Súumesh - Wéyekin - Baaxpée  

Efficacy - how and why does it work?

Example: Dine background and Video: Billy Yellow Hózhó Hózhó beauty and harmony of the sacred creation time, the oral traditions of the Yei, the Holy Ones, such as Changing Woman and her children, then of ritually placing the child that is imbued with the Hocho disease and imbalance into the painting and the sands place upon the child, removing the Hocho and reinstating Hózhó and thus health.  From the internal spiritual balance comes an external material healing.   Another form of the act of Baaeechichiwaau - "re-telling one’s own, of re-telling of the perennial stories.)

Story Text: Quasalid and Kwakiutl healing (EJ)

 

 

 

 

1. Meaning and Life Force are themselves derived from the Spiritual World:  Amotqn - "the one who sits at the head mountain" (Coeur d’Alene) - the "Creator," and the Titwa-tityá-ya - "Animal Peoples" (Nez Perce); it is a spiritual world - Snq-hepi-wes - "where the spirit lives, from horizon to horizon" (Coeur d’Alene); embedded with súumesh - wéyekin.  This is the reality of Coyote and Crane, and all of the oral traditions of narrative, song, regalia and action.  It is they who have embedded the landscape with their "bones"- the perennial mi'yep and suumesh/weyakin

2. All are interconnected as kinsmen; there are no separations, no duality in time and space: chnis-teem-ilqwes - "I am part of all" (Coeur d’Alene); within a context of sharing and giving back: Ték’e - "to give and share [food] with others" (Nez Perce).  You are a part of the spiritual, animated world of Coyote and Crane, who provide the "gifts" of life and meaning to be shared with those in need.

3. Hence, in the acts of re-telling Coyote’s story, of re-donning the dance regalia, or of re-singing a súumesh songs (in replicating in action the special and spiritual meaning of the spiritual "gifts" received, of "respecting" them by "keeping to all the bones" together, of re-aligning the re-telling, re-donning, re-signing with the bones embedded in the landscape by the Creator and First Peoples ), the landscape and all its Peoples can be perpetuate, reinvigorated with life and meaning.  The Creation time is re-traveled as the "First Peoples come alive . . . they swirl around you," and a camas field is re-nurtured and an illness healed.     An hierophany is occurring.    Reality and the oral traditions are one and the same, "Amotqn's world." 

Reality is that transitory intersection of those participating, First/Spirit Peoples, Animal Peoples, Human Peoples. 

"Stories, regalia, dance, songs make the world."

 

 

"Its Home" - "its family, its kinship, an extended part of me, the whole sense of home."

Two-story house (dualistic)

First-floor is the world traveled by the Creator, and by Coyote and Crane in preparation for those about to arrive, with the embedded mi'yep orienting the design of the ground floor, while the camas, salmon and súumesh strengthen and animate the fibers of the structure.   Here too are the camps of those who have already crossed over, prepared for the coming of their children.   The "bones"

Second-floor is the world traveled by the Human Peoples, vulnerable and susceptible, can be "wounded," in need of what the Creator and First/Animal Peoples have provided - the foods, the teachings, the medicine.

The separate floors and stairways connecting them are made indivisible and dissolved, rendering a single, whole home (non-dualistic) when the "bones" are re-aligned

If the landscape is to remain a "home," "the soul of our tribe," what is below must be infused with what is above, any temporal and spatial barriers dissolved.  In you taking responsibility and in your acts of re-telling the stories, re-singing the songs, re-dancing the dances, re-digging the roots, re-fishing the salmon, of re-aligning the "bones," then the First Peoples "swirl around" you and the world is made.  In your questing for and acquiring the songs and súumesh, and then applying them in the Sweat House, during a Powwow and Jump Dance, the plants and animals of the landscape are renewed and the all the Peoples are healed.     A shinning through of the sacred, a hierophany, occuring.

The world "in preparation" and the world "fully prepared," the world of Human and Animal Peoples are rendered a single landscape, "a Home."   You experience the "Rainbow," the transitory intersection of all those participating, the event of converging relations, an event always in the making.      

  

See "Landscape . . ." pp. 260-262

 

  

But ultimately . . . .

 

 

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