Sherri Mitchell - Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change

2018 by Sherri L. Mitchell. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover Art by Jean Bartibogue, Mikmaq Clan Mother, Eskinopetij

Cover design by Rob Johnson

Interior design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available from the publisher upon request.

ISBN: 9781623171957 (print) | ISBN: 9781623171964 (ebook)

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This book is lovingly dedicated to my first teachers, my grandparents Theodore and Eleanor Mitchell. They taught me how to be a good relative. They beautifully demonstrated kindness, charity, and responsibility throughout their lives, providing me with an experiential understanding of my role in my family, my community, and the world around me. I am forever grateful that I had them to love me, and to guide and nurture my growth. Their influence woke and deepened my compassion, and it fortified my commitment to help shape this world into a more loving and harmonious place for all.

I also dedicate this book with absolute reverence to my greatest teachers, my children, Theodore Kyran and Kortney Laine. They have taught me how to love unconditionally, by allowing, accepting, and forgiving every mistake that I made while I was growing up with them. There isnt a day that goes by where I dont recognize how incredibly blessed I am that they gave me the humble honor of being their mother. Kci Woliwon, Mishuns, Komac Koselmol.

by Larry Dossey, MD

We live in precarious times. This fact has been repeated so often by so many that it has become a clich. Chronic exposure to dire warnings can result in psychological numbing as a defense against grim situations. Thus the response of millions to the challenges we face is simply to turn away and deny the urgency of our circumstances.

The evidence for our global predicament is based in abundant science, not on some sidewalk lunatic wearing a sandwich board yelling, The end is near! Only through willful blindness can one not be aware of the challenges we face: global warming, chaotic weather events, polluted air and water, exploding populations, habitat and species loss, water scarcity, desertification, murderous ideologies, resource depletion, grinding poverty, endless wars of choice, ethnic and religious hatreds, on and on, all abetted by the Ive got mine/every man for himself materialistic philosophy that currently infects our society.

A common denominator underlies these various problems. As a society we have attempted, in one way or another, to secede from nature. We have come to believe that the ancient natural patterns that have developed across eons do not apply to us. We have severed our ties with one another as well.

Our dominant cultural view, that of materialism, has also infected our science. We have given our minds and our consciousness over to matter. Whereas our forebears believed that mind is fundamental in the world, neuroscience now asserts that mind is derivative, that it is produced or manufactured by the brain, and that all that is I will be annihilated with physical death. Immortality has been relegated to the status of a fictional belief, a faux comfort of gullible minds too weak to face facts.

We have crafted a spiritual desert, and it is part of our dilemma. This detour in human thought is entangled with the environmental issues that plague us. Some spiritual teachers realize that the question of survival beyond physical death is linked to planetary survival. For example, Buddhist scholar Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, states, Believing fundamentally that this life is the only one, modern people have developed no long-term vision. So there is nothing to restrain them from plundering the planet for their own immediate ends and from living in a selfish way that could prove fatal for the future. Simply put, materialism, mindless consumerism, and environmental hedonism are exacerbated by a denial of immortality. Concerns about survival take on a linked, double aspect: survival not just of our consciousness but also survival of our species on earth.

Enter Sherri Mitchell. In the pages that follow, you will encounter her elegant vision of how we can restore our broken relationships with one another and with the earth itself. Her vision is intensely practical in the tradition of her Penobscot ancestors who lived in an intimate relationship with the natural world every moment of their lives. Mitchells observations are not mere philosophy or psychologizing. She has repaired her own divisions, which are generic to most Native Americans growing up in contemporary American culture. That is why her voice is so personal and persuasive, why her insights are so penetrating, and why she speaks for all of us, no matter what our racial and ethnic origins may be.

Mitchells Sacred Instructions is in the tradition of Native American wisdom represented, for instance, in the Native statements collected by T. C. McLuhan in Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence, John G. Neihardts Black Elk Speaks, and similar volumes. Our cultures interest in Native wisdom is also reflected in the hundreds of photographs by Edward Curtis of North American tribes a century ago, which remain among the best-selling images around the world.

A personal note: I have a considerable library dealing with Native American wisdom traditions, healing practices, and shamanic lore. A dozen of Curtiss photographs adorn the walls of my wife Barbaras and my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. However, I came to admire Native American wisdom traditions only with great difficulty.

I grew up in Central Texas, about a dozen miles from Fort Parker, the site of a massacre of pioneer settlers in 1836 by a band of Comanche and Kiowa warriors. Several of the settlers were killed, mutilated, or kidnapped. Among the latter was Cynthia Ann Parker, ten years old at the time. She was adopted into the Comanche tribe, became the wife of a Comanche leader, and gave birth to Quanah, who became the greatest leader of the Comanches.

The Fort Parker massacre was a seminal event in early Texas history, setting off decades of bloody combat on the frontier. The fabled Texas Rangers were formed as part of this struggle. Atrocities were committed on both sides. By the time the Comanche wars ended, tens of thousands of whites and Native Americans lay dead.