Those Who Tell Me Too Much

photo by emily goodhart

I'm edited by those Old Ones around me. They want me to be seen as 'legitimate' in the eyes of others, in *your eyes and those who they want to receive what They have to say.

They tell me not to share about how sand and stone and water and tree and God and Ancestors talk to me, move me through the world. As if judgments others hold should, or could, maintain the greatest gift as a continued secret. As if I must perform in a way that continues others' ignorance and disbelief as the measure of my world.

Bless them, but no.

No one else's disbelief of me or fear of their own belief can be my measure. My conformation to other’s standards has never suited me, no matter the loneliness that comes with it. It’s why I’ve never worn a uniform (apart from that one time when I foolishly thought the Brownie Scouts was a good idea) and no longer participate in ceremony. The exhortation from Ancestors who, bless them, want me to appear legitimate by leaving out the most sacred relationships I have to avoid derision or being ignored again when I speak out about organized crime and Indian gaming.

However, truths are often uncomfortable. Paul Chaat Smith, curator for the National Museum of the American Indian has said that the truth is often a “mangy, snarling dog standing between you and a crowd-pleasing narrative.” In these times, crowd-pleasing or couching my language so that law enforcement believes me or others are comfortable is not my concern.

My experience of the world is not as unique as many would believe. I walk in what I call ‘the medicine way’. In *my definition, it means I live day-to-day, every day, all day, all the time in communication with aspects of the natural world, seen and unseen. I talk to plants, animals, clouds, winds, soils, Ancestors, insects and others and they talk back. I talk to the idea of Nations that have enough energy around them to come into form.

I hear prayers directly and they are brought to me by third parties. I have spent over a decade in this way, working with others who struggle mightily as they learn to live like this, too. I gave myself over to processes and people to whom I had no connection to because my heart knew, my bones knew and what echoed in my blood did, too: that I was made this way purposefully.

I will not hide behind the prettiness of media packaging or white-washed language. I am not ‘spiritual’. However you define it, that word confines me, imprisons me within lore and ‘the way things have always been.’ I walk through crumbling cosmologies, with those Beings and stories that are expanding to include what is and will be for those coming behind us.

In 2018, an FBI agent shared with a detective from Montana, “Someone is telling Ingrid too much.” He and others from within the Fuckery, with perhaps the exception of those who also walk in this way, are under the impression that human beings within the law enforcement or organized crime community, have been giving me information. That has never been the case though I have wanted just that.

In the introduction to this series on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children years ago, I mentioned that this unfolding of the Fuckery and I requires discussion of history and the repercussions arisen out of it, trauma experienced and held by peoples and the natural world, realities of misogyny, sexuality, institutionalized racism, the reemergence of what I call ‘the medicine way’ and where all those things converge in our current era.

It means recognizing that beliefs and ways of the world are more than theoretical or ceremonial, beyond the scope of encultured ‘sacred space’, and are neither ours nor out there. It creates an inescapable ‘in your face’ expression of truth that makes beliefs true or untrue, redefines things of spirit held as personal or tribal into universal, and cuts through the commodified crap. It means that death isn’t what we’ve thought it is, that everyone really is connected beyond super-simplified popsychospiritmeme-ified oneness. It means we have responsibilities beyond what we’ve presumed revealed within sweat lodges, by the one-liners of protest signs and attention-grabbing headlines.

It means prophecy can be true, cosmologies can crumble, and we really may not who or how (or why) we think we are. It frightens lawmen, lawyers, politicians, medicine men, journalists, folks who once called me friend, and those who operate the Fuckery. It’s why a tribal historical preservation officer nearly scorched his shorts when I asked why an eagle would grab my arm. Because it can’t be true but what if it is.

Whether anyone believes this or not, these are those who ‘tell Ingrid way too much’:

They are Coushatta, Cree, Muscogee, Maidu, Diné, Dene.

They are Lakota, Dakota, Comanche, Choctaw, and Apache.

They are Kickapoo, Meskwaki, Mi’maq, Tongva, and Gros Ventre.

They are Ojib, Ohkay Owingeh, Mewuk, Osage, Missouria, Potowatami, Quapaw, Quinault.

They are Rappahannock, Paiute, Pascato, Seminole, Shawnee and Chickahominey.

They are Sappony, Seneca, Waccamaw, Natchez, Niitsitapi, Cherokee, Mohawk, and Miccosuckee.

Onandagan, Cheyenne, Crow, Unitah, Calusa, Colusa, Appalachee.

Fox, Saux, Winnebago, Miami, Illini, Ioway and Omaha.

Arapaho, Otoe, Kiowa, Caddo, Coahuiltecan, Kutenai, and Pend d’Oreilles.

Nakoda, Yurok, Chumash, Yokuts and Yana.

Nahuatl, Mixtec, Mayo, Massai, and Huichol, O’odham and Tepehuan.

Guaraní, Cocopah, Dogon, Delaware, Sara, Salish, Tatar, Bua and Bantu.

Samí, Bedu, Yoruba, Ibibio, Damara, Pueblan. Altai, Mapuche and Quechua.

Abenaki, Mohigan, Wawenock, Acholi, Madu, Evenki.

Salish, Kumeyaay, Ohlone, Pomo, Skykomish, Yakama, Barkinji, Ngyiampaa, and Ngunnawal.

And more.

The sand speaks, clouds halt, rain and stag protect, horses signal, ground and eagles pull, bees direct, water leads, raven weaves with spider, snake and worm connect threads where others can’t go. Wings whisper, trunks kiss my face, Nagas sing, devas dance. Creation twins create anew.

Hundreds more who trust me with their living kin whose prayers they have heard, whose cries for freedom they echo across the universe and pound through my dreams– insistent, repetitive beats of love. They tell me when to run and when to be still, wait. They tell me to ‘stop with the questions’, ‘sit down and shut up’, ‘Speak, child. Speak.”

They ride the wind, thunder through clouds, beat my heart, sing my soul, cry my tears, soothe and sear my skin. They guide, they tattle on the twisted medicine, pray for the soothing of their kin’s souls and for the bones to come home.