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| IN THE BEGINNING were the Instructions. We were to have compassion for one another, to live and work together, to depend on each other for support. We were told we were all related and interconnected with each other. Now people call our Instructions legends because they were given as stories. But to the Indian people, that was like a reality at some point in history. So most of the Indian nations that we know of, they have their own story of where they began. Some will tell you they came from the sky, from the stars. Some will say they emerged from the earth or they emerged from a lake as a people. In that emerging, it's almost like they were choosing their language, choosing dress style, songs, their dances. So that was the beginning. The Instructions during that time, at the beginning, were to love and respect one another even with all the differences, different cultures, different languages. We were told we were all from the same source. We were coming from the same mother, same parents. The Instructions was to live in a good way and be respectful to everybody and everything. We were told if the Instructions were lost, then harm would come to the people. In the beginning we were given our Instructions of how to live. So that's been handed down from generations to generations until now. "This is how to live." We were told to be good to one another. Respect one another. Take care of each other, as well as ourself. These are some of our Instructions. As long as we do what we're supposed to do, these are the basic important things, then we have no problems. Once we start hating our neighbor and start stealing from our neighbor and start lying to them and not growing our food but depending on somebody else to grow the food, that's when we unbalance ourself. That's what the legends, our stories, tell us. At some point the stories tell how we made a mistake somewheres. Like Coyote, in the stories, always is the trickster, and he's the reminder to our people not to go in that same direction. That's why we have those stories so that we can pass it to the children so they can understand their own mistakes. Now, in some parts, we're not doing our stories, because there's the television, and it's taking the place of the storyteller. So the Instructions aren't being passed down. AIDS AND THE INSTRUCTIONS Right now, the AIDS disease is affecting everybody. It's here, and what it's showing us, the reason it's here, is to show us how to love. So out of loving each other, we'll cure that disease. Love is the answer to everything. If there's a person with the AIDS disease, you give him that love to let him know that he's, he's being loved no matter what he's got and no matter how much the disease is threatening to you. You still love that person so that he can, in order to heal himself, have that love. He has to have that love to get rid of that disease. If you give him fear, if you're afraid that you're going to contact and get his disease, then you're just instilling in that person that fear for his own life. If you feel sorry for him, then he's feeling sorry for himself, and he doesn't need that. You just give him love. IN THE BEGINNING, WE WERE ALL RELATED At the beginning of time we came from love. We were all related. There was a time in our legends where they say that we could talk with the animals, and they would understand us, and we could relate to each other. Somewhere in time we disobeyed the Instructions, the universal law, so we couldn't communicate anymore. So we came away from love. Now we're at the point where we don't respect each other, we don't love each other. There's racism, prejudice, injustice. When we come back to love, it will make that whole circle again. Only love for each other can save mankind. Love is being open and being able to accept the other person as a part of you. Everybody and everything. It goes back to the feeling; you feel for that person. It's easy when we get angry to strike out at somebody, but it's very hard to love somebody that is hurting us. That's what it takes, though, is that love to change that person we don't like. I mentioned AIDS, but there's natural disasters like that earthquake in California caused the bridge to fall on those people. It brought people out to help. All over, people just came and helped. Sometimes it takes that to bring people together to help each other, to take care of each other. Unfortunately, after the tragedy is over, we go back to struggling for ourself and earning money for ourself. Maybe it'll take some big disaster for people to understand and say, "Oh, that's what the Indians were talking about." OVERCOMING HATE When I was younger, I would read the history books about what happened to Indian people. What it did to me was it hurt me so much, and it made me so angry, and because I was so young, that anger was towards all white people. I hated them because of what they did to the Indian people. But growing up and learning, I learned to accept that, and then I learned to love that race or that nation, even though it's still going on. I send love to them no matter what is still going on. It's hard; it's hard to do that. We can fight prejudice, injustice, and hate with love and respect. These are our weapons. It's harder to love than to hate. Yet, nothing can stop love. There is no weapon that can stand up against love. Love is the medicine for all the ailments that we have. That is the medicine. That's the cure for the earth, also. The lack of love for each other is what's hurting the people, hurting the society, hurting the nations, and that's where all the wars and all the disease comes from. The thing that is doing that is ignorance. A PLACE OF PEACE FOR ALL PEOPLE Just because we're Indians don't mean we are on the bottom of the ladder. We're equal to all races of people. Why can't people understand that? We must work together, side by side, to create a world of peace for all people, all children of the world. Then there will be that love, that unity, and compassion, and sharing, but as long as we have that ignorance we'll be unbalanced. We'll have all these things to worry about forever. That forever can go into lives after this one, because when we die, when our physical body dies, our spirit continues to go on. We continue and will have turmoil in that life. Then there's no peace there. We're creating trouble forever just because we don't have that love. PROBLEMS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN One problem many have to deal with is between men and women in relationships, in marriage. Sometimes there's abuse, both emotional and physical. They're both harmful. Lots of times, whoever, they don't want to get out because of the fear of what's outside. There's insecurity. So fear and ignorance are the big problems, but in abuse you don't stay and take it. Sometimes there's no alternative but to separate, to get out. That takes courage, but you have to do it. When you get on the other side of the problem, you look back and see you did it, and you know you are stronger. Some stay in the relationship and say it's because of the children. Really, that is not the best reason to stay. You have to really look at it hard. It may be better for everybody that you separate. Everybody has to deal with these things and do the best they can, but each experience is to learn from and grow from. LIVING IN PARADISE This was a paradise. It was when I was growing up. It was. My grandfather went to the store every fifteen days just to get the necessary things. We had our coffee berry. Today we make it a conversational piece for the kids when I'm teaching the kids. We make them into necklaces. Back then we made coffee, and it's a medicinal. It's sacred bark, they called it, but it's a coffee berry, coffee bush. A lot of people don't realize it; we still use those things. We get our mustard greens way up in the mountains, but we have to boil them two or three times because of the pollution and poisons. The watercress, you can't eat the watercress 'cause the cows and streams are polluted, like they cut the veins of the springs. They are smelly; you can't use them anymore. I call the hills and valleys my shopping centers of a long time ago; the hills and the mountains were our shopping centers where we gathered the cattails, the tule, the berries, the bullrush for our shoes, our skirts, for eating. You can eat the root of the cattail. You can make like a casserole. And the wild tomatoes, we had everything you could think of. The flour from the acorns, then the cherry pits. The Catalina cherries. The pit, we'd use it for medicinal ... coughs and stuff. The willow tree, we made cradles. The homes were of the willow. And it was good for headaches, for chewing the bark. Straighten your teeth with oak tree bark. A lot of things my grandfather taught me how to use. Today, the doctor gives you a pill to calm your nerves, to calm whatever…gee. THE GIFT OF SIGHTI was born during the influenza when people were dying by the housefuls. Then, I developed whooping cough, and I coughed my eye right out of the socket. My eye dried up. They took me to the county hospital in Santa Barbara. They couldn't do anything. I lived there two years. My sister stayed with me. One day she was wheeling me in a wheelchair down the corridor and this little old man called me, "Hey, Buckaroo, come here!" I don't know why he called me Buckaroo, but I had little boots. I was always dressed as western. And I said, "OK."I said to my sister, "Let's go see what he wants." Well, he was laying in bed there and he said, "Hey, Buckaroo, I hear you lost your eye." He says, "Would you like to see again, Buckaroo?" He says, "Tell the doctor to come."So we got the doctor. Doctor Lovern. I remember that name, but he was really Doctor Love for me that Doctor Lovern. And the little old man, I think his name was McKenzie, Mr. McKenzie, he tells the doctor, "I'm an old man. I'm ready to die any minute. I'd like to donate my eye, if I can help Buckaroo here get her sight back. I'd like to donate whatever she needs for her eye."And he told me, "When I'm gone, Buckaroo, please keep me with you all the time." And I do. I have him with me. He donated his nerve and he died the next day. They had me asleep when they were cutting him to be able to connect the nerve to the eye. But I am able to see. They livened the eye up again. It was closed and my eyelid was like leather; you could pound on it like a drum. It had dried up. Then, the doctor livened my eye up again with the nerve of this little old man. I was eight or nine years old. Loss OF THE VALLEY OF FLOWERS They took our food away. We can't even get our mustard greens or mushrooms. We can't even hunt cottontail rabbit. There isn't any more. Deers are extinct. All our animals are extinct. Our fish is gone. Our streams of water is gone. We're drinking their poison water. Why can't they leave us alone? Why can't they send us back to the hills? They think by giving us a chair or piece of furniture or cracker box like this, they think we're living in luxury, but ... at nighttime, we have to get up because the house creaks. It opened up. When we moved here, they had to patch it. It opened up. These are modular homes, two trailers put together. The house tilted. They say, "Who cares! They're Indians. They don't know the difference." Look how much I worked over there for the government, even volunteer work. was only getting five dollars an hour. I did my job to protect what my ancestors left behind. I wanted to save the plants because we still use them. I'm a basket weaver. The valley of the flowers. Now there's no more flowers. We had our flower festival here last year, in June or July, people didn't come. Why should they come? In the fields that we used to have of flowers, just condominiums all over now. There's no room for the flowers anymore. I used to gather at Squirrel's Nest. I fought and fought to save it. It was beautiful. Here comes the PetroTech, the oil companies, and railroad—bulldozed it. It doesn't exist anymore. Isn't that something? These are the things that I have tried to protect. They're gone. And if we go gather our material, it's brittle, it's no good. We're sick, but we keep going. We're like robots, I tell you. If we eat anything from the stores, we get sick. We can't go fishing, but they can do it. They go hunting at the Vandenberg base, the air force. They have the food we should be having. We can't go get our abalone; we can't go fishing. We have to get a permit. We have to have air force security with us there so we won't steal the ocean or I don't know what they think we're going to take. I wouldn't want a missile. And that was our land. Where our village was. They took it. WE CALL THE GREAT SPIR1T EYERY DAY We pray to the Great Spirit. We call the Great Spirit every day for togetherness, for going back to where we were—not livingout in the open, because we couldn't survive now. Everything is so polluted. Our animals have been driven away or are extinct. The oil companies have cut the veins from our springs. They killed the springs, poisoned the water. Now you can't find any water and they ration us our water; they ration everything. Even the bathroom; we pay from thirty to forty dollars a month for our sewer. I used to cry when I'd see them cutting the earth. My grandfather walked here. They'd even steal his footsteps ... God only knows they'd bulldoze them now. They left us nothing, not even my grandfather's footsteps. THE DIAPER THAT WON'T GO AWAY All the pollution. Our roads ... all the Pampers you find. All the beer cans on the highways, and they want us to keep America clean. There was a lady driving by in a car out here; she threw a Pamper out the window down on the Harris grade and it's been about eight months, the Pamper is still there. The cars have run over it. They don't deteriorate, those Pampers. The cars run over it and over it, and I have run over that Pamper and it's still there. It is flat, really flat and like part of the road now. We go over Harris grade to get our elderberry. We go gather acorns over there and whatever we can gather. We see that Pamper, still. There was a guitar by the road, too, an old broken guitar; somebody must have had a fight there. The guitar is gone. The guitar is gone, all the wood of the guitar is gone, but that Pamper is still there. T1ley make that Pamper out of the cattail that w e use for the cradle boards and thats from Mother Earth and I think that Mother Earth is trying to tell us something. I have been called barbarian for shooting tlle cottontail rabbits for breakfast. But, we didn't destroy. From that rabbit, the skin was our leggings. The meat we ate. The bones were needles for my grandmother to sew baskets. Every single thing we used. But today they dont. They eat just what they want and throw it in our backyard. TRUCKLOAD OF WATERMELONS, BOXES OF BANANAS We get things brought to the reservation. I've got boxes of raisins. I don't know what to do with them; I can't eat them. They're full of worms, but if I throw them out, people will think I am throwing out food and being ungrateful. A truckload of watermelons came in. They were so soft you couldn't eat t hem. Then, in came a load of bananas. Boxes of bananas. They were half-rotten. And there were bananas all over the reservation. In the parking lot, boxes of bananas. Old clothes that they bring in ... why don't they see if we have a decent bed to sleep on, food, good food, and money to pay our r ent? Those are the things we could use, not discarded stuff. LIVING ON CLAY See, we're living here. We don't own this land. It's federal land. And we have to pay forty-five thousand for this junky stuff. The floor ... we're going to sink in one of these days. The sink just deteriorated. Bugs fly in. We have snakes and tarantulas and everything in here. We can't go out when it rains; it's just clay out there. We have to put our cars over in that street because we can't drive our cars out. We get stuck. Then, they get vandalized, stolen, and broken into. We can't sit and guard our stuff all our lives. This reservation is cursed. We have white people, white trash I call them, 'cause there is good people in the white people. I was raised in with the white people. I have daughters-in-law that are white and they are very wonderful. They're just like daughters. We have this trash in here. People, the white people, they come here. Smoke pot and teaching others to do it. That's what our people are learning from these trashy people that come and squat in our reservation. We can't get them out. We have some people that like to smoke pot and they let them in, because they want part of it. But you should see the trashy part of the reservation. Old trailers old cars. It's a trashy place. We're not living. We're robots. We don't know if we're going to come home, because we're surrounded with the big white ranchers, big rich people surrounded here. We don't know if we're going to come home or they're going to find us dead somewhere. That's a fear we have. Oh, it happens. It's happening every day. Long time ago my people traded. Today we have to sell what we make to survive. I don't even call this place a home. This is a house. We don't have a tree or anything around here. Good thing we're not living where they have those tornadoes and whirlwinds. We'd be gone. These things, these modular homes, they're the first to go. We don't even light the heater; we're afraid it's not even wired right. MY ANCESTORS WERE FREE We are worse off today than our ancestors. At least they were free. There were no boundaries like we have boundaries today. There's a fence here and there's a no-trespassing sign. You can't go in there, and if you do find a rancher that let's you in, you are in fear because the other ranchers that see you might shoot you thinking you're going to go rob him. We're in danger every minute of the day and we're teachers. We're teachers of the culture. Still we have to ask permission for everything that we do. I read a lot. I study a lot. And I got my education from people; that's why I am able to keep going and to keep my health and myself in physical condition. I'11 be seventy-three this month; Thanksgiving was my birthday. I study a lot, researching more of the culture. It's there. We were here. Chumash people were the most peaceful, the best basket weavers, but they erased a lot of our culture. I don't know what happened along the way. Sometimes I blame my parents, because they tried to take things away from us, the Indian ways. They thought they were doing us good by saying, "Don't even mention you're an Indian. If you go and ask for a job, say you're Spanish or Italian or Portuguese or something else. Don't say you're Indian. If you say you're an Indian, you're not going to get the job." Sure enough! We'd forget. We'd say, "Well, we're Indian." "Well, we'll call you. If we need you, we'll call you." Never called us. |
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