It's Time to Celebrate the Medicine

Erin Everett interviewed Cherokee spiritual leader Grandmother Red Leaf in 2007.

I have been honored in my short life to have made the acquaintance of a number of traditional elders carrying wise teachings and strong medicine. These people don't advertise the magic and mystery of their heritage, but instead they do their work with humility and let their lives speak softly for themselves. Therefore, it was with great gratitude that my husband and I recently drove into the ancient mountains of Yancey County, NC, to meet Grandmother Red Leaf, a Cherokee spiritual leader described by one elder as "one of the few left east of the Mississippi who still holds the medicine."

I'd been in Grandmother's presence once before, at the death honoring of local Tuscarora elder Ted Williams. She oversaw his ceremony, the preparation of his body, and his proper burial in the traditional way. I remember at the time being struck by her strength: this woman had spent her life on the road to her destiny as spiritual leader for her community, and that was no small thing.

When I called her for directions to her house, she warned me that we would be treading on sacred ground when we entered her land. After winding uphill through beautiful country, heading up toward Mount Mitchell, we arrived at her door and were greeted enthusiastically by her two tiny guard dogs. She sat us down, poured us an icy glass of sweet tea, and we gave her a traditional offering of tobacco along with other gifts, thanking her for sharing her wisdom with our tens of thousands of readers.

As she answered my questions, her hands waved in the air to accent her words, and the many silver bracelets on her arms tinkled together. She later told me that the largest ones had been given to her by Chilean medicine women, and the silver disks hanging from them represent the scalps of their Spanish conquerors.

Grandmother had lots to tell us, and lots to show. She showed us old sepia photographs of her grandfather, with his traditional mohawk, posing uncomfortably in white man's clothes. She took down off of her walls, one by one, sacred objects given to her with honor by elders from traditions all over the world, and she told us the story of each one. She uncovered her huge medicine drum, used for special ceremonies, its head made of thick buffalo hide with the fur still on. She pointed out the painted skull of a deer she had hunted and prepared, decorating it from a dream vision with the red of blood, black of wisdom, and a gold streak of lightning. She showed us each of her many medicine rattles made from gourds and turtle shells, bringing the healing power of blue heron, wolf and rattlesnake to her ceremonies. We saw, without being shown, her wall of flamed certificates, including accreditations from pistol and rifle groups.

Outside, she showed us her tobacco ring and her sacred council house protected with invisible ritual and a very visible "Trespassers Will Be Shot" plaque. In this chamber, the elders of the seven clans of the Cherokee will meet to determine the fate of their people in discussions I can only imagine, where Grandmother will tolerate no dissention among tribal leaders. "There is no arguing in the Seventh Fire Circle, there is no power struggle, and no one trying to take over ... I took an oath to Spirit. I said, if this council house is to come, it will be done in a sacred manner. We even have a negotiator to break a tie vote. We're going to have seven clans all represented, and it will be done in the old way. It will be voted on, there will be no arguing, there will be no saying, 'Oh, I don't want to do that, get somebody else to do that.' We will all have a joint effort. I'm the clan mother here."

After the interview was over, as she ushered us down the steps to leave, she mentioned that Jane Fonda would be in our area next June to give a talk. "I've been asked to do the opening ceremony for her," she said, and laughed. When I asked what Jane was coming here to talk about, Grandmother responded, "I'm not sure what she's doing here, but I know my part."

Erin Everett: So many of us in this modern culture are looking for something that we have lost. What can you share with us about Cherokee teachings and traditions that are important for this time?

Grandmother Red Leaf: First of all, I want to say that I speak only for myself. I cannot speak for my people, but only for myself. This is a very broad question bemuse every tribe has its prophecy, but they're all quite similar in some way. One of the elders just brought to me this week the prophecy drum, so I am beginning to learn new little nuances. The Eastern people almost always referred to the people who are living now as the People of the Seventh Fire. And we refer to when the change comes as the Fifth Hoop, the Fifth World, the Fourth Shaking, the Eighth Fire ... by a lot of names.

And it's all about the same thing—the changing that will come and the Earth will shake off all the things that humans have done. I don't think that any tribe believes that it will be like the Christian idea of the world ending. I have never heard of any reference to that. But there will be some dramatic changes.

One of the old stories the Cherokee have is that Brown Bear will cross the ocean to our people here and that there will be a huge battle in the center of this continent--and we know where that is. So, there is a little difference in the stories of the prophecy, but pretty much we are "all following fairly closely the Circle of White Eagle Feathers. It's in Colorado and it's being gathered. The feathers are coming one at a time.

So, I've been teaching about the Fourth Shaking and Eighth Fire for years now, and even up until recently, people have been saying we are coming into the time of the Fourth Shaking. No, we are not. We are on the back side of it. We are almost at the change, according to my teachings. So, it's a wonderful time to be alive. It's a time of celebration, because we are told that the old ceremonies, the old songs will come hack to us, and we are very happy about that. In fact, that's part of what the Seventh Fire here is going to do, is pray up the old songs and dances. We're going to begin to do them again, the old Smoke Dance, the Alligator Dance, the Robin Dance. A lot of the old Eastern dances just went out of fashion, so to speak. So, it really is a glorious time to be alive, to be a part of this, to witness the changes. We were told about these natural disasters that would happen. I'm sure you saw the news yesterday: one of the islands off of Greece just burnt up. People have lost their homes ... it's a terrible situation over there. Of course, we have terrible floods where there was drought and terrible drought where there were floods, and we know that is part of the balance. Everything has to have balance, so we are going through that time, and it is a good time to be alive.

It is exciting to me. I go to ceremony twice a day: once just before any daylight comes, I go down to the little healing spring. And then in the evening, I go hack and make a circle of prayers. Every morning, I light the smudge in the council house, then I make that circle of prayers. I guess it's a form of protection. So my life is good; I am the richest person on Earth, and I live in two rooms [laughs].

This is all there is [she indicates the small room], this room and my bedroom--two rooms--but I have medicine here from nine different tribes, some of it going back three hundred years, and I am the guardian for those things. I am very happy to be trusted in that way.

Erin Everett: We are glad you are here to do it. What can you tell me about women's medicine?

Grandmother Red Leaf: Honey, we are the medicine! [laughs] Well, women are the life-givers; we give life to chiefs and warriors and generations yet to come. The women ... we are the center of the universe in my society. We even had the deciding vote on whether our warriors would go to war. We had, back long ago, a Cherokee women's society called the Long-Haired Ones, and that's the name used for the War Women's Society. I am head War Woman for the Texas Cherokee in North Carolina, because that's where I am enrolled, and my chief appointed me about six or seven years ago. I have nine war women that serve under me. They are all professional people; they are doctors, educators, lawyers, and many facets of everyday work. We act, we take a vow to fight for the rights of women and children, to protect those, to protect the family above all things, and to carry the fires of tradition. So, those are three of the vows; we take six vows, but there is a big induction ceremony ... that I held at the river down here when I inducted those women, and I will do another one as soon as there are enough women to do a ceremony. But you have to be enrolled; you can't be just someone who wants to be part of that society. Enrollment is a requirement.

Erin Everett: Tell our readers what enrollment means.

Grandmother Red Leaf: On one tribe's Indian rolls ... The Eastern Band [of the Cherokee] rolls are closed. You have to be born on the reservation or you have to be ... let's see, I think it's eighteen. I am not sure because I think it's closed now. So, there are no more enrollments going on right now. Even if the enrollments were open, you would have to submit an enormous amount of paperwork verifying your family before you could ever hope to get it to the council. They would have to approve it, so it's difficult--next to impossible, now--unless you are born on the reservation.

Erin Everett: So these War Women are all Cherokee?

Grandmother Red Leaf: They are all Cherokee. We have very strong women who are the War Women; we set a very high precedent, a high mark, because when people look at me, for instance, they see all Indian women. So, as women, we carry a tremendous amount of responsibility. We expect ourselves to live an exemplary lifestyle and to be a contributor. I work with abused women, abused children, high-risk cases: domestic violence, potential suicide. I am a spiritual counselor, and I have served as a spiritual counselor in the prison system for a long time. In maximum security, you get a very broad look at what the world's about. So, it teaches you.

The old teachings say, "My face is a mask behind which I hide." And people do that, you know. Indian people, if you work with a lot of them, or even if you know a lot of them, they always give you time to reveal who you are. They are never jumping on your friendship, you know; like, okay, I want you to be my best friend. We wait for you to open up, until we see through that shadow and see who you really are. Because it's human nature: people will give you what they think you expect.

Erin Everett: For readers who are women and don't have Cherokee blood, is there something that you can suggest to them ... ways to honor their own medicine in this life that we lead?

Grandmother Red Leaf: Okay, I will tell you first that everything is medicine, and medicine is everything. And so medicine will hide from you. It will run from you if your heart is not right. If you're not respectful, if you are not honorable, you won't get help from medicine. I think everyone has a kind of medicine ... See, there are two kinds of medicine: there is herbal medicine and there is medicine the essence. This is what I practice, medicine the essence--the spiritual beliefs about healing and harmony.

There is no word in Cherokee for "disease." We believe that when you are out of balance, out of harmony, that you draw negativity to yourself, therefore you become weak and susceptible to illnesses ... I will give you a good for-instance of how medicine of the essence works. During the huge floods from the hurricanes, the water came off the ridges here and it was twenty feet wide across the upper curve in my driveway, and it takes you immediately to the place where you recognize your oneness with the universe, and you see that it helps you to shed the idea of separateness.

I mean, we are all in the same universe and there are thousands of universes. This is not the only one. But that day ... the rain ... that was a male rain. There is a male rain and a female rain. Female rain is a very gentle, soft-falling, continuing rain. Male rain is, of course, the exact opposite: it's forceful, it's thundering, it's hard, it's vicious, it's destructive. I stood out in that pouring rain and gave thanks for that water. You see, you have to recognize that whatever happens in your life is a teaching. It's a lesson. You have to be grateful. There is a very beautiful prayer that says,

Ogedoda Galv'lati Ogadosgi Osda Nuwati Elohino Yolda Hoyona. Wado

(Translation) O Great One who dwells in the Sky World illuminating all that is, giving Good Medicine of life, and the Great Creation, Mother Earth, and knowing that all things are as they should be.

We give thanks for the beauty of all things, O Great One. We give thanks. (1)

That's it. That's where you have to stand. That's balance. Recognizing that we are not in control of anything. I taught for years, I wrote study guides for the state of North Carolina. I taught NC teachers how to teach the Indian history in the textbooks, and finally we got Columbus declared who he is. Indians have always worn black arm bands on Columbus Day because he was a murderer and a slave master, but he gets a day! You know, nobody has ever been able to explain that to me.

But in teaching these things about our people and how we revere the medicine and how we perceive the medicine, we have to look always back at the balance. We have another old, old prayer. I use the Overhill language. The Kituwah language is the language we have over here in the Eastern band, but there are 57 different linguistic groups, within those, hundreds of languages, thousands of dialects. So, anyway, this old prayer says,

Sge! Sge! Unequa, tsiwonihu! Wado, Agiduda, Galuquitaga Nvna unega sgikasa vtanelega Elati gesv Tsiyuwiya. Tsitsalagi. Tsiwiya. Awaninasgi

(Translation) Listen! Listen! Great Being, I am speaking. Thank you honored Grandfather. You have brought to me from above, the White Road I am Tsalagi. I am of the Real People. It has been spoken. (2)

The word "a-wanins-gi" means "Thank you, I finished, I mean what I said, I said what I believe, and it is true." So when you hear an elder say "sge," it's a diminished form of "a-wanins-gi," which means "I've told the truth as I know it."

All those years of teaching the people how to perceive our people ... The late John F. Kennedy said that the Native People are the most misunderstood and the least understood of any people on this continent. And we still are. It amazes me that people still know so little about who we are or what we believe. I have been trying to encourage Indian women for many years to seek their own dignity because prophecy says that now the leadership, if you will, is changing from the male to the female in the original part of time. Spirit gave guardianship of the fire and the drum to the men and guardianship of the water to women, and water is always a female thing. So now because the men are tired and the Earth is changing, the energy is shifting ... men rule from the head, women rule from the heart, and so we are being told in our prophecy women are going to reclaim our role as healers.

So, all around us is medicine, and you will find that the littlest medicine is the most powerful. The little things are ones that we seek out, we pay respect to. And when I go down to the water each morning, I touch those leaves and say thanks for being here and thank you for bringing us medicine, and that place down there ... I have a clear path through it because they hear the vibration of the words I am saying. They respond to it and [the plants] are so prolific, they have sprung up everywhere between the rocks. They just surround you when you go down to the water.

Cherokee celebrate three Fires: White Fire, Red Fire and Green Fire (which people don't talk about). Green Fire is the dead fire caused by lightning. Everything goes to Green Fire. In other words, that is what phosphorescence is. So, when we celebrate the Fire, you know we are giving thanks for all places of power, and I give thanks every day. You know, these little fires I build--two in the morning, one at night--they are to celebrate what Spirit has given us. And they teach us to look for the little medicine. We have Little People called yvwi tsv-s-di who live under the roots of trees. They live under there, and I take them gifts.

So, prophecy has told us all about this time, and that we are to celebrate the medicine. If you do not respect medicine, you can simply turn your head away and look hack and it will be gone. It's that fast.

One thing I was going to tell you is the interpretation of power that Indians have versus what conventional society has. I wrote a book, not a published book, but a teaching manual when I was teaching teachers for North Carolina. And in that book, I made comparisons of cultural values, cultural beliefs as opposed to conventional society. One of the things I taught about was power. We know that the white society believes power to be control or dominance. One can have as much power as others are willing to give him, or they can take as much as they can take by force. But to us, power is the spiritual capacity to overcome the limits of man's logic. That is a very big teaching, very big. SO it tells us we have to be very sincere about the work we do. We have to be very committed to what we believe.

I went to Connecticut and put twelve women on the hill up there at one time [fasting from food and water and praying for days of vision quest]. But they all completed a year's rite of passage, so they were ready. Some of those women made one thousand prayer ties (3) to encircle their questing fire. And we had a long house, we had everything in the woods, and so when I went up there to do that, this young student of mine, whose name is Hears Crow, she said to me, "Grandmother, what is the difference between 'strong' and 'tough'?" And I said to her, "Well, 'strong' means that you can stand in the fire. 'Tough' means that you can stand in the fire and stand in the fire and stand in the fire."

That is the difference. You have to be flexible within the realm of respect to Spirit. I have witnessed things that have given me the strength I have today. I spent a summer with the Hopi. They are the most traditional people left probably outside the Maori. I was up on that mesa when the men came up out of the kivas speaking in the original language, which is just a vibrational hum. The earth shook. It was a remarkable experience. It probably aged me over one hundred years and yet made me young all over again. But things like that have been such huge gifts in my life. Those are the things that have enabled me to do the work that I do and, of court, constant seeking and supplication of Spirit. I gave up my name for Spirit and that's all you have. So when you give that kind of gift, when you are willing to give all that you have, then all that you do becomes worship.

So, it's a hard path when women come to me asking, "Grandmother, will you teach me?" I ask them three questions: "Why do you want to do this? How long do you think it's going to take? What do you think it's going to cost?" And we are not talking about money. And the only acceptable answers are, "I do this because Spirit has called me to do this." The answer to the second question, how long do you think it's going to take, is, "It's going to take forever." It's going to take the rest of your life. And for the cost: it's going to cost you everything that you thought that you would have, everything emotionally, everything. There is no middle ground when you pick up the spirit bundle. There is no middle ground. Either stay on the path, or you put the bundle down and you don't disgrace the people who have done this for thousands of years.

So, [in Connecticut] when I went into the woods after the questing time and rounded up those twelve women, and I packed them hack into the stone circle, we took them in the long house, we bathed them, painted them with red ocher, dressed them in new clothes the other women had made for them, gave them new moccasins. Then we buried and gave back to the earth their old clothes, their old moccasins. And then I took them into the stone circle and announced their new names to the Earth Mother four times to each direction. It was so powerful. I had seven "pickets" there, seven men from seven different tribes who stood guard for us in respect for all the women.

So, it is those powerful times that give you grace to go forward, because in our humanness, in our inborn weaknesses, we couldn't do it without the strength of ceremony. Ceremony bonds us together and bonds us to the Earth. Only in isolation can spiritual sickness occur. So you have to stay bonded with what you are doing. You have to always, always respect and honor the Creator of all things.

And that was a very long answer. You will never get through your questions! You ask me what time it is and I will tell you how to build a clock. But that's what a teacher does; we expound with the hope that every additional word will bring you a clearer understanding.

Erin Everett: Well, we appreciate that, and that's why I only brought six questions!

(1) Notes from Grandmother Red Leaf on this prayer: "If I remember correctly, this prayer was originally written by Michael Garrett. My Chief also uses this same prayer, and many Native People use this same prayer."

(2) Notes from Grandmother Red Leaf on this prayer. "This prayer comes from our Texas Cherokee (Tsalagiyi Nvdagi) where I am enrolled and you see we refer to "The White Road" instead of "The Red Road" My Principal Chief is Chief D.L Hicks. I am also enrolled with the Tsaiagi Nation Kituwah--Cherokee Early Emigrants--Principal Chief, Nancy Long Walker."

(3) Prayer ties: In many American Indian traditions, prayers are sent to the spirit world by folding the prayers with tobacco into colored cloth "ties" that are tied onto string.

Cherokee/Choctaw tribal elder Grandmother Red Leaf has a deep commitment to sharing with others the beauty of her heritage. She has taught Native American history, culture and art forms for over thirty years. In the past, Grandmother has served as North Carolina's Cultural Consultant and served as a member on many cultural associations. This interview first appeared in the publication New Life Journal.

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