Gregory E. Woods: A Native Man’s Day At The Million Man March Celebration
The point of entry into any consciousness, any door, or adventure begins a chain of events we are prepared for, or we are not prepared to live through. For me, the day before the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March in the nation's capital held my point of entry into the consciousness of the space Minister Farrakhan called for when I met a young Black man who'd been in one of my sacred circles a few years ago. The young man those years ago was in a Maryland program, Safe Passages, that worked with adjudicated youth who were continually in trouble with the law. The young man who hailed me in the subway system was one of those young teenagers and he was a changed man. He was working as a chef for a restaurant. He had no children and his eyes and his countenance was crystal clear!
Talking to him my heart sang with joy listening to him tell me he still had the braid of sweet grass I'd given him when he was a teenager in Safe Passages. Sweat grass teaches that the mind, the body and the spirit of a person separately can be broken. Braided together the three become strong intertwined into a sweet braid Medicine. Whenever the sweet smell of the braid of sweet grass fades it can be submerged in water and the scent returns when it dried by the sun, or the air. This is resurrection, revival. The braid can be burned as incense. Sweet grass is intelligent and whenever it wills the fire can die leaving the braid braided and the teaching insured to penetrate consciousness and provoke awareness where needed. Sweet grass. One of the Medicines Native people use in ceremony, in daily life in our lives in relation to the Earth, our Mother.
When we parted we hugged and I left him with a blessing. I kept thinking about him until I got to the location of the Million Man March celebration to practice with other drummers. Just after sunrise the next day I was escorted to the tipis where other Natives were greeting each other and waiting for the time to participate in the grand entrance of the much anticipated event! On the grounds of the Capital we were a five minute walk through hundreds of people to the place we were to make our grand entrance as Native people in our regalia carrying flags, carrying our heritages with pride, and for the Elders, our legacies walked with us, and there as always were those amongst us carrying our Medicines for the People.
To give a sense of the beginning of the day and the spirit of the place can be done, but it is not the story I want to share in the immediate after glow of the celebration at first. What I want to share is the scores of encounters with Black people compelled to connect with the spirit of Black Indians and other Indian people. I'd like to relate to people who were not there the connections made between Muslim and Christian people in alignment with principles attuned to the subtleties and powerful visions of Minister Farrakhan. I'd like to delve into the vision of Minister Farrakhan for this day from the perspective of kinship and relationship. There are the concepts of safe space and sacred space. The conceptual approach to service the Nation of Islam embodies protecting their own people, property and Minister Farrakhan, and the variant concepts of law enforcement typical of policing.
There were working concepts of reconciliation between races I paid attention to, and ideologies in action far deeper implemented than popular culture dares go beyond political correctness and fear-ridden diatribes against the changes occurring in arenas such as race, sexuality and as the Elders spoke in the traditional closings held off camera at the end of the day: the shifting of energies for the next 26,000 year cycle.
There is a story I should tell.
I invited a young white man to the celebration. He readily accepted. I suspect he'd had already been pondering and looking into the March and what it may mean to him by the words he used after he accepted my invitation.
The two tipis set up on the lawn were encircled by a wooden fence guarded by men from an inter-tribal warrior society from California. These were deep warriors in the traditions of their forefathers. No one was allowed in the tipis. The sacred items were placed inside and guarded by the warriors who deeply understood the care of the Sacred. It is where I left my Medicines until I needed them.
While I was away in the VIP section with the others attending to my place in the opening ceremonies of the event the young man showed up asking for me at the entrance of the sacred space. The initial response to his presence was immediate. He was dressed in jeans, a hoodie and dark shades. The warriors thought he was the white man we all remember as a fat taker (as the Lakota people called the white man), and he was perceived as a threat. But, there was an intervention. One of the older warriors stepped up to the young white man changing the tone of the moment by asking him what he wanted and with kindness from a deep place told him I was not present at the moment, but would return. In the meantime he invited him to wait near by and gave him a bag lunch saying, "You may be hungry. Take this with love." and he touched his heart.
The warrior and I were sitting on my blanket sharing stories when he shared this with me after I'd made contact with the young man. The encounter moved me. I said, "You did this?"
"Yes." he said touching his heart with his left hand and guiding his right hand along invisible lines in the air above his head said, "Love. That is what this (the gathering) was all about!"
Gregory E. Woods
Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories
October 11, 2013
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| Dawn Wolf (2nd from left) with drummers at 20th anniversary of Million Man March October 10, 2015 |
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