Wisdom Keeper (15 page)

I also realized, to my horror, that I was prepared to die to prove my point. I had developed an illness that, after a year of tests by Western medical doctors and alternative medical doctors alike, no one could identify much less treat. I had lost seventy pounds over the course of a year, and my friends were worried about me. It wasn't that I wasn't eating—I ate more than I ever did and I still lost weight. I developed inexplicable pains around my groin, stomach, and back that were persistent. The pains became almost unbearable to the point that I couldn't do anything. I was a public speaker and got invitations all the time, but I had to turn them down because I was in such pain. That lasted about seven months.

I also began to realize that my experience as a child left me not trusting even my own body. After all, it had gotten sick to the point of near death. As a result, I always felt I was going to die from any number of illnesses.

At last, I had an “aha” moment when I discovered that this illness and its consequences were the result of my trials and tribulations from my childhood trauma! At that point, I began to heal the “mysterious” illness—the pains disappeared and I gained weight with the help of a medical intuitive who was recommended to me by a trusted friend.

The mind is an interesting aspect. It hides the truth from us for a period of time, sometimes years as it did with me. Rita Blumenstein, a Yupik Elder, is someone I learned to admire and trust. She said to me, “You know, Larry, that sometimes even the spiritual can be a place to hide from things in life.” I thought about this and it is true. When I was sick and unconscious with pneumonia, I would awake to find myself alone and many times in my own excrement. I would then go back into unconsciousness saying, “I don't want to be here. I'm going back to the place where I feel safe.” It would continue to be the place I would go to throughout my life whenever I felt that I was not of this place of chaos, violence, ignorance, stupidity, and destruction—until Rita shared her wisdom with me. “Sometimes the spiritual can be a place to hide from things in life.” I realized that I had done just that throughout my life. It was easy to the point of being second nature. Now, I go there consciously, not to escape the present moment but to experience what it is like to just “be” without any thought or emotion created by the mind.

Now I am thankful for the experience I had when I was six. Without it I would not have learned some of the most important lessons in my life: to trust in life and life processes, to trust my own body, to trust others, to forgive and have compassion for my parents and grandparent, and to forgive and have compassion for myself. Perhaps forgiving and having compassion for myself was the most important lesson I learned from this. The Elders say that “we cannot offer the world that which we do not have.” Until I forgave myself and developed compassion for myself, I could not forgive or have compassion for anyone else. Now I have compassion for all who take this human journey.

It is not easy being human. We are born into a world in which we experience all kinds of things—tragedy, physical and emotional suffering, violence, love, moments of happiness and sadness, confusion, longings, moments of bliss, moments of joy, judgments and criticisms of self and others, and loss. This is the present reality of what it is to be human, and we are still here. The human spirit is amazing.

What happened to me after my “dark night of the soul” in 1984 was inexplicable and magical. One day that fall, I received a phone call from someone from Montreal who had gotten my name from an Alaska Native leader.

“Larry, the person from Alaska who was supposed to be a delegate to the gathering of Indigenous leaders from the western hemisphere to discuss the World Conservation Strategy is sick. We need a replacement to go to Montreal, and you were recommended. Would you be interested?”

I was at a point in my life when I knew everything that came to me had a purpose, so I agreed immediately. Little did I know what magic was afoot. Since I knew nothing whatsoever about the World Conservation Strategy, immediately following the phone call I began wondering what possible use I could be at such a gathering. Then I had what I would later call my first “vision.” It was simple and startling in its form. As I was driving on the island's red-colored road, a three-dimensional picture of a necklace appeared before my eyes, as clear as day. I thought I was hallucinating, but I knew immediately that what I was seeing was a bear claw necklace. I didn't know how I knew this, since I had never seen bear claws before—we don't have bears on Saint Paul. I also inexplicably knew that it had something to do with the upcoming meeting in Montreal.

Armed with the feeling that I was somehow being guided and would know what I was to do at the gathering, I traveled to Anchorage, Seattle, and finally Vancouver, BC, to catch a flight to Montreal. In Anchorage, I received faxed materials about the World Conservation Strategy, a United Nations blueprint to guide nation-states in developing
environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Apparently, this document, to which 125 nations around the world were signatories, was up for amendments. I knew that my role must be to represent Alaska Native and other Indigenous peoples' interests in this process.

On the flight to Montreal from British Columbia, I was assigned a seat at the rear of the aircraft, so I could see the passengers as they came onto the plane. I paid only casual attention to the people boarding until a man turned to place luggage in an overhead rack above the seat in front of me. He was obviously Indigenous, given his dark brown skin and long, braided hair. As he pushed his luggage into the compartment, he turned slightly toward me. He was wearing the exact bear claw necklace I had seen in my vision! My heart started to beat faster.
This man is going to show me what I need to do in Montreal
, I thought to myself.

The dark-skinned man with sharp black eyes looked at me just before sitting down and nodded his head. I nodded back. “Headed to Montreal?” I asked.

“Yeah, going to a big meetin' there,” he replied.

“Me too, something called the World Conservation Strategy meeting,” I said.

“Well, then, we are going to the same place,” he said. “My name is Joe Sarcasha.”

“Pleased to meet you, I'm Larry Merculieff, from Alaska,” I reciprocated.

“Good to meet you, brother. I'll be representing the Aboriginal Trappers Association.”

“At least now I know somebody going to this thing.” I responded cheerfully. He sat down, and we said nothing more for the entire trip.

When I arrived at my assigned hotel, I was greeted by an Indigenous woman who gave me a packet of information about the meeting to begin the next day. She told me there were to be five hundred tribal chiefs from throughout the western hemisphere at the meeting, and I was to have ten minutes to address all of them in a plenary session on the third day. I gulped.

“What am I expected to say?” I asked, as nonchalantly as I could.

“Whatever you feel you need to say,” she responded, matter-of-factly.

I knew that this opportunity and honor to speak to five hundred tribal chiefs was no accident. But I was still quite nervous.
I'm not even a tribal chief
, I thought to myself.
There must be a good reason for this. They are asking me to speak, and they don't know anything about me!

On the first day of the meeting, I could see that this was quite an important event. It was no small feat to bring so many important Indigenous leaders together from so many countries in the western hemisphere. I had never seen such a gathering in my life. We all gathered in a very large conference facility with chairs placed in concentric circles. I knew that this traditional arrangement of chairs signified that everyone sat in the circle as equals. There was no “head table,” only one central microphone strategically located at one side of the great circle of people and wireless microphones that allowed individuals to interact with the speaker if need be.

The issue at hand was how to amend the World Conservation Strategy document to reflect the needs and desires of aboriginal peoples, and how aboriginal peoples were to be treated when making environmental policies, regulations, and laws. The meeting was being held in the hope of achieving a unified position on behalf of the world's aboriginal peoples before a meeting with United Nations officials. I listened to the speakers as they stood at the microphone, one by one. Everyone who wanted to speak was given a few minutes of time. Only a few speakers were formally scheduled. I was one of them.

I loved the dignity of the proceedings. They seemed right and honest. No one interrupted. Everyone listened intently to each speaker. And, as each speaker came forward, not one delivered arguments against anything any previous speaker had proposed. Each simply stated his or her case. I saw none of the behavior so common in proceedings in the United States in which people argue in favor of their points and against what others may have proposed.

Over the next two days, I watched, listened, and learned. I could see that all the leaders took this meeting extremely seriously given the tone, tenor, and dignity of the proceedings. Throughout those days I looked
for opportunities to interact with Joe Sarcasha, thinking he would somehow offer me insight into what I was to do at this gathering. When we weren't interacting, I watched him carefully. But he said and did nothing that struck me as significant or guiding, a fact that became ever more disconcerting the closer it came to the time I was to present.

A half hour before I was to speak before the gathering, I still had no idea what I was supposed to do. And the gathering was preparing to take some kind of action on the World Conservation Strategy issues. I watched Joe like a hawk for clues. Finally, he did something I took notice of. He was handing out flyers to everyone at the gathering. I made my way toward him and got the flyer. It pointed out how the non-Native “system,” the “powers that be,” had never served Indigenous peoples, how the greatest suffering and problems experienced by Indigenous peoples were created by Westerners. From what I had heard from many who had already spoken before this gathering, this line of thinking and feeling was pervasive. The flyer advocated withdrawal from the World Conservation Strategy process as a form of protest. On reading this, I knew immediately what I was supposed to say to the five hundred Indigenous chiefs.

When the time arrived for me to speak, I began slowly.

“Respected Elders, Honored Leaders of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island,
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it is with great humility that I come before you here today. I bring you greetings from the Indigenous nations of Alaska and their prayers for a successful gathering. I prayed that I be guided in what I say here today. Up to this moment I did not know what I was to say, and my prayers have been answered. I come here to appeal to the compassion of this great gathering, and to ask that we make these decisions with the wisdom that can come only from our hearts and not our minds.

“We know our peoples have suffered great injustices at the hands of organized governments in the Western world, injustices that continue to this day. We know that our voices have not been heard in the countless forums we go to. Our lands continue to be taken from us. Development continues to despoil our waters and fields. Our trees continue to
be destroyed. Our sacred grounds continue to be violated. Our voices are ignored in government. Many of our people are in poverty because developers and governments take the most productive grounds and sometimes have forcibly removed us from our ancestral lands. We see how many of our sacred ways have been violated by those who seek to use them for profit or ego, or who use them as symbols for superficial things such as school logos and mascots. And we see the results on the spirit, hearts, and minds of our great peoples. We see how many young ones are lost, prone to violence, addictions, suicides, and murders. We see how many of our people have become sick mentally, physically, and spiritually with emotional disorders, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, cancers. We see the continued erosion of our cultures and spiritual ways as the pressures from the outside come into our villages and families.

“We understand how this is the most subtle and insidious form of genocide because these symptoms are largely invisible to good-meaning peoples from mainstream societies. Our people die slowly, but it is death caused by the disconnection of peoples from their hearts and ignorance on a grand scale. We can choose to fight people over these things. We can choose to work in anger, rage, and maybe even hatred toward those groups, organizations, and individuals who have done these things to our peoples. We can choose to fight the governments for the injustices wrought upon our peoples. It is always a choice, and I appeal to you to think about this.

“These things have been brought to our people only because the people who do such things are asleep in spirit. It is a spiritual sickness from which they suffer, and they do not know or understand this. They cannot know any better unless they are shown another way. A way of love. A way of compassion. A way of wisdom. Our ancestors understood what it means to be a real human being and conducted themselves in this way of beauty. We must continue to honor these ways. In doing so, we honor our ancestors, and we create the only kind of energy and intent that we want to bestow on the next seven generations. If we choose to fight, then we give a legacy of disconnection, ignorance, and continued violence to those yet to come. Let us bring our hearts together in a good way to
create something born of love and compassion. Only in this way can we make lasting change. The decision is up to you.”

I breathed a sigh of deep relief that I was done. I was perspiring and shaking out of sheer nervousness and surprised at what had come out of my mouth. I didn't know if what I said would make any difference until several of the most revered Elders and chiefs stood up, each in turn, to voice their support for the thoughts I presented.

In the end, the delegates unanimously agreed to proceed with the process and to do so in the way of the real human being. I and two others were chosen to draft language reflecting the desires of the delegations to include language in the World Conservation Strategy that acknowledged and affirmed that Indigenous peoples were part and parcel of environment, and that Indigenous people must be meaningfully involved in the decision-making processes of signatory governments. As drafters, we were also charged with negotiating the language with UN officials. As the drafting and negotiating team, we had no difficulty reaching consensus on language. The only difficult issue for our team was to find a word to refer to the peoples we represented. I learned, for example, that there are groups in Africa that illegitimately call themselves “Indigenous” in order to receive government and foundation support. One person offered that the word “aboriginal” has been used derogatorily in Australia and may have those connotations. We agreed to use “First Peoples.”

Four years later, the language recognizing First Peoples in the World Conservation Strategy was accepted and made part of the document adopted by 125 nation-states in a plenary session of the United Nations. When it was all done, I gave many prayers of gratitude and thanks to the Creator and the ancestors for all their help. I recognized that I could not take credit for any of it, only that I was given a humble vision of a necklace, and that I came with an open heart asking for guidance. And it was there.