Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life

A Silent Voice

171 A late March snowstorm has flung a blanket of snow and ice across the newly exposed fields at the Dream of Wild Health farm. Dark, moist soil has refrozen; migrating birds seek shelter in the foliage of spruce and pine trees. A week earlier, sandhill cranes had called their loud kar-r-r-o-o-o as they flew overhead, while the red-winged blackbird trilled from the wetland , and the robin chirped its joy at finding withered crabapples still hanging from the trees. Behind the house, a woman fanned the smoking embers of damp wood, patiently encouraging a fire to catch hold. The fire is for the women who came to honor the equinox as spring returned with her uncertain, volatile moods. Insidethewarmglowofthekitchen,asmallgroupofDakotaandOjibwe women has gathered for a retreat led by Ida Downwind. Much of the weekend will be spent in silence until the closing ceremony on Sunday. The women will eat and drink sparingly, focusing their attention on prayer. We sit talking around the same table where I first met Delores five years earlier. Bright squares of red and yellow cloth are stacked near half-drunk cups of tea. There is a sense of anticipation and an undercurrent of anxiety about not speaking for two days, stepping out of comfortable routines and eating habits, far from the constant noise and activity of young children and the city. Ida Downwind, an Ojibwe elder, spent many years in South Dakota taking part in Lakota ceremonies that helped her heal from years of physical abuse. Through her participation in fasting and Sundance, she was given A Silent Voice If you ask us, “What is silence?” we will answer, “It is the Great Mystery. The holy silence is God’s voice.” —ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman) 07_Layout 1 6/6/2011 10:20 Page 171 172 Beloved Child permission to lead the inipi, or sweat lodge ceremony. We talked briefly about historical trauma, how it was evident throughout the Native community . When Ida spoke about the trauma in her life, she said in a matterof -fact tone, “I have forgiven the unforgiveable.” She had asked for a retreat at the farm so that this circle of women could rest and spend time in prayer. By calling for silence and fasting, she relieved them of their social obligations and the deeply ingrained habit of caring for others by cooking, tending, chatting, parenting. They could not distract themselves by talking or by careless eating. They simply had to be. When they came in late that night from the fire, their feet covered in dried mud and their spirits cleansed with prayer, when they fell exhausted into their beds, the silence that descended on the house was deeper than thatofsleep,reachingfarbeyonddreamstothestarsthatfilledthenightsky. The gift of this weekend, the gift of not speaking, came as they remembered how to listen to the Creator. The gift of silence allowed them to listen to their own hearts and to hear what the Creator is saying. Many of us have forgotten how to do this. We’re too busy; our children need our attention; jobs are demanding; there’s never enough time. Sometimes we’re so exhausted, we have to sleep, and sleep, and sleep. And then there’s all the pain that surfaces when we first quiet our minds, when there is nothing to dull the grief that rises, or the rage that burns like a fire, or the loneliness that is the most frightening of all, the emptiness of dead space— the reasons why people keep their televisions turned on all the time. If you can find your way back to the silence, if someone like Ida is there to help plant the seed, then this is the first step toward returning to a Dakota way of life, to once again raise beloved children. As Dakota historian David Larsen said, “If you know what was taken away, then you can reclaim it.” When Glenn Wasicuna said to me, years earlier, “Heal yourself first,” I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know what healing was. It’s easy to see the consequences of trauma, to read the mounting statistics of suicide , addiction, disease, and poverty as symptoms of the underlying harms that have been passed down through generations and inherited by our 07_Layout 1 6/6/2011 10:20 Page 172 A Silent Voice 173 children. Far more difficult, I believed, was to...