Crisis: Turning to Intuitive Traditional Wisdom

Florence 3 (See more of Florence’s story below)

When Florence fell and broke her hip, her daughters immediately called for a helicopter. They assumed that she would take the helicopter to a hospital where she would get proper treatment. Florence took one look at the helicopter and told her daughters that she would never get in that “thing” because it was not safe. Frustrated, her daughters urged her into the helicopter, but Florence kept telling them to put her in the truck. They argued back and forth until they saw black smoke coming from the helicopter’s engine. Florence’s daughters looked at her and said, “Mom, you’re a witch.” Florence smiled and said, “You just take me to the hospital in that truck.”
Florence says that Lakota children learn to sense danger. She fears that young people without traditional knowledge won’t have the ability to know what to do when they are in danger. Traditionally, the young in her tribe hold sacred knowledge and are able to warn even the elders of oncoming danger. She remembered how Tony was looked after by animal spirits when he had to walk twelve miles from the river to get to school. She said that he told her that two coyotes followed him all the way. She said that this meant that he would have a good life and that they were watching over him. One coyote might have meant that he was in danger of an early death.
Florence worries that the conditions or the reservation are interfering with their sacred knowledge. She preserves these traditions by carefully choosing when she tells Lakota stories. She holds the knowledge for the people in her tribe. When I asked her to tell me traditional Lakota stories that help the young learn what to do when in danger, she coyly said, “We only tell those stories at night.”
She ignored what I asked, but told me the story of the day tornados struck the reservation in 1999. She said that some of the young ones in the tribe knew the tornadoes were coming before anyone else knew. They called as many people as they could, trying to warn them of what was about to happen.
“When the tornado came, we just didn’t know what was happening until the wind blew through the door of our house, and by then it was pure white, and we couldn’t see anything. I remembered that someone had told me that she was in a tornado and it sounded like a train coming, and I heard that train. I ran to the phone to call my daughter, but before I got there, the wind threw me over, and I was on the floor. Up to then, I still didn’t know really what was happening. I got myself up and looked outside. I saw that my son-in-law had been badly cut, and they couldn’t find my daughter who was hiding somewhere with her nine month-old trying to protect her. When we found her, she was holding the baby so tight we had to pry her arms loose to get her to let go. Sherri, my daughter had a broken pelvis from having been knocked down, but she protected the baby. Though I was hurt, I stayed here and my daughter went in the ambulance since there wasn’t enough room for both of us. Two days later, I couldn’t sit up. I was badly hurt with broken vertebrae and a toe so badly broken that they had to amputate it. Many people got hurt. One man broke his back. One man, an older man, got killed. One of the trailer houses just disappeared. No one could find it. This group of trailer houses was all destroyed. For a long time, we didn’t have houses. We all had to go and stay in the school. We were praying during that time. We didn’t know what had happened to everyone.”
“Out here you have to be strong for each other. I worried about Denise and some of the people out here after the tornado. For a while, they had no plumbing or nothing. It took a long time for us to get the help we were promised by the government and people had no place to live. We just have to hope that someone will remember us. No one came to help for a long time. Sometimes help happens though when we least expect it. Once a woman from New Jersey, someone Tony met, sent Christmas presents for all the children. Sometimes when you don’t even expect it something or someone helps.”
Florence in her way had told me a traditional story of how nature brings the unexpected and can wreak havoc or goodness. It is the children, closest to nature or to the spirit world who know this wisdom and see what is coming. The adults are often witnesses to a life over which they have little control. Kindness, respect, and spoken truth, values if lived by, offer the best chance that anyone has of having a good life.