We talked also about the teachings of the south and north as they originate here on Turtle Island (North America), and directly pertain to this stretch of time and world development. From the south direction, we echo the voices of the Maya on the subject of 2012 and the oil spill, and from the north direction we echo the venerable teachings of the Algonquin peoples about the era of the 8th Fire and the health of the land and sea which sustain us all. We spoke also about fusion, the ethers, and their emerging role in the world. Finally, Wendy and I spoke of the hopes and healing potential that arise with the agrarian impulses being given creative expression by so many people in North America and around the world.

Follow the links below to either listen on the web, or to download the 1/2 hour podcast to your iPod, iPhone, or any other digital listening device.

Listen on the web or download the podcast “Steven McFadden, The Call of the Land” dated July 21, 2010.

My uncle Paul Michael Fitzsimmons, writer, passed away on July 11, 2010 at the Bath VA, where he received excellent care in his last year of life. He was the person who inspired me to become a writer — an occupation I’d never conceived of until hearing him tell of his life.

The obituary that follows was written by Paul’s children, my beloved cousins.

Paul was born in Boston on June 12, 1923. He was the son of Edward and Julia (Coveney) Fitzsimmons and brother of Marie McFadden, Fred (Audrey) Fitzsimmons, Celestine Gookin, Joan Stinson (deceased) and Richard Fitzsimmons (deceased). Paul was a veteran of World War II, serving in the Merchant Marine in the Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean as second mate and navigator on the U.S. Rum River. He was licensed to sail any ship, any tonnage, on any ocean. One of his most stirring memories was meeting up with his brother Freddie in the midst of the war on the island of Guam, where Freddie was serving with the United States Marine Corps. Their mother, Julia, wept with joy to receive word that her sons had such a reunion in the midst of such times.

Uncle Paul at age 87 with birthday cake and three grandchildren: Sophie, Rowan, and Colin. Photo by Marie Fitzsimmons Peters.

Paul was a passionate defender of the Constitution and a devoted patriot of the principles of democracy. Until his dying day, he maintained an impassioned plea to the nation to peacefully rebel against the corporate takeover of our liberties. His People’s Manifesto was last published in the Watkins Review in 2008.

Paul is the father of Robert (Mindy) Fitzsimmons, John Fitzsimmons (deceased), Paula Fitzsimmons (Philip Davis), Marie Fitzsimmons (Kirk Peters), and Daniel Fitzsimmons (Dorothy Elizabeth). He is the grandfather of Dr. Coveney Fitzsimmons (Gabriel Gomez), Liam Fitzsimmons, Jores Peters, Jared Peters, Sophie Fitzsimmons Peters, Hilary Davis, Colin Davis, Connor Fitzsimmons, Rowan Elizabeth, and William Fitzsimmons. He is the great grandfather of Zade Ixchel.

Paul began his writing career in New York City, where his early literary successes included Family of Five (1956), End of the Road (1957), By the Light of the Moon (1957) Green Goods and Gold (1959), A Ring is a Precious Thing (1957), The Oracle Machine and Mr. Kessler (1957) and The Way of a Dog (1957). Paul was commissioned by Beacon Press to write the Howard Hughes story and to bring his family to Hollywood to write screenplays. Instead, the family moved to Burdett to an old farmhouse with 100 acres and began their lives in upstate New York.

During that time, Paul authored “Confessions of a Year Round Hunter” for True Magazine, scripts for plays, eloquent poetry, and impassioned political articles. He acted in local theatre with the Burdett Players, worked to bring about the Citizen’s Party, demonstrated against the closing of Sampson State Hospital, and wrote prolifically. After the Flood of ‘72, Paul wrote a sweeping ode of the Chemung River Flood. His Christmas Dream, written for his daughter Paula, was loved by Katharine Hepburn, who was touched by the magic of Paul’s writing. Paul resided for many years in Front Royal, Virginia, where he wrote guest editorials for The Washington Post and The Riverton Press. In 1982, at age 59, Paul fulfilled a lifetime dream of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail, 2,175 miles from Springer, Georgia to Mt. Katahdin, Maine. His story was published in the Appalachian Hiker. In 2000, Paul made a trip to Scotland to see his beloved friend and fellow AT hiker, war correspondent Jack Willis. The two writers had a special bond borne from their restless natures and adventurous souls.

Paul recently celebrated his 87th birthday at the music recital of his grandson Colin, enjoyed a beer at the Stone Cat Café, and ate homemade cake prepared by his son-in-law Kirk. More than anything, Paul was most proud of his children and expressed enormous gratitude to their mother. Paul died having held each of his four children on the last day of his life.

As Paul lived by the pen, your remembrances may be sent to C/O Fitzsimmons Family, 5550 Peach Orchard Point, Hector, New York 14841. Perhaps you would like to buy a lottery ticket, make a contribution to the Watkins Glen Library to offset his many late charges, or hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail in his memory. Or simply start a peaceful revolution. As Paul would say: “Good Deal.”

The family will receive friends at the Stone Cat Café near Hector, New York on Saturday, July 17th from 2-4 p.m.

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees.
- Those dying generations – at their song,
The Salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

- William Butler Yeats

Winona LaDuke

“I’m always a little surprised when I hear people say that they are getting on a plane and heading off to the Holy Land,” Winona LaDuke said. “Because the Holy Land is here. This is it right here in America. We are standing right now on Holy Land.  My people have known that forever, and it’s time everyone came to understand it.”

Winona was the keynote speaker at the 5th annual Chief Standing Bear Breakfast, served up in the Heartland, May 21, Lincoln, Nebraska. As she uttered the last syllable of her pronouncement about holy land, the Earth responded, as it often will in a moment of truth. The ground began to tremble. The subtle shudder continued for 20 seconds or more. It was definite. I felt it. Others felt it, too.

Currently serving as director of Native Harvest and the White Earth Land Recovery Project, Winona spoke simply but eloquently for 25 minutes before an audience of about 400 people. In the course of her remarks she mentioned her late father, Sun Bear, an old friend and colleague of mine. Sun Bear was an actor, an activist in his own right, and convener of the influential Medicine Wheel Gatherings in the 1980s and 1990s. “Very often,” Winona told the audience, I heard my father say, ‘I don’t want to hear your philosophy if it won’t grow corn.’ It took me a long time to understand what he meant, but I get it now. He was on to something important.

“I know also,” she added, “that when you grow your own food it makes you a better human being. It connects you to the land you live upon, and it relieves a certain poverty of spirit.

At the breakfast event the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska announced plans to advocate for a national holiday to honor their late chief, Standing Bear, and to strive to have him recognized as someone as important to civil rights as Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chief Standing Bear

In 1879, Standing Bear challenged decades of U.S. policy when, in the course of federal prosecution in Omaha, Nebraska, he demanded to be recognized as a person. That was the first time an Indian was permitted to appear in court in this country and have his rights tried.  The government argued that Indians were not entitled to the protection of a writ of habeas corpus because they were not citizens or even “persons” under American law.

Late in the afternoon as the trial drew to a close, the Judge announced that Standing Bear would be allowed to make a speech in his own behalf. No one in the audience had ever heard an oration by an Indian. Standing Bear rose. Half facing the audience, he held out his right hand, and stood motionless. After a long pause, looking up at the judge, he said: “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I prick it, the blood will flow, and I shall feel pain. The blood is of the same color as yours. God made me, and I am a man…”

Standing Bear spoke for several minutes more. When he was complete the courtroom crowd, moved by his logic and his eloquence, erupted with a resounding shout of support. Thereafter, in time, the federal judge handed down a ruling that Indians are in fact human beings — persons within the meaning of the law. This was a historic ruling on the status of Native peoples on the land they have inhabited for many thousands of years — land that, according to their ancestral traditions, they have a definite and special spiritual responsibility to protect.

Scholars have likened the impact of Standing Bear’s case to the impact that the Dred Scott case had for the rights of African Americans.  So signal was the case that NET has produced a TV documentary exploring the issue – Standing Bear’s Footsteps — that will be broadcast later this year.

In what resounded as the morning’s unexpected coda to the case of Standing Bear and all human beings, Winona ended her talk with an observation.  There is currently, she said, a great national debate raging on the subject of immigration. The debate is being stirred by SB 1070, a law recently enacted in Arizona (a law that has become a model for legislation that other states, including Nebraska will be voting on the months ahead). “In the circumstances of this law and its impact there is a cruel irony,” she said. “Most of the people who are intended to be excluded from this land by laws like this come from a genetic lineage that has always been here — family lines that trace back in North America for 10,000 years or longer.”

These relatives — mostly people from Mexico and Central America — are in many cases farm workers: people who labor in the fields to grow our grains and vegetables, or who toil like machines in the vast Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and slaughterhouses that yield our chicken, beef, and pork. Whether we acknowledge and respect them or not, these are our Ambassadors to the Holy Land. They touch the Earth on our behalf. They raise up the food that we eat. They, like Standing Bear, are human beings, too.

My new ebook has been produced in over 10 formats, so it can be read on any ereader device, including Kindle, Nook, Sony,  iPhones, Blackberries, computers, and so forth. I wrote it short and to the point.

The true scope and depth of Native wisdom is generally unknown, and much of what is known is either drawn from the past, or offered out of context. This Soul*Sparks ebook cannot hope to encompass the many levels and great depth of understanding that are par of Native tradition, but it can hint at them, and it can do so in a manner appropriate for the prophetic year of 2012, and in a context that will endure long after that. Some things — basic spiritual teachings like honesty, sharing, humility, respect, and caring for the land — remain constant through all phases and cycles of human and world development. I reckon the year 2012 will bring no alteration to that.

My aim as writer and compiler is to offer a quintessence of both ancient and contemporary Native wisdom in a coherent, and rhetorically strengthening manner that will be readily accessible for many thousands of people as we confront mounting economic, environmental and social crises in North America, and around the world.

The microphone Kanentiio stood at that evening was set on land about twenty-five paces from “Sacred Rain Arrow,” one of the sculptural masterpieces created by the late Allan Houser. Kanentiio’s talk was part of a benefit event for Go Native Arts, hosted in the garden of the Houser Estate about 20 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

An hour after Kanentiio’s oration, his wife Joanne Shenandoah stood before the same microphone. By this time the stars had emerged, and Jupiter was strong in the sky to the East. Joanne faced south, centered herself, and gave voice to the enthralling Prophecy Song from her Orenda CD. She was supported with harmonies arising from daughter, Leah, and flanked in the West by the beseeching bronze presence of Sacred Rain Arrow.

We are now reminded
to be aware of our place upon this earth.
and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves,
our families, our nations,
the natural world, the Creator.

The words sing, we are to awaken.
Stand up,  Be counted,
for you are being recognized in the Spirit world.

- Joanne Shenandoah – Copyright

Several days after the benefit event, I met Kanentiio again amid a crush of people by the bandstand at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. We found a quiet place to sit and talk.

To answer my questions about the land, Kanentiio began telling of where he was born and raised, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory on the shores of Kaniatarowanenneh (St. Lawrence River) at the New York-Ontario frontier. The Mohawks are part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Keepers of the Eastern Door. Their confederacy is the oldest, active participatory democracy on Earth. With its Great Law of Peace, the Confederacy was a direct example and inspiration for the U.S. Constitution.

A former editor of Akwesasne Notes, Kanentiio is also a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, and the author of several books, including Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. In collaboration with his wife, Joanne, he is co-author of Skywoman: Tales of the Iroquois.

For many years Kanentiio served on the board of directors for the National Museum of the American Indian, and he is currently serving on the board for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest interfaith gathering on Earth. Steadily growing in scope and influence, the Parliament will reconvene this December in Melbourne, Australia.

As we talked in Santa Fe, Kanentiio reminded me that Mohawk Territory straddles the border between the USA and Canada. It’s territory that’s in both nations, and it’s in neither. “Akwesasne is a nexus,” he said. “It’s situated at a juncture of land and water that is of considerable strategic importance. We straddle the St. Lawrence River at what were once known as the 25-mile rapids.

“Historically at Akwesasne the lives of the people were interwoven with the land and the water. People were called there because the place had all the resources necessary for life, and those resources gave stability to the people and to the community. That provided the Mohawk people with a high degree of cultural continuity, and it gave us a certain power and purpose. We always had that.

“Then in April of 1959 there came a break with this pattern. The St. Lawrence Seaway came into being, and our whole way of life changed. The natural, free flow of the living waters at 25-mile rapids was choked with locks. That energetic change fractured our community. It messed up the fishing grounds, and it separated the people from the water and from the land. We began to metamorphose from a vigorous people to a sedentary people. We became wage earners for the first time, dependent on money, and we began to lose our language. That brought about a huge change in values, and a whole generation of our children began to change from that point onward.

“When traditional indigenous peoples are separated from the land, then there is a break in trust in relation to the land – a break that goes both ways. We don’t trust the land, and the land doesn’t trust us. But you must have that trust. When we don’t communicate with each other, and when we don’t communicate with the land, the relationships become abrasive.”

In this context, Kanentiio mentioned Handsome Lake (Ganyahdiyok), the legendary figure who brought Gaiwiio (Good Words) to the people over 200 years ago. Among his life experiences, Handsome Lake was given a vision of the future. He foresaw environmental disasters including air and water pollution, and he offered prophetic cautions.

“Handsome Lake and others warned us that the final assault on the Iroquois – the greatest danger – would come from within. That’s what’s happening now,” Kanentiio said. “In terms of ideals, the Iroquois Confederacy represents something very good. But things change. Metamorphosis has continued and is continuing today, but at a faster pace. In our tradition we have in our creation story an important part about the twins, one twin of the good mind and one twin of the bad mind. That’s something to remember. These twins are always present.”

“Smuggling of tobacco and narcotics, and gambling — whatever commands a profit — has created a narco-culture at Akwesasne,” he said. “Our good, traditional Iroquois values of humility, compassion, simplicity, generosity and communal service have been replaced by greed, intimidation, violence, and death.”

After hearing this, I told Kanentiio of a meeting that happened about 17 years ago in Montreal. I found myself sitting beside the late Hopi messenger Thomas Banyacya in a hotel lobby after he had given a talk. As we conversed, Grandfather Banyacya told me that long ago, when the Earth had gone through another epic metamorphosis, gambling had been the precipitating factor. “That was the last straw,” Banyacya told me. “When the gambling and all its related problems built up to a certain level, that triggered the great flood that cleansed the land.”

After listening to my story, Kanentiio responded. “We Indian people are supposed to be the custodians of the land, but what we are doing now is running casinos. We are sidetracked. We have lost sight of what we are supposed to do. The bright, shiny thing along the path has enticed many of the people to become lost, to lose track. Handsome Lake warned of that a long time ago, and now it’s everywhere.

“The Earth is beginning to stir,” he said. “She’s beginning to express the dreams and visions of long ago. The Earth is showing us that she’s increasingly upset with us. The Earth is beginning to arouse. There will be huge changes in this time of reckoning, of healing, until the balance is restored. We are very close now. It won’t be subtle. Big winds will come. The Earth will shrug its shoulders.

“We are not able to change this movement toward purification,” Kanentiio said, “but we know some things will survive. The Confederacy will endure in spite of itself. That is a shared understanding among traditionals, that despite all the odds the Confederacy will survive and go on, as the larger world will also go on in a new way.

“People feel the urgency of the changes now, and many are motivated to do things. That’s good. Preserve what you can. You have to leave something good and tangible behind.

A particular thing that Kanentiio would like to help leave behind is an Indigenous University for North America.

“A few years ago, Vine Deloria, Jr. thought maybe we could take the system of formal education, which had been used to undermine traditional native societies, and reverse it’s impact by creating our own institution based on the university system,” Kanentiio said. “We would create a formal, accredited university where native knowledge keepers would have a place to teach.

“We have native colleges, but an Indigenous University could in time meet and exceed universal standards for learning, and provide formal instruction in all native arts and sciences, of which there are many.  It would have a high emphasis on online study. That’s a dream of ours.”

The Indigenous University would be open to everybody on the planet, no restrictions of race or religion. ”That is typical Iroquois,” Kanentiio explained. “Our way is to make it possible that people come to a meeting of the good mind. To get there, you need to sit in respect with one another. You have to invite people from all walks of life and viewpoints to share information, and you have to listen to one another.

“We have the ideas to create an Indigenous University,” he said. “What we need now are the physical and financial means to bring it about.”

In a related effort to weave indigenous viewpoints into the world’s larger framework, Kanentiio and Joanne — as well as other native peoples from North America and around the world — have become involved with the Parliament of World Religions. “We have in part managed to get the Parliament to adopt a native perspective on the Earth: to regard the Earth not as a commodity, but as a being.”

Kanentiio serves on the board of directors for the Parliament. He noted that the theme of their December, meeting will be ‘Reconciling with Mother Earth.’  “My hope for this Parliament,” he said, “is that teachers from world’s various disciplines, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholics, and many more — can get together again in Melbourne and finally acknowledge that Earth is a living planet and should have standing. If spiritual leaders accept that, and take these spiritual understandings to their nations and congregations to make it a guiding principle, then that’s a good thing.

“We feel the real revolution in human society will come about through these spiritual changes,” Kanentiio said. “It has to happen there first, on the spiritual level. Once we change the spiritual, then the politics will follow.

“For me,” he said, “the roots of this understanding go back to our Iroquois value that all human beings have equal worth, if not necessarily equal abilities. Everyone’s life has meaning. Some are singers and healers, and some are cooks or builders, but each one of us has the blessings of existence. To cultivate this, to acknowledge, to have gratitude for being alive. You can always do that. Our lives are not casual, not by chance. We have been directed here to this time and place, and we are meant to take all of our life experiences with us, all the joys, suffering, and pain, and to take it with us with good mind when we return to the place of living light. That makes the light stronger for the generations to come.”

Author’s Note: Many of the themes articulated in this story are also explored in my epic, nonfiction saga of North America in this era of transition, Odyssey of the 8th Fire. – S. McFadden

This blunt warning is the heart of the 2009 State of the Future study from the UN’s Millennium Project. The report, which will be made public in August, is based on the input of 2,700 researchers, and backed by a range of organizations including UNESCO, the World Bank, and the US Army.

According to the report, “The scope and scale of the future effects of climate change – ranging from changes in weather patterns to loss of livelihoods and disappearing states – has unprecedented implications for political and social stability.”

The immediate problems are rising food and energy prices, shortages of water and increasing migrations “due to political, environmental and economic conditions,” which could plunge half the world into social instability and violence.

The report suggests the threats could also engender wise and healthy responses. “The good news is that the global financial crisis and climate change planning may be helping humanity to move from its often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood…Many perceive the current economic disaster as an opportunity to invest in the next generation of greener technologies…and to put the world on course for a better future.”

What is good and healthy and helpful?

Leon Secatero

Reading the stark forecasts from this report put me in mind – thankfully — of someone I knew and admired, the late Leon Secatero of the Canoncito Band of Navajo, To’Hajiilee, New Mexico. Whenever Leon would hear pronouncements of inevitable doom, he would acknowledge the potential, then respond calmly.

In one of our conversations back in 2005, Grandfather Leon spoke with me about the future. “The journey we are beginning now is for the next 500 years. What will be the sacred path that people will walk over the next 500 years? Even in the midst of all the changes taking place and all the things falling apart, we are building that foundation now. That’s something important for us to remember and to focus on. If we don’t do it, no one else will.

“All anyone needs to do is look around,” Leon said. “We have been destroying nature systematically for many decades. Now nature is destroying us with winds and storms and earthquakes and volcanoes. All that was known a long time ago. The elders have been telling us for years that this would come. Now it’s here and it’s hurting us.

“We need to take a close look at this and then really come to terms with ourselves,” Leon said. “To move ahead into the next 500 years we must leave some things behind or they will contaminate or even eliminate the future. We cannot go forward if we keep destroying the earth. But we must also ask, what is good and healthy and helpful? Those good things can be part of our foundation, part of our pathway into the next 500 years…”

There is a growing cohort of people who are actively asking these questions, and responding creatively. I have come to think of them as the Millennial Agrarians, and they got a nod of acknowledgement this week from USA Today.

In the story, reporter Elizabeth Weise wrote “Agriculture specialists say there is a burgeoning movement in which young people — most of whom come from cities and suburbs — are taking up what may be the world’s oldest profession: organic farming.

“The wave of young farmers on tiny farms is too new and too small to have turned up significantly in USDA statistics, but people in the farming world acknowledge there’s something afoot.

“For these new farmers, going back to the land isn’t a rejection of conventional society, but an embrace of growing crops and raising animals for market as an honorable, important career choice.”

In the face of the grim vision described by the researchers involved with the State of the Future report, these Millennial Agrarians are an embodiment of hope. We are going to need millions more people – perhaps as many as 80 to 100 million more – to face what is happening in our world, and to respond intelligently to the call of the land.

(For more on this theme, including many more creative responses, see my blog at The Call of the Land.).

Like the other key visions which have punctuated Grandfather’s life, the vision for an international healing center at Victoria Island has profound global importance.

Victoria Island is a jewel of nature, strategically located in the middle of the river that runs through downtown Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, under the shadow of Parliament Hill, where the government of Canada meets.  For countless centuries, Victoria Island was a traditional spiritual meeting ground for the Algonquin peoples.

Grandfather envisions returning the island to its spiritual purpose by establishing an inclusive City Park, a Historic Interpretative Site, and International Peace Center at the Sacred Site of Asinabka -Chaudière Falls. The center would host programs and processes for individual, group, and planetary healing, development and peace.

Grandfather Commanda is the senior Algonquin Elder in this territory. Since 1970, he has been the Keeper of three sacred wampum belts of spiritual and historic importance: the Seven Fires Prophecy Belt, the 1701 Friendship Belt and the Jay Treaty Border Crossing Belt.

I first met Grandfather in 1989 when I interviewed him for my book, Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth. We then became closer friends in the mid-1990s as we participated in a prophetic and historic walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific – The Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth (Odyssey of the 8th Fire).

Over the decades, Grandfather has earned wide international respect as a visionary and healer. Most recently – May, 2009 – he was honored by being invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General of Canada. The Order of Canada is the centerpiece of Canada’s honors system and recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.

Grandfather and his friends have been working for over ten years to develop the vision for Victoria Island, and now, in 2009, they feel the time is right to take another big step forward.

Many people and groups –  Algonquin and non-Algonquin, from Canada, the U.S.A. and a host of other nations — have written to the Canadian Prime Minister, and other government officials, seeking to have this vision realized. More letters and expressions of support are needed and welcome now.

Victoria Island served as an important sacred ceremonial place for the original peoples of the land. It seems the land has been waiting for the ancient communal fires to be re-kindled..

With Grandfather Commanda’s vision to build a peace and healing center, comes an opportunity to cleanse and reawaken the land, to ignite the fires for a circle of all nations, and to help spark a culture of peace. Meegwich.

Chaudiere Falls at Victoria Island, Ottawa, Canada