It was only after I began living on the road, crossing the paths of places and peoples that I had no conscious connection to as Ingrid, that I could see how the memories of those who had come before me, come into me, affected my way of being. The memories are what allow me to sing in languages I have never heard and can move instinctively in circumstances for which I have no spiritual or intellectual training. It is why I’m called to places around the globe, know that a rock needs her name back, and know which mountains or tribe is crying, “Where have you been?” and “You’re home!” None of these memories, restored through me, are mine. They are not available and retrievable upon command like those used at your favorite trivia night. These memories are specific to peoples, physical spaces, communities beyond those. They live not in my mind but in my marrow and, when circumstances call for it, act as muscle memory. They allow me to see lostness through the consciousness of others long gone and are a reminder that I am not me, alone.

These days, as I try to regain the trust in All Things that I've lost in recent years, I remember the miracles; those things so striking they can’t be ignored. These are things I wish been celebrated back then but now the memories of how and why they came together are becoming a new foundation.

In late spring of 2014, as I scooted along I-10 across the southern portion of Arizona, I was pulled North and knew that I needed to go but not in that very moment. Thick as the heat of the desert air itself was the knowledge that I could carry on in the moment but I should be ready to go to Navajo Country when the time came.

It came the next month; a string of extraordinary moments that couldn’t be explained well then or now. That’s what the story of Glen’s reunion with his birth mother was like.

During a healing session in Las Vegas, when we were joined by Manasa, I asked her who the Native American presence with her was. She said, "Oh, that's my ex-husband." I said, "Nope. This isn't him. I'm feeling someone that is no longer alive in the breathing sense."
"Oh. That's his guardian. We call him Joe.”
I said, "I think we need to meet."
"That's what he (her former husband) said."

           And so it began.

Being in the knowing is a strange space for many to grasp. It really is hard to hold onto or understand. Although some describe it as 'walking in two worlds'--that of the earthly, tangible & visible and, separately, that of the invisible & spirit--I actually don't.  I live in this space knowing that 'no separation' is an actuality and not defined by human limitations of universal 'laws', bureaucracies, and other sacred geometries that are man-made. This dance I do with all things is one that includes clear, though not necessarily understood, open, continual communication. And life unfolds as I move--often without trust or faith--in a unique partnership. I knew whatever was about to unfold was why I had been called to the Navajo Nation as I drove south of it weeks prior.  I didn't know why but this was considered by those I could not see as a ‘Very Big Deal’.

 

So, when the client said, "That's what he said,” I followed with, "Is he Navajo?,” knowing the answer before she could say yes.

I left Las Vegas with no idea how I was going to get back there but somehow I must and do so quickly. I only had enough money to get home but, again, somehow, also knew it didn't matter, that it was going to happen and I didn’t need to know how it was going to do so. One week later, with a check for dog sitting in hand, I bought a round-trip plane ticket. Five days before I was scheduled to leave, I didn't know how I was going to get from the airport to where I was staying, much less to the Navajo reservation. Three days before I was to leave, a new client asked if he could pay for two sessions ahead of time and with that, I could afford to rent a car.

Two weeks after leaving, I boarded a plane to Vegas still not knowing exactly what was happening. I knew it was about a boy. The day after I got there, I knew that boy was now a man and that man was the one with whom I'd only had one telephone conversation. Two days later, I met him for the first time and said,  "I've been known by many names over many lifetimes. This time I go by the name Ingrid and I am here to bring you home."
"Okay." 
I mean, hello! What!?

 

A perfectly good stranger shows up in your world and says she's going to change your life and you just say, "Okay?” He sure did. With trust in spite of fear and standing in his own knowing, he also said, "I thought something like this was going to happen. I was actually prepared to quit my job to go with you."

Within thirty-six hours of arriving on the rez and three heart-guided conversations with two other Navajo women, we located his birth mother. Forty-three years and four months since being separated from her child. Waiting, wanting, hoping, praying. In March 1971, a baby was taken from his Navajo mother and adopted by a Mormon family. On Monday, July 21, 2014, I was honored to bring that lost man-child home.

Forty-three years waiting to be seen, be recognized, be heard, be loved. Forty-three years for a fractured family to be brought together. Forty-three years for a prayer to be answered and a man-child with great power & purpose, to be returned home.

As I drove five hours with this man—and the in-spirit entourage traveling with him— I wondered how wrong I could possibly be because this was either on-the-spot right or so far off-base that I might as well be on the moon. In my heart, there was no doubt but pieces of my brain snuck in to remind me that, “This is nuts. This cannot really be happening.” Yet, there we were, rolling through the shimmer-heat of the desert.

The closer we got to the reservation, I began a repeated prayer. Silently and, finally aloud, I said, "See me. Recognize me. Welcome me. Support me." The wheels turned as the words came--again and again.

By the time we landed at Tuba’s Kentucky Fried Chicken, I knew I’d been seen. What came was a flood of something entirely unfamiliar, with an intensity that frightened Glen and nearly knocked me off my feet--they were both individuated energies and a collective with a force of nature I could not speak. I could only shake as I tried to find my own ground or center, stumbling into the parking lot.

Trying to maintain my footing and find breath, I looked up. What was rolling toward me with purpose was a huge bank of storm clouds. Whoever they were, they were Beings of pure power--with a solidity and ferocity that belied the rules of physics and gravity and anything I'd encountered before. The weight and ferociousness they carried made me feel as if lightning would jump from me to meet them in the sky. In their presence, though, my fear rose to meet their ferocity with deep humility and recognition of a purpose that I didn’t understand then. I knew, though, that They don’t show themselves to ‘just’ anyone for ‘just’ anything. Whatever we were doing in Dinetah was more than the reunification of Mother and son. It was the beginning something that I could not imagine and would only get glimpses of through the next three years.

When I walked back into the restaurant, returning to the normality of cold fried chicken, fake potatoes and Glen’s look of concern, the only thing I could say was, “I have definitely been seen." It was only years later, as I wandered again through Navajo country on a different mission did I come to know those powerful ones that greeted me as Thunderbirds, Changing Woman (Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé), Big Water Creature (Tééhoołtsódii), and Monster Slayer (Naayéé' Neizghání) and others I have yet identify.

The following October, I was back in Navajoland after Naayéé neizghání­­, the Navajo Creation Story's Monster Slayer, interrupted a telephone conversation to direct me back. Although he did not give a specific map, he showed roads and areas that I was already familiar with and had, those three months prior, circled on the Rand-McNally without understanding why.

 

Naayéé neizghání­­, showed me as a white horse flying to lift a large darkness off the Nation. He didn't say or show what the darkness was or how to do what it was I was being asked to do; I was just to go. There was not inner compulsion to go like there was with returning Glen home. This was a command, one that I did not fully understand but knew that I could not, must not, say no to and within days, I was on the back roads of the Navajo reservation, following where the car and spirit led.

Westbound from Shiprock, I turned left and soon right, off the paved road onto a dirt track. Within minutes, I was stopped by three people, clearly deceased and separated from their bodies (though I knew the bodies were near). Standing in the middle of that road, waiting as if they had known I was coming, I instantaneously knew there were three of them; two young women, one older than the other, and one young man; none of whom had enough time to live a full life and had been in the ground several weeks.

I also knew that there had been at least one sexual assault involved, if not three; that they had each been murdered, either at the same time or close to it and within proximity of where I felt them, and by the same person or group of people.

I mean, I’m used to the dead just showing up. They’re kind of like my father who would appear on a doorstep without warning. There apparently wasn’t any going back to life without the dead once the first disembodied head of one showed up in my driver’s side window in 2008. But this was different. This was three people, who had been murdered, asking for my assistance. And, at the time, with the limited information and experience I had, I thought it was to them I’d been sent by Naayéé neizghání­­. Little did I know that the mission he’d sent me on would not truly begin for another three years.

That three of them stopped me on a dirt road in Navajoland in November 2014 did not exactly surprise me. It was different from what I had experienced with the Ancestors I had worked with before but it felt as natural as breathing. There was no shock, no sadness or grief; merely familiarity. I sat in the car and tried to listen to them, but hearing nothing and repeating, "Show me,” I drove on as they stepped aside. I followed the track, allowing the car to take the lead, turning immediately left again. Laying next to the road was a mattress and a computer data storage unit. Not just garbage that had fallen off a truck on the way to the dump, but thrown intentionally to be rid of and directly associated with three murdered young people.

I spoke to the mattress and computer, along with the three young people, and said I would find help. Doing what any self-respecting former officer of the court would do, I headed to the police station at Shiprock. There I met a female lieutenant who, in so many unsaid words, told me to fuck off with a tone that exuded, "Mind your own business, White lady."

Now, I wasn’t expecting a Leaphorn and Chee story to unfold but I was certainly expecting questions to be asked instead of being so abruptly dismissed. That outrageous response to come from a people who claim to be so tied to and respectful ofAncestors, from the police department whose responsibility is to the breathing kin of those Ancestors whose bones were asking to go home, sent this bilagáana into an emotional tailspin.

The dense fog and snow-blown elk could not mute the rage, grief, guilt and despair I felt at being ignored as I drove back to El Rito, New Mexico, where I was staying. Days later, after losing sleep to those emotions, I changed tack and headed back to the reservation, this time with the Crownpoint police department in my sights. There, blessedly, I was met with openness, manpower and technology needed from command and staff until I was told, “That's not our jurisdiction, you have to go back to Shiprock."

Feeling defeated but empowered, I was ready to go back. A young cop I now call Joe, the man who sent me Ariel Begay’s missing person’s flyer in September 2017, walked me to the car, offered his prayers for me, and began a conversation and partnership that was to last years. Driving back to Shiprock was fueled by determination and what felt like movement in the form of assistance. Once there, I was met by an officer who repeated the same words I had used with the murdered three: "Show me.” A niggling at the back of my brain and my lack of faith in law enforcement at that point, though, led me to feel that he was bending over a little too far backwards for the psychic white lady.

That feeling did not fade when he and another officer pulled from patrol followed me to where I'd been days prior and did their best movie-like ‘Indian tracker' imitation near where I had initially felt the Three. While there they ignored the significance of the now burned-to-nothing-but-coils mattress and cold puddle of melted plastic computer equipment--a fact certainly not lost on me. Particularly since the only person I'd told about it happened to be a cop. It was clear to me that someone had gone back to burn whatever evidence those two things had contained.

Disheartened and filled with contempt for those of the law that I had a long considered kin, I left, thinking I would take a break. However, over and over again, I was called to Dinétah. Hawks and mountains and sand and stone called twice a year until Standing Rock when She brought home to me because once I was there, I wasn’t going anywhere.

These are merely a few striking examples of why I came to trust that when I was sent somewhere, it was on purpose, for purpose and I didn’t have to understand but I must follow. I could argue, bitch, cry and wonder how the hell I was going to eat and put gas in the car but I would go.

It’s why I went to the desert to bring home a young woman who’d been disappeared. I didn’t have to understand but I did have to trust. And, “Go NOW!” 'Now' was the true beginning of lifting the dark cloud across all of Indian Country and my role in MMIW.