeniable benefits, traditional medicine has much to offer, too.

"Although Lench's methods may be described as 'unorthodox' byscience-based practitioners, his approach, in my view, is an ancient solutionto a modern-day problem.

"I find it interesting that Native American healing methods closely resemblethe methods of the Kahunas (native healers) of Hawaii," added Inouye, whois from Hawaii.

"Indigenous cultures seem to have healing methods that are similar. Itdoesn't seem to matter where they are in the world, they incorporate thesame basic principles of healing."

'An old friend'

Herbalist Jim Fain of Eureka Springs, Ark., said he met Archuleta aboutthree years ago in Los Angeles, where Fain, who has a doctorate in clinicalpsychology, practiced Gestalt therapy - a holistic type of psychotherapy -for 15 years.

"He seemed like an old friend to me," Fain said. "There was an immediateand deep comfort. I understood him and he understood me - which doesn'toccur to me that often."

Fain began sending clients who were stuck - "who couldn't make a decisionto even make a decision."



Fain said he has no idea what Lench did to help his clients get unstuck, but"it worked every time."

"Absolutely," Fain said. "They would come back with a sense of choice - abroader way of looking at things."

'Everyone is different'

"What Lench does with everyone is different," said Annemarie Mahoney ofPeoria, 47, who manages a health-care company and went to Archuleta forpersonal growth.

"I knew intellectually that life is easier than I was making it and morejoyful. But I really needed to go back to a place in my heart, where Lenchtook me, to be able experience it and live it.

"Lench is an excellent facilitator," she added. "He goes with what is rightfor you.

"And you don't even know what's happening at the time. You're not awareof the magic he's performing to help you through."

'Jumping Flea'

"Lench allows people to see - in my case - what fear really is. And we allhave fears," said Mahoney's husband, John, 47, who owns a recordingstudio.

John said he was so impressed with Archuleta that he invited him to talk toan audience, so John could record the lecture and give Archuleta the masterCD to make copies to sell at future lectures.

"He knows that everyone is conditioned from birth," John said. "So Lenchtells stories his grandfather told him, like the 'Jumping Flee.'

"Lench went to his grandfather and asked: 'How can I serve the people?'"

His grandfather grabbed a jar and went into the yard, where he found a fleaand put it in the jar.

Fleas jump, John said. When his grandfather put the lid on the jar, the fleabumped into the lid a few times, then stopped jumping so high. And whenhis grandfather took the lid off, the flea wouldn't jump out of the jar.

"That's how most human beings are," John said. "We condition ourselvesnot to jump out of the jar or color outside the lines. But once we becomeaware we are in a jar, we can allow ourselves to jump out."

"Coyote Medicine" by Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona is available at the Casa



Grande Public Library, call number 615.882 MEH. Lench Archuleta's Website is www.windspiritteaching.com. More information about alternativehealing can be found at www.healing-arts.org.

©Casa Grande Valley Newspaper 2001

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Arizona City resident Lench Archuleta was selected to represent theAmerican Indian people at World Mission Conference 2000 in Rome inOctober.Susan Randall, Casa Grande Dispatch

While there, he was one of four people chosen to address the crowd of1,500 delegates from 126 nations.

"My heart was beating so hard I could hear it through my chest," Archuletasaid.

He had been selected as a delegate by Miriam Heverline, educationcoordinator for the Pontifical Mission Societies office in the CatholicDiocese of Scranton, Pa.

Heverline had been asked to find delegates by the societies' nationalorganization, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in New York.

As she was compiling a list of names, Heverline received a call from NewYork asking her to make sure that at least one delegate was an AmericanIndian who would talk at the conference about traditional spirituality.

Heverline said she was "wracking her brain."

"All of a sudden it hit me," she said. "Who would be more perfect?"

Heverline had met Archuleta last summer when she could find no place inArizona to take high school students on a mission experience amongAmerican Indians.

Recommended by a mission brother, Lench invited the group - 10teen-agers, five chaperones and a priest who acted as spiritual director - tospend a week in his family's three-bedroom house in Arizona City.

During the days, the teen-agers volunteered at the Blackwater CommunityCenter, at a nursing home, a day-care center and a soup kitchen. In the lateafternoons, Archuleta took them into the desert.

"Our group just loved it," Heverline said. "They came to understand theimportance of silence.



"There was no wind, but we could feel a breeze come across our faces,almost like the breath of God. You come very close to the presence of Godwhen you go into the desert."

Everyone meditated. Lench chanted and drummed. A visiting Lenapefamily taught a circle dance. The teen-agers walked barefoot in the desert.The priest led evening prayers in the desert and drummed with Lench.

"It was truly an amazing, a wonderful, wonderful week," Heverline said,adding that it is ironic that she had almost called off the trip to Arizona.

"There were so many problems and no place to stay. But I had a feeling Ihad to find a way.

"Now, looking back, it was all for a reason. That's how I knew who tocontact to take as a delegate. He gave a wonderful talk."

On World Missions Sunday, more than 100,000 people filled St. Peter'sSquare to see the pope.

Each national group of delegates had to pick one person to carry theirnation's flag and another to carry a basket of soil. The pope was to plant anolive tree of peace in the soil of all nations in the Vatican garden.

"So we put all the names in a hat," Heverline said.

A man from Puerto Rico was drawn to carry the U.S. flag. Archuleta carriedthe soil.

"So we had a Native American carry the soil and someone from Puerto Rico- which is trying to become a state - to carry the U.S. flag," Heverline said.

"When I talk about the Holy Spirit working, that's what I mean. We nevercould have planned that. Just like we never could have planned Lench.Everything just worked out."

©Casa Grande Valley Newspaper 2001

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mailto:[email protected]

A Wave of Compassion DVD

Wind Spirit Creations

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Sometimes incredible people come intoyour life that touch the heart in a waythat leaves an indelible mark. That'swhat Jody McNicholas has done. I'veknown Jody for years and at times I justhave to sit and witness her passion forreaching out to folks and hearing andseeing them in way no one else can. Hercompassion and sensitivity is withoutbounds and it is exhibited in everythingshe does. When she asked me to be apart of her Dream in bringing Addictioninto the light from the standpoint ofhonoring the dignity and Spirit of thoseafflicted, I had no idea it would evolveinto such a powerful documentary. Icannot say enough about it. When yousee it you will be affected, as I was, andthen Healing will happen within you as well. There is a reason this film iscalled: A Wave of Compassion. See it for yourself and then give one tosomeone you love.

Thank you for your incredible gift Jody. Information about this film can bereceived at:

Price: $35. Please include $3 shipping and handling for single CD. Foreach additional CD, add $1 s/h.

“Sharing the Wisdom of the Old Ways” - CD In the spring of the year 2000 a group gathered together in Phoenix, AZ.In his first live recording, Lench shares the teachings of his grandfather andthe “Old Ones.” He talks of the energy of the Cardinal Directions andpoignantly reveals how our conditioning gets us “stuck” in our perceptions,and how we can free ourselves from these entanglements by reaching outand touching the world around us. He affirms the power of giving and thenature of exchange. Through storytelling and personal experiences, Lenchoffers insight to wholeness and balance by integrating the “Wisdom of theOld Ways” in these modern times. 65 minutes




Sample this CD

Price: $15. Please include $2 shipping and handling for single CD.For each additional CD, add 50 cents s/h.

Send Check or Money order payable to:WindSpirit @ P.O. Box 1183, Arizona City, AZ 85223

Hand-made Rattles

Rattles are made of rawhide, cut and stitched byhand. The average size is 5 to 6 inches in diameter.Rattle heads can be hand painted or left to thesimple beauty of natural hide, while each isdecorated with rabbit fur and glass beads. Rattlehandles are individually hand selected from variousroots and specific trees and cacti of the Sonorandesert. All are picked in a sacred manner with thegifting of tobacco and prayer. Contents include antstones, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco, corn, and prayer. Itake great care and pride in my rattles and consider them to be sacred items.They should be treated as such. No Two Rattles Are Alike.

Click here for information about workshops to make your own rattle.Price of $100 includes shipping and handling

Prayer and Talking Sticks

Again, each one is hand made, hand painted, and specially crafted. Theseare special order commissioned pieces only. Each one is made fromspecially selected wood pieces from the Sonoran desert, and honors theanimal kingdom, plant kingdom, and the winged ones. See photos. No twoare alike.Call for prices and photos of current pieces.

Drum Beaters



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These are high quality, hand made, leather wrapped drum beaters withcushioned heads and they average 15 to 18 inches in length. Each one isdifferent and all are beautiful, made from found cactus wood.

Price of $25 includes shipping and handling.

Painted Steer Skulls

Each steer skull is hand painted withunique Southwestern and NativeAmerican designs. These exquisitepieces are authentically decorated withfeathers, leather and glass beads. Customorders and commissions are welcome.See photos. No two are alike

Prices range from $250-500 and do notinclude shipping.

Make checks or money orders payable to:WindSpirit @ P.O. Box 1183, Arizona City, AZ 85223




PRACTICAL COACHING

I was very fortunate when I was growing up. Every chance I had I wouldlisten to the wisdom of my Elders, especially the Medicine Teachers. Theirteachings were very simple and very profound. Their teachings were rootedin the natural world. Everything around us was a wonderful gift and alesson and they taught me how my head gets in the way of seeing thesethings. My head would prevent me from hearing what my heart was saying.They taught me how to integrate the body, mind, and Spirit. "Listen to yourbody" they would say, "it will reflect what is happening in your head. Andyour head will reflect and shape your Spirit. Each has to be aligned or therewill be no balance. If you have no balance you will keep falling, over andover again. Sometimes you will need to seek someone who can see yourimbalance better than you can. If you listen, they can teach you how towalk in balance again and regain the strength of your own spirit."

We live in a world where Time is our single greatest adversary. Many havevoiced their desire to come and spend time in the desert, but commitmentto family, job, community and personal life will not allow it. It is simplynot practical. So how can we maintain balance and still attend to the voiceof our Spirit? I offer this alternative. Through the kind persistence of folks Iam currently working with, and in order to reach a larger number of people,I am increasing my availability to work by phone. By using the Wisdom ofthese Medicine Teachers, it is entirely possible to create lasting Wholenessand Balance of the Mind, Body, and Spirit. Call 520-466-5163 forscheduling and availability. You may also e-mail.

Balance to you,

Lench

Spiritual Coaching

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THE CURTIS COLLECTION

Cheyenne Sweat Lodge

From Volume 6, The North American Indian

by Edward S. Curtis

With the Cheyenne the sweat bath is one of the mostessential religious observances. Through its agency theirpurified minds and bodies are brought in accord with thesupernatural powers. Even when it is employed in healingdisease the thought is that the power of the spirits, not thesteam, will expel the sickness.

Certain medicine men have the right to build sweatlodges and conduct the ceremony, and they can impartthe prerogative to others. In this way alone can a manobtain the sweat lodge medicine, that is, the right to havea sweat lodge built and then to preside at the ceremony.After the promise of valuable presents the medicine maninstructs the novice, while his wife teaches the wife of thelatter her duties. The transfer of the medicine of healingand fighting is also involved in the transaction. When aman first receives the sweat lodge medicine he hasseventeen willows used in the framework, and as hegrows older he changes to twenty-five, then to forty-one,

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and finally to one hundred and one. These are thrust intothe ground, bent over, and bound tip to base in pairs, soas to form eight, twelve, twenty, or fifty arches, the oddwillow crossing the framework from east to west with itsbutt thrust into the ground in front and its tip bounddown to other withes in the rear, representing thebackbone and tail of the buffalo, which the structuresymbolizes. The origin of the sweating ceremony isascribed to the buffalo, and buffalo skull is always placedin front of and looking toward the lodge. One one side ofthe structure the arches are colored with black earthpaint, on the other side with red. Also two of the manystones collected for heating are colored black, two red,and one half black and half red. In the centre of thecircular hole, about eighteen inches in diameter andtwelve in depth, for the reception of the heated stones;and from here to the entrance in a strip about eightinches wide the sod is removed.

With his invited guests the giver of the sweat enters thesudatory, and sitting at the back, opposite the entrance,draws with the tip of his finger in the exposed soil of thestone pit two parallel lines with each pair of endsconnected by a V-shaped indentation. This figure, wich iscalled hetanihya (cf. Hetan, man) is always made invirgin soil exposed for a cermonial purpose. (In former

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days, if the participants were preparing for a raid, or fora buffalo hunt, he next indicated hoof prints around theedge of the hole.) Then he fills his pipe, extends themouthpiece to the four directions, smokes, and starts itabout the circle. (If the sweat were being taken inanticipation of an expedition against the enemy, any manwho wished to have the help of the spirits to kill a mantouched the mouthpiece to the figure in the stone-pit; or ifhe wished to capture horses, or to kill many buffalo, asthe case might be, he thus gave smoke to the hoof prints.)Four pipefuls of tobacco are thus smoked, and the pipe isthen filled a fifth time and laid behind the pit. The stonesbeing called for, the two black ones are brought in firstand placed at the nearer corners of the hole. The red onesare next placed at the outer corners and the party coloredone is laid in the centre. Then juniper leaves or sweetgrass is dropped on each stone, and the remainder arecarried in. The giver of the sweat lifts the pipe, points it tothe cardinal directions, goes out, passing to the left of thestone pit, and lays it against the buffalo skull, the stembetween the horns. Each man takes his medicine bundlefrom the ground, where it has been lying in front of him,and places it on top of the sweat lodge, and the wife of themaster of ceremonies deposits a vessel of water in thepathway leading from the stone pit to the entrance. Thecover is lowered, and the woman with ceremoniousmotions pours a cup of water and passes it to her

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husband, who starts it round the circle, each man takinga sip, which he spits into his hands and rubs over hisentire body. Last the head man takes a mouthful andspurts the water five times upon the stones, and while theothers grasp their rattles, he begins to pray to his ownparticular guardian spirit, that is, to his medicine, and toall the other spirits, for those who have come into hissweat lodge that any present sickness may pass awayfrom them, that they and their children and relatives maylive long, that prosperity may be the lot of all. Thefollowing is a typical prayer: "Spirits hear me; thinkespecially of me, miserable man. Those that enter mysweat lodge for safety, going out may they leave behindall that is bad. Take thought of them; that good maycome to them take thought. Let horses of different colorscome to them. Ye spirits, my different wives I have givento you, that I might be permitted to speak to you. Mywives from you I make no attempt to hide, that I might bepermitted to speak to you. In your sweat lodge the searchhas been renewed. Stones of different colors they haveheated, woods of different colors they have erected. Yourpipe is filled; come and smoke. When they go out of mysweat lodge may some good go with them. To the placeswhence they came, may they all take good luck. May alltheir relatives receive good; their children let themembrace with joy. Let their way lie along the good road.Especially remember me, poor as I am; help me. That our

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patients may arise with ease, take thought of them; letthem once more walk about with joy. Everywhere indivers manners I have tortured myself; may the spiritspity me. Who are ye that taught this custom? I do notclaim to know anything; I am poor; I am far fromknowing anything. Old men taught me this way, and if Imake a mistake, turn it into good. Especially rememberpoor me. Everything I ask of you, grant me. Henahi!"

At the close of the invocation the men shake their rattlesfour times; then the singing begins, the master of thesudatory beginning and all the others joining. Eight songsare given; but these may be one song rendered eighttimes, or two songs each rendered four times, or foursongs each rendered twice. Prayers sometimes intervene.Near the end of the singing the woman throws water onthe stones. The first period ended, the cover is raisedfront and back for a few mintues, the woman takes adrink of water and passes a cupful to each man, the coveris lowered again, and there follows a second series ofsongs, equal to the first in number of its parts and of theirrepetition. Thus the four divisions of the entire set ofsongs are used. One such set comprising eight songs (theeighth being a repetition of one of the others) is herepresented. Two of these songs, each repeated four times,are given in each interval of sweating.

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When the fourth time the cover is raised, the men orwomen or girls attending receive the rattles, which, oneby one, are passed out at the front. The rattles they placeon the right side of the buffalo skull side by side andpointing toward the lodge, and the medicine bundlesbehind the skull. For the last time the cover is dropped,the remaining water is dashed on the stones, and after aninterval without singing, all come out, some to plunge intothe water, others to squat about the fire and smoke thepipe that has been leaning against the buffalo skull.

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Dream the Shaman's Dream Journey to the Center of your Self Followthe Path of the White Wolf Dance your Sacred Dream Sing your Soul

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Rev. Robin Tekwelus Youngblood,Okanagon/Tsalagi, has been a student of herheritage for many years. She has studied withIndigenous elders of her own tribes, along withAfrican, Siberian and Aboriginal leaders. Robinbelieves that the only way to create harmony andavoid disaster in these times is to learn to attuneourselves to our Earth Mother's natural rhythmsthrough ritual, ceremony, chant and dance."I love to sing, honor the ancestors, and share theancient teachings with others. Please join me forDreaming Shaman Workshops, Retreats andCeremonies where together we can bring balance toMother Earth and All Our Relations."

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Dreaming Shaman and Rev. Robin Tekwelus Youngblood willassist you to design ceremonies for any important occasion inyour life!! From blessing a new home to your wedding or vowrenewal; motherhood, baby blessings and consecrations; Ritesof Passage rituals for young people making the transition toadulthood; crone crowning ceremonies, initiations, or any otherritual you need to honor the transformations and passages ofyour life.

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Phone: 1-808-573-2784

Ceremonies

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http://www.dreamingshaman.com/books_cds.htm

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http://www.dreamingshaman.com/Video/WmnWvgWrlds.wmv


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Copyright © T. GhostWolf Davidson.All rights reserved.

Piracy / Copyright NoticeBreak out of someone

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Webrings

Martha Jane KolmanSoul mate, best friend, partner, wife

7 August 1956 - 12 June 2007

Last updated: Thursday, 09-Aug-2007 01:11:07 PDT

GhostWolf - Out of the Abyss

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Music: Songs of Distant Earth - Sequenced by and courtesy of a friend of SheoWolf.Please do not copy and/or use without obtaining SheoWolf's permission.

Heritage: American Indian

Why "American Indian" ?

...and not "Native American", "Amerind", or "Indian" ?

Spiritual and Cultural Genocide

My own personal view of how American Indians are viewed and treated by thegovernment - and the people of America.

For further information about the destruction of the American Indian culture, please visitthese sites:

Silent Genocide

This article - and the information referenced at the end of the article - provide afurther perspective of the subtle but pervasive destruction of the American Indianculture.

Iron Wing's Children: A Souix Story on Racism

This is a very blunt and brutally honest view of the on-going discrimination anddenegration of the American Indian, and will be an uncomfortable site for many.Clem Iron Wing pulls no punches as he shares very unpleasant truths that mostwould rather not face. It is said that "Truth Hurts" - keep that in mind as you read.

American Indian Websites and Links

American Indian Web Rings

Home Page

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Personal

Biography

Art

Poetry

Writings

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Wolves

Web Links

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GhostWolf's American Indian Page

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/index.shtml (1 of 2) [9/22/2007 6:22:44 PM]




http://members.aol.com/SheoWolf

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/wai.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/wai.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/genocide.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/genocide.shtml

http://www.iwchildren.org/silentgenocide.htm

http://www.iwchildren.org/silentgenocide.htm

http://www.iwchildren.org/

http://www.iwchildren.org/

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/natlinks.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/natlinks.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/natrings.shtml

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Last updated: Tuesday, 04-Oct-2005 21:30:06 PDT

GhostWolf's American Indian Page

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/index.shtml (2 of 2) [9/22/2007 6:22:44 PM]



else's frames here

GhostWolf's Art

Art - drawing with pencil, charcoal, and pen; painting with oils, acrylics, and water colors - has been and is one waywhereby I can express feelings and emotions that I cannot (at the time) share face to face with another.

Some of my drawings are somewhat lifelike, such as my racoons and dogs; others are symbolic of my feelings andthoughts during the time I created the art; and, in those times, my artwork is an integral part of my recovery.

Art, Poetry, and Writing Web Rings:Please check out the work of other artists of the Web.

Click thumbnail drawing for larger version.

The firsttime I

drew thislittle fella

was in1966,while

visitingmy Aunt

inPheonix,Arizona.

My familyconsidershim my

trademark.

1971 - Inspired by watching racoons in BigBasin Redwoods State Park in California.

1972 - A whimsicalmouse couple inspired

by my paternalgrandparents.

1972 - Surrealisticacrylic painting of abass jumping after a

frog.

January 1974 - Pencil sketches done of photographs in Walter Chandler's Book ofPuppies and Dogs. © Walter Chandler

GhostWolf's Art

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Art/poodle.jpg

February 1980 - Donefor a friend who does

not smoke.

4/9/1995 - Ever feelsomething was

watching you in yourdreams? ...this one iseffective in reverse

video. Within minutesof completing it, I

wrote the poem DreamMists.

4/15/1995 - This wasdrawn on a restaurantnapkin one eveningwhile having dinnerout with my wife... I

was feeling very muchat peace...

4/17/1995 - Alsodrawn on a restaurantnapkin; again, havingdinner with my wifeMartha; and again, at

peace...

5/5/1995 - Mypartner and wife

Martha loveslionesses; so when I

noticed that shereally liked the

original photograph,I drew this for her

using thephotograph.

8/10/1995 -Who hasn'tdreamt of

desolation atone time or

another?Also

effective inreversevideo.

9/11/1995- Somesay the

dark agesare over...are they? I

neverforgot...

9/24/1995 - Wantingto strike back at

them... Ending thedark ages... maybe?...Also effective in

reverse video.

9/27/1995 -Another

restaurantnapkin...anotherpeaceful

night withMartha,

discussingspirituality...

GhostWolf's Art


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Art/nosmoke.gif

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10/1/1995 - Beginningto learn that they lied...

and breaking free.10/31/1995 -

Abreactions andflashbacks are not

fun...

11/13/1995 - late1995, a time of greatstress and anger for

me; fighting the desireto strike back at

everyone who had hurtme and is hurting me;expressing that anger -safely? - via art. Alsointeresting in reverse

video.

11/18/1995 - Not all ofmy dragons are

fierce...

12/15/1995 - Stillworking through

anger, still hurting,still wanting to strikeback... and doing so

only via this art. Alsoaffective in reverse

video.

1/15/1996 - Learningto defend myself...

well...

1/22/1996 - Asymbolic

representation ofmyself and my brotherDanny... which of us is

the wolf, and whichthe dragon? ...perhaps

both

4/1/1996 - Somedragons simply

watch... and wait...

4/15/96 - My Dad diedin my arms in 1956 ...I never did get to say

goodbye...

GhostWolf's Art


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Art/acceptance.jpg

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Art/watcher.jpg

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Art/lastgoodbye.jpg

6/2/96 - Starting to getback into painting,

with acrylics... I havealways loved the

desert...

7/8/96 - Never didforget... just watched,learned, dreamed of

the day I'd be bigenough, strong enough

to go back... do tothem what they did to

me...

2/15/97 - This one wasdrawn on a placemat at

a restaurant whileMartha and I waited -

and waited - andwaited for our food

(grin)

5/5/97 - There aretimes I simply want to

be left alone...

5/20/02 - Sometimes recovery means realizing andaccepting uncomfortable truths about self, and then

doing something to resolve those issues - even if thatmeans starting once again from rock bottom.

Home Page

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Poetry

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Last updated: Monday, 04-Sep-2006 15:53:58 PDT

GhostWolf's Art


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else's frames here

Out of the Abyss

Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse affect a person for life. Many survivors go on to have productivelives by modern standards - yet the repercussions remain, and are expressed in as many different waysas there are survivors.

Some survivors learn skills or develop abilities that help them externalize the internal pains - skydiving, rock climbing, hunting; cooking, sports, competitive games; music, art, writing, or poetry. Manysurvivors have several outlets, several ways of expressing their pain; ways of trying to express therepercussions of their abuse to an unhearing and uncaring world.

Poetry is one of mine. This volume expresses only a small part of the impact such abuse has had in mylife.

Thank you for reading.

T. GhostWolf Davidson

Chapter 1 - Descent

Orphans and Fragments

Mists 1

America

Stars

Pathos

Time 1

Time 2

The Reaper

Ballad of the Lost Beard

Weariness

Doom

Tears 1

Abyss

Grubs

Driftwood

Terminus

Eros

Nightfall 1

Om

The Eternal Savage

Twiliught

Mists II

Shadows

Apocalypse I

Trapped

Dawn

Journey II

Click -

Freedom

Starlight

Dream I

Silence

Apocalypse II

Memory

Entropos

E=MC Squared

Mists III

Leviathan

Night of Terror

The Predator

Trolls

The Source

Lost Haven

GhostWolf's Poetry: Out of the Abyss

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/thereaper.shtml

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/weariness.shtml

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/driftwood.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/terminus.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/eros.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/nightfall-1.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/om.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/savage.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/twilight.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/mists-2.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/shadows.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/apocalypse-1.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/bondage.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/dawn.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/journey-2.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/sigma-6.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/freedom.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/starlight.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/dream-1.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/silence.shtml


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/memory.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/entropos.shtml

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/leviathan.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/nightofterror.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/predator.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/trolls.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/source.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/losthaven.shtml

Merry Christmas

The Super Ape

Journey 1

Waves

Winter

Burial

Chapter 2 - Retreat into Denial

Question 1

Ruins

Fantasia

Quest

Stygian Shore

Infinity

Cycle

Smokey

Prison

Question II

The Wanderer

Dream II

Shells

Night Train

Solitary Mind

Wild Wind

Tears II

Midnight Harbor

Summer's Sun

Nightwinds

Auf Wiedersehen

Question III

Sea

Hermitage

Matthew 19:6

Shane

Sayonara

Sands of Time

Chapter 3 - Breaking Free

The Guardian

Broken Dreams

The Journey

The Lost Ones

Shape Shift

The Storm

The Sanctuary

One Man's Dream

Encounter in the Night

To Take... To Hold

Centipede

Destiny - Or Karma?

The Midnight Sky

Voice in the Night

Dream Mists

Father's Day

There are MonstersOut There

Dark Sun Rising

I Didn't Know...

If you enjoy reading poetry and/or writing poetry, please visit thePoetry Passions forum, where you can post your poetry (all copyrights are protected),

read the poetry of others, and comment on the poetry you read.



http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/merryxmas.shtml

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/shells.shtml

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/solitary.shtml

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/shane.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/sayonara.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/sandsoftime.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/breaking.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/guardian.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/brokendreams.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/journey.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/lostones.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/shapeshift.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/thestorm.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/sanctuary.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/onemansdream.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/encounter.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/takehold.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/centipede.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/destiny.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/midnightsky.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/nightvoice.shtml


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/fathersday.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/monsters.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/monsters.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/darksun.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/didntknow.shtml

http://poetrypassions.proboards28.com/

Home Page

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Biography

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Last updated: Wednesday, 17-Nov-2004 11:54:50 PST














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GhostWolf: Descent

In late 1959, the California legal system took me and my siblings into protective custody. My sister and I were placedwith my maternal grandparents; my other siblings eventually went back to my mother and stepfather. I soon learned thatmy guardians - my grandparents - did not want to hear about what happened; nor did any of my relatives.

I started writing in 1962. Unfortunately, my guardians found my poetry in 1966, and destroyed much of it as theyconsidered it "unhealthy". I continued writing in secret, and managed to find a good hiding place for what I wrote.


Mists 1

America

Stars

Pathos

Time 1

Time 2

The Reaper

Ballad of the Lost Beard

Weariness

Doom

Merry Christmas

The Super Ape

Tears 1

Abyss

Grubs

Driftwood

Terminus

Eros

Nightfall 1

Om

The Eternal Savage

Twiliught

Mists II

Journey 1

Waves

Shadows

Apocalypse I

Trapped

Dawn

Journey II

Click -

Freedom

Starlight

Dream I

Silence

Apocalypse II

Winter

Burial

Memory

Entropos

E=MC Squared

Mists III

Leviathan

Night of Terror

The Predator

Trolls

The Source

Lost Haven

Return to the Art, Writing, and Poetry Webrings Page

[ Main TOC ] [ Chapter 1 ] [ Chapter 2 ] [ Chapter 3 ]

Home Page

EmailGhostWolf

Personal

Biography

Art

Poetry

Writings

GhostWolf: Descent

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http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/thereaper.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/lostbeard.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/weariness.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/doom.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/merryxmas.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/superape.shtml


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/abyss.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/grubs.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/driftwood.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/terminus.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/eros.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/nightfall-1.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/om.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/savage.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/twilight.shtml



http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/waves.shtml

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/shadows.shtml


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/bondage.shtml

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Last updated:Wednesday, 17-Nov-2004 11:54:39 PST

GhostWolf: Descent

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/descent.shtml (2 of 2) [9/22/2007 6:24:40 PM]








else's frames here


These are thoughts I've written down over the years, in the margins of books, on random scraps of paper...

It is in silence that we meet --

-- memories have no voice...

I possess empathy --

My heart and soul cry aloud

in the sorrows and griefs

of those I meet...

When my burden of sorrow grows too great,

when my life is crushed and beaten,

I turn once again to the soothing sea

to walk along the glistening sands

and to listen to the surging waves...

I saw eternity go by --

She stopped but a moment,

winked at me,

and then walked on with God...

Thundering surf crashes

upon the dark and distant shore,

swept by swirling winds,


http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/orphans.shtml (1 of 4) [9/22/2007 6:25:33 PM]




mantled by ebon night, companion of my soul...

The hungry waves consume my wandering imprints,

but the ache in my heart

is not food for surf and wind;

only for my haunted memory...

We walk together slowly through the night

sadly drifting under heaven's sight

in the lonely cold star's light

not knowing where to turn

to ease our burdened souls...

I walk with only the stars to light my way;

the cold night has whispered things to say...

The animal within me sleeps

-- when in the company of others;

but prowls and rages all the lonely night...

The road lies before me

fading into the distance

and half-light of dusk...

Brown, brittle leaves rustle

as tired feet move on...

`Tis funny -- this language of ours;

it can express ethereal thoughts

in exquisite manner,



and yet fail

so totally

at communicating the being behind the words...

My mind seeks the voids of interstellar space

to become companion and one

with the jeweled galaxies pirouetting in ebon night

far beyond the reach of greedy, gregarious man...

A lone candle flickers

moth circles

and unites with flame...

Light fades

a dying soul

in surrender to night...

I welcome what friendship may come my way,

and rejoice in memory that it was,

once it has gone...

Enjoy each moment and seek therein hidden treasures; take not for granted each word and nuance, each gesture and twitch; for each has its own existential value from which interest can be gained...

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else's frames here

Mists I

In the corridors and caverns of my memory

I shall run forever along pine-shaded paths,

wild woodland paths bordering the wilder,

lonelier sea...

Forever I'll hear grey sea-gulls laugh and wheel,

rumpling the salt-sea air;

forever I'll sigh when I see the sun smile

through feather-needled pine trees...

Forever I'll watch the fog mists

creeping through the silenced dark,

slipping among the trees, following twilight's feet...

Forever I'll run and feel the splash of the rain,

liquid fingers reaching down to join sad skies

and me...

In the corridors and caverns of my memory,

I shall run forever along pine-shaded paths

paths lonely, except that twilight,

in her veil of friendly fog,

runs with me

February 6, 1966

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Mists 1

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Mists 1

http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Reflections/Poetry/mists-1.shtml (2 of 2) [9/22/2007 6:26:06 PM]










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