Do we follow Geronimo's lead
Is peace in the valley possible?
My eyes are heavy and tired today, because the air is hazy with wildfire smoke for the fourth day and it is finally catching up with me.
I’ve been reading a book called “Braiding Sweetgrass,” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She writes about the inter-relationships of human beings with the rest of the natural world from her perspective of connection with her Potawatomi heritage; one of the over-arching themes of the book is that human beings are neither “other” nor “bad” for the natural world. We are a part of it and, as with any relationship, can act with integrity or not, and get outcomes accordingly.
There are things I like about the book and there are parts I skim, but what is emerging for me as I read it is something that entirely unexpected. That realization is framed within my experience of the past five years, first of the covid terror campaign, and then of the disorienting dismissal of it from the public discourse, and it is this:
There are strong parallels and rhyming patterns between this cultural moment and the one that forcibly divorced the tribes of North America from their lands, their culture, and their heritage. The complexity of the details in both situations can easily distract from larger questions, and it is not my intention here to parse them, nor am I qualified to do so. This essay is about the collision of incompatible cultural ecosystems, and what I must recognize about what is happening in order to do take correct action, both internally and externally.
Gillian Welch wrote a song about Geronimo, the Apache warrior, and his ultimate surrender after 30 years of fighting both the US and Mexican militaries in defense of his people. These are the lyrics.
Pulling into Douglas on a hot October night
Dawn up above us, and there's a moon on the right
Just off the blacktop, there's a sign along the road
It's a marker for the place where they got Geronimo
For peace in the valley, he lay down his shield
And surrendered to the white man hot on his heels
For peace in the valley but oh, Geronimo
You can't raise up your children, watch them grow
Without peace in the valley down below
He was a bonafide Indian chief
East Arizona was his pride and keep
Down through the Pecos, they tried to take him down
'Til an hour from the border, he stopped and turned around
He cried "Peace in the valley!" lay down his shield
And surrendered to the white man hot on his heels
Peace in the valley but oh, Geronimo
You can't raise up your children and watch them grow
Without peace in the valley down below
Peace in the valley but oh, Geronimo
You can't raise up your children and watch them grow
Without peace in the valley down below
Geronimo had to make a choice: should he keep fighting a war of attrition that was tormenting and killing his people, or should he negotiate a peace that would allow them some kind of future? He could make life unpleasant for the settlers but he couldn’t win the war; he had neither the numbers nor the weaponry to fight the military forever.
He sat down at the table and agreed to peace in exchange for safe passage home.
The government lied, and Geronimo died a prisoner. The Apache were herded onto reservations or assimilated into the colonial cultures, their subsequent generations scattered and reduced but no longer at war.
I am not romanticizing or denigrating any cultures here; human stories are not simple or clean. Dependency upon, and deep familiarity with, landscapes and ecosystems forges a connection with those complex environments. If you cannot defend your land from people who wish to occupy it and use it in ways that are incompatible with your ways, and they win, it becomes their land, at least in practice. You can demand the recognition of your claims, but you must endure the destruction and defilement of that over which you have no control, if that is what occurs. You can fight, or grieve, or both, but you must also contend with the reality of your situation as it is, and not as you wish it to be.
But future generations can also learn from your loss, and study your actions, in order to better defend themselves against attack. And one simple lesson of the story of the Indians (for they didn’t call themselves “Americans,” either, and they were “Indians” to the people who sought to drive them off their lands) is this: you can fight, or not, but you must realize that when people who have more firepower than you want what you have, and the way you live with what you have is in conflict with their vision for it, they will treat you as an obstacle and a nuisance. They may be kind and pitying, or cruel and merciless, but you are in their way and they will destroy you or not as it benefits them, but they are unlikely to feel obliged to honor you.
I cannot speak to the concept of individual sovereignty in any culture but the traditional underpinnings of my own, descended from the fiery and doughty Celts and Anglo-Saxons, who themselves warred brutally into and out of truces and betrayals for centuries. When I learned that the woman who donated the bone marrow that saved my life came from southern Germany, I could see the fires flickering on the cave walls in Lascaux, and feel the oily pigments of the stone-age painters as they recorded their remembered hunts during the long winters; I knew that was my history, too.
My people believe that your body is your own, absolutely, and that the outcome of your actions are your full right and responsibility. My people believe that there is a sacred self that may not be justly transgressed, but whose rights may be partially forfeit should you trespass against another. My people believe there is accounting for the abuse of others, and that no one may force another into an action, or deceive, without incurring a debt.
My people believe in free will, and the peaceful exercise thereof.
And my people are an obstacle and a nuisance to some who have more firepower, who want what we have, and who find our way of life in conflict with their vision for us.
My people are determined to raise our families according to our values, and to treat our bodies as noble and whole and worthy of honor, to be fed and healed according to our knowledge and intuition. My people reject the would-be overlords, who treat us as recalcitrant children that are unwilling to sacrifice our individual needs and desires for their technocratic vision; they would create a society ruled from above according to their bastardized and mutant “science,” which mocks the foundational idea of inquiry as an effort to elucidate a wisdom and truth larger than our own minds, and turns it to a tool of control and self-aggrandizement.
These usurpers may be kind and pitying, or cruel and merciless, but we are in their way and they will destroy us or not as it benefits them, but they are unlikely to feel obliged to honor us.
But these people are also not my neighbors. My neighbors may come under the sway of their propaganda, as I, myself, am subject to manipulation from which no one is immune, but in this time of drawn battle lines and declared, slow-burning wars, which are rarely acknowledged except by the targets of them, we must recognize what is happening because it is no longer white-man-versus-red, but brother-against-brother and sister-against-sister, where these forces sow their discord. Even as you read this, you may be filling in the blanks with your own narrative about the players, and that may, or may not, match mine.
That is intentional.
Bob Dylan tells us what is demanded of us, if we are to survive, and he doesn’t give us the details; those are for you to decide.
I will not go down under the ground
’Cause somebody tells me that death’s comin’ ’round
An’ I will not carry myself down to die
When I go to my grave my head will be high
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin’ that the end is close by
’Stead of learnin’ to live they are learnin’ to die
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
I don’t know if I’m smart but I think I can see
When someone is pullin’ the wool over me
And if this war comes and death’s all around
Let me die on this land ’fore I die underground
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
There’s always been people that have to cause fear
They’ve been talking of the war now for many long years
I have read all their statements and I’ve not said a word
But now Lawd God, let my poor voice be heard
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
If I had rubies and riches and crowns
I’d buy the whole world and change things around
I’d throw all the guns and the tanks in the sea
For they are mistakes of a past history
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood
Let the smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood
Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves
Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
Go out in your country where the land meets the sun
See the craters and the canyons where the waterfalls run
Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho
Let every state in this union seep down deep in your souls
And you’ll die in your footsteps
Before you go down under the ground.
Geronimo put his weapons down, but he sat down across from men who could not be honorable, for they had submitted their wills to an entity consumed with corruption and evil. I must be very careful to know who attempts to treat with me, who makes promises in exchange for the bargain of my blood. If I consent to their terms while letting them write the definitions, I have already entered the prison they prepare for me.
But if I see them as they are, hollow and hungry ghosts, I will not go under the ground without forcing them to put me there by their own hands.
I have the power to open my eyes.
*Are you telling the truth? Not just not lying, but telling the truth? That was what I started this substack for, and that’s what it’s about. Homeopathy is at the heart of that, but that is because what happens when you heal is that the truth reveals itself. If that sounds like what you want schedule a CALL (it’s free!) or just reply to this email and we’ll find a time to get on the phone.