Embracing Our Elders' Wisdom

5 things to say yes to right now

Hi friends,

First thing’s first: Bad Bunny.

We watched the show Sunday night, and what I woke up to this week was such an immense pride in the power of community, care, global indigenous solidarity, and joy in the face of empire.

I’m sure I’ll have more to share, but just know that I am sitting in my coffee shop writing this piece, and I’ve been brought to tears again and again thinking about that performance, and remembering that I am not alone in my resistance work, that none of us are, that the power of our being here, of dancing and singing and creating art that matters in the world—well, it matters. It fucking matters.

As my friend Kat Armas shared on Instagram:

I’m here to say that I’ve spent the last several years studying postcolonialism and let me tell you this: we call a lot of things “subversive,” but to witness the joy on that stage—the dancing, the fiesta, the timbales and bongos and trombones—at this very particular moment in history, is truly one of the most blatant middle fingers to empire and its pathetic rhetoric, and its no small thing.

Also please read this piece I wrote about Kat’s new book on empire. She is goddamn brilliant.

Surviving Empires

Today we are in week two of our series, 5 things to say yes to right now.

As a recap:

5 things to say yes to right now:

1. The earth’s guidance

2. Our elders’ wisdom

3. Our own liminality

4. The alchemy of art

5. The unknown future

This week we are focused on the wisdom of our [trusted] elders. I’ve added this word, trusted, because not everyone is automatically trustworthy. No matter what culture or background we come from, we know people that we can trust, and people we can’t. I want to honor the relationships built on trust that we can hold onto in difficult times.

With that, I want to tell you a story.

Ron Yob attended the luncheon after my talk at the January series at Calvin University. He is the tribal chairman of the Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

When the lunch was over, I headed over to Ron and the vice chair of the tribe, Fran Campo, to meet them, to thank them for attending the lunch and sharing space with us.

Recently I was being interviewed on a podcast and they asked me about trees as elders, because I write about that a lot. And right away, I thought of my time with Ron—as soon as I came to talk to them, I crouched down, just instinctively, like I knew, I need to sit at his feet.

There are times when we instinctively know we need to sit at our [trusted] elders’ feet.

Ron had mentioned a site of sacred burial mounds outside the city; many of the mounds had been plowed over by the settlers of the city, and some that still remained were there, protected deep in the woods. I asked if he’d take me there. He said yes.

A few days later, Ron picked me up and we drove the 45 minutes to the woods, and as we drove he told me stories. At one point he paused and said, “you may want to take notes” and I’ve never been more grateful for the chance to jot down thoughts as I listened.

Ron shared about his early years, about becoming a teacher at a “survival school,” schools for Indigenous kids who struggled in colonial public school systems, and for good reason. Ron taught in this alternative space for over forty years.

We arrived to the woods and slowly pulled up to a gate buried in show. In true winter elder fashion, Ron brought an entire snow outfit for me—pants and a jacket that gave a lot of extra comfort in the nearly 0 degree weather. The lock on the gate was frozen, a gate that was put into place to protect the mounds from the countless amounts of dumped trash across the woods in years prior.

We had to take the longer way around, and I didn’t mind.

After a short trek into the snowy woods, watching for deer along the way, we came to the mounds.

In the snow, you notice them among the leafless trees, with Grandfather Sun effortlessly shining on us. We stood atop one of them, and with as much respect as I could muster with the full weight of my body, I tried to stand there as quiet as I could.

Ron taught me about the age of the mounds, over 2,000 years old. The other mounds that had been dug up by the city years before revealed traded items from communities across the continent, showing the immensity of their trading networks along the river.

We paused there and Ron sang the AIM song, teaching about the importance of a universal language for singing that Indigenous peoples use (what we call vocables). Because we are from so many cultures and speak so many different languages, vocables are a way for us to sing in unison, as a People.

Ron participated in The Longest Walk, a 5-month pilgrimage that began with 300 Native Americans and allies in the 70s from Alcatraz to Washington, DC in a demonstration, ending with around 30,000 gathered once they arrived. Along the way, they sang and practiced ceremony, remembering who they were, holding dreams for who they could become and how they could care for their people.

Here’s an example of the AIM song:

After he sang, we laid tobacco with gratitude to all the ancestors who guided us there that day. We walked further through the snow, looked at the native plants hibernating along the frozen water’s edge. He told me story upon story upon story, and I learned with every word. With every word, I became more myself.

When you get quiet enough, still enough, you can sense them: all the ancestors of a place, still speaking, though quiet, silent, still guiding us.

Then we went into town, where Ron showed me several plaques he wrote, an act of present-day resistance, to decolonize and remember the ancestors who are still in the lands, the waters, the air.

I didn’t grow up always “near” my elders—I didn’t have a lot of special time with my Grandma or Grandmother in a family with a lot of cousins; as I got older, there were moments of sharing, memories I’m still grateful for. But many of my elders passed on by the time I was in college, so building back this piece of community, finding them (or letting them find me) has been one of the greatest gifts I’ve received.

I have an auntie from Arizona who takes me in constantly, in home and in heart.

I am taught and held by an elder in Northern Ireland who holds my heart close.

And in these moments like the ones I was able to spend with Ron, I get to hold sacred stories and let them change me, change us, shape the world.

By teaching us who they’ve been and the world they’ve experienced, our elders help us navigate the world we are holding and the one we want to pass to future generations.

In much the same way, the elder trees, elder waters, elder earth holds us in this way.

And in times of deep ecological, social, and political stress and chaos, we should say yes to the elders’ wisdom.

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

Reflection: what lessons are you carrying today that are directly given from an elder in your life or community?

• write a note to an elder and thank them for caring for you

• journal about the kind of elder you’d like to be

• if you are an elder, consider what wisdom you can pass on; write some stories down

• explore your relationship with the elder world around us

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In case you missed the news, I am in a new book of pieces from Sojourners magazine. I wrote for Sojourners from 2017 to 2021, and I am so grateful for the experience and the way they really encouraged my voice in a turbulent time.

Light for the Way is a powerful, yet meditative collection of pieces from the last fifty years of Sojourners magazine, exploring how contemplative practices, rest, simplicity, environmental engagement, and communal care are essential for sustaining our resistance and repairing our world.

Please buy the book if you haven’t, and if you could, please leave a review; they are always helpful.

Over the last decade I’ve used so many tools and tricks to figure out my daily life as a writer, and I’d love to share some of them with you! We will workshop ideas for how to build our day and explore different ways to understand the writing life through an Indigenous lens.

This is an evening event! I am hoping that makes it more accessible for folks who work during the day.

Please come join us on February 20th!