Ready how do you think we should do
it?
Okay we'll pick it up
come this way more you guys pick
those up and then put them through
those stakes yeah hopefully
we'll clear this up and go there.
I'm out in the middle of the desert,
near the southern Texas border,
watching as half a dozen men prepare
to hoist up the frame of a teepee.
This is a South Dakota lodge.
We have a lot of relatives from
South Dakota here representing
themselves
The teepee is for a peyote ceremony,
to be led by a road man named Sandor
Ironrope.
Sandor is a spiritual guide and
leader.
He's Oglala Lakota from
the Pine Ridge Reservation in
South Dakota.
There's going to be more teepee
setting up. We have some Crow
relatives over here and some other
Dine relatives going to come and
setting up lodge.
There are three teepees in total,
each one set up for a different
tribal nation.
This annual ceremony will
bring together some 150
people from various tribal nations.
And while there are peyote
ceremonies all over the country,
this one is different because we're
in the place where peyoti cacti
grow.
The only place where indigenous
people can come harvest peyoty
buttons themselves for religious
and cultural purposes.
It's called The Peyote Gardens.
This is my first time watching a
teepee go up and I'm captivated.
So to get a better view, I
circle my way around, careful not
to step over any of the teepee
poles.
Alright, we'll have to pick them up.
So while we're tying this, my
brother made a prayer, made an
offering, water, tobacco,
and then we're gonna put the shell
of this.
It's a teepee, so for your
audio, this is Julius Not Afraid.
Julius is also Oglala
Lakota.
Where's Chacha? We need our rope runner.
Hold on boys.
Hold on, hold on.
This is how you see Chachi try to
run.
Someone say, "migra", "migra" I'll
go faster. All right.
Justin Dorry, who everyone calls
Chachi, hitchhiked around
1,500 miles from South Dakota
down to Texas to be here
at ceremony.
He's what's called a rope runner.
Chachi has been tying up teepees
since he was a kid on the Pine
Ridge Reservation, and
with every lap around the teepee...
My legs ain't that long. My mouth goes faster than my legs.
He can't help but make a joke.
Oh that's three, that's 3!
Hold the bottom.
Oh, watch that. That's good.
One right here.
So we learned all this from our
uncles, our dads.
These teepee poles, they represent
our family members.
This one here is a Lakota style
of a tie.
Every tribal nation that
sets up a teepee does it
a little differently.
The Lakota style is special.
Looking from the inside out,
the opening is in the shape of a
star.
I'm also a member of the Lakota
Oyate, and for us,
the star is more than just a shape.
It's a symbol of who we are and
where we come from.
We are star people.
Go on, just. One, two, one, two. Keep going. Keep going, all the way
down. Go in the Front. Yeah
I've been been running faster if I
hadn't had that second bowl . Okay
First time Chachi has started
running again.
Yeah, yeah. I wasn't running from the
police, so...
Okay.
You didn't cramp up
Last summer, Adreanna Rodriguez
attended the Native American Church
of North America's annual conference
and produced a story about
efforts to protect peyote for season
one of our show.
Her goal was to try to understand
how this tiny cactus became
the center of an indigenous-led
ecological fight.
After the story aired, dozens of
indigenous people reached out to
Adriana to talk about peyoti.
Then, last November, she got an
invitation to go to south Texas to
the peyote gardens.
Without a second thought, she said
yes. She didn't have an assignment.
She went on her own dime.
She just knew that she needed to go.
So she brought her audio equipment
with her to document her trip.
In this episode, the results of
that trip.
Adreanna heads to Texas to find
peyote in its natural habitat and
to dig into what the cactus means
to indigenous communities
and to herself.
I'm Arielle Duhaime-Ross and this is
Altered States.
Sound good.
All right, we're tightening it up a
little bit.
So you were saying there's a lot of
relatives that are going to be
setting up?
Yeah, they're gonna be setting up
lodges up here, so what we're
looking at is the setting up of
a lodge for Friday night ceremony
here
When I packed my bags for Texas,
I brought along my audio recorder
and mics, but I wasn't
sure. Was I there first as
a journalist or was I on
more of a personal quest?
All I knew was that I had questions.
Questions I hoped Sandor
could answer.
Can you introduce yourself?
Yeah, my name is Sandor Ironrope.
I'm a Teton Lakota,
and my mom, my dad, my
grandpa, my grandpa Sam Lone Bear
was instrumental in kind of
sharing this way.
Sandor is 55 years old.
As a young boy, he participated
in the Native American church peyote
ceremonies.
He learned the teachings, prayers,
and responsibilities from his elders
and went on to be a leader in
the church for decades.
You know, we're interconnected to
all things, and
we have to be able to
unify as indigenous people
around our mother Earth.
Sandor has spent decades
advocating for the protection of
peyote, which he considers part
of his commitment to protecting his
people and their traditions.
Today, he sits on the board of
directors for the Indigenous Peyote
Conservation Initiative,
or IPCI, a
nonprofit group working to conserve
the delicate ecosystem in
southern Texas where peyote grows.
We're going to repopulate this area.
The group runs a cacti nursery,
they replant peyote back into the
wild, and they protect the habitat
with the help of ranchers.
We're giving back because it gives
to us.
So now it's really teaching
the basics, the spiritual,
ecological, harvested medicine
to the next generation.
The next generation are those who
are here, setting up the teepee
in front of us.
So capturing the essence of what
we're doing here is really,
as we said, for the youth.
She's one of the youths.
Sandor points to a young girl and
her mom, who have been quietly
listening to our conversation.
My name is Charyce Not Afraid,
and I am Oglala Lakota from
the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation up
in South Dakota.
Charyce is married to Julius Not Afraid.
The man who was explaining to me
that the teepee poles represent
family members.
And then this is your daughter,
okay?
Yep, this is our youngest daughter.
My name is Abilene Renos.
My mom is Charyce Not
Afraid.
I'm 13 years old and I'm
from the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation.
This is Abby's first time here
at the peyote gardens, but
not the first time she's
participated in a peyote ceremony.
Last year, Sandor guided their
family through ceremony back
at their home in South Dakota.
The first time I used it,
I was thinking about it.
They asked me if I wanted to go into
the meeting, and then I decided to
do it.
It's just something that really
stuck with me, and so then
we went harvesting yesterday,
you know, it's just a real beautiful
thing. I really enjoyed it.
Harvesting peyote is inseparable
from the work of reclaiming
identity, which includes culture
and language,
but it's an experience that
not many Indigenous people have,
given how scarce peyoti cacti have
become.
I'm happy I'm able to do stuff like
this, because a lot of people
aren't.
They're not able to get peyote
and stuff like this to go harvesting
again. So I'm grateful I get to
do this stuff.
Abby is only.
13 years old, and she's
learning things that many of her
elders have not had the chance to
learn.
She gets to learn all this stuff at
a young age where me
being older, that was my first time
harvesting.
For Charisse and Abby,
it's not just about reclaiming
identity and culture.
It's also about reclaimin joy.
I'm trying to learn our language,
because I'm not very good,
and I can understand it to a bit,
but I want to know it.
I want speak it.
I want understand all the
medicines.
Charyce asks her daughter to
introduce herself in Lakota.
(Speaking in Lakota) What is your name in Lakota?
(Speaking in Lakota) Strong-Thinking Woman.
And that comes from, she always had
an opinion, a strong opinion
and thoughts.
And so it just kind of worked with
her. Her Lakota name fits
perfect.
It's fitting, huh?
But it's true what you said,
like, being Native is
more than just in existence.
It's all these other components that
make up culture and make up people.
Because it's our everyday walk
of life is what it is.
Charyce grew up on the Pine Ridge
Reservation with her
great-grandmother, who only
spoke Lakota.
And when she passed away, Charyce
stopped hearing their language
Even if we didn't speak it back
to her we knew exactly what she was
saying how to do it everything and
then when she passed away...you
don't use it you lose it
So for Charyce, being
in ceremony with Sandor,
who is fluent, and hearing him
speak Lakota, brings the language to
life.
It's that the yearning of what
you're missing or what you
are supposed to know.
You know that's our language that
should be our first language but
we didn't get that.
Having her children understand
and speak Lakota is the
goal because our language
is a part of us.
That's our culture, that's our
everyday walk of life.
That's the language, that the dance,
that's the movements, that just what
we should do and
should know.
I don't speak the language you know
either, I only grew up knowing a
couple of songs that my uncle shared
with me.
But at that feeling that you get
from hearing the songs from it,
it's engraved in us where we don't
even know it is.
And, but we know we're, we're
yearning for it because if a song
can get you emotional or,
you know, there's, there is a bond
there and you didn't even know there
was a bond.
It's true. I've also had this
thought before.
Even when the language is not
understood, there's an undeniable
connection, a familiarity
in the sounds,
a sense of home.
My grandmother was relocated
from the Standing Rock Reservation
to San Francisco back
in the 50s.
I was born and raised in California,
distant from our Lakota traditions.
I spent half my childhood living
with a white foster family.
Listening to Charyce,
I began to wonder if I was here
to reclaim something too.
And then Charyce asked me.
Will you be going into any
ceremonies tomorrow?
Um, I mean,
I haven't been invited to one yet,
um, but
I, yeah, I don't know.
I'm just, it's always interesting
when I come for something for work.
Like, I'm mean, technically I'm
always, like, representing myself
as, like a tribal member first, but
I'm kind of just assessing again,
like my, where I'm at spiritually
with myself, so.
When I was invited to South Texas,
I wasn't planning on participating
in ceremony.
I wasn't exactly sure what I'd be
doing, honestly.
I brought my audio equipment in
part because the work of reporting
gave my time a certain structure.
My role was clear when I was being a
journalist, but deep down,
a part of me might have known that I
was here for something deeper.
I was in search of connection
to a spiritual practice,
and I was hoping for a feeling of
grounding and understanding.
I couldn't answer Charyce's question
yet.
I needed to know more first,
so I went to where the stories were
being shared.
It wouldn't be a Native event
without an open mic,
and one of the people who stood up
to speak was Charyce's his husband,
Julius.
Say, uh, good morning to your
relatives.
Good hearty handshake to each one of
you.
My name is Julius Not Afraid,
I come from uh two relatives
of the siliki,
people of the big bird, of the crow,
a child of the greasy moth.
His childhood was spent in
a place called Allen, South Dakota,
a small, close-knit community.
In there, you know,
this medicine, it showed me a
way of life from the beginning of
my birth, generations before
me. It helped me in a
time of struggle with substances,
with alcohol, drugs,
at a time where I almost
lost my life.
And the truth of it is, it
was self-influenced.
And so I had the
courage to ask for
help.
And I wasn't alone.
I have beautiful relatives.
In 2019,
he traveled to Texas and spent about
two months working for IPCI.
He fixed miles of fence and
herded cattle.
And it allowed me time to
heal. And I know there's opportunity
for others that might
take my story and be
able to utilize it as their own.
Since getting sober,
he's toured all over Indian country,
sharing his story.
You know, I got to make travels,
I've got to make travels through
this Indian country, through a
performance, a song, the dance,
along with this peyote and our
traditional practices, Wala Kota,
the Lakota ceremonies.
Sure, amazing feeling to be able
to go, be able partake
in a harvest, to be a
able to make a prayer, to shed
a tear out there amongst grandma,
grandpa, peyote.
After a long day of talking to so
many Lakota people,
I couldn't help but think that
it's not just about peyote.
It's about connection, healing,
love, and the ways in which
culture persists.
It's about Indigenous survival.
As the sun sets, the desert
air cools, and
the day comes to an end.
I'm reminded of how interwoven
our lives are with this land,
and how ceremonies are threaded
through a larger story of
survival and reclamation.
Oh, everybody!
Oh, come over here.
Gather round.
Before you go out, we're gonna have
a little talk here.
How many of you guys have been out
here before?
I've been here.
So can we have all the volunteers
raise their hands?
It's peyote harvesting day.
I'm surrounded by about 40 people,
nearly all indigenous.
Most of the land where peyote grows
in the US is privately owned.
A local rancher granted us
permission to harvest peyoty on
their land, but we only have
an hour and a half.
I'm grouped up with the other Lakota
relatives.
No one is ever going to be out into
the brush alone, okay?
You're going to harvest only
medicine that have more
than eight ribs and are
bigger than two inches across.
If you see those flags on the
ground, don't go past that line.
Does everybody have the vests?
There are all kinds of rules.
If you want to continue to harvest,
you're going to have to follow the
rules.
These rules are not our rules, these
are the land owner rules.
And there are ceremonial
requirements too.
It's very important that you give
your offering.
So it's important that we all
understand that integral part of
this offering.
This is important because it changes
the way we think about things, how
we're doing things.
This is all peyote territory.
This is still our grandma's house.
So how we do it and how we respect
it is important. We only
have a little bit of time, that's
why it's important to get together,
organized.
That sun's already going down.
There's some ceremonies to happen
tonight.
So according to the white man watch,
it's about 20 till 3.
And so how much time? Hour and a half.
And all of it has to be
meticulously counted,
from the number of ribs to the
size of each cactus.
We're going to count 13
ribs at the mature medicine and
we're going to count how many eight,
how many seven, nine
like that and
we are going to document it.
A rib is one of the vertical lines
that run up the body of the cactus.
More ribs mean the cactus is
more mature.
Harvesting requires a bag and
a small knife, which volunteers
can get from IPCI for
a small donation.
They have a knife in there these
ones are 20 like this with the knife
in the bag, but the bags are 10.
Which one?
Can I have a knife and a bag please? Yep.
The whole set to go.
Thanks for our credit cards.
It's in there?
Thank you.
Am I teamed up with you? You know what you're doing?
Not really, but I don't even got a
knife, so yeah.
You want a knife?
Make a donation and get a bag.
Yeah, I just got one.
here, here, here.
God bless you.
In our small group,
we step off the dirt road.
The brush is so thick and prickly,
it's nearly impossible to walk
through it.
Okay, now I definitely see how you
can get lost out here.
And this is thin.
Oh, God.
Marco! Polo!
You found one?
Found one!
We just have to share the message behind
us. Found one.
Someone finds the first peyote
of the day, so everyone
makes their way over to see it.
Right here so we have
to understand this
is this grandma right here this
grandma right here she gave us
all our food all
our medicines right here
The Sandor points to a cluster of
peyote cacti poking out of
the ground.
And so what we have to do is
talk to grandma.
Let grandma take care of us.
So we have to recognize grandma
right here and grandpa and give
offering and talk to grandma and
grandpa and say, thank you, grandma.
It's gonna be you.
You, you're gonna have to lead the
way.
Sandor looks over at the two
youngest members in our group,
children who are somewhere between
five and seven years old.
You're going to have to learn how
to respect grandma and grandpa
and come out here.
Come out here and show
yourself.
You have a Lakota name?
You can say your name.
Say your name four times, grandma.
It's important to identify yourself
by your indigenous name,
by your Lakota name.
And at least have a
thankful thought.
Like thank you for my mom, my
dad, and then you can put that
tobacco down.
Thank you for being here.
This is really important.
We all huddle around the cacti.
This is an emotional
moment.
You should know how it lives,
know the soil, these plants in
here, how it lives about
its life.
This already knows us right here.
As Sandor talks,
some people around me start quietly
weeping.
It knows I got ache right here.
It already knows that.
It knows where my heart is already.
But it's up to us to voice it
in our prayer, in our offering
here.
This is part of our mental health
and our healing.
Before we start our prayer,
Sandor looks over at Chachi,
the Oglala rope runner who tied up
the teepee.
Sandor knows he's struggling with
taking care of his two boys as a
single father.
I want you to be well.
I know your heart's hurting in many
ways. I know that already.
It's okay to have fun.
It is also okay to cry.
And be serious here too.
For your own sake, for your sonny
boys.
Things are tough, but I was happy
that you made that effort right
here.
So I'm happy you're here.
Sandor bows his head and
closes his eyes as the group
begins to pray.
May they have a beautiful harvest.
So we're gonna go hunting, so don't
get lost.
Stay with your people.
You volunteers.
Ah, you don't get lost.
Make a lot of noise when you're
going because there's pigs still
out.
It's okay to sing too,
sing your songs.
Before we disperse, someone
passes around a bag of peyote
buttons, and everyone,
even the children, eat a piece.
Suddenly I spot peyote under
the brush, and I crawl in
to get a closer look.
I'm not sure if it's old enough or
how to cut it properly, so
I call out for help.
Hey Adrian, I just wanted to ask a
quick question really, really quick.
Do I cut as deep as I can or
is it just straight across?
Yeah, usually straight across, just
ground level.
Okay.
As long as you can see it exposed
and that means it can regrow from
it.
Okay, I'm still going with you
guys now I kind of have to separate
it from my team.
Adrian Primo first came down to
the peyote gardens nearly 10 years
ago.
He now brings his two children with
him.
I am a member of
the Yankton Sioux Tribe.
I reside in South Dakota.
I teach the language
and culture in
the public schools in Rapid City,
South Dakota
In Texas, he saw firsthand
how badly this ecosystem needed
protection.
So that turned into
a movement of
conserving the culture along
with the plant.
So these go hand in hand and
it's something that's not,
I think, is a
common everyday conversation of how
all of these are intertwined.
And that conversation includes
a kind of etiquette.
Etiquette meaning that when you
take something you have an exchange
an equal exchange of energy at
this current time because of this
initiative I feel comfortable
bringing my children to
to the peyote lands and harvesting
so for me I
am laying eyes upon
an answered prayer it's an amazing
feeling and testimony to
say eight years ago elders
uncles and grandpas
shed tears they put their knees on
the ground and they...
And they cried and they asked the
creator help us make
a way for us so that we can
heal our generations and so that, we
can connect our people to the land
so that they can have a better
chance at overcoming the
odds.
Now, Adrian is passing along
what he's learned in the peyote
gardens to his children.
We want to prepare our children to
be able to do that.
We want them to have the ability to
take the hats on and off, the
spiritual hat, the emotional
hat. We wants them to put on the
father, the mother hat, be good
teacher, the good relative.
We wanted them to wear all those
graciously. So by my children being
able to put their direct hands
in the ground
here and to ask the mother earth and
the medicine that we
want to live, we want
a way of life, who want to
survive.
For Adrian, peyote
is part of that survival.
Generations ago indigenous people
were put on reservations
and they were putting away all of
their traditional ceremonies and
they're outlawed and then
they they prayed for help and
what came to us was this way of life
this Native American church now it's
an intertribal practice across
Canada all the way through the
United States and in Mexico and
it was an answer to a prayer
so this prayer wasn't
just today, it wasn't just last
year or eight years ago.
It's been.
50, 60, 120
years in the making since the
reservation area.
While we talk, Adrian's children
play nearby.
And so now, fast forward to
our children, we brought them with
us and we see them walking around
and it's because we want to
pay special attention to what
they're absorbing on a daily basis.
So everything they're doing around
this land, putting their hands in
the soil, feeling the thorns in
their hand. And for us indigenous
people, we believe that this
malleable age, they're building this
neural networks, everything that
they see they're downloading as
their formula for life.
I went off to find more peyote and
spotted some big enough to harvest.
Oh, it's right between this cactus
thing. That's why it's still there.
Go this way.
Where'd it go now?
Lost sight of it.
Oh my god stickers.
I squeezed through the brush and
with a quick slice of my knife cut
off the crown
How'd you do, son?
Did you do a good one?
Look at
all my boo-boos.
These are good boo-boos though, man.
Yeah.
Thank you.
The group reconvened to share
what they found and give thanks.
Thanks
How much did you get?
Shit, I got a couple pounds?
Whoa.
Now bad for my first, huh...
Hey, relative, let's gather
around, uncle.
Let's sing a thank you song.
I don't know what time we're
leaving, but this looks pretty cool,
you know.
Come on, brother.
Sing the old thank
you peyote song.
Well that medicine started kicking
in and I was pretty sure I just
didn't want to look, I just wanted
to sit down and sing.
I figured, I said hey where's uncle?
No one checked on our chief leader
man.
Which way is back?
Ow, ow, ow.
Hey we all point different
directions. Thanks for the reaction, y'all.
That way!
That way y'all? That way.
Gary's right there. Let's go. Vamonos.
After we returned to camp and the
sun set, two dozen people
entered the teepee meeting to
participate in ceremony.
Inside the teepee Charyce
invited me to sit with her and her
family, and I said yes.
In that moment, I stepped out
of my observing journalist self
and into my own self,
a Lakota woman.
I didn't bring my audio equipment
out of respect for the medicine and
those around me.
And I allowed myself to simply be
present.
Sitting in the teepee,
I wept for all that has been taken
from us.
Sandor looked over at me and
said, you may not speak
Lakota or understand
the words of these songs,
but your spirit understands and
that's why you are crying.
After the ceremony, when
we all exited the teepee to greet
the morning sun and each other,
Sanor told me I needed to come home,
to the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Other Lakota people in Texas
said the same, come home.
I kept thinking about this
invitation to come home to
South Dakota, a place
I've never lived.
Even after I went home to
California, it stuck with me.
I told my best friend Raven about
the idea, and a couple months
later, I found myself in a rental
car, speeding down the highway
toward the Black Hills with Raven
in the passenger seat.
Raven is also Lakota,
Sicangu, and when she heard
I was planning a trip to the Black
Hills. Near her reservation,
she insisted on joining me.
And to be honest, I couldn't
have brought a better travel buddy.
Raven was raised in South Dakota
between her mother's community
on the Yankton Sioux Tribal
Reservation, known as
the Ihanktonwan Lakota Oyate,
and her father's community,
where she is an enrolled member of
the Rosebud Sioux Tribe,
known the Sicangu Lakota
Oyate.
We listen to powwow
music.
And we laughed and then
my mom looks at him and
looks at the sage and he goes,
alright, have a nice day.
And Raven put on her grandfather,
reading his book, The Lakota
Way.
Chapter 2, Perseverance.
More watching to overcome,
to persist, to strive
in spite of difficulties.
With Raven navigating,
we traveled through South Dakota,
stopping along the way to pick sage.
Is there a sage down there?
Cause I'm like, maybe if I go in
that road.
Hella grasshoppers.
Oh yeah.
You can be afraid of grasshopper.
We'll just be right back.
You never take the
tallest.
Raven taught me to be gentle and
leave the tallest stock to watch
over the rest of the medicine.
How about this one?
They're not too big, huh?
It's like a family, they're
family. Take these ones here, huh.
I'm waiting for a grasshopper to hop
right in my mouth.
I want to get some for my mom.
I never picked sage before.
I never felt it not dried out.
When I was in Texas and Sandor
told me to come home to the Black
Hills, he also said
to come visit him when I got there.
With fists full of sage,
Raven and I climbed back into the
car and headed to Sandor's house.
I mean it's beautiful out here.
Sandor greets us outside his home
and points to the open prairie
land.
It's more peaceful out here.
It's been a blessing to be here to
help people.
We have a ceremony here.
We have Sweat Lodge here, and
that other ceremonial lodge is over
there in the wintertime.
That's your altar place on your dash, huh?
He points to the sage we collected
that's drying on the dashboard.
You can arrange your chairs however
you want.
We take a seat under some pine trees
and Sandor turns to Raven.
Where's your folks at?
My dad passed away a
few years ago from cancer.
He's the Sichangu side, because both
my parents, my mom is Yihangtawan,
my dad was Rosebud.
And my grandpa is,
on my dad's side, is the Marshall
family, the Joe Marshall, the
third, the author.
Um, didn't he just pass away like?
April.
Yeah, yeah.
Super recent. Didn't he write a
couple books?
He wrote the Lakota Way,
the Journey of Crazy Horse.
I looked up to him a lot.
It was really special, special to
have him in my life.
It's a blessing to be able to tell
the stories through that medium.
You could imagine, you
know, old, old camps,
old camps where you sit down and
you're visiting with Ji
or you know.
Aside from the time I spent with him
in Texas, I didn't know
much about Sandor, or his story,
and I was looking forward to asking
him about all his various
roles, acting as a spiritual
guide, working with IPCI,
I think all indigenous people
are born into policy,
whether we like it or not.
I think that
being Lakota, understanding
a little bit of our history, we
all are leaders.
It's just a matter of where
are you going in your leadership.
And so Lakota woksapé really
teaches us a fundamental
concept about prayer,
you know, will check you.
About what wotakui is, kinship,
what compassion is,
you know, wonshila, what
generosity is, wachantognaka,
you know.
What fortitude is, whatchitanka,
what it means to have ,
knowledge, to understand
something, wawbleza,
to understand it, not just to know
it, but to understand that these
values have to continue on.
And when you understand all of that
in the outside world, go get
an education, come back and help
your people.
It's always been about policy,
the suppression of indigenous
rights.
It's there always been a fight with
this government.
Whether you have indigenous people
in Congress or not,
it has always been fight for our
rights.
And so knowing that and
having a responsibility
to...
Your prayer.
And we all have a responsibility to
our prayer.
You can't just be sacred for these
days.
As you know, obviously, I'm very
new to this medicine, but also still
on my own journey
of just learning about where I come
from and who I am.
I guess for me, there's just a lot
of things that I'm trying to
balance with,
like making sure that I am being
respectful. It's just like a lot
things that i'm balancing when doing
my work, but feeling the privilege
of like, I get to learn
about who I'm through my work at the
same time and I think it's really
a blessing.
But one of the things that happened
when I was in Texas,
it's something that a few people
have said to me and also you said to
as well when I mentioned that I'm
from Standing Rock, most people
said, oh, you need to come home now.
And I guess I just wanted to kind of
ask you, what did you mean when you
said that to me with coming back?
You said, you know, you come to the
Black Hills, you need come back.
Well, because you have spirit.
This is like all Lakota people.
When you find out that
you are Lakota,
I think there is a rejuvenation
into understanding
what your world view really is.
You know, wea, we,
the moon, we the sun,
ampewi, iya,
it's like a rock,
wea tuk'a iya is
creation stories.
How we look at a woman is
very strong,
very backbone, generational
keepers.
So I guess empowerment of
yourself as
Lakota and to understand that.
I think for you
to come home is really
to reground your spirit
and to find yourself.
And everybody has a Lakota
name.
I don't know if you have a Lakota
name.
You know, but you should identify
yourself in your
nāghi, in your spirit, in that way
to honor yourself.
I felt good for you and I felt right
here, you know.
And that's how I said it, come
back, you come home.
We sat in silence,
and then Sandor smoked a cigarette.
Tears welled in my eyes.
I felt glad to be there,
but there was sadness, too.
You know, the way I feel about
things is that I'm
getting older.
We don't live forever.
And I have a
desire to be as
useful as I can.
Be as useful I can to
help the spirit of somebody.
That is the responsibility
that we are supposed to have.
Help heal each other.
Onshiki chilapi,
have pity for each other.
Ihaki chappi.
Have heart for one another.
So, that morning with that
teepee and after that,
and then I knew that there was
something in that fire,
in that medicine to help you.
I knew there was a good
seed planted, there's a good
spiritual seed for you.
If I'm honest, I wasn't
sure what would come from my visit
to the Black Hills.
But being here, listening,
observing, learning,
it's like it all allowed me to
feel a connection to the medicine,
the people, and the land
in a way I hadn't anticipated.
But I'm happy you came here today,
you know, to really get a
little piece of us.
And we don't like to be out and
open too much, you now.
It's a different world.
We like to more away
from people.
And we were blessed to be here.
Yeah, thank you for inviting me.
It's just feels
like a blessing even just to be here
to be able to talk to you and
yeah catch up with you again and
slowly be more so introduced to this
medicine even if it's not
necessarily that I'm going to it's
not always what it's about so
there's still a lot of things that I
am able to be in
relationship with so I'm
really appreciative for it.
I take a moment to breathe,
to let the weight of the journey,
the conversation with Sandor,
and my emotions settle in.
I think of our Lakota teachings,
and how we are star people,
and we all move through the
universe, guided by the teachings
of our ancestors, like Raven's
grandpa.
As we make our way back into the
city and towards the airport,
my phone lit up.
It was a voice message from Sandor
I'm going to send you with the song
so that you remember the
Lakota people,
where you come from.
Ocete Shako'i,
you and Raven.
(Sandor
Singing)
And then you text.
You all have a good journey.
You will come home again.
Remember your Lakota.
See you later.
Yeah, I mean, it's really sweet to
be.
Sent off with
a song like
that, which I think...
It feels good to
hear Lakota being spoken and
it feels good to
be seen as a
Lakota person by another Lakota
person.
It's always a little bit
overwhelming for me because a
lot of it is very new,
a lot of first times for me,
but I think for the most encouraging
thing that I've gotten from this
relationship with not
only like
with the medicine but also just
like with the relationship of like
knowing Sandor and starting to know
that ceremony a bit is just like
the openness and
the inviting.
And also, like,
something you've talked to me about,
which is like, this is your
homelands, too. Like, this your
coming home, like this is your
language, this is your space
to take up and to be
present in.
So I just really,
I'm grateful as well for him to be
offering that to us.
What Sandor shared with us about.
How important it is for
you to come home
and for us to be
home and for us to even be
doing this journey together
as two Lakota women.
You know, for me personally,
as a Lakota person not
living in my homelands,
it's always in
the back of my mind that I
need to come back home and...
Coming home is
hearing the language.
And hearing the songs.
Taking part in traditional
crafts and stuff, and people,
all the Lakota people. Those are the
instances that I feel like I'm
coming home.
I've gotten to the point with this
trip where obviously
we're here with
like these intentions of excitement
to like be going home, to be home
and I
think at a certain point I
felt some ease.
The one thing I've come to just
accept was like, wait, this is not
the end of anything.
This is just a continuation of
our journey and
it's really exciting and this
is just like a part of it.
Sometimes I'm like, are we ever
gonna get bored of talking to each
other?
Like we just.
At one point I was like, damn, what
if...
What if we just give up?
No, we're just in one long
conversation.
That's what it feels like.
Okay, I think we're really...
Do you have to head off?
Probably do have time to listen to
you a bit more on the drive, so I
don't know if you wanted to
try and listen to some of your
grandpa's book again and pick a
chapter.
Yeah, let's do this.
It's a nice send off.
Chapter 8, Compassion,
Wa'ooshilapi,
To Care, To Sympathize,
The Story of the Eagle.
Some of our elders like to tell of
how our people came up out of a hole
in the earth, in the southern edge
of the Black Hills.
That's a creation story.
Altered States is a production of
the UC Berkeley Center for the
Science of Psychedelics and PRX.
This episode was reported and
produced by Adreanna Rodriguez.
This story was reported with the
support of the Ferris UC Berkeley
Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship.
Adizah Eghan is our senior editor.
Our executive editor is Malia
Wollan.
Jennie Cataldo is our Senior
Producer and our researcher is
Cassady Rosenblum.
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Special thanks to Raven Marshall and
Michael Pollan.
Our executive producers are Malia
Wollan and Jocelyn Gonzales.
And our project manager is Edwin
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