Embassy Dedicated in Advance of Conference

Alma Ransom at Tribal Nations Embassy

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the sun rose in the nation’s capital, more than 70 tribal leaders from around the country stood in the rear parking lot of a Washington townhouse-turned-office building and circled a small fire.

Each held a handful of sage and tobacco to toss into the flames, and the people listened or prayed along as Alma Ransom of the Mohawk Bear Clan stood and voiced aloud her thanks to the Creator — in English and in her traditional language.

She pointed to the smoke “piercing the sky” and gave thanks to the four winds and the four directions, and she led the group as it turned in unison, east-north-west-and-south, never minding the backyard views and the waking street noises of an urban neighborhood in the nation’s capital.

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Natives’ Journey to Inauguration Completes a Soldier’s Quest

By Victor Merina

reznet

WASHINGTON — For some tribal members, the journey to Inaugural Week began with a sweat and a prayer ceremony on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation as they cleansed and purified themselves for the long trip east.

John St. Clair and Harrison “Bunny” Shoyo were like most of the travelers — a blend of young and old, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho – all exhilarated about representing their state in the Inaugural Parade for Barack Obama.

In that group of 15 Native American dancers, drummers, singers and flag carriers, St. Clair held aloft one of the state, U.S. or tribal flags as part of a color guard that would set the pace for the others. Shoyo, one of the singers and hand-drummers, helped set the rhythm and tempo for others in regalia who performed the traditional dances, the fancy dances and the jingle dances in a colorful wave that glided along the parade route.

Neither the 66-year-old St. Clair nor the 63-year-old Shoyo will ever forget that Inauguration Day experience. But for these Eastern Shoshones, sharing in a historic moment was only a part of the memories they would take back to Wyoming.

Twenty-four hours after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, away from the vast crowds and worldwide media they encountered during the inauguration festivities at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, they brought gifts for hospital administrators. Visited soldiers who were wounded in Iraq. Spoke to military families who sat at their love ones’ bedside. And voiced songs and prayers for the soldiers as well as those who cared about them.

In the beginning, in an empty family room, the tribal members gathered, and Shoyo, one of the spiritual leaders, led a prayer ceremony seeking spiritual help for the soldiers they would see. Many of these soldiers had been “derooted” from their everyday lives, Shoyo said. They had been thrown into combat and need to be “replanted” into a more nourishing world. And the Shoshones and others had come to help in any way they could.

Minutes later, Shoyo was leaning over a young Army sergeant in his 20s whose maimed legs and crushed foot were wrapped in heavy bandages. The soldier’s father stood by trying to make his son more comfortable. His equally young wife was helping as well. And as Shoyo spoke, he handed the soldier his own precious participant’s badge that said he had walked in the Inaugural Parade.

“Someday, this might help you think of this day,” he told the soldier from Tennessee who listened through half-closed eyes. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”

‘Home of Warrior Care’

St. Clair, standing nearby after having had his own visit with the soldier, knew about military sacrifice. He had been wounded in Vietnam as an Army lieutenant in the Mekong Delta some four decades ago. Now he found himself walking through Ward 57 — the self-proclaimed “Home of Warrior Care” — and could see the wheelchairs stacked in alcoves, antiseptic soap bottles hanging by the elevator doors, the get-well signs on the corridor walls, and the constant bustle of nurses, doctors and orderlies. Even on the threshold of a fast-approaching Super Bowl, he was reminded of his own painful recovery from injuries suffered in another distant war four decades earlier.

“I remember listening to the Jets-Colts Super Bowl from my hospital bed,” said St. Clair with a pause. “The soldiers here have a long recovery ahead.”
As the group gathered in the hallways or stepped from room to room, the Shoshones — with their Wind River jackets and formidable presence — drew their share of attention. Hospital workers greeted them warmly. Bed-ridden soldiers waved. And soldiers and family in one hospital room nodded in quick assent when Brian Standing Rock, a Chippewa and Cree who had married into a Shoshone family, asked if he and the other tribal members could sing a special song.

It was called “Soldier Boy” and composed by the Blackfeet Nation, he said, and it is sung to “honor, respect and thank” those serving in the military. As he and the others began singing, the young soldiers in their beds closed their eyes and the young wife and father listened quietly as these tribal members from another generation, another war and another sovereign nation chanted and sang to them.

‘Thank You for Remembering’

In the hallway afterward, Dolores “Cookie” Wolf of Cape May, N.J., whose son had arrived at Walter Reed two weeks earlier from Iraq, walked up to the group. She apologized to the Shoshones for not being able to see her 22-year-old son, Spec. Robert Andrzejcvak. He had lost a leg from the injuries he suffered in a grenade attack in Iraq, she said, and was still being examined by doctors.

“He took it better than his mom did,” Wolf said of her son’s amputation. “He said, ‘I got a late Christmas present. I’m alive.’ “

The 51-year-old mother then went down the line and shook each Native’s hand. “Thank you for coming,” she said when she was done. “Even with this war still going on, you don’t see much about it in the news anymore. People forget. Thank you for remembering.”

It was that loss of recognition, that fear of fading memories that led to this post-Inaugural trip for the Wind River group. Ivan Posey, the chairman of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, which governs the tribe, had helped organize the visit to Walter Reed. He also was determined to ferry the group to the Vietnam Memorial on the National Mall before they left town.

Posey, a Vietnam-era vet, was intent on honoring his own brother who had served in Vietnam and returned to the reservation to a troubled life in which drinking problems and post-traumatic stress from his war experiences led him on a downward spiral. His brother died in a house fire in 1979, said Posey, who still counts him as a war casualty.

Those stories are familiar to Indian Country, especially for those veterans who served in Vietnam, Posey said. He pointed to soldiers who were killed and those who were wounded and those who simply survived — and whose lives were never the same afterward. All should be remembered, said Posey, and during their visit to Washington, he was determined that the message would be heard not only by officials but by the young Shoshone teenagers who had danced in the parade and could see the impact made on the older tribal members as they visited the wounded from Iraq and revisited the memories of those who did not survive Vietnam.

By visiting the soldiers, Posey said the Vietnam veterans in his group also would gain something in the experience. “That is very powerful when you think of the medicine they will offer and what they will receive in return,” he said.

Gifts for the Colonel

At Walter Reed, part of that mission was accomplished when the group met Col. Norvell V. Coots, the commander of the hospital’s health care system. They presented him with gifts including the figure of a fancy dancer fashioned out of iron and an 1890s photo of Shoshone chiefs surrounding the most revered leader of them all, Chief Washakie.

John Washakie, the great grandson of the legendary chief, was among the visitors gathered around Coots and as a veteran of the 101st Airborne Division who served in Vietnam, he called it a moving experience because of his own family history.

“The person I was named after — John Washakie — was killed in World War I,” he said. A former tribal chairman, Washakie said he wanted to not just experience the parade but to help the young Natives in the group understand its historic significance as well as help government officials appreciate the contributions of Natives in the military and elsewhere.

When it came time for the group presentation, it was St. Clair who spoke for everyone, and there in the lobby of Walter Reed, he gave the colonel a brief history lesson on the role Natives have played in the U.S. armed services and the sacrifices they have made despite a tangled history with the American government.

“The point I was making with that is that at one time Native Americans were considered the enemy,” St. Clair recalled later. “We were the subject of wars until the 1880s. But in spite of that, we volunteered to fight even before we became citizens of the United States.

“We’ve always had that tradition of being warriors, and history has proven that even to this day,” he added. “And that makes me proud to be a Native American and a Native American veteran.”

Revisiting Vietnam

For St. Clair, now the chief tribal judge on the Wind River Reservation, there was one more important piece of business to take care of before leaving Washington. On the bus ride to the Vietnam Memorial, he spoke of his roommate at Oklahoma State University, a Creek who left school and enlisted in the Army before St. Clair and who arrived in Vietnam first.
“I lost touch with him,” said St. Clair. “Then I heard he had been killed, but I never knew for sure.”

For more than four decades, St. Clair has wondered what happened to his friend. But he was reluctant to find out although he wondered from a distance whether the name of his former roommate was among the 58,260 names listed on the Vietnam Memorial wall.

As their bus edged along the Washington streets, the Shoshones found themselves caught in a traffic jam from leftover visitors from Inauguration Day. With the sun setting, the worries began. St. Clair and the others grew concerned about reaching the Vietnam Memorial while there was still light.

When they finally disembarked, the sun was low on the horizon, and by the time the group had made it to the wall itself, the sunlight was rapidly fading.

When they arrived at the memorial, some tribal members walked slowly along the monument or stood silently, lost in their individual thoughts. Others took photos of the wall and nearby statues. Still others quickly took off in search of the names of two Wind River tribal members who had died in Vietnam. When they found their names — Roy J. Snyder, a Shoshone, and Weldon Moss, a Northern Arapaho — there was a quiet celebration.

St. Clair’s Search

But St. Clair found his own search more frustrating. As dusk approached, he was lost in the avalanche of names. Then a guide at the memorial pointed him to a registry and suggested he look up his roommate’s name to locate his spot on the ebony wall.

As he searched the registry, St. Clair discovered the entry and the single line of information that would end the mystery of more than 40 years.

Josh Peters.

Salina, OK. PFC Army. DOB 1/12/1945. DOD 5/20/1967. Panel: 20E. Line: 66.

With darkness falling, St. Clair quickly went to the wall panel that was supposed to include his friend’s name. Counting the lines and scanning the names on the smooth surface, he finally found what he had been seeking and traced the letters with his finger: J-o-s-h P-e-t-e-r-s. He took a deep breath, and there was a tiny smile on his lips.

St. Clair wanted to etch Peters’ name on a piece of paper that was given to him. But he had no pencil to make the copy. When Ivan Posey, the Shoshone tribal chairman, brought a pen, both men tried to rub the name so it would appear but to no avail.

A woman suggested using her lipstick but they still could not lift the name to paper. Finally, in near darkness, the woman offered her eyebrow pencil. And with that, a name began to emerge on the paper. So did the memories. There was Josh Peters, the fun-loving guy who made people laugh and would hitchhike home for visits. Josh Peters, who worked part-time as an artist to make it through school. Josh Peters, who along with his roommate John St. Clair, started a student Indian club together while in college.

“I’m sorry I’m so emotional,” St. Clair said as he stood in the darkness next to the wall. He was holding the small piece of paper in his hand and kept looking at what he had etched. “I knew his name would be here but I guess I hoped it wouldn’t.”

He sighed. “But it’s good to have,” he said as he began the journey home. “It’s one reason I came here. Not just for the inaugural but to find this.”

January 30, 2009
http://www.reznetnews.org/article/natives-journey-inauguration-completes-soldier-s-quest-29330

‘One Nation Under a Groove:’ Reflections on Inauguration Day

By Victor Merina

reznet.org

January 26, 2009

WASHINGTON—This was a time for walking and waiting. For singing and praying. For shouting and whispering.

The nearly 2 million people moving up and down the avenues in the bitter cold did most of the walking. They navigated miles of boulevards looking for their seats or hoping to find a place to witness the president-to-be as he was sworn into office, or glimpse the new president afterwards as led his Inaugural Parade.

The most famous walk, of course, belonged to Barack Obama, along with the First Lady who strolled along the parade route waving to well-wishers as if it were a spring outing at Cherry Blossom time rather than a frigid January day with people huddled in parkas or swathed in woolen scarves all around them.

Most of the fans — who were sitting, standing, clapping their hands and stomping their feet in appreciation and for warmth — had been waiting for hours for the opportunity to applaud the formal beginning of an administration that would launch a new political era unlike anything the country has ever seen.

Some people had spent the night outdoors in temperatures dipping into the teens or made the early-morning journey in packed subway cars, buses and cars to join the massive crowds at security checkpoints at the U.S. Capitol or along the parade route. Others merged into the slow-moving lines of people headed for spots on the National Mall where they crammed themselves before giant television screens to view what was happening at the other end of the mall where the ceremony was held.

Many did not mind the hours-long wait. “I waited this long for a black president,” said one African American woman in her 70s. “I can wait a little longer.”

‘His Mind, His Body and His Soul’

Marcus D. Wells, Jr., chairman of the affiliated tribes of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, said he had been waiting for this very moment since he met candidate Obama last April in Grand Forks, N.D.

“I wanted to hear what was in his mind, his body and his soul,” said Wells of that initial meeting.

What the tribal chairman saw and heard was enough to convince him to endorse the senator from Illinois. “He spoke directly to Indian people,” Wells said. “He spoke directly to me. He didn’t speak above me or around me. He looked me right in the eye and asked what he could do for our tribe.”

As Wells sang the praises of Obama, so did others.

On Inauguration Day, four teenagers on E Street paused from their rush to locate a prime viewing spot to offer a rendition of a song — part rap and part bebop — that they wrote for the new president. A disheveled man on the mall blissfully sang off-key verses of “We Shall Overcome.” And two women in their fifties, campaign volunteers from Iowa, won the applause of strangers after bursting into a pro-Obama song they had written after retooling a rock ‘n’ roll song from decades earlier.

Betsy Zan, a college professor, and Sharon Anway, a music instructor and jazz musician, from Cedar Falls, Iowa, had been working on the Obama campaign since the earliest days of the Iowa caucuses, and now they were ecstatic to be attending the inaugural.

“I was inspired by the things he said about hope,” Zan said of the new president. “He touched my heart.”

‘O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma’

With the singing came the shouting. Triumphant shouts all around.

There were cries of “O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma” cascading from some adventurous enough to scale statues and monuments for key viewing spots. Others took the sheer joy of bellowing “President Obama!” again and again. Still others alternated the familiar cheers of a candidate on the hustings — “Yes, we can!” — to the chants echoed for a winner on Election Night and that now sanctified a president-in-waiting — “Yes, we did!”

There were those who shouted with their signs like the young man who walked against the stream of people moving past him while lofting an “Arrest Bush” sign over their heads. A parade of hooded demonstrators wearing orange coveralls marched through a park near the reflecting pool under signs to “Shut down Guantanamo!” And one man stood silently as he simply lifted a sign with the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

As crowds streamed by Constitution Hall, three young men triumphantly raised their own handwritten, high-decibel signs. One linked the occasion to a civil rights icon with “MLK is Smiling Today!!! Another bannered “From Slavery to History!!!” And a third simply reminded everyone of a change in presidential style and shift in political mood with his sign: “One Nation Under a Groove!!”

With the glitzy placards and shouting voices also came the whispers.

There was the father who spoke quietly to his son of the history they were about to witness. There was the mother who confessed to her daughter how her parents never believed a black man would make it to the White House — until now. There was the young girl whispering in her father’s ear to place her on his shoulders so she could see what all the excitement was about.

Uneasy Questions

There also were the dark, whispered questions people hated to hear, rarely spoken aloud but still present, threatening to sweep away all the good feeling of the moment: Will this last? Will he succeed? Will he be safe?

The soft-spoken conversations and the whispered talk took place among loved ones huddled under blankets and among strangers shivering next to each other. For some, those private conversations turned inward and became moments of reflection.

Harvey Spoonhunter, tribal chairman of the Northern Arapaho, turned thoughtful when he spoke wistfully about missing his opportunity to join the Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone dancers and drummers representing the state of Wyoming in the Inaugural Parade.

Spoonhunter got lost on his way to the staging area and found himself snarled in a traffic jam. Instead of marching and dancing alongside his 19-year-old son, Layha, and other tribal members in full regalia before the president and a vast audience of onlookers, the disappointed Spoonhunter was forced to return to his hotel.

Spoonhunter watched the historic day unfold alone in his room but despite his own lost moment, the Arapaho chief was filled with pride as he witnessed the swearing-in ceremony and watched his son and the other tribal members walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“It was very emotional especially for Native Americans,” he said. “They seldom recognize us, and now there is a lot of hope there.”

Spoonhunter spoke softly as he recalled the day’s events. “I never thought America would be ready for a black person for president,” he said. “Now there is hope for all ethnic minorities knowing that anything is possible.”

The walking. The waiting. The singing. The shouting. The whispering.

Public and Private Prayers

All were there on Inauguration Day — and so was the praying.

From the huddled crowds on the mall to the seated guests on the Capitol Hill steps, public prayers and private prayers abounded. From Pastor Rick Warren’s much-anticipated invocation to the Rev. Joseph Lowery’s humorous but pointed benediction, prayer surrounded the proceedings. Some were religious and some were secular but prayer was ever-present.

When Lowery spoke, there were responses in the crowd that rang of Sunday morning service with some in the audience raising hands in the air and shouting “Amen!” There was the president’s reference to the words of Scripture in his Inaugural Address. And on the eve of the inauguration, at the American Indian Pow Wow, solemn words voiced to the Creator sought blessings and protection for not just the president on such a historic occasion but for those present at the powwow who had served in the military or who had lost loved ones in the very wars that presidents have overseen.

These were prayers of the religious and the non-religious, all united in thoughts of a safe and successful journey for an old nation and a new president.

Among those looking ahead to this new journey are tribal leaders such as Chairman Wells of the Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara, who said he looks forward to the day he will travel from his Fort Berthold reservation home in North Dakota to the White House where he will sit with President Obama.

“We will be there,” said Wells. “And we will leave him a gift and it will have a lot prayers in it and it will get him to where he’s going.”

The ‘Other’ Musical Celebration for Obama

By Victor Merina

reznetnews.org

January 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — On a day when much of the nation’s attention was centered on the Lincoln Memorial and the music of a star-studded celebrity lineup, Keith Bear stood on the other end of the National Mall playing his wooden flute and telling stories about his Mandan/Hidatsa heritage.

Gayle Ross, a Texas-born storyteller, also took her turn on the makeshift stage of the National Museum of the American Indian shaking her cow horn rattler to punctuate her Cherokee tales of meadowlarks and quails and human lessons born from animal sagas.

Storyteller Keith Bear performs at the National Museum of the American Indian.

And on the museum’s ground floor, in the closing performance of a day-long roster of multicultural artists, the Yaaw Tei Yi Dance Group spun and sang and soared through their traditional Tlingit/Haida songs and dances to reflect the various clans of their Native Alaska.

This was the other musical and cultural festival that entertained, enthralled and inspired an audience on Sunday that had gathered in the nation’s capital to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president and to enjoy an open-air concert that brought together some of the biggest names in music and arts in one of the country’s most historic venues.

At Lincoln Memorial, Hundreds of Thousands

At the Lincoln Memorial, Obama and his family joined hundreds of thousands of people who had arrived by cars, buses, subways and on foot to revel in the artistry of Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Garth Brooks and John Legend.

Two miles down the sprawling mall was the pocket-sized gathering of 60 or so people at the American Indian museum listening to the lilting flute music and soothing words of the 54-year-old Bear. He had traveled from North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Reservation to share his stories before he, too, would join the throngs who will stand in the winter cold to watch Obama take office on Tuesday.

On this day, in between song and story, Bear told his audience that the new president with his multiracial heritage underscores a changing America and its significance for Natives and other Americans.

“He’s not a black man. He’s not a white man. He’s brown,” Bear said of the new president. “So he, too, is a rainbow of what we have in this country.”

Ross, 57, a descendant of John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation during and after the Trail of Tears, also spoke of the historical meaning of what will take place when Obama is sworn into office. She did so as she gazed at the steps of the U.S. Capitol, which could be seen outside the museum window where she sang her songs and told her stories to an audience of young and old.

Black Eagle, Obama’s Indian Name

For Indian Country, she said, that special link to the new president can be seen in the adoption ceremony last summer that brought Obama into the Crow family with a new name — Black Eagle — and a reminder of how Natives are the roots of the nation and share a stake with all Americans in the country’s future.

Gayle Ross tells stories of growing up Cherokee.

Ross said the new president is someone “who will take the oath of office who also has an Indian family and an Indian name, and so we all have a lot of hope for this administration.”

Even with the smattering of political and personal messages, most of the weekend’s “Out of Many — a Multicultural Festival” at the Smithsonian’s American Indian museum, which ends Monday, has been devoted to an array of song, music, dance and storytelling.

On Sunday, the Native artists were joined in various performance spaces at the museum by Chinese lion dancers, African poets, Cambodian dancers, Salvadoran musicians, Hawaiian dancers as well as singers playing mariachi music, bluegrass, Irish music and a style labeled Jewish-American jazz and fusion.

As with other storytellers brought together for the event, Bear and Ross told their tales at an ad hoc stage at the back of a resource center before stacks of books and Native artifacts. Their audience sat in folding chairs and rolling seats and at computer tables. Some stood as they listened.

‘Our Common Ground’

“I think that stories are such an essential aspect of being human,” Ross said later. “Storytelling is the oldest form, everything comes from it. … Even our first dances were a way of telling stories.”

Ross went on. “I think that they are wonderful ways that we celebrate the things we have. We affirm the ways that we’re alike. We affirm our common ground with stories, but we also celebrate the ways that we’re different.”

Those contrasts, in a different sense, could have been in Sunday’s two celebrations at opposite ends of the National Mall. The music and stories and words of optimism for a new presidential era wafted from one end of the mall — with hundreds of thousands of people jammed into the outdoors Lincoln Memorial site to the fewer than 100 who sat in the cozy warmth of the National Museum of the American Indian. But both mattered.

At day’s end, when the final acts were finishing their performances to thunderous applause at the Lincoln Memorial, the Yaaw Tei Yi dancers were closing the day’s music and words at the museum with their Tlingit/Haida songs and dances.

The 35 members, who derived their group’s name from the legends of the Kiks.adi (Frog) Clan in Sitka, Alaska, had journeyed from their base in Juneau to share their heritage. And with their songs that explained, like musical maps, where their clans originated and how they lived, they also were there to tell their stories.