Program 203 – Elder Wisdom

Martin High Bear

with Brian Bull

[audio:https://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/s2_progs/203_ew.mp3]

Arlie Neskahi:
Today, on Elder Wisdom, we honor the founder of Wisdom of the Elders, the late Lakota medicine man, Martin High Bear. He was born in 1919 in Laplante, South Dakota on Cheyenne River Indian reservation, and raised by maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eliza Charger. Brian Bull has more.

Brian Bull:
Young Martin used to sit at his grandmother’s feet listening to the elders tell stories and talk about the importance of their traditions. They told him that one day he would become a medicine man and help to restore the ways of his people.

As Martin grew older, he postponed his spiritual work to support his family – his wife, daughter, and three sons. He worked hard as a ranch hand, heavy equipment operator, and truck driver. And on the weekends, a saddle bronc rider, taking his sons around to Indian rodeos.

Martin High Bear:
The time came, a little over twenty years ago, that I went up on the hill. But I had all these dreams and visions.

Bull:
Martin’s stepfather, Felix Green, was a medicine man from the Rosebud Indian reservation. He explains how Felix helped him, in a 1992 interview with Michael Toms of New Dimensions Radio.

High Bear:
I told him about my dreams and what was happening to me, and so he had a ceremony on me to find out about my ancestors. And so that night, they brought the white buffalo calf pipe out and they locked me in an altar with it. And through this, this medicine man and the calf pipe, told me all the stories of how many medicine people were in my blood relations. And he told me I was next in line, that I should take care of this right away. And so I did. And this is the way I become to be a medicine man, a healer, or spiritual leader.

Bull:
Uncle Martin had great grandfathers and four great grandmothers in his lineage who were medicine people. So Felix Green taught him the songs and put him up on Bear Butte for a vision quest. When he came down from the hill, he had the power to doctor people.

High Bear:
A lot of people needed me. And I even helped the non-Indians with doctoring, because I knew a lot of things that was told to me. In my ceremonies, when I set up my altar, I work with four flags. And these colors are the black, the red, the yellow and the white, the four colors of people god created in the world.

Music:
John Trudell
Lucky Motel
Bone Days
Daemon

Bull:
Following the 1890 murder of the Lakota medicine man, Sitting Bull, and the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Lakota were forced to give up their own traditional ways of worship and change their religion to Christianity. The Sun Dance, vision quest, ghost dance, sweat lodge, and other ceremonies were outlawed for almost a century.

High Bear:
A lot of good stories and memories of our ancestors that are not here with us anymore. And we know it is sad, because what we want to know, they wasn’t asked about it. Living in this fast life, fast cars, beer joints, liquor stores, all these has caused a lot of them to go wrong.

Bull:
However, some Lakota continued to keep their ways alive. Martin spent years working with other medicine men, and members of the American Indian movement to make the spiritual practices of his people legal again. In 1978, the Freedom of Religion act was passed. Aware of the erosion of his peoples’ ways, he knew their future depended upon them remembering who they were. He knew they needed to relearn the spiritual ways of their ancestors, and sometimes that meant pulling them off the streets so they could sober up and rebuild their lives.

High Bear:
And like the old people said back in the old days, they told me the old is coming back. And so this is why today we need some beautiful prayers to God, the Creator.

Bull:
Martin grew up with ambivalence toward non-Indians because of the losses and transitions his people had to face, but he was gradually guided by visions and dreams to help all people learn to live and pray in unity.

High Bear:
You know, God created one religion. When he created everything, he created spirits. And then he put these spirits into everything he created. And so when he came down to the two-leggeds, them are the people, he created them all equal, with one religion.

Everybody of the four colors at one time had sweat lodges all over the world, and they all had to go up on the hill to vision quest. Moses went up on the hill to vision quest and brought down the Ten Commandments. But when we come down to it, I think the Native, we were the only ones that followed up the old traditional way God gave us, to all of us.

Bull:
Controversy continues whether non-Indians or mixed bloods have the right to participate in Native ceremony, but Uncle Martin guided people of all colors to return to their earth-based spiritual roots using Lakota ceremony. He is an example to the world of how you can become color blind.

High Bear:
And so when people say that these vision quests and the sweat lodges belonged to the Indian people alone, these are the things they never kept track of their culture, and this is why today, it’s kind of lost. Not really lost, but we say forgotten. Because what God created here on the earth is still here, but it has just been forgotten.

And so this is why people think this all belonged to Indians alone, but no, back when he created everything, this was the way he created everything to all humans that walk on mother earth. And so maybe, if you read your history back, you’re going to find out that each country had a sweat lodge. Cause that’s the way God gave us all purification – a place to pray.

Bull:
Uncle Martin journeyed on to the spirit world in 1995, but his teachings are still alive today. His biography, called the Seven Commandments of the White Buffalo Calf Maiden, will be published in 2007.

For Wisdom of the Elders Radio, this is Brian Bull.

Neskahi:
Brian Bull is assistant news director for Wisconsin Public Radio, and is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce tribe. He lives with his wife, two kids, and three cats in Madison, Wisconsin.

Music:
Peace Dance
Papa John & Daniel
Visions and Rhythms, Vol. 2
Natural Visions