To Honor All Creation
Is to have respect
Boozhoo! Aaniin! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. Summer is allegedly on the wane but it sure doesn’t feel like it. At least not here in Montana, and certainly not in many places where I’m sure a number of you are sweating it out. Doesn’t it feel like everything is just that much more alarming pretty much everywhere? I was driving home from Missoula this afternoon in all the heat, traversing a stretch of country road (we called it “the scenic route” when I was a kid) that is currently undergoing a major overhaul in order to make more room for people and their enormous pickups. It was dusty and traffic was confused and impatient and the big noisy machines were pushing dirt around and loudly grumbling. Meanwhile a helicopter was flying north-to-south across the horizon in front of me, over the cemetery, of course, headed toward the river and trailing one of those big buckets they use to drop water on fires and I don’t even know where the conflagration is. Like school shootings and bad politics it is all part of the stuff that happens every other day somewhere that is either making us numb or unhinged or both at the same time. I don’t know how we are going to get through these upcoming years. I do know that our only chance is if we take them on together. Look for the true beauty and majesty and magnificence in the world that is also happening everywhere all the time. At least that’s what I keep telling myself even as I give everyone side-eye. Anyway. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you have an extra $50 a year you don’t know what to do with, or even $5 every month. Here’s a suggestion that will hopefully not make the world worse….
It was the evening of the second night of my stay at the All Nations Tipi Village at Madison Junction in Yellowstone National Park. The day just ending had been the first that included interactions with the public, and while most were overwhelmingly positive the sun was unrelenting and I was tired. The light was fading into pastel colors behind distant ridges and a group of singers and drummers were in the meadow rehearsing for a performance to come the following night.
A large bull buffalo sauntered down out of the thick lodgepole pines to the north and ambled into the wide meadow that separated the line of tipis from the river. Lingering tourists, largely campers from the campground just above the meadow, swarmed with cameras and excited babbling. A nearby ranger urged everyone back to a safe distance. The buffalo was unconcerned as he lingered. He pulled big chunks of grass into his mouth. If he knew anyone was even around he seemed oblivious.
A woman approached me. “Is that a real wild buffalo?” she asked. “Or is it one from a petting zoo or something brought here to hang around the tipis?” I assured her it was indeed a real wild buffalo.
As darkness settled people dispersed. Somewhere nearby a small group of men were chatting; I was reclined in my tipi and their voices were low and indiscernible until they faded away. The first stars were beginning to appear as seen through the opening at the apex of the tipi where the fourteen poles crossed. Of the cultural ambassadors from a baker’s dozen of tribes assembled in the village, I was the only one actually staying in one. The rest were up above in the campground. Apparently that had been the intention all along but I never got the memo. When I arrived Monday evening and no one was around, I set up a nest in the tipi and afterward no one made me move. So here I was, in that tipi, drifting off to sleep.
Some hours later I emerged into the cold of the night and walked out into the meadow. I could hear the river and a slight breeze rustling the pines like whispers from this other, and simultaneously familiar, universe. Without so much as a nail clipping of moon to brighten things the stars in the sky were stupendous. Gobsmacking. Truly and literally of other worlds. The Milky Way stretched far overhead. I don’t see anything like this anywhere near where I live, what with city lights and porch lights and headlights and any and all kinds of lights.
I heard a grunt and reached up to flick my headlamp on. Some twenty or thirty feet away was the buffalo, bedded down behind one of the other tipis. I wasn’t slightly alarmed. “I’m just out here getting an eyeful of the sky and taking a leak, friend,” I told him. He seemed to understand.
The next morning I was up and making coffee a little after 6am. My buffalo relative was still there, a massive shape in a dusty wallow, his legs tucked-up under him. Small bunches of Canada geese, not even Vs of them, were flying low overhead above the misty river, making their racket. Before long the buffalo heaved to his feet and started eating again. He made his way south along the line of tipis, curved around to the west along the bank of the Gibbon River, and disappeared.
Many people like to get all indignant when we dare to “anthropomorphize” our animal relatives. I think this is a perfect example of human arrogance. Who are we to pass judgment on the inner world of creatures we’ve never tried to understand? My world is better when I accept that it isn’t the animals that are dull and stupid, it is that we are. We are the ones who have forgotten how to communicate with them, not the other way around, and they have much to teach us. In Anishinaabe cosmology, humans were the last beings to be placed upon Mother Earth. The world was fine without us before our arrival and would certainly be better off with us gone again, a fate we seem to be hell bent on embracing. But it’s not too late to change that either. I also believe the land and our animal relatives would miss us if we left. Same as we miss the ones we’ve driven to extinction.
Is it necessary to embrace all these things that happen as a spiritual experience? No, it probably isn’t … but I ask, why not do so? For me it makes the world more beautiful and also stimulates my desire to remain when I reflect on all of our close connections, our kinship networks, that extend beyond our human ones. It worked for people and their surroundings for thousands of years, didn’t it? Who’s to say it won’t work now? Isn’t it worth a try?
Sometimes a buffalo in a meadow is just a buffalo in a meadow. But sometimes, like this experience in Yellowstone, the buffalo – bizhiki in Ojibwe – is visiting as one of our Seven Grandfathers, representing Mnaadendimowin, or Respect. I think that, like so many people who saw those tipis assembled so in that beautiful meadow for the first time in 150 years, this buffalo came to pay his respects to us. He was there reminding us to be mindful that we are indeed all connected, living being to living being. That we must be honorable in the teachings we were sharing with the curious. That we need to give of ourselves to make things better for everyone. Reminding us. And welcoming us home.
It was also just straight-up cool to know I slept about thirty feet or so from a real, wild buffalo.
If you want to see more photos from this gathering, as well as a couple from the Little Shell Powwow that happened last weekend, and likely some from the Métis celebration in Lewistown this coming weekend, subscribe! A subscriber-only post – the very first one! – will be arriving on Sunday, hopefully. If not, shortly after. Things are still crazy busy….
Speaking of our animal teachers, my friend Sam, who works for the Clark Fork Coalition, was on the glorious Freeflow trip back in June. She wrote THIS PIECE a few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to share. It’s wonderful. Thank you, Sam!
“I remember a moment from June, on a Freeflow Institute float with local writer Chris La Tray, learning to say, “Miigwech!” in Ojibwe before we got on the water. Thank you! Over the summer, I’ve learned some ways to show my gratitude respectfully, building a healthy relationship with the river so we can help each other.”
Tomorrow I am blasting off to Lewistown for a couple days, mostly to jibber jabber per the following. But then I’m going to linger for the Métis celebration. It’s going to be a blast, lingering heat be damned.
I hope everyone who gets a long weekend has an extraordinary one. And if you don’t get a long weekend, have an extraordinary next few days anyway. Miigwech!
That's amazing, sleeping next to the buffalo. And I agree that there is nothing wrong with anthropomorphizing animals, and respecting that they have an inner life as rich as our own, one that we will likely never understand. One we possibly can't understand. I'm not a spiritual person except in nature. We are a part of it, despite our arrogance. A city is nothing more than a termite mound, and about as permanent. Nature reclaims our settlements all the time. It costs little to respect other animals, and we are better when we do so.
What a wonderful experience! I love Yellowstone so much.
Reading this I was reminded of a time as a teen when my family camped in Yellowstone - we had a knack for always going on our tent camping trips in early June, when there was still snow (Yellowstone. Around lake Superior. The Rockies. All in June, all snowy) Anyway, I have three younger brothers and at the time I they annoyed the heck out of me, so I brought my own solo tent. One morning, my dad told me he thought I'd really been snoring loud last night as he lead me to the back of my tent. At which point he gestured at the indentation in the ground about 5 feet from the tent where a large buffalo had spent the night. (The herd had been close the evening before) It was one of the most disconcerting and awe-inspiring event of my teen years. :)