Solstice Solace

Last evening I did my ceremonies in observance of the Summer Solstice. In the past I have spent it at one of my tribes holy places, fasting, singing through the night and greeting the rising sun the next morning. We do this ceremony in the Summer and one in the winter to keep the Sun from hurling off into space or crashing into the Earth. We have done this since our people were created and were made the caretakers of this land. We still do it today. (BTW...you're welcome).

I didn't do anything grand yesterday in my private ceremony. The Elders/Holy people take care of the Sun issues. But I do prayers, songs, and feed the spirits the way I have been taught to do but don't do nearly enough. I get to show these things to my daughter. My prayers have always included the ancestors who created us. They always include our decedents who are yet to live. Since I have been struggling with infertility those two groups have taken on new meaning for me.

At one time the population of my tribe was documented to be 14. Now we are a few thousand. We have been working really, really hard to become a people again. I want so desperately to contribute to that re-peopling and I can't.

When a population is gripped by pestilence such as the fevers and small pox epidemics that ravaged California Indian peoples a little over 100 years ago it's the children and Elders who die. Literally, they saw their future and past vanish before their eyes. They had so many to pray for and nobody to pray for them.

Instead of simply praying for the ones who will live...I am praying for the ones who will never be. The ones I assumed would be part of my legacy...building back the numbers of my tribe that has been so decimated by disease, war and poverty. The ones will never pray for me.

Instead of simply praying for the ancestors who created me I pray for the ones who never created decedents to pray for them. The ones who were not among the 14.

All those for whom the circle was broken and those whose circle never began.

Yesterday was my CD1.



Kaptsu mistu sumoqino (Have faith always)