Much of it is coming through public radio, where I have enjoyed listening to Native music programs on both KUNM 89.9 and KANW 89.1 here in Albuquerque the last few days. I've also caught parts of Native America Calling over a couple days, one show featuring a healer using a process called "somatic archeology."
There was another show this morning from a Watersheds as Commons series, which can be found at www.loreoftheland.org. It featured Navajo speakers discussing right relationship to the land and water, and I found it quite moving. At the completion of the show, I was surprised to hear that I knew the narrator, Celestia Loeffler, whose voice sounds polished far beyond her 20-something years, and who co-produced the show with her father, Jack, a musician friend from years past.
The most moving of inputs came from a new friend of mine. who mentioned attending a ceremony at Navajo the past week, a type of ceremony I had not been familiar with. It was a blessing ceremony for a Navajo child she midwifed recently. The ceremony involves a feast put on by the person who has made the child laugh for the first time, in this case the child's uncle. Much of the interaction involves others helping the child laugh again throughout the feast. There is also a ritual involving generosity of food involving the baby holding salt which people receive from him or her for their food.
The child is thus affirmed in the cultural values of generosity and laughter, in a very real sense actualizing the blessing "may your life be abundant in sharing food and laughter". I share this respectfully with absolute wonderment, as the kind of world I wish to belong to and co-create as well. Imagine how much richer our lives could be with this kind of approach to things.
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