feeding the calves with plastic: a Prayer-story

It seems the natural inclination of the Euro-American to separate the whole is steadfast. It plays in every aspect of American life, and irregardless of the outcome, the consequences he continues the practice. The restlessness of the Whites my ancestors observed and commented on has not abated, and in the whites’ urgency has not rested even upon the heaps of spoils littering the land once ours to roam and care for.

It is a sad puzzle trying to understand why we feel compelled to duplicate him. It has cost him peace of mind fearfully and continually looking for the Boogey Man to come get him, and for the chickens to come home to roost. It has cost us our children and our wisdoms are for sale now. The schools he sends our children to are drumming into student and teachers not to touch each other.

"It is bad.” they say.

The calves drink from plastic tubs, the chickens live in cages never to touch the ground, church is separate from state, and God is in a compartment until he is needed for the acquisition of something or a war is questioned on moral grounds.

It is tough being of the People trying to walk the Red Road, or live and embody the teachings of Yoruba ancestors in a country that walks upon the continent and cannot see Turtle Island, or hear the voices of African women and men in the Atlantic Ocean howling in terror and rage and bewilderment! For the ‘visitors’ so much separation between their heads, and their hearts has severed the ties between the Above and the Below and their inner and the outer being creating an insanity from imbalance the world has not seen since the waters flooded the Earth as our Creation stories tell us. Garbage floats above the planet, sewage and plastics float in the waters, the air changes color and the ground moans in shifting waves adjusting to upheaval and disrespect.

The gifts the whites brought us were a mixed blessing, and only a few, in the old days, could live a period of their tribal lives without him, but eventually he caught us all, and explained that his way was the way of progress. We lost our land, gave up our freedoms and lost our religion, and our rituals were outlawed. When restored in 1978 we found so many white people trying to heal themselves through our Medicine Ways.

It was like the Old Ones said when they dreamed their visions as the whites covered the forests and prairies with their stool, their cattle, their smells, and towns. “The grandchildren of those who took our lands, and killed us would come to our lodges to heal themselves.” © Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 1.9.13