anything to do with the earthquake in Japan, but those are people who do not understand the idea of connectedness and that all things are connected and related. And in the great floods that are happening now in the Midwest, you have the birds, the insects, the animals, even the bodies in the cemeteries are going to be affected by this tremendous inundation of water and the merging of these three, four rivers. So everything is affected, our economy, the food chain, the birds that migrate, the ants, the insects, the mosquitoes, the four-legged, the winged, all of it, the whole world is affected. The universe is affected because of the diversity of energy which is being released in misery and grief and sorrow from the people's minds and thoughts and deeds. Each word, each thought, each deed generates its own energy and goes out into the universe accordingly. So for people to say that I didn't feel anything or I'm totally unaffected by it is just not a statement of their ignorance, it's just belated consciousness that's now raining down on us and we're becoming I now because I'm having more and more trouble myself keeping up with the clock.

Your book, From the Gathering, The Wisdom of Little Crow, lovely little book, on the cover is depicted what is called a hoop. This is a circular object with feathers being depicted, four feathers, and there are actually four major aspects to the hoop. Wisdom, fortitude, bravery and generosity. I gather that this is a Plains Indian or a Dakota Lakota concept, the hoop. I'm familiar of course with the medicine wheel of the Southwestern Indians more. Are there similarities between the hoop and the medicine wheel? Everything is the same thing Sam in just a different form so that that's my very simplistic answer to it and saying everything is the same in just a different form and thereby it takes a lot of uh saves a lot of time and a lot of energy trying to figure it out. Yeah. It's all the same thing it's just a different form the creator it's the same thing it's just a different form to many people and it's addressed differently and looked at differently But it's the same thing Now each of these four aspects what I would like to do the book is sort of divided into these four aspects and and I Have a rather dog-eared version of your book here now a dog-eared almost every page in here it seems because every one of them I've Let's speak first of wisdom.

There are a couple of interesting ones here. First of all the oral tradition, the idea of connectedness. a couple of these that strike me and then you can just comment on them and maybe we can kind of go through these that way. Sure, that would be fine. On page five, somebody tried to tell me that my sacred hoop was just like a cross. I told him that the cross was just like my sacred hoop. You just extended one of the directions, that's all, and then you put it out of balance. At least my hoop is in balance. I refer to that as kind of a parable relating to the times when the black robes came among my people and there was a discussion and it's in our oral tradition that the discussion was going on between the priest and the leaders or wise people at that time. When it first occurred the priest came and they said to our people, you know your great spirit, your wakantaka, your tokashva, grandfather, your mdoji is just like our God.

And the chief responded, the leader responded, no. He listened and he said, no, it's that your God is just like our undoji. Ten years later, it was reversed. Within 20 years, we had forgotten and we were accepting that parallel and that comparison. And so from that point on, we've seen that the process of changing who put into English what our things meant became part of that destructive nature. So that's what I'm referring to there. I try to explain that in that way. Okay. As we move along through this we come to the pipe and there are two or three in here. This is a symbolic aspect of Native American ceremonies. Is this a fairly common aspect to most of the tribes, the pipe? No, in fact when it's depicted in movies you see Apaches carrying pipes or you see other people carrying pipes. They were predominantly with, for me, in our Plains tribe the Lakota and Dakota people. And to see it depicted with other tribes that did not use the pipe in that manner again is misinformative and it creates a whole illusion that everybody was running around with a pipe and that's not true. The pipe to us is very sacred, it is a part of our history, it came to us, it was brought to us, sent directly from the creator, the mother father creator I mentioned that name as an Iniska, an interpreter of the oral tradition.

I can mention it saying that she was indeed a messenger with feminine energy that came and brought the pipe to the Lakota people at a time with a set of instructions for the men, women, and the elders and wise people and giving us a way in which to live and how to use this particular instrument. And when we see it misused or services or ceremonies or the ritual sold concerning the pipe and the misuse and abuse by Anglo, Buddhist, Zen, we've got Episcopal priest, we've got Catholic priest running around the Methodist church, we've got the playing with the pipe and just all these different things and it just shudders my bones because it is so improprietary and it is very blasphemous from their viewpoint because their religion seeing us as devils and savages and that anything we did was indeed the work of the devil and they shouldn't be doing that because it is against their dogma, their doctrine and their tenet.

Hmm, interesting. Yes, it is indeed. Well here's from page 26, here's one that I like. The chenopah. Chenopah. Chenopah, okay. Yes. Is my connection to the creator, the sacred pipe. It's a symbol for me and it keeps me mindful. But if the pipe isn't where I can see it or where I can think on it, the next, the very next thing that connects me to God, to the Christ principle or the Christ concept or however you want to say it, is when I look in the mirror.

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of a grabber isn't it? Because that's an awesome sense of responsibility. If indeed we do have this need to have an outside direction, a sense of power and rightfulness and righteousness, it's very hard for us to maintain any kind of awareness. These things that we use in our rituals and ceremonies are purely symbolic in nature and are used to keep us mindful and to take the responsibility and to say that, you know, when I look in the mirror, I see God. I see the creation of God. I see all things to which God has created and connected and so that keeps me not only mindful but behaving in such a way as to treat all people and all places and things as sacred, my thoughts, my words and my deeds. Well we move along to spirituality and there are two or three short ones here on page 31, 32, 33.

I heard that. People have a continuous of hearing the sin, the original sin, how bad they are, how dreadful they are, and that they are going to go to some place or be cut off from or separated from God or the idea of God in some way because of their acts and deeds. And so we have this tremendous need to think that there is someone that gives us certification I a section on women and this is very very provocative we have to get into this realization that what we are talking about is changing our minds our mindset as to how we are related to the earth for men one of the biggest things that we are struggling with is that the earth is feminine and that means we have to change our mindset of how we deal with women.

Yes, yes. That's another thing that we share and we keep reminding the masculine energy, the men, and it goes further than that, that we are both feminine and masculine, we have both sides, but until we can get to a place of accepting that, we are still kind of talking in the infant stages of man versus woman. And when we continually treat women as we do for whatever purposes and whatever rationalizations we use in abusing and beating and hurting and mistreating and raping and all of the things that men do to women, we are going to have a very difficult time in coming to balance with ourselves, we need to find that relationship balance and the harmony of balance with feminine energy within our own selves first before we can recognize it as being something that is being shared with us on the outside.

And that's in the relationship with the earth itself. It's very hard because we are taught as men to be dominant, to be in control, and to be very aggressive towards the things that we see, that we feel and believe need to be done. We are taught a lot of strange myths that don't really hold water because they really create paradox against the teachings of what we believe. Here's another one I thought was very provocative. The women already know what the pipe is about, so they don't need to fool with it in this lifetime. Did you hear me? Women already know what the chinampa is about, and so you do not need to fool with it or use it or to have it in this lifetime.

It is for men to learn the way of that pipe and to attempt to live with it in that way. Yes, that always creates a net, because many women always say, why aren't there any women at the pipe? Why are there not women at the pipe? What is it about women that they don't need the pipe. What have they attained that we poor males have not? Well, let me clarify just a second. Most of these white women who come into the Indian orientation and see that there is not women who are primarily dealing with the pipe and that of course is not true for our gathering because we have taken some directions which have changed that in a time of change. But that women for the historical and biological and physiological things are in senses of purification until certain ages up to what we call menopause.

But up until that time they are in continual cycles of purification and as such they are I way and to take the pipe into ones life. So again you have the inconsistency of mans behavior towards woman, thusly then you see that again the woman is teaching the man by the bringing of the pipe and saying these instructions are for you and this is how it is to be used. Then we begin to live in such a way that our behavior then changes towards the feminine energy. But usually because our congregation is made up of maybe 90% non-Indian people we have a continuing struggle with that also is when women come up to me and say, why enter any women there? Why enter any women?

What's wrong with women? Are you segregating us? Are you prejudiced against us? Are you chauvinistic and I go no, no not at all. It's just that that's the way it is, that's the way the pipe was brought to us, that's the way it is to work and that's the way it will be done as long as I have anything to say about it or do with it that I will follow those instructions and it will be to the benefit of all the people. Here is another one on women. You don't write much about people who already got their quote stuff together.

You don't have to write something about people who know who they are and where they are going and what their responsibilities are. You have to write about the dummies who don't know and that's why everything is about men because women know who they are and what it's about. Yeah, yeah, when I originally said that you should have seen the shoes, the chair shuffles, feet were shuffling and women were kind of laughing and things were kind of a really enjoyable moment because it's so true in the one context and it is true, women do know and have a great acceptance of who they are. The things which drive women crazy of course is the inconsistency of the masculine energy and its inability to accept the conditions of the relationship and the ongoing relationships and again men reflecting on their mothers and that whole relationship as well as their father-son relationship, etc.

We're just taught differently. And we're not taught to be human beings, but we're taught to be men and women, and therefore we, you know, we have been at this gender war for so, so, so very long. Yeah. Well, okay, let's move along the hoop now. Let's move along to fortitude. to Yes, again it is an example of our connectedness and our accountability. rather than it being seen as the creation being outside of ourselves and us again totally disconnected and totally not having any responsibility towards what occurs and what is to occur and what should come after us.

Consideration for the seven generations that follow us. We have a tendency to be caught up in our own self-indulgences and our own self-pity and we have no discipline and we lack focus and these are some of the things that I'm continually trying to say in a good way without insulting anyone. Now let's move next to duality and this may be a word that some people are not that familiar with. That world of duality you have good, you have its opposite or opposing side. That holds true for everything in creation. Why would it not? Why would it be different? Is it the same for all creation? For everything that is in its positive state, it has its negative state, which exists with the same freedom and abundance as its other side. So there is no one place holier or less holy than where you sit right now.

Yes, yes. It's a powerful message to help instill, if you can, in the individual their sacredness and the wisdom of their being. It is such a tremendous task to share with people who have never heard these kinds of things before, who have never had anyone say to them, you are sacred, you are special, you have wisdom, you are a healer, and you are all the things that you seek. All that you need to do is to have faith in it and to act appropriately. And everyone of course has that. I guess this is another way of saying you are in your perfect place now, whether you think so or not.

Yes, yes, yes, very much so. Here's another one on duality. Error is part of life. If our lives were error free, we would have nothing to do. What would be the purpose in living? That's kind of the rhetorical question that you throw out there. When I spoke to you of our oral tradition, I talked about a time before we were flesh. And in that time, we talk about being in the state of spirit where we were able to do all things, all things that were imaginable, to speak and converse, to change our forms, to fly, to soar, et cetera, in the realm of spirit, or God, if you would.

And as a result of that, we became bored and we began to mistreat each other and to abuse each other in that perfect state. So with the creation of that error, we were then moved into the realm of human form. In other words, we became two-legged and we lost a great deal of the power because we abused it. We were not satisfied with the idea of being in a heavenly body and so we created chaos and eventually wound up having to do something else. Moving on to faith, have faith, have faith, have faith. You're on the spiritual path, you're on the road. You are the spiritual sanctuary, you are that strength and you're not going to be punished for believing that God lives inside you. That isn't a punishment, that is a joy.

Yes, yes. And it's the concept I guess that God does reside within everyone. Some people really can't get a hold of that one, can they? No, it's not being able to exercise the faith that in their having faith God then does exist because they give it the energy to exist and that it's there and we simply have to believe it's there and from there go forward and act accordingly as we would believe a God would act. On healing we have within us all things which we attribute to God. We have the capacity to remain ill or to be healed. To be healed does not mean to be well. God never said to be healed meant being well.

That's an interpretation given to us by man to incite people to ferocious prayer in their own behalf. Being healed means you simply have faith, faith to face whatever it is. Yes, acceptance of life as it comes to us, part of our oral tradition, and the acceptance of things that happen to the extent that to ponder it and to worry over it and roll in the earth wondering why me, why this, why that, simply to move on from that place realizing that there is what we refer to as the great mystery. We say, tukas gench gench, which means something holy moves and we certainly don't know what that is, but in our faith we are taught to accept that and to move on with life. That's the way it is. Our word Rechecho means that's kind of how it goes. That's it. Yeah. When I'm sick I'm out of harmony and out of balance. My sickness is a symptom. It is a representational symptom of my out of balanceness. Yeah. And of course that's one of the concepts I guess that comes to the fore a lot that balances everything in terms of the Native American way of life and their beliefs.

Well primarily I borrowed that in part from my relationship with Navajo people because their whole issue of being out of balance or harmony with nature. And so it does apply to us also and it is in our teaching that you know we are not thinking appropriately somehow because we are creating more of an issue than we should and that indeed is being out of balance. We move along here to Indians. We have been exterminated, terminated, and every other kind of nated, and we are still in existence. But only a million of us are so. A million, that's nothing. When you think of the great melting pot of this here United States, a million people is nothing.

So, what effect do we need? We need everybody to speak to those issues that concern us so that we might somehow maintain our identity. Yes, again talking about the political juice and the inability of a million, less than two million people to have any effect, any effect upon the system whatsoever. As you know, that's less than 1% of the total population, one half of 1%. If we did not have the empathy or the understanding of people and those issues which are very critical to us politically, socially, it then shows itself as it has in the past that we are historical relics and that people by the very nature of not being informed as to how we are still alive and living and operating.

Therefore, we don't come up in the political arena as being very necessary, very important. There are other more critical issues that deal with greater numbers of people. And most programs you know during the great 60s and 70s and 80s were all determined by numbers. The numbers of people determine the amount of money that were spent. We just had an election out here in Los Angeles and the new mayor there has appointed his key people on his advisory boards, his agency people. And they have Asian Americans, they have Hispanics, they have blacks, and they have 23 women. It's 46 people, half of them are women but there are no Native Americans and Southern California and California is the state that contains 15% of the total Native population and Southern California has some 80,000 American Indians in there and yet there is no representation. Okay we move along to the Red Road.

I look at my oral tradition and it says the red road and the black road. The black road is the road of materialism and it's easy to walk, it's easy to get into. Life in itself is easy. The red road is the spiritual road and that is a road that is difficult because it's a road that says you redistribute, you redistribute your wealth. You see the sacredness of your creation and the sacredness of all things. You respect all people. You respect all things within life as you know it. And life as you don't know it. The red road, the spiritual road, the spiritual path. Yes. Very, very hard and very difficult.

And it's symbolic in nature if you will because the hoop is a direction that is traveled in a clockwise direction. If you look on the front of the book, just imagine walking that outer peripheral in a clockwise direction. And it is easy to fall off and to be distracted and to be pulled away, but you can always pick yourself up and start again. Again, it is a way of behavior a way of living a way of treating all things to which you are connected we just had a tremendous incident of white supremacists and who were going to blow up a church out here a black church and kill a rabbi and kill Rodney King and had other people targeted and those people are my relatives I'm related to them I am connected to them, they are in my prayers, they will be in my prayers tonight when I pray.

But you know it's a reality that says if I do something or say something wrong they would just as soon shoot me or blow me up as anybody else. So how can I see them as being sacred and related? It's easy for me because my oral tradition has taught me to do that. Okay, well let's see, we're about halfway through the hoop at this point, just taking random quotes here for comments. Let us pause now for a quick commercial break and we'll be back with Crow. And we are really talking in some depth from his new book, From the Gathering, The Wisdom of Little Crow, edited by C.F. Clark.

to open your eyes and get the guts to climb out of bed. That's your vision quest. Get out there and do what should be done. Let your dream be your vision quest and get out and live your dream. Yeah, yeah. Everybody talks about going on a big vision quest somewhere. You're saying your vision quest is every morning when you wake up. Too simple, isn't it? Right. Just too simple. People say that's too simple. Give us something more difficult, more spiritual. Isn't there anything more spiritual than just to say my dreams are my vision. Go out and live my dream. I should be doing five years of therapy or something. Do I have to be under psychoanalysis or do I have to have a real Indian take me out and bury me in a mountain hole. Everybody wants to do that.

I have two other books, both books of poetry, and I talk about vision questing. So this is just my effort at saying to people, quit wasting time, get off your dead backside, turn on the switch and get with it. In other words, everything is within them. They don't have to go out there and starve. You don't have to waste time, yeah. Eat locusts in the wilderness or anything. You don't have to do that.

I self. Know that you are infinite. Know that you are infinity in this form and that though you make transition this energy will return again and again and again because life itself is unending. Energy is unending. Let go of the fear of materialism. Let go of the fear of non-materialism. Let go of the fear of dying. Let go of the fear of breathing, looking, smelling, tasting, feeling. Let go of the fear and just be. Be who you are for it is in that wisdom that you then demonstrate the wisdom of the Creator, the Mother Father Creator, the Mother Father God. Well there is about a whole program in that scene for 3 or 4 weeks because that again goes against so much of what people have been taught and what people have heard all of their lives and it is so frightening.

The first aspect of it, our issue is not to frighten people but simply say to them this is you. This is just another way of seeing the world. It's an alternative view. It's an alternative view based on an oral tradition which teaches this to indigenous people and has taught it to us, my particular tribal group, for centuries. I and that has a lot of fear in it also for people to accept an idea that God is simply not the grandfather with the long flowing beard but is an energy of energy which contains both masculine and feminine energy. Yep, absolutely.

Well, let's see, here on the Weber Davis line is Janet. Janet, you're on Ktalk with Little Crow. Hi, Janet. Yes? Hi, you're on. Hi. Hi. Hello, do you have a question for Little Crow? Hi. Hi.

Hello, do you have a question for Little Crow? Well, I was just wondering what it was like to talk to him. Well, you're talking to him right now. Oh, hi. Yeah, hi. Do you have a question? Oh, no. You have a friend in the background and the radios on huh? Yeah. Yeah. Well, are you enjoying the program? Yeah Good. How old are you? I'm Okay, well good You do you have a question for a little crow?

Okay, well, thank you very much for listening we hope that we hope that you'll continue to listen and enjoy Let's move along to power. You are capable of doing something that has never been done before and that is to make the world, the universe a better place than it has been. That isn't going against the laws of nature. That's saying you have the power within you. You don't have to be a goddess to have it or a shaman to have it or a holy man or a holy woman or a medicine man or a medicine woman. You've got it right there just as you sit. You're it. Yeah, you can see the look on faces. Yeah, you're it, you know, you're it.

This is it and that's who you are and what you are. You don't have to be any of these things because you already are. And just live, just live it, just live your life. Be unafraid, take the challenge, take the risk. Dare to be who you are, you know, and get out of this idea of fear and punishment and all of the things which have chained us and negated us. Again, this isn't anything that I'm using or feeling or even considering that it's an act of proselytization. It is simply an alternative world view.

They're quotes from things which I've said in a gathering and a meeting. They are totally unrehearsed. There is no script they come from. There is no written book or tentative they come from. These all come from an oral tradition and I simply overlay them on contemporary relevant time. Now I think they speak volumes. They really speak volumes. You know I have a personal feeling, just let me try this out on you, that a lot of people who are independently spiritual without a particular religion have gotten kind of a bad rap in a sense that some people will say, well, I am God, so don't bug me or whatever. And that isn't truly the case. It's the idea that we each carry the spark of the creator force within us.

And I think some people have misrepresented and it's been twisted out of proportion and given kind of a bad name. Yeah. Many times I find people from other religious backgrounds coming and attempting to want to learn ceremonies and rituals and things and adaptations and I often say to them, you know, was the reason that you left your prior place, was it because you no longer believed in the religion itself or was it the person who was presenting it to you? Did you lose faith somehow in the interpreter? Because in many cases that's what happens. And the interpreter usually has the control mechanisms to make the congregation or the group or the denomination do or act in certain ways towards those people who do not seem to really grasp or who may be slipping or who are not truly in the fold.

not time though, change is about and all things which have been in the structure and known as we know them will change and as we were saying two years ago, rivers will change their courses mountains will lose their faces and we'll have snow in the California mountains in July and we really still have snow here. Indeed, let's go to Elaine, you're on Ktalk Elaine with Little Crow. Well, I've been a student at Paton's and he mentioned about 55 books ago that you were writing a book called The Sacred Spirit Within and to get on the list and be sure and get that book. It was called The Sacred Heel Within, yes.

The Sacred Heel, alright. And so I had sent my money in right then. Of course they sent me the money back, but I've been waiting for that book. I want to know when you are going to write it. Well Elaine that book is sitting on top of my file cabinet and like so many things I believe that when the time is right that it will get completed. It is completed. There are some things which I need to do of course in kind of getting it edited and put put together but now that I have a competent publisher and a great editor and personal friend it is going to get done.

It should be out before the end of the year. Well I would be grateful for it. I am waiting. Okay Elaine, good. You can look forward to that. Alright here is Brent. Brent you are on Ktalk with Little Crow. Yes I would like to ask what part does cultural and personal progress have in your philosophy and how do you define progress? Personal and cultural progress, are you talking about as a group of people or as a, are you talking consistently?

As a group of people. As a group of people. Well, in my culture, as I've been able to interpret it and as it was told to me, an individual's accomplishments and things that one accomplishes at the personal level, I won't say private but at the personal level, are done to strengthen that individual in their ability to serve the community. What we refer to as the people of the community, in other words, my ability to earn a living through being able to speak and to be articulate enough to do that or to write or to anything else giving me resource thereby to help the community by which I am part of. And that's the way in which my culture has taught me to view that, that everything that I might receive as a result of my vision quest through dream and vision going on the hill or whatever it is I'm doing, I use it in such a way that it benefits the people and not myself personally.

But in doing that, because we are human, we come to fall within the hoop itself of wisdom, fortitude, bravery and generosity, which are the attributes that we seek as Lakota people to see in people and that is what we respect in them and therefore we move forward with that, that everything is done for the people, not ourselves personally. Okay, Brent, I'm sorry we have to leave it there, we're just running out of time and I wanted to just get a quick mention in for the final position on the hoop, generosity and the headings here, children, creation, equality, the gathering, love, prayer, transition. Here's one on children that I think is, gets into some very deep metaphysical aspects of things. Children come here by choice. You were the vehicle for your child.

He, she chose you. And that's as far as it goes. I mean it's like you don't keep the cab driver at your house for the rest of your life. That's always a favorite of the women, you know, who have terrible times with their kids. But that's what I mean. Again, it comes back a lot of metaphysical overtone there, but I do believe, and it is part of our teaching, that these things of choice and determining our own scripts happen as a result of our I and I was wondering the rituals that they perform when there is a kill mate, what does that have to do with the religion? Well not being a person of Pueblo or Zuni descent I can only kind of equate it to saying that it is a respect of the spirit of the animal in which it fells and it's giving a respect to that animal and the spirit of that animal in its transition and thanking it for the gift that it provides to the family and to the hunter itself.

Okay we have to leave it at that Stan, thanks very much for your call. We just have a minute and I did want to end with this one because I think that this is a terrific one to end with, let your prayers be for everything but yourself. Pray for everyone but yourself. Now that's an interesting concept right there. Yes it is and it's one which I work on constantly with people and even my own brothers and sisters who are here in the sweat lodge doing prayers for themselves. I try to talk with them and say, you know, that's not the original way that we learn to pray and that's not the way our oral tradition teaches us to pray. That's an assimilated prayer form.

We're meant to pray for everything but ourselves with the faith that whoever is next to us is praying for us. That puts our ego out of it and really truly connects us to all things to which we are related. I've heard it said by some people who have experimented with this, I guess is the word that Prayer was never really very effective for him until they began to do just that that they were praying for everyone but themselves and then Suddenly things began to happen for them every time every time Little crow it's been a pleasure having you on Open mind this evening, and I want to Commend this book to everyone the wisdom here is terrific from the gathering the wisdom of little crow edited by CF Clark everyone issue of contact newspaper by calling 1-800-800-55...