Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

the black woman took me to the peyote ceremony
it wasn't the one we thought it was going to be
but it was the one that was happening
out there on the rez in Arizona
near window rock

we sat in the teepee and passed the medicine around
as the Navajo sing their peyote songs
this ceremony was for a young Navajo woman
to help her be successful

the songs went around and rose up into the night
like the sparks from the fire in the middle of the room
I was with three people that were allowed
to be part of this, and I ate the medicine as it was passed
and tried to sing the songs along with the others
the singing was so powerful as it went around
each singer had their own offering
and it went on and on into the deep night
rising rising to the dark sky to the stars

I saw some things in my mind's eye, like what this land
was like before it was a reservation, or maybe what it
will be like again some day when the land is of the people

Always had an affinity for the Navajo, since their absorption into WhiteManCulture101 and such, even a movie or two, but mostly how I'm greeted when I pass through Shiprock, across a parking lot to say hello. The Navajo were nomadic raiders for centuries (like most of us), and if you look back, there are ugly aggressions to be found everywhere you might look in the human unfolding.

Just finished reading about how Kit Carson starved out and rounded up and forced the Navajos to march across the frigid desert. It was a bad deal.

In the ceremony when I closed my eyes, really strange, I was seeing flags, I kept seeing an American flag, and it was disturbing, I realized later that it was because I was on a reservation, land that is owned by the government. I also saw flags behind the old glory that were of the Native nations, with their own symbols. But I had a sense of almost like of being on another planet, or when this planet was or will be like the native ceremony, a feeling of togetherness and unity, when people go to a huge round building where everybody gets healed.