Native Americans began
their 3,600-mile walk across America at Alcatraz Island Feb. 11,
and soon they’ll conclude in Washington, D.C. I’ve
accompanied them on the Northern Route, co-hosting a Web radio
program as they crossed the freezing Sierra Nevada Range, plodded
through a hailstorm in western Utah and walked over the cold Rocky
Mountains of Colorado.
The Longest Walk 2 commemorates
the Longest Walk of 1978, which began with 17 participants in San
Francisco and ended five months later with a gathering of tens of
thousands in Washington, D.C. It helped block a congressional
effort to annihilate treaties that protect Indian sovereignty, and
also helped spur passage of the 1978 American Indian Religious
Freedom Act.
Thirty years later, walkers cite a variety
of reasons for taking to the roads and talking to people in towns
across America. Many say the walk is a group prayer for the
protection of sacred Mother Earth and tribal sovereignty. Michael
Lane, who came from New Zealand with his family for the 2008 walk,
was also on the 1978 walk. “The purpose of the walks is to
carry the message of the inherent sovereignty of Indian
people,” he said.
Along the way, the walkers have
offered prayers for healing. The number of walkers ranges from 40
to 60, with more joining in some towns. At the site of the Sand
Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado, where Cheyenne and Arapaho
families were shot and butchered, the walkers gathered for dawn
prayers. During one of the morning prayers, Marty Chase Alone, a
Lakota, offered a ceremony to release the lingering spirits and
wipe away the tears. “You can go home now,” he said.
As we walked, I felt this was still the West I loved, but
it was not the West I expected to find. The region seemed under
huge pressure to develop its natural resources.
In
Holcomb, Kan., a power-plant expansion was dividing the people. In
this town where a family was murdered and later portrayed in Truman
Capote’s book, “In Cold Blood,” a storeowner said
some people support the plant because a slaughterhouse had burned
down nearby, resulting in the loss of 3,000 jobs. When asked about
air pollution and the risk of disease to residents, he said what
many who listen to the corporate public relations officials have
said, “It will be the cleanest power plant ever.”
When the walkers camped in Syracuse, Kan., it rained for
three days and made a lot of locals happy. The recorded rainfall
here had been zero, and we were told it must have been the presence
of the walkers that broke the drought. All along the way, people
offered feathers and sacred items for the sacred staffs carried by
the walkers.
I was onboard the media bus across the West,
an audio studio for daily streaming and archiving
(www.earthcycles.net). The Earthcycles bus, owned by Govinda
Dalton, is powered by solar and wind energy and heated with a wood
stove.
Overall, the Long Walkers have found an abundance
of grace and generosity from the communities we passed through,
from the ceremonies and meals of the Miwok in Shingle Springs,
Calif., to the efforts to save the sacred places by the Paiute,
Shoshone and Washo in Nevada. The Longest Walk was showered with
hospitality by Navajos and townspeople in southern Utah, the staff
at the Salt Lake Walk In Center, community members in Denver, staff
at the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose, Colo., and all across Kansas.
At the School of Natural Order in Baker, Nev., there was
regeneration, and in the heart of Utah, in the towns of Scipio,
Richfield and Green River, we felt the solace of generous spirits.
The Kickapoo in Kansas offered a place for a five-day rest.
It was in Greensburg, Kan., that another dimension of the
West opened up to the group — the force of a tornado to rip apart
a town. Debris was still piled high nearly one year after the
tornado struck on May 4, 2007. Still, there was hope and abundant
love in this town as the people were rebuilding
“green,” focusing on solar and wind power.
As
the walk across America nears its end, it does so as a movable
prayer. As Jimbo Simmons, a Choctaw, put it, “The act of
walking brings back into focus the traditional knowledge
that’s been locked away for generations.”
Brenda Norrell is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). She is a
reporter and radio producer and her article on carbon credits was
just selected by Project Censored as one of the 25 “most
censored” of 2007-8.
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