by antoinette nora claypoole

2006-03-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

Introduction.....

If one searches a memory back far enough there is the truth that all people were once tribal--honoring woman, mother, goddess as the source of all life. All of us, regardless of skin color, can find our roots in tribal cultures. That is, we all have an essential connection to Earth-based life, be it Celtic, Gypsy, African, the People of First Nations (named "American Indian" by the colonizers). In this way we are all related and in this way many people were like Indians and Celts who once freely held ceremony, sang with a drum, honored the kiss and hum of winged ones, four-leggeds becoming totems, Sun and Moon honored as magical deities.

However, nowadays, few of any nation remember with clarity these old ways-- the conquerors have been busy trying to make us forget what we already remember. For a very long time. Threatened by tribal people and our inherent resistance to become slaves, property owned, or power-over oppressors, colonizers throughout the centuries have attempted destruction of woman/Earth centered life. Colonizers destroyed libraries of woman's literature and art in ancient Egypt's Alexandria, burned over one million women at the stake for things like making a man sexually attracted to her, hunted and tortured European men who practiced prayer at a forest altar outside the confines of the "Holy Mother Church", massacred Indians on the "Great Plains" under the guise of manifest destiny. All of this in an attempt to deny the religion, life and culture of land-based people.

Despite these desperate death walks, there is that rare exception of tribal ways surviving, as can be seen through the knowing of people like the Traditional Dine' (Navajo) who live near Big Mountain, Arizona. They remember what many have forgotten. Just as in old European tribal cultures, sacredness of the land lies at the heart of Dine' life. The Dine' pray and make offerings everyday to one of the four sacred mountains, and this is what keeps the People, Dine', alive. This land is their Altar and it is said no one will survive, destruction of life as we know it will occur, if this Altar is disturbed. That is what the prophecies say. No one will survive. Not the Red people, the White, Yellow or Black.

Dine' are part of a tribal people who continue to carry the prayer and life-style of Earth based realities and are threatened with destruction of their way of life. For those age old ATTEMPTS to colonize and conquer "heathens" continues on into the 21st century--in the form of corporate exploitation of and desire to own natural resources which often lie under Indian reservations in the United States. For even today there are federal jurisdictions which are interfering with Traditional Dine' way of life. Over the years several laws have been passed which demand Traditional Dine' move from Big Mountain and many Dine' have resisted this attempt at forced relocation. Recently the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit fourteen years in the making, a Freedom of Religion petition (Manybeads vs. U.S. April 2001) which would have allowed Traditional Dine' to stay on their homeland and pray. This most recent decision has paved the way for Hopi Tribal Council urged by energy corporations to make plans for the mining of uranium and coal from the Altar, Big Mountain, Black Mesa, a desire which has been in the making and the courts since the mid 1950's.

And so it is that I was going to offer a small author's note here about the universality of Earth-based people's struggle against the colonizer, when abruptly and without warning, on August 17, 2001, as I was working on edits of this book, United States Federal Agents together with Hopi Tribal Police destroyed a sacred ceremonial ground on Navajo (Dine') land at Big Mountain, Az. It was at that moment that many of us knew dark times were about to come to all People, for prophecy says that destroying ceremony/sacred sites will bring hard times to those who disrespect the old ways. In their own way the Traditional Dine' of Big Mountain area are keepers of our destiny, for they have always prayed within the folds of these places, have known about these times which are upon us since the beginning. The Dine' struggle to keep their homeland, their way of life, their religion, because they believe what happens at Big Mountain happens to the entire human race.

And so it was that 9/11/01, the attack of the World Trade Towers in New York City happened. It occurred less than a month after the altar at Big Mountain was destroyed. Now we all face this struggle for survival together. And I feel more strongly than ever that the story here, RIVERS IN HER EYES is one which may act as a guide into the truth of these times. For it covers some factual history and fictional journeys about the issues which face the Dine' at Big Mountain. Colonizer acts which affect us all.

It may also help to know that this book began when a resident at Big Mountain asked me to write her story. This Dine' woman asked me to help write her story partly because of my involvement in Big Mountain support work over the years, and partly because she liked a book of mine which had just been published--a true story about an Indian woman who was part of the American Indian Movement back in the 1970's. But mostly she asked me because she wanted someone she could trust to tell the story. I was honored to take up the project and originally we had thought it would be a biography. And then because of oppressive circumstances RIVERS IN HER EYES moved from being biography to fiction. Midway through the work, harassment and government interference into her life made us rethink how to tell the story. We felt more federal surveillance may happen for writing memoir carries its price--even as I wrote this, harassment and threats to Dine' families and their way of life continue.

So we set aside the biography idea, decided that I would change the way the story is told. This work then became an historical fiction, all characters fictionalized with some of the events based on historical fact (where further explanation of history and fact, real people and fictional ones are needed, the reader may refer to the endnotes/appendix). Here I do not present myself as an expert about the Dine' culture or nation, and I have no intention in indulging in glamorization of white OR Indian. This is a fiction story told with sensitivity to all cultures involved, delivered in the truest sense-- a story about how it is that we can survive and realize we are all related. That we all share the same air.

Perhaps it is this ability to prevail which brings us all together. Yet a warning. Reader of any nation. Go gently and without icon mentality into the spheres of Indian reality. Seek out an inner sensitivity and connection to your own genetic ancestry ... while listening with and knowing of People of First Nations. For while I have spent nearly twenty years living, praying and working with Indian people, I have wondered at how there is medicine in our togetherness. And though I have been doctored by ceremony and honored to pray with strong Elders, I have been likewise proud to share with my Indian friends the pieces of my Irish/Italian ancestry which are mutually useful for our survival. Saying it straight, I am proud to represent ALL the nations which reside inside of me. And in this way I believe we all come to break the pattern of missionary mentality. There is no one to save. No one to rescue. No one riding a white steed a holy cross around his neck. Simply families remembering a patch of moss. A way of life. A mountain altar. A desert wind. Bringing each the other breath. Of life. As owl and her sight. As mourning dove in pinon. There is a song. Of night sky. Of morning dawn. Of fires burning and star passages. Of children born and old ones gone.

The dream is that RIVERS IN HER EYES helps something shift in the way a reader, a nation, a world, creates our relationship to Earth-- and to each other. A redefining of sacredness of life for ALL nations. In the dream our stories and lives can survive the ravages of time. In that place there is no more slaying wo/man, mother, goddess, Earth. In the dream we breath together like lovers in the dawn. We are the heartbeat and the fusion. The milk of Life. Again. And again. And again. The dreams are where we really live.

antoinette nora claypoole
San Cristobal, New Mexico May 22, 2002
Ashland, Or. Sept, 2005

Introduction to Rivers

by antoinette nora claypoole