(The buffalo story perhaps best represents and reflects the harsh reality confronted by the Native American Indians. The brilliant storyteller Daniel Ogen, of the Blackfoot tribe, adored telling this epic story which may be interpreted as a Native American Indian view of the fall of humanity from paradise or a more stable, secure and safer way of life.)
Never ever take anything for granted! And never presume too much! This especially applies to how you understand people and offer them presents. Just ask yourself how many unwanted presents you have received from people and secretly disposed of or offered to others? For instance, in Scotland, volunteers who offered potatoes to poor people who turned up at a food bank were told they could not take them. And the reason for the refusal was: the cost of boiling them was more expensive than the free gift. The homeless people themselves can tell countless stories of being offered useless things.
Well someone gave Daniel Ogen an unwanted present. It all began ten years ago when Daniel Ogen was invited to tell a story about the Native American Indians at some kind of New Age center in Moscow. At this time, interest in Native American Indians was at a new height and people perceived them as noble savages who lived a much purer life style than those who lived in 'corrupt cities' where obsessive consumerism and materialism was the rage. Some Russians wondered if they could find an alternative vision and life style from the Native American Indians. This was hardly new. It was once the fashion during the late 18th Century.
While Daniel Ogen was telling his story, I noticed that one of the audience was busy sketching a portrait of the legendary Apache fighter Geronimo. After Daniel had told his story of the buffalo this young artist walked up to him and presented him with a poster of Geronimo as a gift. An exasperated Daniel did not even pretend to smile. He looked more bemused than anything. After we were going home Daniel told me "I don't need this. You can take it." I retorted, "But it is a gift meant for you. You can't just hand it over to me." Then Daniel launched into a diatribe against Geronimo when he told me how this warrior had murdered many innocent people and was an absolute rogue. He was hardly a hero whom Daniel sought to emulate.
So I carried this picture home. I hung it up in my room only to face a further angry response from my wife. "This picture is so badly drawn. Everything is in the wrong proportions. You can't put it up." So it eventually ended up in the trash bin when I was out.
I think Daniel strongly disagreed with not only the negative but also the positive stereotypes of the Native American Indians. For instance, he did not agree with how the New Age followers were depicting and presenting the Culture as part of an alternative religion. He stressed that often this 'religion' had nothing in common with the original sophisticated and complex religion of the different tribes of the Indians. He told me it would take many years for any scholar or researcher to truly grasp this religion.
Daniel pointed out that 'Hollywood had invented more legends about the Native American Indians than the Indians themselves.’ He thought it idiotic that Indians were presented in the films as being incapable of uttering one correct sentence of English. In reality, many American Indians spoke excellent English. It annoyed him when some woman from Chicago told him he should get back to his roots and relive his life on a reservation. "Practically all my native American Indian friends say that if you can do better by moving to other places you should go ahead.'" In contrast, he had great respect for the late Professor Alexander Vashchenko who had spent years doing research into Native American Indian Culture.
You could understand why Daniel did not particularly desire to return to any reservation. Daniel often told me how terrible the conditions were. He once told me "Long ago, in the 1950's, I lived on an Indian reservation in Montana until I was about five or six. We were very poor. The houses were often in shabby and run down condition. My family were not 100 percent Indian blood but a mix of French Canadian and Indian so in a sense we were outsiders among the Indians. We were not quite here or there. Sometimes adapting to this culture was daunting.
I found that the Indians often had no idea of private property. For example, if I left my jacket on a chair just for a second it would immediately vanish. Some guy would take it without asking. According to his mindset you have not left it but thrown it away. You obviously did not want it so it was okay for him just to take it. I would often say to a guy about to take my jacket 'Don't touch it. It is my jacket and I am just leaving it there for a short time. 'Then I could leave my coat there without them taking it. It was very difficult to get them to understand this."
Daniel told me how poverty could get so bad that some Indians felt forced to shoplift from food stores. You either stole or starved. He told me "One technique that worked well was when one kid would come up to the store and suddenly faint or fall down in great pain. As the shop assistant went up to him to help the rest of the kids would be stealing food from the shop." Daniel also told me a story which best tells how hard this hunger could be. He told how a group of Blackfoot Indians were so hungry they had to keep on the move looking for any food they could grab. They would sometimes hunt and fish.
The agreement was that any food a person got had to be shared. One night, some of the group smelt something which was like fish. They felt that someone was secretly cooking fish and thus breaking the rule. Everyone denied the accusation. Tempers rose and everyone began to violently argue. It looked as if a fight would break out. Then suddenly a young girl shouted loudly "No one has been cooking any fish. The smell comes from me. I am having my period." When her cousin heard those words he was so shocked that he died of a heart attack. This was partly because of the great embarrassment of what she had said — but also partly because he had become so weak from the hunger.
Daniel Ogen told me in one story that "Now the Blackfoot Indians don't like the white man. Before the white man drove them out their lands they did not consider them real people but called them 'Pale ghosts' who had brought the plague with them. When the white man first arrived in America, it was as if the gates of hell had been opened and all the fiends of hell had ascended on us. For the white man came with such a dreadful lust for gold or land it had deranged them. They plundered, raped and massacred whole villages. They brought all kinds of diseases such as small pox, influenza and the plague.
When the white man arrived, the ‘great ghost disease' came to us, Daniel told me. What Daniel meant by the ‘great ghost disease' was also a profound loss of spirituality as well as their original beliefs, customs and way of life.
The buffalo story partly reflects the influence of 'the great ghost disease' on the Native American Indians though it can be interpreted in many ways. Daniel told different versions of this story but the core essence of the meaning remained the same. On his way to Moscow State University where he was due to tell this story at a storytelling session, Daniel warned me "Now Stephen, I don't want you to interrupt me by saying that is not how the story went the first time." "I never dreamed of doing this," I answered. I have heard this story numerous times and here is one version I heard from Daniel.
Let me begin the story of the buffalo. Many years ago, the earth was alive, the trees had a voice, the water had a voice, and the shadow had a voice. If you said hello to a rock it might take many years, but it would eventually answer you. Everything was alive and growing. So when you would pick grass to make soup you would not say, You are mine" but humbly ask by saying, “'I am no better than you. I am hungry and must eat so please can I pick you?’ You would ask the spirit of the grass to feed and forgive you. If you wanted fish, you would go and talk to the fish spirit or if you wanted a deer, the deer spirit. Everything was sacred and the earth had to be treated with respect and reverence.
Now the Indians were greatly dependent on the buffalo. They needed the buffalo for all kinds of things. They would use the flesh to cook meat, use their hides to make tepees, use the fur to make clothes or blankets, and use the bones to make cutlery. But before you could kill a buffalo, you had to have 'a conversation with death.’ That is, before and after hunting you had to make a prayer, perform rituals and even ask the buffalo for permission to kill it. When you went hunting and saw a buffalo if he looked back at you straight into your eyes it meant he wanted to die. So you could kill it. If the buffalo walked on without looking back you could not kill it. But after killing the buffalo you had to use every part of it and bury its bones with great reverence. You could not throw its bones away like unwanted rubbish.
One day the Indians forgot to respect the buffalo. They started to become sick with greed. They started to kill buffalo en masse by driving whole herds off a cliff and using them only for a few needs. The Indians became possessive and greedy. They no longer listened to the voice of the wilderness. The Indian became a universe in himself. He no longer listened to the spirits of nature. So the sacred in nature was taken out. The Indian became a monster and caught the great ghost disease of greed and ate up everything. While hunting, he forgot the conversation with death. The result was the buffalo suffered badly. The great white spirit of the buffalo saw this and told the buffalo ‘The Indians have treated you badly. They don't deserve you anymore. So I will take you away from the earth and you will be under my protection.’ So the Indians were deprived of the buffalo. They spent more and more time hunting scarce buffalo. As they spent more time looking for the buffalo, they had less time to spend on their art and became less creative. Their own culture declined. Their art got worse. They became more materialistic. They became hideous. They no longer respected the old whom they saw as an inconvenient obstacle that got in the way. People started to hurt each other. A tree was no longer alive but simply an object. The psyche of the people was shattered. A new law of the jungle arose where the young and strong were more important. We lost our voice, lost our songs and became a dreadful people.
One day, an Indian hunting party ventured out. They came to a forest. Among the party was a young Indian maiden who caught sight of a white buffalo who was astonishingly beautiful. The girl invited the buffalo to her village. She told him "Be our guest'. But the white buffalo refused saying ‘I can't go to your village. You have treated my buffalo very badly. But I can teach you a special buffalo dance. If you learn this dance and return to the village to instruct your people how to perform this before a buffalo hunt, the buffalo might come back to you.’ For three hours, the White Buffalo God taught the maiden the dance.
From then on, the Indians performed this dance and learnt again to listen to the voice of nature. And as the sacred returned the buffalo gradually returned to the Indians. And in time the buffalo forgave the Indians for their past misdeeds.
Twenty years ago, I attempted to tell this story to a new group of Russian English students. It was a big mistake. Nobody could understand me. I spoke with a very rough strong Scottish accent. The offshot was the students complained and I lost the group. So I was forced to learn how to speak more articulately and clearly. But I have never completely lost my Scottish accent.
Then, ten years passed and Scots culture became very exotic and alluring for some people. It was even “cool” to learn a Scottish accent. But people’s view of being Scottish was a far cry from my own hard experience. Many people were deeply disappointed that I did not adore whisky, wear a kilt, belong to a clan, or adore Sir Walter Scott. I did not like to go along with this 'sham culture' any more than Daniel wanted to embrace new age culture. And the rest was silence.....