"A Visit to the Stone People Lodge"
by Jim DeNomie, Bad River Chippewa
Friends Journal
June 2000

Our carefree banter begins to ebb
as intimate thoughts of the "the People"
percolate to the surface
of Tunkoshila's spiritual waters.
Tunkoshila the Great Mystery, the Creator.
"The People" grandmothers, grandfathers;
here and on the other side,
and those still to come.
Firetender has done well.
The Grandfathers,
those of the stone people' lodge
are already here.
We feel their wavering heat
and see their brilliant orange gaze
All physical belongings are shed.
All emotional baggage checked outside the door.
We enter their lodge humbly on hands and knees;
crawling into a waist-high womb.
For the types who keep track of things,
we are a record crowd;
sixteen sets of kneecaps and elbows,
hunched toward a fire pit of hissing, sparkling grandfathers
in an earthbound space capsule.

Leader, then helper enter last.
Door flap is lowered and secured
against outside light.
Eyes open, eyes closed. It makes no difference.
All is blackness, but blackness will become a light.
Cool, pure water is ladled upon the glowing
grandfathers.
Their scalding breath is on us and in us immediately
We being to sweat.
Someone adds sage people
to the steaming, wheezing grandfathers.
Helper begins to sing, voices of all make us one,
yet, alone to ask the Creator
to look kindly upon "the People."
Each of us feels private
with our innermost thoughts and prayers.
This is the most intimate way to pray.
I become an arc within a circle.
It is my turn within this hoop of live.
Tunkoshila, create a strand of blessings
to string along a family tree;
blessings for grandmothers and grandfathers,
parents, aunts and uncles,
cousins, friends,
and, most important, children.
Once again, leader ladles cool and moist
on to hot and dry.
I am stunned by the intensity
of this holy mist, but this good.

The grandfathers are listening.
Relaxing more, I adjust my breathing
and allow my thoughts to flow
on to the Grandfathers and to the Creator.
One by one, we ask for blessing
for all our relations
and for their pressing needs.
The first circle is almost complete.
We, collectively and somewhat urgently,
ask Firetender to open the door flap.
Round one is over.
Two more to go.
Door light is barely visible through the moist steam.
Cooler air is a blessing in itself
as we sit in our silence and introspection--
once, twice and through a final round.
One by one we re-emerge
up on the shore of the now-world.
Some of us stumble,
dizzy from the sacred trip we have been on.
We are purified and cleansed--one and all.
Our minds and every pore
of our collective bodies have been opened;
producing a fry bread sweat,
enough for a three-day powwow.
Talk picks up again
as our thoughts become more corporal.

While not feeling new born,
I feel much better than I did before.
We restore ourselves
with the help and nourishment
of the plant people,
the winged,
the four-legged,
and all those present.
We are thankful.
Everyone says "later"
and heads home.
My body is deposited next to my friend
who pats my shoulder,
because she knows
I am purged and too tired to talk.
In the morning
I will have known
what it is like
to sleep like a kid
again
and to have dreamed about
"the People."

Jim DeNomie is an award-winning radio program producer and Native American media educator.
 This was from a side bar to a Quaker article about the spiritual concerns of indigenous peoples' rights.

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