Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the CCDA Podcast.
Speaker: In this episode, you will hear from a panel of native speakers as they consider what it means to be home.
Speaker: The first voice you will hear is J.R.
Speaker: Lilly, who is moderating the panel discussion.
Speaker: Home is much more than just a structure and a place that we...
Speaker: inhabit, but it is identity, it is who we are, it's family, it's much more than that.
Speaker: So we're going to explore some of those themes today, but I want to introduce my friends here.
Speaker: I'm going to let them give a much more in-depth introduction of themselves, who they are, where they come from, or as my girlfriend likes to say, who claims you?
Speaker: Who's your family?
Speaker: Who's your people?
Speaker: And tell us a little bit about what home means to you and your tribe.
Speaker: It's really good to see you, my relatives.
Speaker: I'm thankful for the invitation to be here.
Speaker: My name is Lenore Three Stars, and I'm Oglala Lakota, which is one of the seven bands of the Lakota that make up the Ocheri Shikowi, which is the seven council fires.
Speaker: My dad is, he was Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation where I was born, and my mother is Minikoju Lakota from the Cheyenne River Reservation.
Speaker: So I take time to introduce myself in terms of kinship because the Teo Shpaye, the family system of the Lakota, is really important.
Speaker: It teaches us to practice relationships of respect and responsibility.
Speaker: Our homelands include Hesapa, which is the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Speaker: So when I went back this summer, you know, I...
Speaker: standing in line and I'm thinking, I love it here because I blend.
Speaker: You know, I never have to think if there was a reaction to me because I'm brown, because there, everybody's brown.
Speaker: I was just blending in.
Speaker: But when I go back to Spokane, I also feel at home.
Speaker: And I think that comes from knowing that
Speaker: You come from somewhere.
Speaker: You are.
Speaker: You belong to somebody.
Speaker: I belong to our people.
Speaker: I belong to Hesapa.
Speaker: We belong to each other, the land and the people.
Speaker: So I...
Speaker: I remember the Lakota way of thinking, which I also think is another indigenous way because some of my native friends say, oh, yeah, we have that too.
Speaker: In our language, it's called.
Speaker: But in Lakota, it's Mitakriasi, and that means we are all related.
Speaker: We're related to Creator and to each other and to all parts of creation, not just the humans.
Speaker: So when you have that kind of grounding, then you can take that with you.
Speaker: When you are able to treat Earth as Unchimaka, which is Grandmother Earth.
Speaker: I like that one because that's what my grandchildren call me, Unchi Maka.
Speaker: except for my grandson now.
Speaker: He calls me unchos.
Speaker: I have no idea why it sounds like nachos.
Speaker: But I tell them, you know, this is where you come from.
Speaker: This is your grounding.
Speaker: You're connected.
Speaker: So I think you can take that with you.
Speaker: Thank you, Lenore.
Speaker: Let's go to Edith.
Speaker: My name is Edith Woodley.
Speaker: I was born and raised on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.
Speaker: My dad is Eastern Shoshone.
Speaker: That's where he grew up.
Speaker: And my mother is Choctaw from Southeast Oklahoma.
Speaker: So I'm Shoshone and Choctaw.
Speaker: I relate more with my Shoshone people because that's where I grew up.
Speaker: That was home.
Speaker: It was on the Wind River Reservation.
Speaker: However, my people's homes were on the eastern side of Oregon here, down around Bend area, not along that area there.
Speaker: That's really where my people come from.
Speaker: And during certain times, this little thing called the Oregon Trail,
Speaker: kind of happened and so it kind of my peoples were kind of pushed out of their homelands and so the band that I come from we he left and went to Wyoming and that's where I grew up was in Wyoming I was there till I was 18 and
Speaker: And like I said in our book, is that that was home.
Speaker: That was home.
Speaker: I never realized that was home until after I got married and my husband and I started moving around, going different places, living different places.
Speaker: And we were living back east and we did a lot of traveling.
Speaker: And for some reason, after we passed the Mississippi River, something inside me came alive.
Speaker: I got excited.
Speaker: I couldn't, I didn't understand why that it was in my DNA.
Speaker: I had to go back west.
Speaker: And in the west is where I come home.
Speaker: It don't matter where I live in the west.
Speaker: It's home for me.
Speaker: Even if it's back in Wyoming or if it's where we are in Yam Hill here in Oregon.
Speaker: It's home.
Speaker: And so I
Speaker: My DNA knows where home is.
Speaker: And so that's why I feel so comfortable living here in Oregon now.
Speaker: It's because I know this is, I'm coming to do more of my own ancestry research and coming to find out my people are from Oregon.
Speaker: And so that is really my home.
Speaker: Osi Oganali, Aniki Tuwaji, Randy Woodley.
Speaker: So my people are Ketua.
Speaker: That's our real name.
Speaker: Ketua means that we are sheltered under the creator.
Speaker: And so creator is our protector.
Speaker: Our homeland originally was 40,000 square miles of the eight states in the southeast.
Speaker: A lot of you probably live in our former homeland.
Speaker: And then Oklahoma became sort of a second home.
Speaker: And so, but part of that was Northern Alabama, which is where my mother is from.
Speaker: And so, uh, that sense of home and learning from my uncles, how to snare red horse, uh, fish at night under, over the bridge and how to lead a rabbit with a shotgun.
Speaker: And, you know, all those kinds of little things I learned down South in, in Cherokee country, um,
Speaker: And so I think of those places as home, although I have to say, Alabama has changed a lot.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: So anyway, but I was actually raised in southeastern Michigan.
Speaker: I was born in Alabama, moved when I was six weeks old to southeastern Michigan.
Speaker: And I always say a very deep pocket of the south near Detroit because my parents went up with a great migration experience.
Speaker: And it became, well, my dad said, they taught him the three R's down there.
Speaker: The reading, writing, and road to Detroit.
Speaker: So they worked for the automobile factories, and that's how I grew up in that Detroit metro area.
Speaker: So I don't know what I said, but it sounded cool, didn't it?
Speaker: So I said, good morning.
Speaker: Told you where we're from, where our people are.
Speaker: This morning, I just said who my parents were.
Speaker: But if we were home, you know, we'd be introducing our grandparents and so on.
Speaker: And all that, as you introduce your family, uniquely positions you within the community.
Speaker: So like I said last night, my wife and I,
Speaker: A couple other folks that are here with us from the Yakima Nation.
Speaker: We're a confederation of 14 different tribes and bands.
Speaker: Thinking about home, you know, our creation stories tell us that Tamanwethla, which is one of our names for creator, it just means giver of the unwritten law.
Speaker: The stories are that he made us at Pato.
Speaker: We call her Pato, she who greets the sun first.
Speaker: You might know her as Mount Adams.
Speaker: But again, that's a Johnny-come-lately name.
Speaker: Her ancient name is Pato for us.
Speaker: She who greets the sun first.
Speaker: And that when we journey from this life, that we go back to her.
Speaker: And so our teachings at home, our elders tell us that, you know, when we walk that Ticham, earth, she recognizes our footprints.
Speaker: Oh, you walk like your three greats, grandfather.
Speaker: You know, like she recognizes we're deeply rooted here.
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: unlike everyone else that has come here from different places.
Speaker: Even if you've been here for a long time, we always giggle back home when you hear some farmers go, well, my family's been farming this for three generations, and we're like, noobs.
Speaker: We didn't come over on some fake-bearing land bridge.
Speaker: The momentless our stories are that he made us there
Speaker: We've always been there.
Speaker: And so like for my wife, you met last night, my wife Gina, not only is she Yakima, but she's connected again all up and down to Inchewana, the big river, the Columbia.
Speaker: She's Grand Ronde, she's Cowlitz, and Filipino, and Hawaiian.
Speaker: So she's a hottie.
Speaker: So this is home to us.
Speaker: This is what it means when we say home to us.
Speaker: We have a theology of place and a theology of belonging that no other people group can have here.
Speaker: And even if you've been here for a few generations, you have roots, but they're not deep yet.
Speaker: And that's why maybe you can learn from the indigenous and host people of the land still.
Speaker: Wonderful openings, everyone.
Speaker: So we're going to dive into some questions.
Speaker: But before we do, I know kind of like before we get into a rhythm of like everyone gets answered and go back, we're going to try to think of it as at the end of the day, we're just done with a meal.
Speaker: We're done with ceremony.
Speaker: We're at dinner table and we're all just chatting.
Speaker: So anyone, feel free to dive in, answer the question.
Speaker: If you don't feel like answering, you don't have to answer the question.
Speaker: We'll get to the next one.
Speaker: I usually have food when I'm at the dinner table.
Speaker: Usually.
Speaker: Usually.
Speaker: That comes later.
Speaker: I'll also, as a moderator, use my powers to move us along in the conversation if necessary.
Speaker: But also feel free to interrupt each other, add to each other stories, riff off of each other.
Speaker: Until the other day when I was... Exactly.
Speaker: And ignore the question completely and answer whatever you want to say.
Speaker: We're going to go with what creator has to say.
Speaker: And the last rule, all jokes must be funny.
Speaker: So our first question, sort of a theme of land and relationships.
Speaker: Many tribes use language as a family to describe the natural world, like Mother Earth, Father Sky.
Speaker: Is it part of your worldview?
Speaker: Is this also part of your worldview?
Speaker: And how would you describe that to a non-Native community?
Speaker: Unjimaka, the Grandmother Earth, because that's a title, that's a term of kinship and deep respect.
Speaker: That is our connection.
Speaker: I'm Oglala Lakota, and an elder once pantomimed the meaning of that, scooping some earth and sprinkling it on her arm, because we are people that come from the land.
Speaker: So I think if we were to treat Unchimaka as our grandmother, I think we would have a different relationship with her than we have right now.
Speaker: In addition to Mother Earth, we have critters, we have brothers, and we have other siblings that our worldview is not just so human-centric.
Speaker: I think Randy talks about that in some of his books.
Speaker: Yeah, so, well, I just want to say one time I was, so I was a professor at George Fox University, Portland Seminary, and we were doing a chapel one time.
Speaker: And so someone had used the term Mother Earth, and a bunch of students, like 40 of them, got out and walked out, right?
Speaker: because they're like all pagans, right?
Speaker: Mother Earth.
Speaker: It's like, can you look around and see anything that anyone is wearing, built, or is made of that didn't come from the earth?
Speaker: That's your mother, right?
Speaker: Your mother and your grandmother, et cetera.
Speaker: They give birth to all of this.
Speaker: And if you like the story in Genesis, like we come from the earth, we're just walking earth.
Speaker: So everything is our relative.
Speaker: Everything comes from the earth.
Speaker: And so, you know, and guess what?
Speaker: Here's a secret y'all may not know.
Speaker: God made it that way.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: For us to enjoy and to be in relationship with.
Speaker: But our problem, it comes from this, like we have a 3,000-year-old problem called platonic dualism.
Speaker: And what platonic dualism does is kind of lifts the quote-unquote spiritual and mental above the material.
Speaker: And ever since then, it came through also the Reformation, and the Reformation was baked in the bread.
Speaker: And so that we begin to think that there's a spiritualness that doesn't include the materialness.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That is not, first of all, that's anti-biblical.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But secondly, it doesn't even make sense.
Speaker: That's not reality.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so part of it, once we do that, everything becomes a hierarchy.
Speaker: And that again is in every, came through the enlightenment period and the reformation.
Speaker: It's a part of our theologies and everything else.
Speaker: And so now, you know, humans can be over everything else, right?
Speaker: The earth, the animals, everything else.
Speaker: It's just being part of it.
Speaker: Men can be over women.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: White people could be over black people, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: Jesus didn't even teach hierarchy.
Speaker: He said, you know what?
Speaker: You know, the greatest of don't be like the Gentiles who lord over each other.
Speaker: He said, the greatest of you is the servant of all.
Speaker: So we take that as a Christian ethic, but we don't think about that.
Speaker: It's like that's how we're supposed to order life.
Speaker: We're all a part of it together.
Speaker: Yeah, I think, Randy, that's good.
Speaker: I think Gnosticism is alive and well in the Western church, that split view of reality, that dualism that Randy's talking about.
Speaker: And I wish that it wasn't, but it is.
Speaker: And I think that's where folks can learn from Native people.
Speaker: We have something to teach.
Speaker: If we could quit being the perpetual mission field, we'd have something to teach.
Speaker: That's all I got to say about that.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And we'll go to our next question.
Speaker: Talking about responsibility.
Speaker: We all know that home is not just a place where we seek refuge, but it comes with a lot of responsibility.
Speaker: Some of us have chores.
Speaker: What is your role?
Speaker: What is our role in stewardship and care of home?
Speaker: So in Genesis, if you're a king and you're translating the Bible, you like that word dominion to say overrule people, right?
Speaker: Rule over people.
Speaker: But if you are being honest with the translation, a better translation of that passage is to be a co-sustainer.
Speaker: Co-sustainer.
Speaker: And it's in context because the other thing it says right after that is, so till the earth and keep it up.
Speaker: And so we are earth keepers.
Speaker: That's our role.
Speaker: That's what's taught among my people.
Speaker: And it's taught in Genesis that that's our primary role.
Speaker: That's our first job as human beings.
Speaker: To be human is to be an earth keeper.
Speaker: And it doesn't matter if you're like actually tending the earth or bringing water to people who don't have healthy water or food to other people who need it or missing and murdered indigenous women or human trafficking of another sort.
Speaker: Whatever it is that you are repairing the whole community of creation, you are doing your job as a human being.
Speaker: That's what our role is.
Speaker: It's plain and simple.
Speaker: Every human being on earth is to care for the community of creation.
Speaker: And we all get to choose how we do that.
Speaker: Lenore, in a lot of your talks, you talk about how we care for each other, how we care for the earth, in that reciprocal relationship.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: We've had a reciprocal relationship with Unchi Macaw for millennia, you know, thousands of years.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Reciprocal means that you don't take more than you need from creation.
Speaker: You don't take without leaving a gift.
Speaker: So when you're walking along and you see a pretty rock, you don't just say, oh, I'll take it home.
Speaker: You ask permission, you leave a gift.
Speaker: And I was telling some folks at church, I said, that means for us that we might leave tobacco.
Speaker: And so my friend said, we were out chopping down our Christmas tree and we remembered what you said and we didn't have a gift to leave, so we sang a song.
Speaker: And I said, I thought that was a perfect example of respect and relationship that they were showing to creation there.
Speaker: Edith, you're a perfect example of somebody who cares so much for your guests and people who come into your home.
Speaker: What are your thoughts here?
Speaker: It's just something that's built into me.
Speaker: I grew up that way.
Speaker: People in and out of my home all the time.
Speaker: And so as we got married, I come to find out Randy was the same way.
Speaker: He had people in and out of his home constantly.
Speaker: So it's just something that's just built into who I am as a person.
Speaker: And I think a lot of Native people have that same thing built into them, where it's just hospitality is just one of those things.
Speaker: But, you know, it's not only just you got to...
Speaker: be hospitable not just to your friends and your relatives and your family and your brothers and sisters but to um to the earth also to the plants around you and because the thing is is that when you you take care of and show those plants and animals around you the respect and
Speaker: that they deserve, just like you deserve the respect, then you'll get this mutual thing.
Speaker: I mean, you may not think.
Speaker: Yeah, you may think, oh, she's just a tree hugger, you know, one of those type of people.
Speaker: But no, really, think about it.
Speaker: When you have respect for a plant, and you take those, and you go, okay, creator, thank you.
Speaker: You lay a little tobacco, like Denor was saying, down.
Speaker: And you go, thank you for this food that will sustain me and my kids or my family or my neighbors that are coming over for dinner tonight.
Speaker: They help us.
Speaker: But then in the meantime, before they get to that point, if you show them that care and that love as you're planting them and tending them,
Speaker: When they come to be adults, they will turn around and give you that love back.
Speaker: That's called a mutual respect.
Speaker: By giving you beautiful, healthy blueberries or apples or whatever, or even vegetables that you do in your garden.
Speaker: This is a respect that we have with creation around us.
Speaker: I wanted her to mention how she picks blueberries.
Speaker: Oh, definitely said that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She said you don't pick from the top because you leave those for the birds and those up there.
Speaker: She said you don't pick the bottom ones because the little ones down there, they need those.
Speaker: So you just pick from the middle.
Speaker: I love that you use the word responsibility, you know, because...
Speaker: Responsibility, that's the difference between religion and spirituality.
Speaker: I'll tell you what I mean by that.
Speaker: I was asked to come and there was a museum.
Speaker: I don't remember if it was on the way to Portland or Seattle.
Speaker: I can never remember.
Speaker: But somehow the lady had known me from somewhere along the journey.
Speaker: And they had set up a display of Columbia River tribes and then specifically Yakima.
Speaker: And so she said, will you come and look at this display to see if we have this wording right?
Speaker: Well, I didn't feel like I was the one, so I asked some of my elders, but I asked three different elders.
Speaker: Each one of them said, we trust you, you go, because I have sat at their feet and learned a lot.
Speaker: And so I took some students with me and we went.
Speaker: And we have a non-profit Native youth organization, so we work with our Native youth, our teens.
Speaker: And so I took some kids and we went.
Speaker: And one of the first things our kids noticed right off the bat was there was, you know, they always talk about us in the past tense.
Speaker: They do that in your history books, they do that in museums.
Speaker: And one of our kids said, they read something that said, oh, the Yakimas used to hunt here and they used to fish here.
Speaker: And the kid was like, I was just fishing there this weekend with my uncle.
Speaker: What is this?
Speaker: So when we saw the Yakima display they had up, it said the Northwest, something to the effect, the Northwest was so abundant with berries and fish and deer, and that's why Yakimas ate them.
Speaker: And I said, lady, that's not why we eat them.
Speaker: And I'm going to tell you this real condensed story.
Speaker: This is a story you would hear in our longhouse.
Speaker: our Wachet, our seven drums faith.
Speaker: When Tamawathla made everything, everything was giant.
Speaker: And he told all his creation, I'm talking about things that crawl, swim, fly, grow, two-legged, four-legged.
Speaker: He said all his creation, you choose from among yourself one who will protect you and lead you well and take care of you.
Speaker: So as all of creation is talking amongst itself,
Speaker: Some of creation said, well, what about Anhui, bear?
Speaker: He's big, he's strong, he's got teeth and claws, he can protect us.
Speaker: And others of creation said, oh, but he's grumpy and he sleeps a lot.
Speaker: Someone else said, well, what about Spilii, coyote?
Speaker: He's cunning, he's fast.
Speaker: And other creation said, oh, man, he's always getting himself into trouble and mischief with the Creator.
Speaker: He's going to get us in trouble.
Speaker: And then finally, one of creation said, well, what about two-legged?
Speaker: What about human beings?
Speaker: They're kind.
Speaker: They're good.
Speaker: They could take care of us.
Speaker: And other creation said, oh, man, but they don't have any fur to keep them warm.
Speaker: They don't have big claws.
Speaker: They can't even run very fast.
Speaker: They can't even take care of themselves.
Speaker: How are they going to take care of us?
Speaker: And that's when Nusa, salmon, swam up and said, we will give ourself so human being can be nourished.
Speaker: And in return, they will care for us and lead us and protect us.
Speaker: And then Yamash, deer, came out and said, we will give our hide so human being can be warm and our food, they can be nourished.
Speaker: And in return, they will care for us.
Speaker: And then Wyopneet, elk, he was third since he's a visitor to our country.
Speaker: He came and said the same thing.
Speaker: And then came the roots.
Speaker: And then the berries like weanew, huckleberry.
Speaker: And they said, we'll give ourselves as a human being.
Speaker: And in return, they'll care for us and lead us.
Speaker: Lastly was Chush.
Speaker: water's life.
Speaker: And water said, we'll give ourselves so human beings can be refreshed, and in return, they'll care for us and lead us and protect us.
Speaker: And I said, lady, that's why we eat them, because we have a responsibility to them, and they have a responsibility to us.
Speaker: And the teaching that I heard on the responsibility of
Speaker: when it comes to religion and spirituality is that religion is about guilt and blame and shame.
Speaker: I've been to churches where they have five minutes set aside for you to feel really bad about yourself or how you screwed up that week, as if the Creator surprised that we did.
Speaker: Whereas spirituality is about responsibility.
Speaker: And when I read the stories of Yeshua, I love to use his tribal name.
Speaker: Don't forget he's a tribal person.
Speaker: I'm rambling on.
Speaker: But responsibility.
Speaker: That's what spirituality is about.
Speaker: Yeshua overturning the money changers tables.
Speaker: That's responsibility.
Speaker: You're still turning tables, right?
Speaker: So I just want to make sure that one thing is really clear so that we don't become like the object.
Speaker: Oh, look at those native people and how they felt about home.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You are all indigenous from somewhere.
Speaker: Every single person here.
Speaker: If your people had to learn to live with earth and with each other, or you wouldn't be here now.
Speaker: But we were overtaken by a Western worldview about 3,000 years ago.
Speaker: And since then, we've never recovered.
Speaker: And Christianity has never recovered.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: So, yeah, there's ways that you have to become indigenous.
Speaker: You have to begin to decolonize yourself from this empire, this American empire.
Speaker: And then you have to begin to indigenize.
Speaker: And that means to be in relationship with the land, right?
Speaker: And we're talking about relationship, whatever it takes for you.
Speaker: You go out and sing to your tree, whatever, you know, hug it, whatever.
Speaker: You know, you need to build a relationship with the land that you're on and get back to those roots because we have it up here somewhere, but we've forgotten it, right?
Speaker: And if we don't, the future doesn't look very bright, okay?
Speaker: If you want to know how to fight climate change, you begin to have a relationship with the earth, okay?
Speaker: I'd like to hear you sing to a tree, Randy.
Speaker: Any final thoughts?
Speaker: Home, protocol, ceremony?
Speaker: When you go somewhere, you always bring a gift.
Speaker: It don't matter if it's...
Speaker: coffee or if it's um you know maybe you made a bunch of muffins the morning before just take half of them and take them with you whatever you know it's just you always come with something to offer someone else because you know it's just it it lightens their spirits sometimes you might
Speaker: still feel like you're exiles.
Speaker: You know, maybe you didn't come originally from this part of the world.
Speaker: But one world, we're all related.
Speaker: So we all have that relationship no matter where we are.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: And thank you to J.R.
Speaker: Lilly, Lenore Three Stars, Edith Woodley, Randy Woodley, and Corey Greaves for sharing their experience and wisdom with us.
Speaker: See the show notes of this episode for more information about each of these speakers and their organizations.
Speaker: And for more resources by our Indigenous brothers and sisters, visit ccda.org slash indigenous.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening to this episode.
Speaker: Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker: This episode is produced by Sarah Callen in association with Scott Overpeck.
Speaker: We will be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's shalom.
Speaker: We'll see you then.
