Indigenous Peoples' Celebration of the Great Mystery

Indigenous Peoples' Week at Humboldt State University

Mad River Mouth McKinleyville CA

Today in the United States is Columbus Day. It is an embarrassing holiday that completely ignores those who dwelt here, millennia before Columbus breathed his first breath. We are uninvited guests who have outlived our welcome. Fortunately, even in my lifetime, the celebration has shifted from an extolling of colonial conquest to a recognition of the cultural gifts already present in the "New World". Humboldt State University does indeed celebrate a week of "indigenous" culture. I witnessed an amazing, yet sorrowful, prayer and dance to the four directions, Father Sun, and Mother Earth, at the campus center. A prayerful remembrance of the local cultures; a grievous statement about the continued oppression of the very people upon whose land the university was constructed.

Not far away, the forerunner waves of a Kamchatka storm break wildly near the mouth of the Mad River. A avian duet dance in the bristly wind and a lone, weathered Sitka spruce gazes at their graceful flight. I ponder: How many before me sat on the bluff viewing this ballet in the sky and sea?

We had better learn from those who dwelt here before--we had better learn silence and grace and peaceful encounters. We had better dance the great mysteries before we extinguish all mystery.