The Black Sky Tribe

Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/…m.html

Venting Nickels suggests

By Sharon Pian Chan and Ashley Bach

Seattle Times staff reporters

Frustrated by the state and federal gridlock on solving Seattle’s transportation problems, Mayor Greg Nickels suggested secession at a Thursday luncheon.

“Our region should declare its independence,” Nickels said.

The Puget Sound regional economy makes up 67 percent of the state’s economic activity, he said. “If we were a country, [our economy] would be just a little smaller than Thailand. We would be larger than Colombia, Venezuela. We are held back because our state and federal government still believe our economies are driven by wheat farms and timber logging.”

Nickels spoke as part of a CityClub round table at Town Hall with Bellevue Mayor Grant Degginger and Redmond Mayor John Marchione.

Nickels suggested the region start by putting the Puget Sound Regional Council “on steroids.”

The 32-member board, Nickels said, should shrink and take greater control of how to spend state transportation funds.

Nickels spokesman Marty McOmber later said the mayor’s comments at lunch — such as, “I am serious when I say we ought to talk about independence” — were meant to be tongue-in-cheek. The mayor was venting his frustration after the state opposed transportation projects and gun-control legislation he wanted.

“We have rural legislators making decisions on things like the viaduct and whether we can keep our city safe,” Nickels said.

The three mayors did not disagree on much in a discussion that ranged from homelessness and Highway 520 to improved regional cooperation. Degginger and Marchione both said they would not support a 20-cent fee on disposable grocery bags, as Nickels has proposed in Seattle.

Nickels said he disagreed with King County Metro’s plan to distribute 40 percent of new transit service to the Eastside, while Degginger said the policy was necessary to improve service to the underserved suburbs.

A new Highway 520 Bridge is an example of an issue that needs execution, not more discussion, Degginger said.

The biggest challenge ahead is “to show some leadership,” he said. “… We need to implement decisions, rather than talk about them over and over again.”

All the mayors advocated for better transit service, including buses. Moderator James Vesely, editorial-page editor of The Seattle Times, asked them if they knew what bus route they would take to get to work in the morning.

Each knew the number of his route, which drew applause, though Nickels admitted he does not take the bus.

“The Parasites:

I believe Western European culture will never endure in the Americas. I believe it is only a passing phase like the hoola hoop or the skate board. I also believe that the peoples living in the Americas will become American; that they will have to in order to survive in America. That means that a truly American culture will evolve-is evolving-in the Americas, a culture which is not a European import, nor an adaptation of an European import. That means that the sons and daughters of immigrants who strove for over four hundred years to posses the Americas will be possessed by the Americas; the descendants of those who tried to conquer and subdue the Americas will be conquered and subdued by the Americas. It means that the stubborn land pioneers cleared and cursed will be loved, respected, and revered by the great grandchildren of pioneers. And the native creatures of that land will also be loved and fostered, including the original American Human: the Indian.”
-Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole, from No Foreign Land: The Biography of a North American Indian.

This is what I have been shown by spirit… at our lodge at the cedar house so many years ago, doing ceremony with my tribe, we black sky people… when bioregional animism was being born in my visions and in our relationships. I saw how the Earth this land gave form to the body, the mind the spirit and the cultures of the people… how new tribes were forming peoples spirits where waking up to the reality that they are the place they live, they are the people of the land and sky they live within…

I was shown this clear as day… I could feel the land reaching up through us giving us form and instruction on how to live, how to bee kin, how to be family and live in a good way. I still see this and feel this… and I am seeing it in the people I share this vision with.

I am going to going on a long walk in the not to distant future
this fall… looking for my people and seeking new skills… and visiting the members of the black sky tribe where ever the four winds have taken you with the hope to bring you back to the Puget Sound eventually so we can co-create a village with the land.

Many years ago I sat in my brothers living room in ceremony with the sacred medicine called san pedro cactus or Achuma as it was called in Bolivia where it originally comes from. This cactus has traveled its way from there and now is grown for healing, divination, and communion with other-than-human-persons, just to name a few…

During this ceremony i had been spending a great deal of time focusing on my fellow mans pain and sickness, the problems that face humanity, my own problems as a human-person as well. We sat quietly in contemplation as well allowed the medicine to bring us visions and insight. The consumption of Achuma is the ceremonial act of bringing another person into your body to guide, cleanse protect, and teach you. This is a practice that has been called plant teacher shamanry, where a visionary plant is considered a teacher, or tutelary spirit that can be consumed and thus embodied as the method of communion with the plants spirit or intelligence. A prime example of co-intelligence via resonant intelligence, when the plant is consumed the plant and the one that consumes the plant works as one functioning system of intelligence.

Evolutionarily speaking the plant kingdom is a much older and much more well adapted species then mammals and have often been considered the elders of human-people. Within animist communities elders are often considered wiser, (thought this is not often the case in non animist cultures) so there for the plant is sought out for its wisdom. When one consumes the plant and is in a humble way working with the plant as an other-than-human-person not a tool or a drug or just a plant, but a person, the plant lends its wisdom and power to the one that consumes it. The great mystery of life cannot help but be felt via these wise ones, one may embody these wise ones but never truly know all that they know, it is a great mystery that they reveal to us and give us hints as to how we must relate to life and the mystery in order to be well. They will never give us all the answers we seek because the mystery itself must be perpetuated at all costs according to these plant elders. It is the question no the answer that drives the teacher, and with plant teachers it is no different.

Sitting in my brother Spheres living room, focusing on human suffering and its alleviation… the room shifted, it changed before me. In front of me was not just his living room, but super imposed upon this living room was a prairie, and sitting where I sat was a deer. The deer and i shared the same space, its body and mine were one. I felt the deer within me, as me, and as it moved I moved, as it thought I thought and it said to me very directly… “Don’t forget us, the work your doing is also for us.”

The Deer had spoken and living room had shifted back from a prairie/living room and I was left with a life altering change in how I viewed my purpose, in the roles i was to play in life. I had all of a sudden developed the seed for an ecologically responsible ethic. How could one sit there open to the whole of life and feel a deer speak to you ,telling you not to forget her people and all other-than-human-persons when attempting to ease suffering. It became more and more apparent to me as I opened up to more guidance from spirit that night that the the fate of human people where interrelated to the fate of other-than-human-persons, deer had pointed the way.

Being shown that one could relate to an other-than-human-person in this way was a huge lesson for me, it was also a huge shock to have an other-than-human-person choose to apear to me to give me this lesson with out my seeking it. I felt honored yet rattled, i had to at this point now find ways to change the way I lived my life. Deer had spoken to me. It wanted something from me, we had begun a long relationship.

Yesterday in the psyche ward I work as a counselor in I watched through the windows as a heard of deer chased each others young in a game of tag. I was reminded of my experience with deer that night during ceremony at my friends house while working with the plant teacher called Achuma. I saw them play and chase each other, and I prayed for them. I saw the difficulty of their lives and I saw how we added upon their already large yet joyfully burden and I continued my vow to help them through the choices I make in how I live my life and how I relate to others, how I help others. I learned from deer that to help others human-persons one must help them in a way that helps nature, that helps the deer as well. I am happy I learned of my responsibilities in this way because these ecological and social ethics have been planted deep in my soul… not in the shallow levels in my intellect.

Been feeling lately like this tribe has more of a future, that members of this tribe have had spirit really working through them lately and that old visions of our community growing have more of a possibility of actually manifesting now. I have just moved closer to the killing tree again… some thing about this side of town is comforting to me brings me back to the days where visions came more easily as well as guidance from the land and sky.

A few days ago I talked to Heron, Heron is a member of this community from the other side of the Cascades, where a lot of my people are from. Heron is a community leader in training he’s like a carpet that really ties the room together… his and my friendship over the years has helped both of us grow a lot. I had lost touch with him over the last few years and both of our lives have not been in such a good way… but I finally talked to him and feel that we are both moving in the direction we have always needed to be moving in and its starting to become more clear now.

We talked about old visions of building a village on the peninsula, words from inside and outside of our ceremonies, and we spoke of the skills we are gaining to make that happen soon.

I spoke with another member of our tribe who’s name the cedar tree calls Sazaska. Heron and Sazaska are two people who create community and empower people. They are two of the mot spiritual powerful people I know, both wise and cunning… the y have not been on the best terms over the last few years but they are being brought back together now that the time is getting to be right again. I am praying for them because they are community leaders and work very well together… when they stopped working together our entire community some what fell apart. Its amazing how the relationships between two people can have such an immense impact on a  community. They both tell me they see each other in dreams so I feel spirit is working them.

The other night I saw another member of the black sky tribe, Grandma Love… and her new Bo… we spoke about these two brothers and we spoke about new plans to start a village up on the peninsula in the next few years. Cosmic Rains and I have been making plans to start our village in the next few years, we are now getting ready to start this fall in getting the skills we need at the Lost Valley Ecovillage learning permaculture design and ecovillage design, then perhaps onwards to the cob cottage company in the town i was born in to learn cob building. Grandma Love and her Bo and I talked about having festivals and community gatherings surrounding fire ceremonies and collective intention. This is the first time in a long time that I have felt that my visions of how I am to live my life with my people are starting to actually happen. Its and exciting time in my life right now and I feel blessed to be given the guidence from spirit and the land to make these choices in my life which will create a way of life for my people to live well. I feel that learning these skills as well as creating an ecovillage will bring even more grounding to the work we are accomplishing in bioregional animism and it will give me an opportunity to show how bioregional animism works to people out side of our community as well. My prayer is that in time we will have a working animist community with regional animist traditions tied to the life place that can show visitors to our community how life i lived as a bioregional animist.

I am looking forward with an open heart and the will to have courage now more then ever.

Bless and be blessed black sky people….

LLB

Those of you who have prayed with me at the base of the great trees and of the tree we call here in Tumwawa as the Killing tree, the old growth fir who is the house of the bald eagle recently we had a ceremony dedicated to bear out there…

I went out to the killing tree the other day, an old growth fir tree with an eagles nest on the top… during the winter there usually arent any eagles out there… but I was with my love Cosmic Rains who also has eagle medicine and we went out there to ritually bury a bear skin (bear is also one of our mutual creature teachers). As I took out the bear skin to dedicate it to the earth eagle started speaking to us… it was quite amazing and my girlfriend was blown away because the noise the eagle made was the same noise she said I was making in my sleep that morning… it was a very powerfull ceremony.
We both felt that the earth recieved the skin of the bear well and that the bears spirit was glad to be finally respected. the skin had been given to me by my father (also a bear person) the person who gave it to him had killed it and had taxadermied the head which I felt was a huge disrespect the bear was obviously “used” as a trophy and had been killed with no respect what so ever…
I am happy to bring the bears body to a sacred place, and that eagle welcomed it back home.

So for those of you who find this place to be sacred to you and for those of you who also go to this place to pray… know that bear is there with you know as well and acknowledge him.
blessings
LLB

This is a community page for the black sky tribe (well more like a small band then a tribe, but i know we have numbers out there we have yet to meet). For those of you who know who you are this is a place for you.
blessings
LLB