One Fine Morn

Growth is a painful process.

—Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee

On one fine morning in the summer of 1997, after having spent some three years or so inching my way into the Native America powwow culture, I was invited to a Native American religious ceremony, and without knowing what I was getting myself into, the word yes flew right out of my mouth.

I was introduced to the world of powwows through my first wife, a woman of Lakota decent, who had been raised by an Italian family and discovered some elements of her heritage through majoring in Native American studies in college. It was through random invitations from friends that we found ourselves regularly attending powwows on the weekends.

While there are many non-Indians who feel a certain drive to learn from, be a part of, and gain acceptance by Native American people, I don't think I have ever been driven that way. Yet I recall my first two powwows distinctly for the radical difference in culture that I observed and found highly compelling. The starkest contrast I saw to the modern culture I grew up in was the complete and total integration of all ages into one collective social gathering and celebration. I observed children barely past the point of having taken their first steps dancing around in a circle alongside teenagers, adults, and elders well into their eighties, all together with one unified drum and song. I found it beautiful, and it felt like home.

At my second powwow, I watched a coming-out ceremony performed for a young boy who was coming out as a northern traditional powwow dancer. The ceremony was conducted by a man I assumed to be a father or uncle, who took him around the circle, stopping at each of the four directions, who leaned down to speak softly into his ear, appearing to convey some great teaching or wisdom. Then as the drumming and singing started, the boy danced around the circle alone, as the official coming-out as a young man and a dancer tasked with maintaining the traditions and respect for the old ways. Watching this young boy dancing in a large circle for all to see with such grace and dignity was moving.

I was very much taken by this simple rite of passage. I observed what seemed like a deep respect from everyone present for the importance of what was taking place; a hush fell over the arena, with focused attention and a seeming mutual understanding for the experience of a lifetime for a young boy discovering his path in life.

This cultural unity and identity is what attracted me to powwows and compelled me to seek more of it. I knew then of how so many non-Indians attach a certain romanticism to Native culture, possessing an image of a proud people riding swiftly on horseback with the wind flowing in their long hair, feathers draping gracefully from hair and clothing, made of buckskins and beads. Personally, the only Indians I have met like this lived in Southern California, had headshots and agents, and mostly worked as extras in the film business.

The Indians that I have known have been as varied as any other culture I've experienced, and yet most, but not all, have possessed some similarities that I have continued to find enjoyable and enriching, such as a sweet and playful sense of humor, a slow deliberative way of communicating, and an intuitive sense that land and respect for it are extremely important, that elders are people to be highly regarded, that Little House on the Prairie is really good television, and that family and lineage is how a person identifies one's self.

I made friends in the powwow circuit, some become close friends, and one in particular, a Comanche brother named John, phoned me on that one fine morning in the summer of 1997 to ask if I wanted to take part in an actual Native American religious ceremony. With drumming and singing and God knows what else, I had no idea what was in store for me. And what I did not yet know was that all that I thought I had learned about their culture, their ways and values, was only scratching the surface; that simple coming-out ceremonies or their sense of humor or even their pride in lineage could not begin to shed light on the depth of purpose and values that are so deeply engrained in their culture. I could never have imagined the journey I was about to embark on, what was in store for me, and the life that was to flow from dedicating much of my life to their spiritual ways and teachings.

So there I was, several days later, sitting in this ceremony, referred to in the casual sense as a house meeting—a meeting yes, conducted in a house yes, but really a ceremony with roots that stretch back for thousands of years as far as we can tell, with ancient songs, use of natural elements such as sage and cedar, a drum, a gourd rattle, tobacco, and lots and lots of prayer.

There was a man affectionately referred to as the sponsor, who provided the purpose for which we were gathered together to pray, who was suffering from a life-threatening disease. There was a roadman, who conducted the ceremony; and a fire man, who maintained a fire outside the house and continually brought coals in, from which cedar was burned for purification. There was a drummer; a water woman, which I didn't really understand at the time; and some thirty or so other people, all seated in a circle having come to pray for the sponsor and blessings in their own lives. Many were Native, but most were not.

We started right at sundown and continued all through the night until a couple hours past sunrise. We did not sleep or eat. We sat on the floor in a circle on folded blankets and struggled to keep focus on prayer and song, without conversation or distraction.

The experience for me was nothing short of completely miserable. My feeling driving home was that those people were crazy to want to go to such ceremonies, experience such sacrifice and physical discomfort, and then to go back again and again as they do. Yet the peace that came over me in the days following was indescribable. Somehow, and in rather short order, I developed the desire to get back into another ceremony. I called my good friend and started inquiring about...