Nature Speaks Project

INTERVIEW WITH:    Gilbert Walking Bull, 

                               Along with Diane Marie and Tom Tonkin

INTERVIEWED BY:    Linda Milks

DATE:                     November 17, 2004   - 11:00 am.

PLACE:                   Steve Karlin’s house   

                              Wildlife Associates  

                              Half Moon Bay, CA

 CONTACT:             www.tatankamani.org

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 Gilbert Walking Bull is a Lakota medicine man and was trained from a young age in the old native traditions by his grandfather.  He did not live on a reservation and was not schooled in our culture or in English but taught himself beginning at age 16.  He was trained to be a healer and leader and he has shared his traditional knowledge with us and those interested in learning his ways.  

Diane is Gilberts wife and is very warm and welcoming.  She is always present when Gilbert speaks because although he is fluent in English, it is his second language and his dominant culture is Lakota.  So there are certain phrases and cultural modalities that are best understood when translated by Diane or Tom or someone well versed in both Lakota and our dominant culture.   

Tom Tonkin has been working and studying with Gilbert for many years and knows well both the material, the Lakota culture and Gilbert and Diane.  They all live in South Dakota outside of Hot Springs on a place they have created called Tatanka Mani Camp where they offer instruction in traditional Lakota teachings and ceremony. 

The session lasted for about 40 minutes.  The four of us sat on chairs in a circle in the front room of Steve’s house.  Gilbert, Diane and Tom were in various stages of having the flu but they felt OK.  This was three days after the Inipi (sweat lodge) I had done with them and about 45 others in the redwoods south of Half Moon Bay.  I had also taken a couple weekend workshop with Gilbert and Diane and had heard him speak at other times and had received a healing from him - a very powerful healing.

This was my very first interview for the Nature Speaks Project and Diane put me at ease. She and Tom, who came to assist with the workshop and sweat lodge, were playing a video game when I walked in! 

We went in and sat down with Gilbert, and Diane suggested I begin by just briefly explaining to him about my project as I had done with her on Sunday night at the potluck after the Inipi.  I ask if I can tape it.  Diane asks Gilbert and he says yes.  It is a very informal setting - no ritual involved, everyone calls him Gilbert.  Diane does give me a brief smudging with sage.   

I briefly explain my Nature Speaks Project.

(I would also like to extend my gratitude to Steve Karlin who hosted Gilbert on numerous occasions and allowed us to use his house.)

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GILBERT: 

The first part that you mentioned…

LINDA:

To interview people who would act as interpreters for the trees.

DIANE:

People who could speak to the spirits of the trees and tell what they have to say.

GILBERT: 

Yeah, well in our Grandfather’s teachings we don’t really truly have any communications with trees but the stories behind what the Great Spirit created. 

At the beginning of time he created all the rocks and trees and bushes and so on. They were all the first ones that Grandfather created.  And then secondly all the human beings. 

So in that time the animals have to, will nourish from his creation.  So these grass feeding animals like the buffalo’s, the horses, all the 4 legged, deer & elk and coyotes,  - coyotes don’t eat anything, sometimes they eat certain grasses to heal themselves. 

Now these are things I grew up with.  So the bushes represent part of our culture in a sacred -----????.  And the choke cherries were medicines.  So we respect those choke cherries and know all about this plant.  And it to, if it is abused and treated in a way that’s not respected, it too will quit producing chokes. 

The same way you have the wild plums, and wild apples, even buffalo berries. Under these things there’s other plants produce fruits.  But it too has to be treated and respected according to the teachings of the Elders. 

Because it’s a wild country but yet the Great Spirit put in charge the Holy Men to make special alters.  So they go out during the summer months and see where the grass should be grown properly, looks like where there’s a way and then they make special offerings for them.  So the grass grows appreciated through the rain and then they reproduce themselves again.  So this is the way the Spirits gave the powers to certain Holy Men about - upon creation.

So we know that we use these fruits and plants, all good for human beings as well as for the animal world. And also the trees, there are different types of trees, that we utilize trees.  The biggest part of them we don’t build any houses with, I don’t but Europeans do.  It gives us a tree to use when the branches fall off and we use it for our wood. 

We always use the cottonwood tree that grows in the Midwestern area at certain times of the year, like August and September, it produces something that looks like a cotton ball.  We use it when it puffs out - like what do you call those things you use for your ear- (Tom says:  Que-Tips)  Yeah, that’s just the way it looks like. We use those things for that purpose.  And some places they gather so much, like a bag and they go through it good, the pods and seeds and it pops open, and they go through all that and they use it for like a baby diaper.

So the women know.  Now the kids they pick these things in the bushes area there’s one that produces the same thing, what’s that called it looks like a little drum that grows ? - (Tom says: Cattail)  Cattail does the same thing, women gather these cattails when they come to ripen in the Fall they produce a lot of cotton and they use that for    ??    , they make small pillows out of them, then they have bags of them for the babies. 

So we have in such ways to respect Grandfather’s creation from the beginning of time. Each thing that represents something for us that women shall use.  And we use some kind of berry plants.  What’s that, hind berry, mulberry plant I think it was.  That too is used for arrows, because the plant, the stem grows so straight.  So the hunters go out and see a plant that grows with the shoots coming out straight.  We all help one another.  Even the bow, the bow that comes out, it’s ashwood that’s used, since the beginning of time. 

So each plant that Tunkashila (Great Spirit) gave to us, there is always something that it is used for.  Sometimes our people go into an area and they want certain things to reproduce itself.  If they go and pick like even a willow that we use for ceremony purposes only, choke cherries,  what they do is they cut a kind of shoot out of that choke cherry bush but they pray that they may replenish itself in the place of the one they cut.  And they put a little tobacco on it and pray that they may increase.  And they take that shoot down and use it for ceremonial purposes. But in due time you see abundant growth coming.

So we respect every plant that Tunkashila placed upon the sacred earth.  Different areas of this country have lot’s of different types of trees. Out here on the west coast all the way down in to Oregon and Washington area the Klamath people, they believe that there is a spirit taking care of all the trees that grow up there.  They call that spirit Stick Man.  They say that they see this, at times people report it, that there will be a grove of trees growing someplace and he will appear among these grove of trees, taking care so that a seed that drops to the ground, it replenishes itself. 

So all over that area sometimes elders talk about these things where they see these Stick Men.  It’s a tree that moves.  Like a human being, all the branches on there’ll mean that it will move.  So way up here where there’s a grove of trees, he’ll be there for maybe a week or so to tend all those seeds that drop there, root itself so they grow, and then he moves to a certain area again.  But he goes all around the coastal area to all the different trees and groves.  So we call that Stick Man. 

So we have a way, in a way tree does not---------------, it’ll talk to us but we respect them for what they’re for.  And there’s medicine coming out of these things too, of the roots.  You have a wild apple that’s good for all animals.  And we use it for ceremonial purposes.  Choke cherries, wild apples, buffalo berries, plums, all these plants are sweet but yet we could eat plant so we go out and gather all these things when we were kids.

LINDA:

Can I ask a question?

GILBERT: 

Yeah.

LINDA: 

So is it not correct for me to think, to understand that the tree spirits collectively have a certain kind of intelligence that if asked or if opened to could teach us something about them and their environment that would help us relate to them in a better way?

GILBERT: 

Yeah, it would be so.  There’s different types of Holy Men who have different types of powers upon the earth and they’re all in charge of Grandfathers creation. 

DIANE:

Different aspects.

LINDA: 

Yuwipi?

GILBERT:

 Yeah.  So there’s a bush out there that might be neglected, and that Holy Man might know it if he calls the plant and talks to that plant. 

DIANE:

Different plants will talk to different Holy Men. 

GILBERT: 

Yeah.

LINDA:

And collectively, the idea I have is to take the wisdom of the earth and the trees through an interpreter and try to translate it to a western mind, so that we increase our understanding of just who these beings of the earth are.  So if the spirits of the trees and the earth have something to say it could be interpreted and translated to the western mind.

GILBERT: 

There was a time that Holy Man know’s something about these choke cherries and he had a vision that they are not taken care of in true religious ceremonies.  That’s a spiritual plant and talk in----??.  They have to go out and make special offerings so that she’ll grow.  So they have powers over these, Holy Men have these things.  What you’re saying is that maybe that uh, how that plant talking person.?

LINDA:

Yeah - do they want us to know something?

GILBERT:

Yeah, like that they, the Holy Men say beware of us that we may wither away or a new generation come and they neglect us.  In other words the Holy Men are not making a special alter for them for the Great Spirital power direct on that bush?

DIANE: 

Can I interject something?   I think there’s a contextual understanding that has to be had to do what you want to accomplish. I think that what you have to realize is that what the Native people of this land did, that’s what they did for their entire life.

They learned how to live with, talk with and work with the spirits of this land,

the spirits of the trees, the animals everything.  But it came, that’s what the Inipi was used for, so there’s a whole cultural thing around that.   So the western mind can’t understand until they get out of their western mind.

LINDA:

So there’s no way of interpreting it?

TOM: 

Yeah they’re not even going to buy the book unless they’re already at that place.  And the other thing to consider is that there are so many different types of Holy Men. And they are very far and few between now.  Like actual true legitimate Holy Men. I mean the new age society has all sorts of shamans and journeyers, but as far as a true actual holy man that can really work with the spirits - and then you’re talking about a thread off of that.  A certain particular type of Holy Man that can talk to the trees and talk to the bushes.  I think you’re going to be searching a long time for the person that has that one particular aspect that’s actually authentic.

DIANE:

That’s authentic.

LINDA:

That’s actually was one of my questions.  How to find people who are authentic?

TOM:

It’s going to be a long time searching.  You’re going to run into a lot of charlatans.  There are so many of them that use their imagination and things like that.  And they really think they’re having these visions but during ceremony we realize through spirit that it’s all their imagination.

DIANE: 

And also just like what Jon’s community is doing - they’re getting acquainted with the natural world in a slow, steady and methodical manner.  One has to do that, and do the sweat lodge and that ceremony even to begin to get to the place where they can have a possibility of understanding what the plants are saying.  I don’t know if that makes any sense but, it’s like a big bite you’re trying to take.  Hahaha, not to discourage you but you need to have a deeper understanding about how this whole system works.

TOM: 

Yeah.

LINDA:

Yes, I do recognize that.

GILBERT: 

You’ll have to fictionalize it you know the way the plants talk like the kids do you know?

TOM:

Right, that’s what you’d have to do.

LINDA: 

Would that be valuable to use it as mythology?

GILBERT:

If you can say like for instance, there’s an important part of the stories that was told about the time in that a virus was near and a lot of people died back in the 1830’s.  And hundreds and hundreds of people died. 

This little group was in New Mexico, and when they know that they can’t heal someone, him or her, so what they do is they leave, give a lot of food then leave so they won’t spread the disease among the people, and they fled. 

There was a little hill and 2 of them left behind, a boy and his sister. 

The boy was able to move about but his sister was almost to a point where she could not move.  They bed her down and he took care of her, and when they left, after that the next day or morning he went up on to that hill.  He got up there on top and he really felt bad because his parents and their relations all left and he and his sister were going to die. 

He was sitting on top of a little stone and he heard a voice, it said take me and use me and I will make you live.  So he looks around and saw a plant and he looked again and sat down and tried to strain his ear to hear where that sound came from, and he looked down - here I am, take me and chew me and swallow the juice and give some to your sister. 

He looked down and there was a cactus, it had a little eye that was moving you know like a human being.  He didn’t see it, it was a spirit that looked like a root you know.  So he was digging around and found this big round thing that looked kind of like a turnip, a vegetable type.  And he scraped that with a stone, took off the leaves and everything and it looks like a little apple. 

He scraped it and started chewing it and it was soo bitter.  But he swallowed some and kept chewing it until there was a lot of saliva in it and water.  So he took that to his sister and he squeezed that in her mouth.  She was laying there and swallowed it and it wasn’t long until she sits up.  And he felt real good, so he went up there and picked some more and cleaned it out and brought it back and in a couple days they were well. 

See how that plant talked to those kids?  Because they were at the point of death. But the plant turned himself into a human being in a way to help that person.

That’s a good true story but you know at least you will make a person open their eyes when you write something like this.

LINDA: 

So it wouldn’t be disrespectful to do it that way, to make these leaps.

TOM:

No, people do it all the time and it helps.

GILBERT:

Yeah. Yeah.

DIANE:

Because the child and the child-like mind needs help to understand the world he’s living in and children’s stories are for that purpose.  So we’re like children.  The western mind is like a child, a stubborn child, but hahaha.  It seems like what you’re attempting to do is to try to be a bridge.

LINDA:

Yes, exactly.

DIANE: 

That’s a good thing.  And there are a lot of good things being done to bridge and you know there are always more good things to be done to be a good bridge. 

TOM: 

Yes.

DIANE: 

But I think you’re maybe trying to make too big a step.  And that you’re not quite ready for that step.  Take small steps, baby steps.

LINDA: 

OK

TOM: 

I think using mythology will work for you. Rather than try to seek out the one in a million chance of actually finding a Holy Man that can speak to the trees that you’ll be able to find.  That’s not a charlatan.

DIANE: 

As I understand it, each tree, bush, plant has its own spirit.  There’s a lot of spirits.  

LINDA: 

That’s the way I see it.

DIANE: 

One Holy Man might have been given the power to communicate with just one of those.

TOM:

 Yep. You’d need a lot of real legitimate Holy Men for each plant or tree you’re wanting to talk about.  That’s where you get to the realm of the impossible in this day and age unfortunately.

LINDA:

OK.  That’s good for me to know.

GILBERT: 

Yeah.  Then again there’s a story - they tell the future too of the trees.

An Indian guy was sitting alongside this river, and there was a buffalo berry bush next to a big cottonwood tree.  You know how big the cottonwood trees and the leaves are you know?  And he was sitting there in the shade and all of a sudden he heard music.  So he looked around for where the sound came from, he had never heard any kind of music like that. 

Instruments were playing, like a violin sound, a guitar and all this so it’s really music that he heard.  So he stood up and looked around and among this buffalo berries bush a low branch got into this bush.  And the wind was kind of coming through, and you know these buffalo berries have got long needles.  OK this leaf was right under this thorn and it was moving, just like a record.  He saw this image and he knew that’s what’s coming.

DIANE:

Oh , the record player!  So they ( the bush & trees leaves) foretold the future of the record player. ( Hahahaha _ we all laugh)

GILBERT:

Yeah! --------and the Holy Man told him that in the future that’s what was gonna be.  So the tree and the bush told him about that future.  So you can do that, you can really open those kids up when they read a book and things like that, they will respect the trees, bushes and grass that grows out there. 

They all have a purpose for other things in Great Spirits creation.  Creation shall be for us too - they call it root people world.  For the roots, you know we eat the plants, we have the vegetables, you know all things we have - they’re coming out of the earth…

LINDA: 

Yeah, it’s just amazing.

DIANE: 

So I hope that helps.

LINDA: 

Ohh, I feel like this is a blessing and I’m grateful to have this opportunity to speak with you, all of you.  You know you could have just read the phone book and I would have felt blessed!   (everyone laughs!) 

So this is icing on the cake.  Thank you for everything.

DIANE:

Thanks.

GILBERT:

Huh! - That’ll be good you’ll help us.

LINDA: 

And I will try to produce a good project.

GILBERT:

Yeah!  Yeah.

DIANE: 

Use the Inipi to pray about it and ask for guidance.  That’s a good way to use the Inipi.  And if it’s OK can we get your name and address.

LINDA: 

Oh yeah.

GILBERT: 

We have a lot of seeds to be put out in a little spot area.  We don’t bury them, we scatter them on the ground and that way they root themselves.  At the same time we’ll hold just one of them. One seed and open it up a little and put in the ground (points finger into floor to indicate putting a small hole in the ground)  and take these seeds and pray that all these seeds shall flourish.   And that’s the only one that we bury but it affects all the other seeds we scattered. 

We use that when we’re on the reservation and gardening.  They take that first potato and put it in the ground and they pray with it you see but that affects all the ones that were buried.

LINDA: 

Because they’re all connected.

GILBERT: 

Yeah. Anyway, always that first one, just one of them they…  And the same way with all seeds, that Holy Man takes them - we walk  - like the sage we use for ceremonial purposes - that too.   Holy Men will pick these and bury some and pray with it that you shall grow abundantly for the purpose of using it for ceremony.  So he’ll go out there and bury one and pray - just one of them (seeds). 

Because that only prayer, all the praying he does for things to grow normally…  The same way that kids need to learn to respect these things so that they can do these things - learn that these are important to cause things to grow abundantly in areas around the country.

My Paraphrase: 

They concern themselves, you see -  If they’re out in the forest and they see a cone that fell off a tree -  they take it and they say a prayer with this.   And this then affects all the other cones on the side of the hill in the area that are buried to help them grow.  The energy comes from praying on that one cone and that energy affects all the other cones in the area to help them grow. They are taking care of the forest that way.

LINDA:

Yes, yes, great.

GILBERT: 

You can write an article about that.  All the seeds get help.  But the seeds, too, in that area, all you need to do is scatter the seeds and just take 1 to plant in the ground.  Just stick your finger in a few inches and plant the one seed.

But when you take one and stick it in the ground and pray, those others will like that, the energy, they will root themselves even though you just scattered them.

LINDA:

The intelligence of that energy will…

GILBERT: 

Yeah, Yeah.   We take care of the seeds in that way.  All Holy Men have those powers like even the seeds you see outside you see those seeds sticking out of that grass (points out the window to a bush) I scattered some of those and prayed over them…

THE A (½ HOUR) SIDE OF THE TAPE ENDS HERE AND NOTHING ELSE GETS RECORDED.

Gilbert mentions that it is a good project - something like that - and I left feeling I had his blessing. 

I felt this was a very special opportunity to have a session with this Holy Man and his assistants -for me and also for launching the Nature Speaks Project.  I feel l have permission from the highest source that I have great leeway in working with the project and I don’t have to be so exclusive in gathering resources and people to act as interpreters.  I can fictionalize more than I thought I could for the stories and still have them be valuable tools to build bridges of understanding.