Ceremony At Chews Ridge

When the U.S. Navy proposed last year to install a stargazing interferometer on the peak of Chews Ridge Mountain in California, local environmentalists and Native American leaders were alarmed. Citing concerns that the project would lead to development of the mountain, they called for a meeting with representatives from the navy and the U.S. Forest Service. In this essay, which first appeared in Wind Bell, Teah Strozer, director of the Zen Mountain Center, describes that encounter.

— Ed.

 

We gathered in the Round House, a covered amphitheater dug into a hill, and sat on earthen benches. Four huge tree trunks in the middle of the room supported the wooden beams of the roof, which, like a tepee, was open in the center to the sky. Beneath the opening burned a large ceremonial fire.

Tommy Little Bear, chief of the Esselen tribe, welcomed and purified us all with sage incense. Then he held up the Two-Faced Talking Stick, one side a smiling face, painted white and decorated with feathers and ribbons, the other side a sorrowful face, painted black and hung with strips of leather and beads. He explained that whoever was holding the Talking Stick could speak uninterruptedly.

For hours people gave heartfelt speeches, asking the navy to leave the mountain untouched. But as the room got smoky and the day grew long, I began to wonder if anything being said would make a difference.

Every so often I noticed an elderly Native American man and his son methodically dressing themselves in traditional costume. Quietly the father adjusted the son’s feathered headdress. The son helped his father with a belt and skirt. When I looked over at them later on, they had removed their shirts to put on arm bracelets and paint. Meanwhile, the Talking Stick was making its way around the room, and I was becoming tired and uncomfortable and ready for a break.

Then the father reached out and took the Talking Stick. He looked long at his son, who was fully dressed, painted, and sitting quietly, holding a ceremonial pouch, then he walked slowly to the fire, turned, and gazed at each person in the room. A feather fan in one hand, the Talking Stick in the other, he said clearly and distinctly, “I think all white people should be killed.”

He had our attention. He related a dream he’d had, in which all white people were put on ships and sent back to Europe. Their land was taken from them, their animals were killed, and sickness and death spread through their people. He talked about what life was like for his ancestors before white people came with their guns and greed. He said that everybody thinks the first atomic bomb fell on the Japanese, but in reality it fell on the Native Americans who were downwind from the testing sites in New Mexico. Their land was poisoned. They suffer even now from high rates of cancer and other illness. He wanted us to understand how much he hated what had been done to his people, how hard he had struggled to understand the white culture’s still insatiable desire to control and subdue the land his ancestors had lived with in harmony.

I found it difficult to listen to him. But his voice — alternately quiet and forceful — was magnetic, his bearing confident and proud as he walked round and round the fire chanting this litany of sorrow and rage. He said that whites in power simply take whatever they want, and that protesting probably wouldn’t stop them, but he still believed that we were all one people, that we needed to listen to each other and to the Great Spirit. Humbly, he asked the Great Spirit if he could offer his pain and the pain of his people, as well as the pain of all people and all living beings, in a prayer that we might hear each other.

Then he asked his son to stand beside him, and a man with a drum began playing. The drummer beat a steady, slow, hypnotic rhythm, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, like the beating of my own heart. It sent shivers through my body. The father explained that he was going to chant a song expressing an offering and a prayer. He faced the fire, held one arm up to the heavens, and began to chant. The son opened his ceremonial pouch and pulled out a scalpel. With the utmost sensitivity and care, he began to cut a piece of flesh from his father’s arm, near the shoulder. The father never missed a word of the chant as his son cut into him. I made myself watch as the blood ran down his arm. Once, the father looked at his son with a calm, open face. The son looked up into his father’s eyes. At that moment I saw a man pass on to his son, as his ancestors had passed on to him, the truth of the suffering of life, and the truth that one can stand there in that pain with perfect equanimity and grace. When the son finally finished, I felt limp, clear, and empty. At that moment I would have given them anything.

The father motioned for the son to sit down and for the drummer to stop. He circled the fire again, letting his blood drip into it. He prayed for the well-being of us all, for the earth, trees, grass, and pebbles. He prayed for understanding of the interconnectedness of everything and for the return of balance. As he gave his flesh to the fire, I believed that what he asked was possible. When he sat down, the room was silent.

But after only a few moments I noticed that we were already putting ourselves back together. We were insulating ourselves from the pain. The connection we felt was dissipating; the suffering we had witnessed wasn’t really our own.