Many seated in front of him shook their heads or drew a sharp breath. Not because they were disturbed by Hiamovi's disclosure, but because they had seen what he was describing all too often in the young men of their own tribe.
'Even though I was a chief's son I got into a lot of trouble on my reservation and when I'd used up every last bit of good will, I left. I left for the white man's cities, where I was even less happy and where I got into even more trouble. I'm not proud of it my brothers and sisters, but it happened.
'One night, on the road to Billings, I got into a fight. I was running drugs at the time. I was shipping across county lines for a connection I had in Butte. As a sweetener, for bringing him so much business, my connection had slipped me a package of grade A, home grown peyote.
'I pulled up at a station to get some gas in some little hick town on the way back from the deal. Because I'd taken the back roads to avoid being picked up, it was the first station I'd seen in a couple of hours. My tank was nearly empty but the owner claimed he 'didn't serve no Injuns'. I was wired from the coke I'd been snorting. I felt paranoid and invincible at the same time, and I wasn't going to let this dumb redneck get the better of me. He'd picked the wrong Indian to fuck with. Trouble was, his brother-in-law, the local Sheriff, was using the can out back. He ran me in and impounded my vehicle before I could even throw a punch.
'They didn't find the coke when the Sheriff booked me – it was safely stashed in the bodywork of my car – but I knew it was only a matter of time before they did. If I was lucky, I was looking at a ten-year stretch in the white man's prison. A Native American doesn't have many allies in a white man's prison. Pretty much everyone wants a piece of him.
'I sat in that holding cell looking at a grim future. Then I remembered the peyote my contact gave me. The Sheriff and his men hadn't found that when they searched me.
'It wasn't a drug I'd tried before. But you know, when you're in a foxhole, you reach for whatever you've got. They could lock my body up, but at least I could set my mind free.
'I had no idea how much I was supposed to take. As this was my last chance to get high in what might be a while, I thought 'fuck it' and did the lot. Not an approach our ancestors would have approved of, but it got me where they wanted me.
'First the walls of the cell and my metal bunk started to feel like they were made of rubber. Then everything began to stretch out of proportion. My head got further away from my feet. The ceiling kept getting higher and higher and suddenly, in spite of where I was and what had happened to me, I couldn't stop laughing. I had to ram my fist in my mouth to avoid waking the Marshal on night duty.
'It was like someone had finally let me in on the joke that lay behind the whole illusion of my life. I saw the joy that powered all of creation and it was unbearably funny. I laughed myself into a state of hysteria and, without warning, the chord that held me to the physical plane just… snapped.
'The walls of the cell fell away. I was standing on the hunting grounds of my forefathers. I realised that I had never left. That the holding cell, and the white man's cities, and all the pain I had felt was only a bad dream.
'I felt the grass beneath my feet and the clouds in the sky and the trees that stretched to touch them, all reach out to welcome me home. I laughed again. This time out of relief. I let go of my fear and I let the laugh burst out, not caring who heard it.
'At that moment a whirlwind tore past me and snatched up the laughter. The laughter carried on but it was no longer coming from my mouth, it was riding away into the distance over a hill.
'Then I heard my laughter coming back to me. But as it got closer I saw it was no longer riding the whirlwind but was coming out of the mouth of a coyote. Not just any coyote, but the Coyote. The trickster god who trips you up so you learn the lessons only a fall can teach you. Lessons you won't understand until you let go of all your self importance, your vanity and the traps that your ego sets you. Lessons so valuable you have to hit rock bottom before they teach you to build yourself back up.
'Coyote stopped laughing and looked at me with gentle understanding. 'Come,' he said. 'There is someone who has been waiting to meet you since the day you were born'.
'Then he took me to a rock and he told me to climb it. It wasn't much of a rock to begin with but with every handhold and foothold I found, the rock grew a hundred feet taller until I cried out in despair that I would never reach the summit. Not even in a hundred lifetimes.
'A great laughter came from below. It was Coyote's laughter, and as it travelled up the face of the ever- growing rock it seemed to lift me up, reminding me that I was trying to conquer the rock, as the white man tries to own and conquer the land, because I was afraid of it. If I were to stop fearing the rock it would lift me up and carry me to the summit. I did this and within two steps I was at the top.
'The rock was now higher than all the world and I realised it was Tunkashila, the first land to break above the waters, called by my ancestors: 'Grandfather Rock'. I was so high that I was seen by First Man, son of night and the blue sky and also by First Woman, daughter of daybreak and the scarlet sky of sunset. They smiled when they saw me, as though they had been waiting for me to arrive so they could begin the ceremony. They took the sky in their hands and parted it as if they were opening the flaps of a teepee.
'Beyond the sky I saw a great light spilling out. This light was the source of all life. It was the force that pushes the corn up through the earth and the child out of the mother's womb. It was the purest form of love, that gives the gift of life to all creatures of land and sea and asks for nothing in return, except that we be mindful of each other. This light was the Great Spirit.
'I was afraid to be seen by this light. I felt ashamed and unworthy to be touched by it. I wanted to dig the biggest hole in Grandfather Rock and hide in it. To cover myself over with dirt so that it might never know of me, for I had turned my back on my people. I had spat on their ways and disgraced their name. I had been trapped by the white man's drugs and his money and I had been put in a cage.
'Tears of shame and self pity ran down my cheeks. I hoped that they would form a lake at my feet so I could drown myself. For here was the Great Spirit, of whom my people had spoken for generations. Whom I had spoken of in scorn and disbelief and yet here I was, humbled by the truth and made wretched.
'Even still, the Great Spirit lifted me up and told me, with a patience more infinite than the rock I was standing on, that my shame was nothing more than vanity itself. No different from the disbelief I had clung to, and just as foolish. So I let it go.
'I have no idea how long I spent with the Great Spirit. It felt as though a lifetime passed in the Great Spirit's world with every breath I drew in or let out. Yet only a heartbeat had passed in the world of man.
'I learned many things in that time. The Great Spirit told me He had been waiting until I was at the lowest point in my life before he contacted me. Just as he had been waiting until our people were at their lowest point before he came to their aid.
'Then the Great Spirit showed me our land before the white man came. When we were free to hunt and fish and tend our corn. Next he showed me how the white man came to our shores. Like a virus. Entering our land like bacteria. Only a tiny amount of them needed to enter our lands before the whole continent was overrun, spreading through our lands like a disease, destroying our way of life. Breaking their treaties and murdering our women and children.
'But, the Great Spirit told me, our people would recover from this disease. We would not die from it. No matter how many churches the white man built. No matter how many times he proclaimed that his god alone was the only god of the world. The Great Spirit tends everything that lives on American soil. For He is that life and springs eternal from it. He was here before the white man came and He will be here after the white man has gone.
'Then the Great Spirit showed me how a single ear of wheat fell from the hands of the first white settlers and grew to be a tall stalk. 'This is the white man who feeds from my soil,' he told me. 'And this is how I will withdraw the life so that the white man will no longer prosper here'. And the Great Spirit withdrew his life from the soil around the roots of the wheat and it withered and died. Then He showed me a famine strike the roots of fields all across the country. 'And so shall the white man fall,' the Great Spirit told me.
'Finally the Great Spirit showed me a bundle of wheat. It was tied together with twine and it rested on a single stalk of corn which was bending beneath the weight. Pressed to the ground and nearly broken. He told me that the white man had not beaten the human beings because of his lies, or his brutality. The white man had beaten the human beings because, while we prided ourselves on the independence of our tribes, the white man came together to found a nation. One stalk of wheat cannot break a stalk of corn, but a bundle can bring it low.
