Living by the Word

Living by the Word by Alice Walker

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Authors: Alice Walker
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trial—Dennis had been sentenced to prison for three years—and after I had returned to San Francisco, I was asked by Bill Wahpepah to join the program of a fundraiser for the International Indian Treaty Council, of which he was director of information. One of the things the Council does is connect Indians of all continents with each other; today, because of people like Bill Wahpepah, indigenous peoples from New Zealand to Nicaragua are talking together, sharing their experiences and struggles. To my mind, this is one of the best things happening on the planet.
    To his surprise, I think, I said yes. Some of Bill’s style is expressed in his letter to me about the event. “Dear Alice,” he wrote, “we have this idea of asking you to read with this man, John Trudell…” Enclosed was a tape of John’s work. An incredibly powerful and sensitive poet, whose family had been firebombed to death in retaliation for his activity in the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, John moved me profoundly, as did the beating of the ceremonial drum over which he read. I was delighted to read with him. On the night of the event I asked Bill if it would be appropriate for the drums to sound for me, as well. He said “sure,” and invited the drummers to drum as I read. There were six of them around the large drum, and their steady, ancient drumming seemed to reawaken in me the very beat of my nearly dormant poet’s heart. I knew that my spiritual reassessment had reached another plateau and that my political hibernation was over.
    Bill and I were to work together several times before he died. When I learned he was not well—he spoke many times about the earlier years of his life, when the use of drugs and alcohol constituted his response to despair—I invited him and his family to visit with me in the country. Actually, that expression “to visit with” is Bill’s. The first time, he came with his wife, Carol, and the boys, Renchul and Choko; the second time, he came alone. I was not there—for some reason, it was always hard to synchronize our “visiting”—but a friend who stopped by tells a lovely story of Bill blissed out, naked as a jaybird (presumably), splashing about in the pond. It was during that visit that he planted tobacco seeds in the garden, very neatly and with their own little staked fence. (They never came up; when I asked Bill about them he said he’d gotten them from some old-timer on the reservation, and, no, he had no idea why they didn’t come up. He knew very little about such things, he said. We laughed at this admission.) He hung tiny “medicine bundles” of cedar, with wrappings of red flannel, from trees in the yard and over the front door. I was left also with a substantial supply of sage, some of which Bill had burned in an abalone shell, which still retained the residue. This was rather wonderful: to walk into my studio after Bill’s visits and to find these unexpected gifts, not the least of which was the smell of sage smoke. I always think of the place where I work as holy; Bill seemed to sense that instinctively, and, indeed, we once had a brief conversation, if I remember correctly, in which I told him that I’d come to understand my work as prayer, and he said he understood his the same way. I always felt very comfortable talking with Bill about prayer and Mother Earth and the spirits that, if you are open to them, are ever present. He had such empathy with the suffering of the Earth, as Belvie always said, that when he spoke about her you thought it was some human being he knew.
    On his last visit to the country he looked very tired and his eyes were sad. We sat on the deck above the garden, and he said a touching thing: “I want my children to continue to know you.” I thought he said this because, the afternoon before, I had been out along the road and pond sowing wild-flower seeds with them, and laughing; like their father, they didn’t seem to have much faith that anything

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