The following is an interview with Joseph Marshall, author of The Lakota Way of Strength
and Courage: Lessons in Resilience from the Bow and Arrow, available from Sounds True.
Tami Simon: Joseph, one of the themes of your work is the art of perseverance and
how to work with difficulties: difficult times and challenges. As a Lakota
Sioux elder, obviously I think this is something that you know a lot about from
the history of the Lakota and all of the difficulties that have been
experienced by your people. To begin with, I'm wondering if you could tell us
about the key ideas about how to work with difficulty when it emerges in our
lives.
Joseph Marshall: First of all, I think you know
difficulty is not exclusive to any one group. All of us experience it in one
way or another and to one level or another, sometimes every day. And of course,
we all know that some difficulties are harder or worse and can really have a
drain on us. But I think that, first of all, we have to understand that life
comes with difficulties. There are problems. There are obstacles. There are
situations for us to attend to day in and day out. Once we understand that
reality, that's the most important aspect of dealing with difficulty and
persevering.
One of the things that my
grandparents — both sets of grandparents — always tried to teach all of their
grandchildren is that life is good but life is not always easy. It's the
not-easy times, those times of difficulty that we have to face instead of
avoiding them. Those were two very simple realities that they tried to teach
early on, even when we were little children. Everything, like crossing a creek,
could be an obstacle. It's not a problem for somebody who is six feet and has a
long stride but crossing a small creek could be a problem for someone who is
not quite four-feet tall. It was an opportunity for them to teach us how to
deal with this particular difficulty. And, in a broader sense, that
difficulties are a part of life. Once we realize that difficulty is a part of
life, that's the first step.
It's interesting — you're making an observation that somehow in our
contemporary society it's almost this idea, almost a commercial idea, that
difficulty shouldn't happen, that there might be some way we can avoid it if we
buy the right soap or something like that.
Yes, or take the right pill, or
read the right book, or have the right kind of friends — then we won't have
difficulties. It's interesting. I find it interesting, and maybe you do too,
that sometimes when I watch TV I see commercials for certain kinds of
medication and along with what the medication can do beneficially, there's a
whole list: a long recital of the side effects. And that's really what life is.
I mean, there are certainly good things in life — good events, good occurrences,
things that happen to us that are good and positive. And we have relatives and
friends who have a positive impact on us, but then also there are situations
and people whose impact, whose attitudes, whose ways are not as positive. It's
just part of life and no soap, no pill, no drink, no potion is going to do away
with that. I think it would be good if we could have those things but we don't.
And if we accept that reality, then it is better for us.
Okay, so that's the first step in working with difficulties — just to
recognize that it comes with the package of being an alive human being.
Difficulties happen. But I know that there is quite a bit more in your work
looking at issues like resilience and how we can bounce back when hard things happen.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Another thing that I learned early
on, from basically grandparents and from people who were part of my upbringing,
was that each of us — whether we are young or old — have a certain amount of
strength to begin with. We come with that; it's part of the package. When we
are born, we have the ability to be strong. And in order to flip that switch or
turn on that strength, we need not avoid bad things; we need to face up to them.
Whether we get knocked down or not is not really the issue. It is that we
faced it. We probably will get knocked down or disappointed or some adverse thing
will happen as a consequence of facing something. But we still need to face
it — we face it with whatever strength we have. I learned early on that I was, in
my case, stronger than I thought I was and that I could face up to something
and deal with it. Even if it knocked me down again, I would face up to it
again. That's the strength we have and perseverance is simply not to give up.
That's the first lesson — not to give up.
I'm wondering, Joseph, if you would be willing to share with me
something from your own life, something that happened that you found very
challenging and how you were able to draw on Lakota wisdom as a way to keep
going?
As a child, the first really
difficult thing that I had to face — there were disappointments as a child — was
going to school. I lived with my maternal grandparents until I was eight and
really didn't know what school was about; what formal education in the Western
sense was all about. There was an uncle of mine who I knew was in school but I
didn't know what that meant exactly, precisely. No one ever took the time to
explain to me what "school" meant. I knew he was going to school,
that he would go to a dormitory and come home on the weekends and then he went
away to the university, which was more school.
When I was eight, my uncle and my
grandparents took me from the Rosebud Reservation to the Pine Ridge Reservation
to my paternal grandparents. I had to stay with them and go to school. It
happened so suddenly — it was totally unexpected. We made this trip of 140 miles
to my other grandparents and it wasn't that I didn't love them or respect them;
it was that I had to suddenly be uprooted and placed in a different situation.
That was the shock.
Added to that was that I was there
because I needed to go to school. In a few days, my Grandfather Marshall took
me to the Kyle Boarding and Day School, not far from where they lived — just a
few miles. It all came as a rush. There were different people. There were
crowds of people. There were hundreds of kids. There were teachers. There were
adults that I obviously didn't know. There was a language that I wasn't
entirely familiar with. So it was. I just didn't know what to do. I was
confused. And amid that confusion was a little bit of anger because I didn't
understand what was going on.
But all I could do was get through
whatever that first day was. Part of that first day, I remember very vividly
sitting outside the principal's office for a long time. This very tall man, a
white man, came out in a suit and he took me to a classroom and everybody tried
to explain to me the best that they could — because I wasn't very fluent in
English — what was happening. Then encountering a whole classroom of kids — they
were native, Lakota kids but nonetheless, I knew nobody. There was nobody I
could relate to.
That was the first really
emotional shock that I encountered, experiencing what "school" was
really about. I knew what was expected of me and I just had to simply get
through each moment and each day the best I could. I didn't at first — it was
difficult. I ran away from the school grounds several times and people had to
come after me to bring me back to the school. But eventually, I decided that
probably the only way to deal with it and get the adults off my back was to
endure what was going on, even though I didn't like the food. I didn't like the
routine. I didn't like where I was. I simply had to endure it. That was my
first lesson in perseverance.
Did your grandparents advise you in any way or teach you in any way
how to work with that situation?
They did. Once they
realized — especially my grandfather — the amount of difficulty I was having in
school, he finally sat down with me and said, "Grandson, you can't be
running away from school because you don't want to learn to run away from
situations that are tough." He explained this to me because he spoke
Lakota as well — all of my grandparents did — and he took the time to explain to me
then what "school" was about and why it was necessary. Whether we
liked it or not, it was necessary. It was something we had to do. And he told
me that he knew I could do it. Once he explained those things to me and spoke
to me very gently and took the time to outline what was expected of me, then it
was easy to contend with. It wasn't easy overall but it was easier to face.
You were raised by your maternal grandparents and I'm
wondering if you can share with us a little bit about what that situation was
like. Give us a visual of what your early childhood was like.
I was told that I was given to
them, or taken to them, when I was just a few months old for several reasons.
My parents were working and my father had several jobs going from one ranch to
another to break horses for ranchers so it was not a lifestyle in which an
infant was safe or comfortable. So I was given to my maternal grandparents. And
we lived various places that I can remember, some more concretely than others.
It was in a northern part of the
Rosebud Reservation, near a little town called White River, South Dakota — in
that general area. One of the communities on our reservation was called Horse
Creek and that was our community. Another one was called Swift Bear and we were
in that community as well. But it was, in most ways, very carefree for me. I
was allowed to play. I was encouraged to play, to wander about by myself and
explore my territory. There were about 150 square miles of land and meadows and
a river and creeks and hills that I and a couple of dogs could go and just
explore and see what was out there. It was their way of encouraging me to
understand my environment and deal with whatever was out there, be it good or
bad, whether it was dangerous rattle snakes or rabbits or coyotes or a
fast-moving creek — I had to learn to deal with that.
That was my childhood. It was
carefree in many respects and very adventurous. They didn't forbid me to go to
somewhere, some place or do something unless it was very, very dangerous. And
then they would tell me, "You can't go there because …" Generally
speaking, I respected that because I respected my grandparents. But it was
always out in the open. Even in the winter time we were always outside doing
things, out in the environment working or playing. I had a couple of dogs and I
had access to horses. I was put on the back of a riding horse when I was four
or five years old and I had to learn to keep my balance and stay on — that was
the way it was done for a long time.
That was the way I was from my end
of the experience. Because my grandparents were, when I came to them, in their
fifties and sixties — actually, my grandmother was 47 and my grandfather was 61.
There were also people of their age and people of their generation — our
relatives and friends — who came to visit. We visited them. There were a lot of
social occasions. There was church on Sundays, for example, where everybody got
together and when those things happen, then the old people always drew the
children to them, to talk to them or to visit about things and to tell stories.
So that was the foundation … that is the foundation of who I am. That contact
with those old people and how they were as people — the kinds of things that they
had to say, not just to me but to all of the other children that were there and
the kinds of lessons they taught with their stories. So that was my childhood.
It was, as far as I'm concerned, over much too quickly.
Now, Joseph, here you are, you're in your 60s and you live what one
could say would be a Western lifestyle currently in terms of your home, your
cars, and everything. How much do you think of your early experience and the
wisdom that you learned from your grandparents and the people of their age? How
much of that wisdom really applies in our modern world? What does and what
doesn't?
As far as I'm concerned,
everything applies because life is life. The only differences between now and
then is the amount of technology and the amount of it that people have contact
with. Everything else is basically the same. We still have to worry about
making a living. We still have to worry about taking care of our families. We
still have to worry about what's going on in the world that directly affects
us. Those were some of the issues that they had to contend with when they were
the primary care givers in my life as a child. Those kinds of issues, while
they might be slightly different today, are basically the same.
The things that they taught me
were about understanding the environment around me, about the kind of people
that are out there in the world, about the kind of person that I should be as a
Lakota and as a man. All of those lessons are applicable today because everyone
knows that what we learn in those first formative years — up to maybe the age of
10 — is how we contend with life thereafter. And everything that they had to
teach is just as viable today as they were then.
Now there are just a couple of questions that I would like to
ask you. They are things that I've always wanted to ask a true Native American
lineage holder, a true Native American elder. I hope that it's okay. I notice sometimes that I feel a personal
sense of guilt when I speak to someone who is of
Native American heritage. Guilt for what Euro-Americans did in coming over to this country a
couple hundred years ago. I'm curious what you would say to someone
like me or other people who maybe have a sense of … maybe it's guilt, or shame
for what our collective group of Euro-Americans did, the kinds of tragedies
that they created.
It's an interesting question and
statement. Yes, I have encountered that. People have asked me that. They
declare, "Well, I do feel guilty." I get emails a lot. I get letters
from people who say that very thing that you just did — that there is a sense of
guilt for how history turned out, how the interaction between our different groups
of people turned out. First of all, there's no denying history. There is a
reality to history that we all should be aware of for two reasons, not so much
to feel guilty but just to have an awareness of it because the premise, the
axiom, that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it is very, very
true. On our part, we don't want those things to happen to anyone and we
certainly don't want those things to happen to us. So along with feelings of
guilt, right behind it and linked with it inextricably should be a sense of
realistic awareness of how history really came down and why some of the things
happened the way they did and what the attitudes were
that were behind those actions.
Someone asked me, "Why do you
want us to feel guilty?" I never ever said anywhere — I never ever wrote
anywhere — that I want non-native people to feel guilty. What I would rather have
is awareness: awareness about history so that we learn from it so that we do
not treat each other and other people the same way that Euro-Americans treated
native people — and wolves as well. If you want to study what happened to native
people, then study what happened to wolves. If you want to know what happened
to wolves, study what happened to native people. It was that sense of
entitlement and sense of superiority that drove all of that and those are the
kinds of things, that perhaps as Americans overall, with which we are facing
the world at large — with that sense of superiority and entitlement. I think that
some of us have not learned from our own history. In place of that guilt,
that's what I would rather have — awareness.
History is difficult thing. It is
a difficult thing to remember and know exactly what happened. It's a difficult
thing to own up to, and for native people like me, it's often a difficult thing
to talk about because sometimes it's not easy to keep the anger at bay and the
bitterness at bay, although I try. I try to present history in a way that is a
learning tool. Not a bloody stump to hit somebody over the head with, but a
learning tool. And when one uses it as a learning tool, then guilt is not the
consequence. Awareness should be. And that's really what I would want — that
awareness so that we don't do the same stupid, awful thing again.
In that spirit, I know that our conversation here is not going
to go on for days and weeks but I'm curious, what aspects of the history — of the
non-native people coming over to this country and what occurred — what aspects of
that history do you think are important to really emphasize that might not be
in people's awareness?
What aspects of it? I think all of
us function or operate or live from what our values are and what our attitudes
are. And I think that Euro-Americans came to this continent with that sense of
superiority, that sense that they were a better people, a more moral and
enlightened people. And I think that there was one Pope, and I can't remember
exactly which Pope it was, who issued an edict that it was acceptable to kill
native people because they did not have souls like white people did, like
Christian people did. When you have those kinds of attitudes, certainly you're
going to act from those foundations, from those attitudes.
Certainly the guns and the liquor
and the technology that Euro-Americans had did their share of damage, but
without the attitudes driving them, we probably would not have had the kind of
damage that guns cause. It is attitudes and how they drive people to do what
they do. The whole thing of Manifest Destiny was that "we're entitled,
we're supposed to come here and do this, it is our right." If you look
around and if you listen to some of the things that are happening today in
politics and corporate America, there is still that attitude of Manifest
Destiny. And that's dangerous because that causes you to override the basic
values of fairness and compassion and balance that all should be driving us
instead. It's attitude that is the root cause of a lot of difficult things.
You mentioned that in yourself, you do your best to keep anger and
bitterness at bay, especially when seeing not only what has happened in history
but as you mentioned, what we currently see happening in our world in terms of
people still holding those kinds of attitudes. How do you do that? How do you
keep anger and bitterness at bay? How do you personally do that?
Well, it's finding a certain
amount of balance, and understanding that anger is a destructive force, it's a
destructive emotion. Maybe there is such a thing as righteous anger. Sometimes
it is necessary for anger to cause us to be courageous when something goes
wrong. But anger in and of itself when it is driven by ignorance is a very
destructive force. We need to learn, or at least I'm still trying to learn,
that anger is not the best way to teach a lesson — to teach a positive lesson.
But having said that, the anger is still there when you consider, when one
considers the kinds of stories that emerge from history.
I remember my grandfather saying,
because I asked him when I was probably 14 or 15. In school we were studying
Western American history, and there was a brief mention of what had happened at
Wounded Knee in 1890. My grandfather was born in 1888, so he was only two when
that happened. But of course, his parents were alive so I asked what he knew
about that event. And he told me what his parents and other people had told him
in the years after that had happened and what their reaction was to it, which
was basically an enormous amount of shock and sadness that this sort of thing
would happen. He told me the story of what he knew about Wounded Knee and then
he ended it by singing an honoring song for all of the people who died there.
I saw my grandfather cry maybe two
or three times in my entire lifetime, and that was one of the moments that he
cried. When he talked about what happened at Wounded Knee, I saw how it
affected him. And when you see when that kind of event affects people, then you
feel a certain amount of pity and empathy, certainly, but then you become angry
because you're one of those people that it happened to. It was your kind of people
that suffered with what happened at Wounded Knee. So it's not easy to keep the
anger at bay but still, we have to realize that anger is not a constructive
force. That is what I remember day in and day out: that it's best to teach with
positive emotion rather than with negative emotion and anger is one of those
things. Balance is important. I keep it in its own compartment, aside from
everything else I do.
Thank you. One of the other questions that I've wanted to ask that I'm
going to ask you now as a Native American elder, a Lakota elder, is how you
feel about non-Native Americans adopting and then adapting certain native
ceremonies like the sweat lodge ceremony or the vision quest experience and
leading their own vision quest groups and sweat lodges. What's your view on all
of that?
It's not acceptable to me, pure
and simple. I don't think it's our place to deny somebody, anyone, who wants to
come and participate with us in our ceremonies. There are several instances,
but one comes to mind when I was living in Wyoming and there was an
advertisement in a local paper that said, "Lakota Sweat Ceremonies, 7 p.m.
on Wednesdays, call …" and there was a name and phone number. So when I
called the number, there was a machine on the phone so I left a message. I told
them who I was, gave them my name and that I was a Lakota and I was interested
in what this sweat ceremony was all about. I never got a reply back and I
called several times.
As it turned out, I found out that
the person who was doing the advertising was a local registered nurse who
worked at the hospital, a male nurse. He had gone to one or two Lakota sweat
ceremonies, just as a participant, and from that he assumed that he had the
right and the wherewithal to conduct his own ceremonies.
I take issue with that kind of
approach. It's up to each individual medicine man who he accepts into his
ceremony and who he allows to be part of it. And if a medicine man says,
"You can come and participate," that is not a license to conduct your
own sweat lodge ceremonies — no more than I would get up in front of a Catholic
mass and say, "I'm conducting this mass and I'm going to preach the sermon
today." It doesn't work that way and it shouldn't work that way. It's not
acceptable to me for people to assume that they have the wherewithal or
authority and the right to conduct Lakota ceremonies. People who are not
Lakota, for them to come and participate and learn — that's okay. That's the way
we create awareness. But to come in and take over, as it were, for me it diminishes
the whole thing and it's not acceptable at all.
Just to push on this a little bit, if that's OK Joseph, just a
little-obviously someone advertising a sweat lodge as a Lakota sweat lodge is a
pure and simple appropriation of something that doesn't belong to them. But I'm
curious-and I'm curious because I know of a lot of people who are good, sincere
people who have taken the sweat lodge experience itself. They've said,
"Just come participate in a weekend of sweat lodge ceremony" where
they're taking that essential piece of building a structure and having a fire
and sweating and praying. How do you feel about? Just honestly, I'd love to
know.
Well, that's OK. I've seen people
and been with people who — one of my nephews is a medicine man and he invites
people to come, and there are all kinds of people who do come: native people
from other tribes, non-Indian people who do come and they participate. When
they participate in the spirit of learning and being part of it — that's fine. I
mean, that's the way we come to an understanding of one another. Native people
go and they belong to Christian denominations and they go to Christian church
services. But unless they become, through the process of pastors or deacons or
whatever, and that system is available to them in that sense, they don't assume
that they have any control. And that is where the rub is for me. I've been with
a lot of people, non-Indian people, who will come and will courteously and
respectfully and in the spirit of learning and being a part of something will
participate. And as far as I'm concerned, that's good and fine.
But I'm taking it a step further. Not just participating but then
going and setting up their own sweat lodge. Not calling it a Lakota sweat lodge
but just, "Here's a sweat lodge experience" and leading people
through that. They've never been initiated necessarily by any type of
traditional elder but then they just take it and teach it in a "this is a
universal practice of the sweat lodge." What do you think about that?
To me, that's at the very least
questionable. I think that you know, in specific instances we need to know what
their motivation is and what they are saying to people. The case in point is
what happened in Arizona and several people suffered injuries and died because
this one man built a sweat lodge that housed over 40 people inside one sweat
lodge and the heat was overwhelming. A sweat lodge is not to see how hot you
can stand it and to see how tough you are. It's a cleansing ceremony for one
very simple reason: you become reborn. It's not how tough you are and how brave
you are or how hot you can stand it before you give up. That was the sense that
I got out of this story of what happened in Arizona. When people don't
understand the real reasons and the full extent of why we do certain
ceremonies, then that's where people who come to them are misled. And that's
really what I take issue with: people who come to a sweat lodge that is
conducted by a non-Lakota or non-native person who doesn't quite understand it
fully. The people who come and participate are misled because they think that
this person knows everything that there is to know and chances are they don't.
That's the thing I take issue with.
Of course, your own prayer and ceremonial life is personal. Each one
of us — it's our own intimate experience of our spiritual life. But I'm curious
if you would be willing to share a little and give us a sense of what Lakota
ceremonies are important to you in your life now?
In general, they're all important
but we don't always have the opportunity to participate in all of them and the
one ceremony that I like to participate in is the sweat lodge or Inikagapi,
which means "to be reborn." But every day, I start off my day, Tami,
with several minutes of silence before I get to work, before I turn on any
device in the house, before I make coffee, before I do anything else. I light a
sprig of sage and I smudge. I let the smoke rise and I pray for a few minutes.
I pray for my relatives, my friends especially, anyone who is having any amount
of difficulty, or facing something extraordinary. I pray for them specifically,
such as a cousin of mine who is now facing stage-four liver cancer. I thought
about her today. I'm thinking about her all day. Then after I smudge, I sit
down and — making sure my feet are on the floor, that I'm in contact with the
ground, with the Earth — I spend a few moments of nothing but silence. If there's
nothing but silence, that's okay but sometimes there are images and thoughts
and feelings that come into that silence and I allow that. And that's how I
start my day and that's my little ceremony every day. And it will be every day
of my life from now on.
Joseph, we started our
conversation and I was speaking with you about what you know about Lakota
wisdom in terms of dealing with difficult times and the art of perseverance. I
started with that because it is an aspect of your work that I'm quite
interested in and that I think is very important. But I'm curious, beyond that
theme, what you feel are the central teachings of the Lakota people that we
really need in our world today — that you really want make sure people are aware
of. As in, "Here's what the Lakota can offer our troubled world."
Interesting question. The answer
probably requires a lot more wisdom than I have at my beck and call at the
moment. But what I understand and perceive about what we Lakota stand for — and
there are many things that we stand for — but one of the things that we do is
that we accept the reality of what is. There is a saying in our language,
[which translates to] "that's the way things are." And if you take
that simple phrase and look around, there are some realities that exist in our
everyday lives, in our immediate environment, but also in the larger environment
around us. Some of those realities the Lakota perceived way back when: the sun
comes up and it goes down; it comes up in a certain direction and it always
goes down in a certain place; and there are other realities as well — there are
circles and cycles to life. The seasons run in a cycle and the moon is round.
The sun is round — that is a circle. And these are the kinds of realities that
are a part of our existence. We don't deny them. We accept them for what they
are because we can't change them.
And the biggest reality is about
life itself. It has a beginning and it has an ending and it is a cycle itself.
We're born, we're infants, then we are children, then we are adults, and then
we are elders — that is the cycle of our life. Now I'm at the point where I'm at
the beginning of being an elder so I'm into that last phase of my life and
that's the way it is. Having heard other people talk about it, especially old
people — that this is way things are — it enables me to accept that reality about
life and about my life.
The one thing that I think is one
of the most important things is how we relate to other forms of life. Out of
that, we understand the reality that we, as human beings, are no better or no
worse than any other form of life. Whether it is a shrub or a bird or a snake
or any other form of life, we are equal because all of us are born into this
life: we live our lives, fulfill our purposes, and then we end our lives. And
no creature, no form of life — especially us humans — cannot circumvent that one
reality. That's what makes us all equal. We don't regard ourselves as having
dominion. We don't regard ourselves as being the one species that is in charge
of all other species. We are no more and no less and that is the one reality
that I think the world needs to understand in relationship to the Earth. Most
of our cultures do not accept that — they look at it from a different viewpoint.
That has an impact on, certainly, how we treat one another, how we treat other
forms of life, and how we treat the Earth. I think if there is one thing that
other people can learn from us is that aspect of reality. We accept that
reality in a humble way and we act on that reality from that knowledge that we
have of it. So those are some of the things that we Lakota can offer to the
world and that's the way I look at it.
Joseph, now I'm going to ask you
even more! Can you believe it? This woman who asks so much! I know that you're
a beautiful storyteller and I wonder if there is a story that perhaps comes to
mind right now that encapsulates a bit of what we've been talking about in some
way; any short story that comes to mind that you might be willing to share with
us.
Well, the story that immediately
comes to mind when you pose this question is one that happened to me and I've
written about it and I talk about it a lot. It relates to how we as human
beings look on the past and what it can offer us in terms of what we can learn
from it.
When I was a boy — four, five, six
years old — my grandfather and I would go for walks. We would go anywhere and
everywhere any season of the year — whether it was winter, spring, summer, or
fall, we would go for walks. Sometimes we had something else to do while we
were walking, like gathering wood or so on and so forth. But we would walk and
we would walk a long ways, sometimes for miles. He had this curious little
habit of stopping and then he would turn me around, grab me by my shoulders and
he would say, "Grandson, look back at the way we came." So I would. I
would look back at how we had come to this point, either by river or down a
hillside or though this little grove of trees. However we had come, I would
look back because my grandfather told me to.
After this had happened several
times over the few years, I finally asked him, "Grandpa, why are you
making me look back?" I suspect he had been waiting for me to ask that
question because the answer was right there. He said, "Because, Grandson,
one of these times I'm going to send you down this trail by yourself and if you
don't remember the way you came, you will be lost." To me, that is the greatest
lesson I ever learned about history and about the past because the past makes
us who we are and makes us what we are. If we're not aware of how we came to
this place and this moment, then how in the heck are we going to understand
where we are going from this point on? To me, that is one of the most profound
lessons I ever learned from my childhood.
