The Way of the Contrary

There he is — the man, the medicine man, the Yuwipi Man and head Heyoka, the Sun Dancer and ancestral Chief, showing his true colors of yellow and black, Spotted Owl feathers adorning his ceremonial skirt, a split lightning bolt contrarian symbol etched upon his face, chest and beaded eagle wing fans. Wičháša Ithánčhan Tatanka Weitgo, also known as Phil, here captured in his tipi, the Lakota word for the place of abiding, would soon emerge the masked sacred clown to throw down, rolling about and turning the Wi-wanyang-wa-c’i-pi wakan or sacred Sun Dance Ceremony upside down, in the summer of 2003. “Chief… Phil… Crazybull…”, echoed Uncle Leonard’s baritone shout over the PA. “Is he a man?” Or is he… something else entirely?”

I don’t own many Phil photos, this very special one coming my way after finishing the former post, a piece prompted by the passing of his teacher and Uncle, Chief Leonard Emmanuel Crow Dog. During the pandemic, we visited how crisis can be good for you, referencing my funky Heyoka tutelage. Those were the best of times, those breezy summers almost twenty years back, way out on America’s wild, western plains, from my home-base in Cave Creek, Arizona, to Phil’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the land of his tribe, the Brulé or Burnt-Thigh Sicangu people of Rosebud, South Dakota. If you knew Phil well, he’s appearing quite the robust, eternally youthful Shaman here, full of strength and endurance. A stroke and other physical complications struck soon after that summer, turning the best of times into the worst. And all that clowning — the somersaults, the yanking of female dancers’ ponytails, the masks and creative, otherworldly costumes coupled with weitgo (crazy) antics that filled his people with laughter, dread, hope and healing — was gone less than three years later. “What lasts in life Nephew?” Phil asked in one of our last conversations. “Love,” I replied, “Love lasts. My love for you.” “No, no. Love can turn to hate”, he offered up, in his final contrarian teaching on the duality of life in the material world.

Yet almost twenty years up the Red Road, my affection for and devotion to Phil continues , as do all our relations with loved ones. Life took an unexpected zig the first time I shook his hand. Then a few years later, having received a flickering flash of my own future, both life and death, it simply didn’t make sense to build anything on the constantly shifting sands of the material world, but rather on the rock of the world to come. Ceremonial living and spiritual purification are not easy roads because life is not an easy road. Ergo we orchestrate an equally arduous situation in Ceremony, utilizing heat or cold or water deprivation in order to feel along the boundaries of being in a body, turning life’s difficult nature around, leveraging suffering to liberate our spirits from the the confines of matter. It’s a beautiful road and one helluva journey, elevating one’s self on a path that ascends upward, becoming better and better over time. That’s why I uphold The Higher Haven to be heaven’s front porch, a clearing for the healing of many, on a level that Phil’s teaching deserved, with the only requirements for tribal membership being significant effort and unwavering commitment to one’s own Path.

“To carry and honor a Pipe is to understand death, commitment, integrity, courage and love,” according to Chief Phil. “And if you were to study the Inipi (or Ceremony), it will take you your lifetime” With so much coming to pass in the light of Phil’s guidance and predictions for my life, I’m recalling my own vision for our future, fondly reminding him that and if we stuck together, he wouldn’t be lying his star quilts down in the mud of the Tucson Gem Show. “We’re taking this over the Haŋwí (the Moon)”, I’d happily inform him, so inspired by the individual, creative self-expression around Ceremony. While true that my plan to be his assistant and acquaint the whole world with my real Indian Chief of a Teacher looks slightly different than originally planned, he’s still by my side, and vice-versa. But isn’t that life? Moving and evolving while we try and hold to our little plans.

Here’s what the Oyates, the people who attended our recent Way of the Contrary weekend had to say - “All my relations! I found the right words to speak out loud and make my inner child feel heard! Thank you Paul and Phil’s Spirit . This has been a wondrous gift to slowly unwrap. Peace be with all who take this step into wellness.” - L.G. “Thank you for finding us. I feel an openness, freeness, and connection to life that has been missing for too long.” - S.W. “Chi-Migwech (Anishinaabemowin or Ojibwa for “Big Thank You”) for such a beautiful and uplifting evening. So grateful for the reassurance that the Creator and Spirit exist within me. I look forward to my next Ceremony.” On that note, the next Way of The Contrary Weekend will be August 13th-14th. Two spots just reopened for our Summer Noble Silence Meditation Retreat Weekend this coming weekend. And the full Fall schedule, including the triumphant return of yoga, will be up before July is out. We’ll also have some special information coupled with client testimonials on what happens at The Higher Haven between retreat weekends. We hope you’re making the most of your Summer 2021 and look forward to seeing you soon. Aho Matakuye O’yasin!

A Very Happy/Sad Fourth of July

A young Leonard Crow Dog, an equally youthful Frank Fools Crow, and Leonard’s Father Henry on the Rosebud 1973.

A great figure, a great man and a great Medicine Man, maybe one of the modern world’s greatest, continued on his journey recently. Chief Leonard Emmanuel Crow Dog — activist, leader and great guide to the Sicangu Oyate, the Burnt-thigh, Brulé Lakota people —passed into the World of the Spirit at his home, Crow Dog’s Paradise on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Central South Dakota USA, about a month ago today, June 6th, 2021. “Lakota Spiritual Leader Leonard Crow Dog Walked On” read the title of the Native News article. He was 78 years old.

Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney Bordeaux issued a statement saying, “As a young man Leonard Crow Dog learned from his father Henry Crow Dog and Lakota elders. He did not go to school; instead his parents enlisted four medicine men to guide his education. Throughout his life, Crow Dog learned from the University of the Universe as he would say, and he shared his understanding of the WoLakota with our Sicangu Oyate, the Oceti Sakowin (note: People of the Seven Council Fires or the Great Sioux Nation) and Peoples of all Nations. Leonard was in touch with the sacred power that connects all of us and the Creation. He stood for human rights, and he knew that the Lakota received our rights from the creator — our breath of life, freedom to dream and live our visions, and our sacred duty to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth.” Per another online statement celebrating his life, he was acknowledged for protecting and restoring land known as Pe’ Sla, a part of the sacred Black Hills, providing cultural and spiritual knowledge to tribal leaders and representatives that guide their work as tribes restored their rightful authority and care over the sacred land that was promised to the great Sioux Nation in the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851.

You’ve heard of the American Indian Movement (AIM) the group formed in the late 1960’s by grassroots activities Russell Means, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, because our entire nation had a sympathetic listening for their 1970’s warrior antics. I remember hearing as a kid of the armed occupation of wounded knee on the Pine Ridge reservation as well as their take over of Alcatraz Island. I had not heard that they stormed the replica of the Mayflower, history I learned of while researching for this article, cracking me up. But this movement, founded to turn Native peoples toward a renewal of their spirituality, with a strength of resolve to transcend the ruinous policies of the USA, Canada and other colonialist governments, existed in various forms for 500 years without a name. Leonard Emmanuel Crow Dog was AIM’s Medicine Man and spiritual advisor.

I loved Uncle Leonard. He was an absolute force of nature, a servant to the people, and the teacher to my teacher Wicasa Itankan Tatanka Weitgo, Chief Philip Aaron Crazybull. Phil was Leonard’s Heyoka or sacred clown. They were both men, but they were more then men. My Kola Hadrien, who was close to Phil before we met and actually played a role in connecting us, conveyed that a fiery Leonard would turn to him and shout, “Nephew! Scribe! Write this down! ‘I, Leonard Crow Dog, declare war on the United States of America!” That’s one of my favorite old stories, and why I waited until the Fourth of July to post this tribute. Because Leonard deserves it, as there is no finer example of a man who stood apart as well as for his people, an “American” in our land’s truest sense.

He exuded native pride, with a dignity and beauty to his stride, like a mountain lion. On that note, he also talked in this poetic, otherworldly sort of way, like a sacred prattle: “It’s hard to know, it is hard to understand,” he said in a recent online video. “It’s not written in the library of Congress… the most telepathic communication of a prayer, prayer of life, the Wolakota will be in the dreams of our generation, of our people…the medicine is there, the healing is there, that’s why its sacred… I don’t care how many Cesaereans she goes through, the Mother Earth is always Holy, is always sacred, … the dream is still there. Although they did their best to destroy it, it’s still there.” He was fond of saying that: “We are still here.” Truth. There’s no problem when people dub The United States of America a Christian nation. Clearly The World of The Spirit supported the efforts and prayers of our nation’s founding fathers. But I like to remind folks that before the their little buckled shoes even set foot on this land, there was a spiritual tradition practiced here for hundreds and thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years, Shamanism being mankind’s first, natural religion. A tradition of power, prayer, purification, and peace.

 When I tell my life story, I sum it all up by saying that for the most part, I lived on an Indian reservation from roughly 1999 to 2006. And although that is not precisely true, Ceremony was the only thing I really cared about and wanted to do. Some of my best times and best memories were summers spent on the Rosebud reservation, rolling up to Chief Crow Dog’s home in a beat-up old pickup truck to carry tipi poles to the Sun Dance grounds. I was hanging off the back, and he looked at me smiling and then faked a scorn, razzing me, saying, “You know your people have been making my people suffer for the last five hundred years.” I called back, “Not me personally Chief!,” and as I bobbled off, he grinned again. You see, my people, the Armenian people, were also part of a horrific genocide. Whatever the psycho-spiritual shakedown from my ancestors having to endure such a damaging experience, after spending a couple years as a student of Phil Crazybull, doing sweats, walking the Red Road, finally vision questing and sun dancing, my mental illness was slowly but surely cured by the Indian religion.

When I danced I danced hard, danced my ass off, because I knew it was being saved, and like they say in recovery, at some point I realized my ass was attached to my soul. In my mind’s eye, I see Leonard with his staff, in his dark blue skirt, motioning to the brilliant blue, wide, South Dakota sky, leading twirling lines of hundreds of sun dancers in the summers of 2004 and 2005. Between rounds, the dancers all go under a shaded arbor to rest. I somehow ended up across an aisle from Uncle Leonard, who gazed at me, and then slowly nodded. That look meant the world to me, as well as the world to come. Prior to my connection to Ceremony and The Red Road, I was formerly fond of saying that I was quite unwell within myself, but now recognize my life as a healing journey. And so, in that pursuit, I’d done it all — fundamentalist religion, recovery, therapy, men’s groups, even hardcore Zen and Vipassana meditation — but only the path that Leonard called The Way of The Sun and The Moon and The Stars could save me. And it did. That and being the student of a true Lakota Heyoka.

I’ve never written about my visions in this space before, and I’m not going to write about them now, as they say that one’s visions are one’s own, to do with what one will. But let’s just say that my mind was often occupied with thoughts of having to stick my hand into a kettle of boiling water and pull out a dog’s head at Paradise circa the summer of 2006. When Phil informed me, “We bring a basket with a rattlesnake into the Lodge and the real Heyoka proves it by reaching in and killing it with his bare hands,” my response was, “Where’s the basket?” It’d been a hard Heyoka initiation the summer of 2005 at the Children’s Sun Dance that Phil lead on the Diné reservation the summer before. In fact, at one point, after being tackled and pinned down and pierced at the bottom of my back by a gang of Indian goons, while I screamed “I’m crying Uncle, I’m crying Uncle you losers ‘cause I’m the only fake Heyoka out here!” I went into Phil’s tipi out of my fucking mind. “This shit is crazy Phil what is happening here? Do you know why I do all this stuff!? Do you know why I’m willing to put up with all these trials and walk this line? Because I want a girlfriend!” Which was my way of saying that I knew that I was unlovable, but I would do whatever I’d have to do to be loved, which I know today is self-love. “Those guys took it easy on you out there! When they initiated me, Leonard himself broke my nose.”

Then on January 18th, 2006, Phil passed unexpectedly at the age of only fifty-six. Chief Crow Dog and Chief Sonny One Star, Phil’s brother, were both at the Children’s Sun Dance on the Navajo reservation in June, as I remember scribbling in a notebook trying to keep up with Leonard’s sacred ramble, declaring that although losing Phil blew a hole in everyone’s heart, we were going forward. Later that summer, in August, I visited Crow Dog’s Paradise for the last time. I spent one night in Phil’s camp, took a look at who the upcoming “leaders” were, and I was out of there. My girlfriend at the time Mieze —ah The Healing!— and I rolled down the couple miles to Sonny’s place, on the same road to Paradise — pun intended — and he became my teacher for a few years. I circled back in the summer of 2012 to Sun Dance with Steve Blue Horse at Howard Bad Hand’s Dance near Shiprock, New Mexico, confirmed my mission, and then life moved on.

“Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things,” said Chief Crow Dog. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of the Indian religion.” While it’s true that Leonard has left us, we still have the songs, we still have the sacred Chanupa and we have Ceremony, and our healing way of life. For that I thank Chief One Star, Chief Crazy Bull, and Chief Crow Dog, Wopila Pilamaye. May you rest in Power Chief. Aho Matakuye O’yasin

Listen To The Ground...

Groove Master Educator & Movement Teacher Extraordinaire Heather Winia rouses the troops Saturday morning

… There is movement all around… there is something goin' down… and I can feel it… on the waves of the air…there is dancin' out there… it's somethin' we can share… We can't steal it… those sweet city women they moved through the light… Here I am… prayin' for this moment to last… livin' on the music so fine… borne on the wind… makin' it mine…

Yep, we were all gimme that night fever, night fever… we know how to do it… gimme that night fever, night fever… We know how to show it… with the Groove’In My Life mini retreat, many, many a Dance tune was accessed in the service of cutting loose and losing our collective blues. “If you do it on the dance floor, you’ll do it back in your daily life,” offered up Groove Master and Teacher Heather Winia, who lead the powerful, all-day dance party. After a long period of separation in honor of health and wellness, it was wonderful to have this great group of women in the house hugging, smiling, laughing, crying, and dancing the whole day down. We’ll be taking it from 80’s Disco tunes to complete crickets & Noble Silence at our upcoming Summer Noble Silence Meditation Retreat Weekend, where we’ll get fire in the mind, get higher in our walkin', and soon be glowin' in the dark, give you warnin'…