Going Native—Reclaiming Our Lives from Oppression and Stress
Along the foothills that surround my home, runs a network of hairline trails that wind through arroyo beds and over piñon-covered ridges, and finally merge into miles of national forest. They call to me each morning, promising a breathtaking view of the Jamez mountains to the west, and to the south, the Sandias. Our dog Molly, a large enthusiastic Catahoula hound we adopted last year from the shelter, looks at me expectantly. ‘Ok!’ I say, ‘Let’s go.’ We charge out the gate and up the escarpment, liberated at last.
Within minutes, Molly is already a quarter of a mile ahead of me. She looks back with that giant joyful dog grin and barks for me to hurry. There is land to love. There are bushes to jump. And so many animals to see. Not to mention those two ravens to race.
I have spent the last year getting to know this particular stretch of land, its trails and inhabitants — bear, bobcat, coyote and mountain lion. Though native to Santa Fe, this little valley just north of Santa Fe, where I now live, is asking me to be a part of it in a deeply intimate way. I am to know it, become a part of it and belong to it.
Partly it’s the lifestyle of running a small ranch with a herd of horses, a donkey, barn cats and dogs. Nature – her creatures, her plants, geology and weather – has her very own timing and rhythm. Working alongside her means dropping out of the mad technology-driven pace, and culturally-created beliefs, and into something more honest, present and simple. If the temperatures drop below freezing, there is ice to break in the water tanks. Period. If the sun goes down by five pm, the horses need feeding by 4:30. It’s the literal manifestation of chopping wood, carrying water.
And partly it’s the calling of these times. Where else to go inside a culture that has surfed to the end of it’s own internet? If we are to restore sanity in our lives, if we are to reclaim some kind of truly civilized way of being in the midst of pointed missiles and blind life-destroying bravado, nature and our connection to her, offers the way.
Jeannette Armstrong is a Canadian author, educator, artist, and activist. She is Syilx Okanagan. Her work Slash is considered the first novel by a First Nations woman in Canada. She describes belonging to place as the knowing that we are everything that surrounds us. ‘We refer to the land and our bodies with the same root syllable. This means that the flesh that is our body is pieces of the land come to us through the things that the land is. The soil, the water, the air and all the other life forms contributed parts to be our flesh. We are our land/place,’ she writes. ‘Not to know and to celebrate this is to be without language and without land. It is to be ‘dis-placed’.’
Modern life has dis-placed us. Not only are we alien to the earth, we are alien to ourselves. We are stranger to the deep sense of rooted quietness as offered by a tree. Our ears are deaf to the ancient stories of our own indigenous heritage as first peoples who tended the soil of our original homelands. And so we borrow the traditions and sacred stories of Native peoples in an attempt to grasp some remnant of memory. But they are not ours to appropriate. We meditate, we manage our stress, we eat vegan, we go to therapy.
Yet as a dis-placed people, we remain powerless, rootless, and vulnerable to the headwinds of 21st century living. We attempt to pull forth from ourselves wisdom, strength and emotional capacity, but without a greater presence to draw upon, our stores are quickly emptied.
Instead we can find another way back in, that will welcome us back to our very own belonging in this present time regardless of circumstances. Wherever we are, in a city, or suburb or cabin, we can engage with the natural world. When we deliberately take time to be attentive to and a part of the natural environment, something special happens. We become indigenous – we ‘occur naturally in a particular place’.
Becoming indigenous – a journey back to our belonging, is not a journey we take in our heads. It’s one we take with our bodies that weaves us back into the web of life, through regrowing our roots that push through earth, deep into bedrock, and drink from wellsprings. Being in nature teaches us to live like that again. She teaches us to go native, to feel the wind on our face, and the dirt on our hands.
‘In these times it’s not enough to awaken ourselves, to find our community: the world is in need of restoration and each one of us is challenged to do the work of collective change,’ writes Sharon Blackie in her astonishing call to arms If Women Rose Rooted: The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging. ‘The day of the Heroic quest is over, with its all-conquering, dragon-slaying Hero saving the world, one sword-stroke at a time. The Journey we need now is not a journey of active, world-beating individualism, it is a journey of collective re-enchantment — a re-animation of the Earth. It’s time to become native to our places again.’
It’s time to reclaim our own native power, which is the power of the earth itself. Be with her, through all her emissaries – trees, birds, animals, rocks, mountains – and she will bestow within you a quiet depth of presence that is immovable. Take care of her and she will return a thousand fold through her generous outpouring of beauty and abundance. Become a part of her and you will return home.
As prodigal sons and daughters, it is our connection with nature that will not only restore us to sanity, but help us to collectively heal a traumatized society. Rooted in our knowledge of plants and cycles and rhythms, we can be a trusted force for change. We can be mediators of the invisible worlds. We can be Wise Women and Wise Men.
Molly races to the top of my favorite ridge, about a 30-minute run from our house. I follow suit, breathless. At last we reach a small dead tree, whose branches are adorned with bracelets, rosaries, feathers, and other offerings. At the base of its trunk are seashells, two sand-dollars, and a small statue of the fierce goddess Kali. On the ground before it is a large stone mosaic, outlining a sun shape, with large bleached bones and crystals at the center.
I don’t know who made this little mountain shrine. Or who adds to it. Since I first came upon it 12 months ago on horseback, it’s changed and morphed, with more items being added here and there. Today I bring a raven feather and wedge it’s base into the sand, so that it sticks out of the mosaic, pointing north. My contribution to its evolving story is how I participate in this place. I sit quietly for a long time, while Molly follows the zigzagging scent of a nearby rabbit. The sky is large before me. I exhale out the day of emails and expectations.
I have sat here in this place for nearly a year now. I am learning to stay still. I am learning to recognize the patterns of light at different seasons. I am learning how to listen. I am learning to see the invisibles. I am beginning to understand a hidden language told by breezes, hawks and stone. Stay present with a place long enough, and you may begin to hear its voice. And this is what I hear…You belong to me. I belong to you. It is love with responsibility.
My teacher and friend, ‘Uncle’ Bob Randall, listed Custodial Elder of Uluru, and a member of the Yankunytjatjara people in Central Australia, taught me the word kanyini in his language. It means ‘unconditional love with responsibility’. Unconditionally we belong to all things, whether we believe it or not. It is our simple birthright. And with that love and belonging, there is a responsibility to care for all things…ourselves, our families – and this includes our family of all living things.
One day while we were sitting in a rather unlikely scene together – a cafe in downtown Sydney – he said to me, ‘You can live the kanyini way anywhere.’ He looked up at a young tree neatly landscaped into the pavement near our table. ‘See,’ he laughed, ‘even here I can see my sister, and feel her love for me.’
Like this we can begin to easily yet deliberately reweave the natural world back into our lives, and allow her to – just like Uncle Bob’s tree – push through the hard pavement of the haste and worry. Like this we can thrive and flourish.
Kelly Wendorf is an executive coach, spiritual mentor, facilitator, horse-woman, writer, poet, mother of two astonishing people, and courageous life explorer.To inquire about coaching, spiritual mentoring or private retreats with Kelly, email her.January 8th, 2018