We are peoples of prophecy, of visions and of dreams.
We are connected to the ancestors, and to the generations unborn and unconceived, in one unbroken hoop, a tightly woven braid of blood and culture, but also of the hopes of the Ancient Ones, the dreams of the spirits themselves. It is braid and hoop and path and road, and an often difficult one, beneath skies of clearest blue and stormy violet, but its integrity holds in the illuminating golden light of a thousand thousand visions.
Ao many of our ancestors were themselves visionaries, those well known even to the dominant culture and those known only to our immediate families. But one of the most famous, although largely for words he never uttered (at least in the form in which they are “recorded”), was Hinmuuttu-yalatlat, otherwise known as Chief Joseph.
The man was a warrior, a leader, a visionary for his time and ahead of it, too. I’ve written about his story here before, and rather than paraphrase, I’ll retell it here in the same words I used then. I began with the hard history:
If you know the story of Chief Joseph — the real story, not the sanitized New Age version bandied about today — then you know that it is much more complex than surface questions of “war and peace.”
Born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat in 1840 to one of Khapkhaponimi, one of the “chiefs” of the Wallowa band of the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce), both he and his father had the English name “Joseph” hung on them by white “missionaries” invading the area. At this time, Manifest Destiny was playing out in its usual fashion, and the Nimíipuu were under great pressure by the colonialist federal government to enter into treaties to permit settlement of their lands. The “treaties,” of course, were not worth the paper they were written on, and the “settlement” amounted to “we’ll steal your land and pen you up over there.”
Desperate to save their sacred lands in the Wallowa Valley, lands essential to their spiritual traditions, several of the chiefs agreed to such “treaties.” Then came the “discovery” of gold by trespassers in those very same sacred lands that the treaties allegedly protected. Under intense pressure to surrender the mineralogically valuable land, the chiefs eventually decided to resist — and, if necessary, to fight to save their lands, their people, their ancestral way of life.
In 1871, Khapkhaponimi walked on. That his people fight to save their sacred lands (and their freedom to be) is recorded as his dying wish. His son, Hinmuuttu-yalatlat, who the dominant culture remembers only as “Chief Joseph,” took up that dying wish as his mantle and his mission. After three years of desperate and ultimately futile negotiations with the U.S. government, Hinmuuttu-yalatlat ordered his people to head northward to safety, taking the women, elders, and children. Battle erupted, and for several months, his warriors engaged the U.S. Army while the people retreated to the hoped-for safety of the Canadian border. Once there, they were ambushed and surrounded, and the bitter cold and lack of food in the northern winter made effective countermaneuvers impossible.
Hinmuuttu-yalatlat worked desperately to negotiate a peace that could be had with honor. It was during this period that his most famous utterances were reportedly made:
“We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man. Free to travel. Free to stop. Free to work. Free to choose my own teachers. Free to follow the religion of my Fathers. Free to think and talk and act for myself.”
“You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.”
He hoped that he was being treated as a peer, as an equal — as a man. And, of course, the invading army’s negotiators were only woo willing to foster that false hope. He was made promises of specific lands — not their most sacred, most important lands, but lands nonetheless — for the people, if only they would lay down their weapons, board the unheated cattle cars of the Iron Horse, and be transported peacefully.
They laid down their weapons. They boarded the freezing metal rail cars.
They were transported to a concentration camp.
Sent first to eastern Kansas, then to Oklahoma, Hinmuuttu-yalatlat and the Nimíipuu spent more than a decade in the wilderness of U.S. Army death camps (and death camps they were, decimating the people’s numbers with epidemics of disease, starvation, and other privation). Eventually, they were promised a safe return to their sacred valley, only to find, once transported, that they were not home but were once again interned, this time on the “reservation” of the people now known as the Coleville.
Hinmuuttu-yalatlat survived another quarter-century. Recognizing the futility of challenging the U.S. Army’s massive numbers and firepower, he nevertheless continued to fight in his own way, challenging their words. He spoke, plainly and proudly, to anyone and everyone who would listen. He insisted on the Native right to self-determination, to autonomy, to sovereignty, to existence — as men, as women, as human beings.
He did not, in his lifetime, create the world that he so devoutly wished to see. But his words have outlived his body, unto the seventh generation and beyond, and they are sound guides for our peoples today in the same ongoing fight for the same existential rights.
Warrior, leader, elder, teacher, he remains, well over a century later, a hero to our peoples and a role model for our own work. It is why Wings has his image tattooed on his upper arm: a reminder of the need for courage and conviction, of the need to adapt but continue the fight, of the need to stand on our principles and keep our traditions alive.
For our people.
This was his dream, his vision, his hope and prayer and prophecy for his people — and, by extension, for all of our own. And it was one that inspired today’s featured work, by an artist whose own people hail from lands not far from those of the Nimíipuu. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
Chief Jo’s Vision Mixed-Media Collage
This framed collage by Preston Bellringer (Yakama/Assiniboine) melds ancient prophecies with modern media in a piece that harks back to a ’60s ethos and feel. The iconic central photograph of Chief Joseph in the upper half of the collage is surrounded by a complex synthesis of images in multiple media: photography, paint, pen and ink, even children’s stick-on decals, all telling a layered intertribal story of warriors protecting the people in their quest for a better time, a better place, one of peace. The studded wood frame is 25.25″ high by 8.5″ wide; the visible image (no glass cover) is 22.75″ high by 6″ wide (all dimensions approximate).
Mixed media; wood
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
It’s a work of psychedelia, in a sense — one with a definitive ’60s vibe to it. But such is the nature of true visionary experiences: They illuminate, but it takes skill and patience, attentiveness and experience, to unravel the strands of imagery and prophecy and weave them into a braid of hope and healing.
What Hinmuuttu-yalatlat sought for his people was the most basic of human rights: of sovereign people in a sovereign land, of the self-determination to live as it was given to them to do, amidst clear air and clean waters, a dream of blue skies and golden light and a life lived in the good way.
He did not live to see his dream come to pass. Neither did his children, nor his children’s children. Neither, thus far, have we.
But we have time. This is our dream now, our vision and prophecy and task. It it is given to us to work to fulfill this life for our sovereign peoples and a sovereign world, a dream of blue skies and golden light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
