The Sacred Drum

The Story of the Sacred Drum (adapted from Dr. Anton Treuer’s telling)

The mid 1800s was a time of extreme violence among Indian tribes and between those tribes and the United States government. In 1862, there was a major conflict between the Dakota and the US government. Two regiments were pulled away from the Civil War to completely evict the Dakota from Minnesota. During one government raid, a Dakota woman fled her encampment and was pursued by US soldiers. Eventually, she came to a lake. There, she heard the voice of the Great Spirit, who told her to go under water, and she would stay alive. She stayed under water for four days, as the soldiers continued to search for her. During that time, the Great Spirit gave her a dream. He said it was against his will for the Indian people to kill each other and he gave her a vision of a drum and said it would be a path to peace. She saw men seated around the drum and women surrounding them. Both were singing. This Great Spirit told her that the men around the drum should be men who killed Ojibwe, and that eventually, they would run out of men who had killed Ojibwe. After this vision, the spirit told her to leave the water, go to the soldiers’ camp, and break her fast. She went in, invisible to the soldiers, and ate in their mess tent. Then she returned to her people and relayed what had happened. Right away everyone believed her. They began to make the drum she described out of a washtub, but before it could be finished, the US soldiers came on another raid. When this happened, an Indian hit the washtub with a stick, and it immediately transformed into the drum. Upon hearing it, the soldiers fled.

On Saturday, our class got to attend a sacred drum ceremony for the Thunder Bird Drum at the East Lake Community. The ceremony was hosted by drum chiefs David Niib Abid and Mushkoob Abid on property that used to belong to the East Lake Ojibwe but had been seized by the government and turned into a wildlife preserve. The location was an incredibly beautiful place—a ridge overlooking Rice Lake, covered with lilac and swarming with dragon flies.

The ceremony, which had actually started the previous evening, consisted of many segments of traditional songs. In each song, a spirit was represented by a specific person. During some songs, people simply stood and bent their knees at the beet of the drum. For other songs, men, women, or both danced around the drum. There were several tobacco offerings to the drum, and the pipe was passed around the room multiple times.

During one of the breaks, Mushkoob Abid told us about the history of the East Lake community—how they had been homeless for a long time after they were removed from their land and how now many of the tribe members were scattered. He also took us to Sandy Lake, which is known for the terrible tragedy that occurred there in 1850. In an attempt to relocate Michigan and Wisconsin Ojibwe tribes to free up farmland, the United States government announced that Indians would need to travel to Sandy Lake, Minnesota to receive the annuity goods it had promised. Although the government said that the goods would arrive no later than October 25, it didn’t deliver them until December 3, hoping that the Indians would decide not to return to their homelands. Meanwhile, about 400 Ojibwe perished from illness, hunger and exposure—either waiting for the food or trying to get home. Mushkoob also showed us the dam where the Mississippi flowes into the lake, a spot that was teeming with giant Buffalohead fish.

Over the course of the day, there were two feasts. We sat down to a long table with hundreds of dishes on it—ranging from wild rice and fresh fruit to fried chicken and cherry pie. It was a true feast—like something out of medieval times.

The evening ended with a giveaway dance. We exchanged gifts and joined classmates and East Lake members for several dances around the drum.

"The Elder" by Lucy Green

He eats blueberries from a cottage cheese container,
bare toes peeking from a red cast
propped up by the footrest of his wheelchair.

This is the land he has known from boyhood.
The lake still reflects the steely clouds and cobalt sky.
The ferns unfurl on the dappled forest floor,
As they have every spring of his life.

Birdsong laces the breeze that ruffles the grass,
And he remembers hunting with his slingshot,
Plucking clean the lifeless wings,
Nibbling roasted meat from fragile bones.

Today the children sit inert in front of the TV,
They drug themselves unconscious.
They carry guns, and when they kill,
They kill each other.

The wind carries the smell of water,
And he remembers rowing to The Narrows,
Fasting on sacred ground, weakened with hunger,
Until creation filled his spirit with truth.

Today the young men are restless.
They look for purpose in gangs,
They seek relief in alcohol,
Their visions are induced by the flashing lights of the casino.

The taste of fish seasons the air,
And he remembers the walleye his grandmother prepared
Alongside the venison his grandfather provided.
Poverty never kept them from having enough.

Today everyone eats fry bread and potato chips.
They drink Coca-Cola and beer.
Their bodies inflate, their blood bears poison,
And their organs self-destruct.

The clouds cast contours on the grass,
And he remembers shadows on the wall of a wigwam,
Half imagined and half real,
As his grandmother told winter stories with her hands and lips.

Today, his people live in houses with locks on the doors.
They tell their children European stories in a European tongue,
Or they leave the storytelling to Hollywood,
And the young ones forget their ancestors.

A gap in the clouds admits the warmth of the sun in an instant,
And he remembers the heat of the rocks in the lodge,
The sensation of sweat and steam beading on his skin
As the pipe was passed from hand to hand.

Today, so many shun the sacred ceremonies.
The black book and black robe have made them fear the ancient ways.
Why do they dread the language of their hearts
when their children lie dead in the churchyard?

The blueberries are sweet on his tongue,
Just as they used to be when he picked them by the bucket.
A smile adds wrinkles to his creased face,
And the sadness passes from his eyes.

“There’s something in the air that’s coming back,” he says.
“I’m not sure what it is yet, but it’s good for everyone.”

Adventure, Tragedy, Baskets, and More

We left early Thursday morning for the Red Lake reservation, where we met up with Darwin Sumner for a hike to The Narrows, a remote shoreline where the two parts of the lake join. It is the most sacred site on Red Lake—a wild place often used for fasts and ceremonies.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different plan. After contending with deep mud for an hour, we decided our vehicles couldn’t make it the remaining four miles to the trailhead. We turned around disappointed, though we did manage to spot a fisher—a weasel-like animal—crossing the road. We ended up spending a couple of hours eating and walking along the pebbly shore of the lake.

After lunch, we visited the Red Lake Tribal Council offices and met with Chairman Floyd Jourdain. He described the electoral form of government that operates on the reservation today along with the relationship the tribe has with the federal government.

We then piled into the vans and drove to the other end of the reservation—the Point in Ponemah, where we observed fisherman at work. We were joined by Greg Kingbird, a medicine man and spiritual leader. We gathered around him and heard stories of his boyhood and his reflections on the way life on Red Lake has changed in his lifetime. On the way home, we spotted both a black bear and a pair of eagles.

This morning, we drove to Leech Lake Tribal College, where Elaine Fleming gave us a presentation about environmental abuses in Indian territories both in the US and Canada. She then took us to the location of an environmental disaster on the Leech Lake reservation, the St. Regis Superfund site where chemicals from a wood treatment facility contaminated the ground, wells, lakes, and aquifer. As a child she remembers walking across this site and drinking, bathing, and playing in water contaminated with known toxins and carcinogens. Her brother, along with many others in her community, has since died of cancer. The tour ended on a more hopeful note, with a stop at the community garden Elaine started.

This afternoon gave us a much needed reprieve from the tragedy we witnessed this morning. We joined Garnet “Rocky” Mountain, a professor of Ojibwe arts and crafts, at his beautiful home that overlooks the Mississippi River. He walked us through the process of making black ash baskets—from stripping logs, to peeling paper thin bands of bark, to weaving the baskets. We all sat down to a campfire and s’mores after completing our baskets and watched a breathtaking sunset.

Red Lake Nation

On Monday, we packed our overnight bags and drove to the Red Lake Nation, which surrounds the largest freshwater lake in the United States. This reservation differs from Leech Lake (and most reservations in America) in that its leaders refused the system of allotment afforded by the Dawes Act; therefore, the entire reservation is owned by the tribe, rather than piecemeal chunks, and only members live there.

After stopping on the shore of the lake, we were distributed among host families in the towns of Little Rock, Red Lake, Redby, and Ponemah. Some students found themselves the guests of families with grandparents, parents, children, aunties, and uncles under one roof. Others were taken in by elders who lived alone or in the retirement home in Red Lake.

We enjoyed the company of traditional story tellers, school nurses, veterans, drum keepers, medicine men, teachers, and artists. Some students celebrated Memorial Day, attending a graveside ceremony with a fifteen gun salute. Others toured the reservation by car, stopping at sacred spots on the lake. Some visited the schools. Some listened to traditional stories and tales of Sasquatch spotting. Many watched TV and played with children.

Our home stays provided a new sense of perspective. We enjoyed forming relationships with people not unlike ourselves. We also saw firsthand some of the devastating effects of oppression, economic disempowerment, and stripping of land and language. Poverty was widespread. Trash littered yards and the sides of the road. Unemployment paired with a reliance on gambling was abundant. Gang graffiti—covered by layers of mismatched paint—blotched the sides of buildings. Poor nutrition, health problems like diabetes, and obesity were plentiful. Everyone we stayed with had lost numerous people they loved to murder, suicide, or drug overdoses. In spite of these tragedies, our hosts showered us with generosity and entertained us with their indefatigable senses of humor. When we left them just 24 hours after meeting, many of us were sad to go.

Today, we headed back to Red Lake to hear from Judy Roy, the former secretary of the Red Lake Tribal Council; Murphy Thomas, a cultural counselor at Red Lake High School; and Wilf Cyr, the Interim President of Red Lake Nation College. We were joined by a number of Red Lake High School students and their teacher Diane Schwanz, who prepared us Indian tacos for lunch and gave us a tour of their school. Our conversations revolved around preserving culture and language, fostering economic growth on the reservation, health care, and tribal government.

Wilf Cyr offered a fiery critique of indigenous peoples becoming nation states or “sovereign.” He said nation states, which have the ability to oppress and take land, only perpetuate violence. The attempted sovereignty of Indian nations, he said, would only lead them to be quashed by the larger nation states that surrounded them. Instead, he advocated for nationhood, something he says Red Lake Nation already possesses, as it has a language, culture, territory, land, and history. He warned of the dire consequences of the loss of language and called for an extreme solution—requiring all people on the reservation to learn the language and all business on the reservation to be conducted in that language. Language fluency, he said, should be the requisite characteristic for tribal membership, not blood quorum, which is the present policy (imposed by the US government and tribes).

Tonight we enjoyed a walleye cookout with what seemed to be the entire town of Bemidji (and surrounding towns) at an annual community fish fry. With full bellies, we returned to our dorm to catch up on journaling and sleep.

Old and New Ways

We have spent the larger part of the last few days on Leech Lake Reservation, partaking in a spiritual tradition—the sweat lodge—and a modern social event—the powwow.

On Friday, we sat down with Richard and Dennis Morrison, medicine men, who shared the seven teachings of the Mede society—truth, courage, kindness, wisdom, love, respect, and humility. We prepared ourselves physically (with a fast) and mentally for the sweat lodge—a purifying and healing ceremony conducted in a small dome heated by hot stones.

We then drove to the home of “Wild Bill,” who lent us his lodge. Several students selected stones to be used in the lodge, arranged them over kindling, and surrounded them in logs in a fire pit opposite the lodge.

After the fire was lit and the stones were heating, Richard took the women to the forest to gather cedar boughs. The women then lined the floor of the lodge with the cedar and strung it from the lodge to the fire—a path for the spirits to travel during the ceremony.

When the stones were ready, we climbed into the lodge—first the women, then the men. Smoldering rocks were placed in the center of the lodge, and we greeted them as grandmothers and grandfathers. Then the door was closed, and we were in complete darkness.

What followed was a deeply spiritual and intensely hot couple of hours. It does not suffice to say that sweet grass and bearroot were thrown upon the rocks, filling the lodge with fragrance, or that the water poured upon the stones turned to steam that condensed on our skin and eyelashes. There was much more to the lodge than listening to and singing along with the ancient songs and praying for the sick and suffering. Some things, words cannot describe.

After the lodge, Dennis, Richard, and their intern Bruce gave Ojibwe spirit names to all of us, and then we all enjoyed a feast of wild rice, walleye, fry bread, and cake prepared by Nancy Kingbird.

On Saturday, our group split. Some joined Richard and built a new sweat lodge on Nancy Kingbird’s property. Others joined a powwow attended by thousands. We watched as women in jingle dresses and men in exquisitely beaded and feathered regalia danced around drum circles. Children in elaborate dress competed for the title of “princess” and “brave.” We enjoyed Indian tacos and fry bread hamburgers and bought souvenirs from the vendors that surrounding the grounds. We even participated in a few intertribal dances.

Sunday brought us the opportunity to both revisit the powwow and attend another sweat, led by Dennis, in the lodge students had built on Saturday.

Our first week in Minnesota left us all amazed by the generosity of the Ojibwe people, by their dedication to their community, by their sense of humor, and by the vibrancy of their culture. We look forward to meeting and learning from many more people over the coming week.

Letter by Malika

Malika Aanaïs Levy-f wrote this letter during her first week in Bemidji.

today i cried five times dr. kevin. heat came out of my ears and radiated off my head as it spun. i think people could see the waves. someone said i'm sorry for that. i said crying is one of my best teachers. i willingly give my water to the dead.

today i watched people on video saying:

"Spear an Indian, spare a Walleye."
"Kill a pregnant Squaw, save two Walleye."
"Timber Nigger"
"The treaty rights of the Chippewa are a license to steal."
"Red Nigger"
"1st Annual Chippewa Shoot"
"Water Nigger"
D.N.R. = "Dead No-good Redskin"
"I'll stick this ------- pole up your ---."

more than ever I need James not to be white right now. i need him to claim his native indigenous identity as the son of a Lakota woman. and i do realize i'm saying this to you, you being you. but you see i decided i needed some time alone, some time away - and i should have said so to the kids when they saw me on fire, after hearing those words out of real people's mouths and i still walked to and through downtown Bemidji Minnesota for two hours looking at American flags American Legions and having yet another white person, a white man, say something about my "weave" because this can't be my hair and still still still stare in disbelief when i say calmly, say with poise and pride that, yes, it is - with a smile.

i'm ever so aware i'm living on stolen land. i want to leave this country. i want to go home. and i'm not sure where that is anymore except that it's a place where people are not ghosts and they speak the truth - a place where fear is not the people's leader.

fear is the mind killer. i will turn around, look over my shoulder and face my fear; and i will destroy it. and when i turn back around there will be only me. -f.h.

pray to the almighty let us not do unto as has been done unto us. teach your beloved children who have been enslaved to reach for the light continually. -s.

Reflections by Malika

Malika Aanaïs Lévy-f wrote this poem on the Greyhound bus on the way to State College for this trip in response to the question “Why are you going?”

because she asked me why

i am a living legacy and yes
i mean this precisely in the way that recognizes that's who we all are
we are all the legacy of a people we are all the legacies of many peoples
i am here because and despite the persecution oppression genocide of
my people
the people from
who my life takes breath
i am slavery survived holocaust escaped conquista resurrected
sometime yesterday and now never
tomorrow but always flowing behind some before flashpoint pulsing today
today today crashing
into newly next then and after
ahead i remember who i am going to be i am the
once was who
tricked you disappearing under the waves crashing your hull falling
flat to your shotgun expiring in your gas chamber i was always
going to be
resurrected before you killed me before you saw me before you saw and before
you saw i saw seeing you i was invisible and i saw i saw the after right now right
before and i will still see i was always going to
be and i remember
who i am going to be because i stand on the shoulders of africa yisrael kiskeya in timeless
rock
concert mosh pit i hurl myself into the world with newborn abandon my
hebrew taïno african body ayisyenn all
olives vermilions red corn cherry coconut infused sahara sun baked to perfection like
and i
land on my ancestral dancefloor floating atop the fingertips of past me's the Spirits
who never
left just because they were told i stand
upon the shoulders of three civilizations and i see outside of the Time that would
separate me fragment me i stand
on the shoulders of three civilizations whose destruction completed could not
be carried to the brink because i am still here and because i am
afro semitic carib indigenous my horizon has no
end here i stand
twice high human you survive i legacy

Language, Land, and Stories

Yesterday, we had the privilege of listening again to Dr. Anton Treuer, who spoke to us about Ojibwe language and culture revitalization.

Language and land are the two critical elements to sustaining a culture, Dr. Treuer said. He illustrated with the example of the French, who are identified by the French language and the geographical boundaries they inhabit. He then gave the example of a descendent of German immigrants to America. If, over the course of five generations, the language and a sense of Germany as a place were lost, then that person would not consider herself German, but a descendant of Germans.

“Even if technologies and dwellings change, you still maintain a culture with language and place,” Dr. Treuer emphasized.

This is a huge struggle for the Ojibwe and many other indigenous peoples in America and around the world who have been forcibly stripped of their lands and languages. In Ojibwe country, two policies enforced by the American government stand out as particularly destructive: the Dawes Act, which allotted tribal lands to certain Indians and enabled the rest of it to be sold to non-Indians, and the boarding school era, in which Indian youths were compulsorily shipped off to schools that stripped them of their language, religion, and culture.

There are 183 tribal languages in the United States and Canada. Of those, 163 are likely to go extinct in our lifetimes.

If the Ojibwe language were to be lost, it would be a tragedy—not just because it is a beautiful language whose illustrative words conjure images and readily lend themselves to puns and humor. The Ojibwe believe that their language is the language that their souls understand, even if their minds don’t comprehend it. For this reason, the Ojibwe is the only language that’s used for religious ceremony.

Dr. Treuer explained that such ceremonies cannot merely be preserved by a written (or even recorded) record, for the Ojibwe believe that spiritual knowledge cannot be copied or learned from a book. Rather, it goes from one soul to another.

“To lose our language is to lose our ability to keep those ceremonies going,” Dr. Treuer said.

He is working as a professor of Ojibwe language to make sure this doesn’t happen. He wants his descents to be Ojibwe, not descendents of Ojibwe. He supports the idea of immersion schools, in which all subjects are taught in Ojibwe. In places where this has been practiced, students have had a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent passing rate on standardized exams in both math and English. He also believes that parents need to speak the language at home for the younger generation to learn it fluently—no simple task, as many parents never learned the language as a result of their parents’ deportation to boarding school.

Although there is a large and growing body of Ojibwe people who want to learn their language and access the spiritual teachings that accompany it, the body of people who possess that knowledge is shrinking.

Last night we traveled to the home of Anne M. Dunn and her daughter Annie Jiminez on the Leech Lake Reservation. They live on a picturesque tract of land, a lovely green meadow surrounded by birch trees and pines. Immediately, we were captivated by their animals—dogs they had rescued, grazing horses, and newly hatched chicks.

It was soon clear that Anne, an Ojibwe elder and storyteller, has the gift of adding magic and sparkle to everything she touches. We admired her garden, which she had enclosed with bowed branches, ornamented by pieces of glass and colorful trinkets “too pretty to throw away.”

Annie, a nationally acclaimed musician and recording artist, enchanted us with her voice and her drum as she sang a ceremonial prayer before dinner. We then enjoyed the feast she had prepared for us, which included our first taste of wild rice—grains she had picked and prepared herself.

When the sun went down, we gathered around Anne, who introduced us to the wolf, the raccoon, a yellow dog, a brave Indian girl, and lessons learned by the tamarack and Norway pine. We sat transfixed, despite the cold, like the boy in her final story, who received the gift of story and forgot the snow and his hunger and then was able to give the same gift to his family.

The night concluded with a song by Annie and the gift of beaded bracelets for each of us. We left, blessed by the generosity of these women and delighted with the new stories that were dancing in our minds.

A Day on the River

Today, Michael Wassegijik Price and his 7-year-old son Che led us on a 12-mile canoe trip on the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The pictures tell the story.