The Zen Peacemakers, together with Lakota Elders, are facilitating their first Native American Bearing Witness Retreat in the Black Hills on August 10 - 14th.  Retreat participants go to bear witness to the genocide of the American Indians beginning in the 16th century, the injustice that continues to this day and the thievery and exploitation of their land.

  
June Ryushin Kaililani Tanoue will be attending thanks to the help of 27 people who donated towards her trip.

Tio'ka'sin (pronounced as tee-oh-kah-see-n and means Spirit Coming In) Ghosthorse, one of the main pillars of the retreat, is from the Cheyenne River Lakota (Sioux) Nation of South Dakota and the bands of Itazipco/Mnicoujou and Oglala. Tio'ka'sin is the host of First Voices Indigenous Radio on WBAI NY - Pacifica Radio.

Tio'ka'sin is a master musician and one of the great exponents of the ancient red cedar Lakota flute, and plays traditional and contemporary music, using both Indigenous and European instruments. 

He performs worldwide and has been featured at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the United Nations as well as at numerous universities and concert venues.

We spoke briefly by phone recently and I asked him what issues were important to him.

Tio'ka'sin Ghosthorse:   The spirituality of Original Peoples is always in conversation with Mother Earth as we try not to transcend or ascend ourselves with disconnecting language such as 'raising our consciousness' or 'reaching a higher consciousness'.  I think we are still having to evolve the consciousness we're in now before we move on. 

Westerners are often looking beyond Mother Earth but keep themselves within conscience of duality - what is right or wrong, good and evil and heaven and hell therefore making it easier to be influenced by a salvation point mentality which in turn becomes a messianic binary religion. 

Native people - because of our languages are dealing with consciousness. The languages are relational languages of aliveness, verb or action oriented and so Life in general like trees, plants, rocks, animals, birds, fish are all consciously conscious Nations.  They always have been conscious in the moment.  They are not thinking out of conscience. 

June Ryushin Tanoue:  What does Sundancer mean?  

Those with conscience are usually muting nature and other Original People's voices.

We don't have a concept or word for domination.  Because of our relational languages - there can be no concept of domination and hierarchy.  Therefore we can't have a definition of who, where or what God is.  It's beyond our human capacity to think of a human god.  It shows the arrogance of humans who define God.  The human being because of our consciousness can only see wakan (to consciously apply mystery to everything or some say 'sacred' but it's much more than a noun.)  

Therefore it's also a way of defining what English or conscience people think of as love.  I see it within the concept of wakan (meaning no beginning and no ending or ability to make something live or not).

Original People's conscious languages can be spoken all day without saying a single noun in conversation.  Therefore everything is alive and conscious and we are able to communicate with all things - even those things we create. Because our language is non-objective and non-subjective.  We are careful to make our decisions through Mother Earth first and not Wall Street. 

We see, we know and we hear the call, the voice of Mother Earth because she is who we are and who we used to be and so we call Mother Earth - maka - which means who we used to be or who we are.  

We don't have a word for dirt in our language.  When you pick up a piece of dirt you can see within it the consciousness, the aliveness of creatures and little beings.  We know that 90% of our bodies is made up of that consciousness of Mother Earth and that 90% is trying to always be consciously in balance, while only 10% is human. And, that 10% tries to control the 90% in the Western languages of hierarchy, domination and through a 'language of lacking and ownership' up-lining or marketing our thoughts for a systematic production.

Native people do not speak out of possessiveness or lacking else we become less appreciative.  We speak out of a language of giving and not sharing.  Sharing is also a possessive thought process. If you understand the articulation of the language you speak - the words, the songs, the chants have power to be wakan.  

Mother Earth knows these original languages.  She listens to those older languages that are pure - these languages that will assist Mother Earth to teach us to clean up our mess and to give care to her.  She understands the quantum physics of the language that are coded in the Indigenous languages.  So we must all speak out in abundance and appreciation.

We don't have a religion. I think our ways of life were banned illegal because the Original People perceived that our bodies are in the soul rather than the soul confined within the body alone. 

So it is the responsibility of all things - that all things are equal and you are responsible for living with all life.  So it makes it more difficult to be negative or to hurt or kill out of the senselessness of rage, anger or hatred toward those other lives that take care of us.  

Look around you - the chair you are sitting in, the house, the car, the computer - everything was created to care for you.  So it is actually doing its conscious awareness responsibility by taking care of you.  And all we have to do is to return the appreciation.  And understand that all other life is just as intelligent or more intelligent than you are.  

I was told by my grandfather that the human has a heart and it functions as an organ. In Lakota the human being has a Can'te (chawn-tay) - means the living tree.  

When you look at a tree - you're also looking at Can'te and it has a root system, which reaches down into Mother Earth. It feels her pulse.  The Can'te is a nutritionist bringing nutrients, a hydrologist bringing water.  It is a scientist about what it needs to live under the earth. It grows out and reaches out to the sky and understands the weather patterns, the clouds, the sunshine, the birds and animals it lives and supports with. It understands the wind. 

From Day One it understands the stars.  It always understands the stars, the sun and moon.  Our brother or sister the tree or Can'te understands the stars better than any human can understand the stars.  When we think about life, we see all life has that consciousness like the tree.  That's what we call Wakan - 'to consciously apply mystery to everything.'

June:  Would you like to say anything about the Native American Bearing Witness Retreat?

Tio'ka'sin:  It's our first time.  Maybe there will be some mistakes as we are learning to walk differently and maybe there will be some new experiences for lots of people. We need to keep an open heart.  

Throw your watches and time concepts away and understand that it's a first attempt in the U.S. for Americans to reconcile.  It will not be instant gratification - it's been 500 years.  Some people are looking for forgiveness...but it's down the road.  If they stop thinking about taking away something - it's the opposite - think what are you giving to it.  I think people will understand how native people have been trying to show other people how to have peace with Mother Earth and not peace on Mother Earth.