Beneath the securities of good nights and safe houses, lived fear. Fear dressed in Existential fangs always sat at the outside waiting to get in. The sweet smell of apple pie and coffee seemed a good enough shield to the elephant that sat in at the edge of the room, flicker of flame and wax. Shadows have always lurked beneath the savory light of ‘everything’s fine if you send hopes and prayers.’ Then one day, everything changed. Not the flash of atomic light we dreamt of in cold war beds, terrified with nightmare, and the comfort of mothers floor. No, it changed the way you would expect a tad pole to become a frog, unseen but heard for miles across platforms of social distancing. The veil became thin, and the emperor ran across abandoned golf courses, naked and scared.
Photo: Patricia Halleran
This had always been the dream, the liminal birthing canals connected to the ethernets of the universe, tearing illusion from its perch.. the Eagle remembered it was an Eagle and tore apart his jingoist ways, for a chance to taste the flesh of Salmon once again. The metaphors painted slow motion chrysalises, sparked from the time outside of time, where dream and awake fancy dance on early morning vistas.. or perhaps, it is the prayers of Ghost Dancers awaking the Ancestors for aid. The realist thing about this, is that it is not real. It is not matter. It can not cast shadow, or shine light, yet sits on the edge of hills, threading and weaving, a silent killer. A silent reminder….
Pay attention to what the frogs have to say, they may have all the answers we need.
‘The vision, however new and culturally unique, is translated back into a traditional oral format: the new within the old, reflecting the tenacity of oral tradition.’
“Magic in the Mountains: The Yakima Shaman: Power & Practice”, by Donald Hines, 1993
Grandma Shirley and the songs of forgotten dreams.
The stratosphere of my story is woven with so many American heartbreaks that my DNA seems permanently tuned to Patsy Cline’s “Fall to Pieces.” In these broken pieces, I’ve fought to carve out a sense of belonging—some place amidst the ruins of a well-fought war. My grandmother used to tell tales of family woes and heartbreak as if they were the very fabric of our shared ancestry.
Grandmother’s voice was golden—a place where she tucked away her secrets. She was a siren, luring you across a smoke-filled room with her sultry sadness and rough-around-the-edges charm. She found God in the holy waters of honky-tonks, at least until children and the rapture of everyday life claimed the sanctuary of her dreams. She traded in “Strange Fruit” for a father she thought she’d found in the dogmatic catacombs of Kingdom Halls. Still, she always shared that part of herself with me. She told the racy stories, grasping her hands like prayer, a nostalgic exhale slipping through the blinds. With me, she felt safe—a place to whisper her discontent with choices that turned her from the Old Ways of our blood. She saw the fire in me and tried to pass on the Ceremony. I ended up finding it myself. I found it in metal.
Laying down screams for my band, Cathartes Aura in 2019.
There’s resonance in the tonsils, a release of primal force summoned from the swamps of modern life. Here, a feral wind releases its shadow, storm clouds clash against the shores of volcanic words, and violent air rushes through smoke-strained cords. The buzz of amplified sound becomes a harbor for Armageddon, spinning chaos into a kind of bliss. The drums thump, quickening the trance—an anxious war waged on flesh and heart. This is what metal means to me: a padded cell of my own, where trauma is brought to the chopping block for visceral release.
When I was young, my world seethed with the wonder of nature—the gilded peaks draped in mist, ancient trees resisting the chainsaw’s hum, rivers meandering in dramatic silence as forests fell like rain. These landscapes were soundtracked by stereo speakers blasting Black Sabbath, by motorcycles, Iron Maiden, skateboarding, and punk rock. I’d listen to quaking mountains scream like thunderbirds in 4/4 time and distortion, summoning visions through a haze of psychedelic experiments. (I believe my ancestors used mushrooms as a kind of message in a bottle—or, more accurately, a cap.)
I felt the anger and confusion of being cut off from my ancestors and the spirit of place, forced to bow to an anemic god who never had our Mother’s best intentions at heart, feeding us a diet of forgetting. Old stories would rise up, speaking of days lost to the corpses of progress and manifest destinies, as sweaty bodies slammed together in a prayerful trance. It was redemption from the plagues—at least for a little while.
The Cascade Range, where it crosses the Columbia River, exhibits enormous cross sections of lava, and at its base are petrified trunks of trees, which have been covered and hidden from view except where the wash of the mighty stream has exposed them. Indians have told me, of their knowledge, that, buried deep under the outpours of basalt, or volcanic tufa, are bones of animals of siah , or the long ago.
Where Gods live.
Traditions of the great landslide at the Cascades are many, but vary little in form. According to one account, the mountain tops fell together and formed a kind of arch, under which flowed, until the overhanging rocks finally fell into the stream and made a dam, or gorge. As the rock is columnar Basalt, very friable and easily disintegrated, that was not impossible, and the landscape suggests some such giant avalanche. The submerged trees are plainly visible near this locality. Animal remains I have not seen, but these Salmon-eating Indians have lived on the river’s borders through countless ages, and know every feature in their surroundings by constant association for generations, and naturally ally these facts with their religious theories. (MacMurray MS.)
“Mary was born at the Cascades in 1854, in the “Moon of the Falling Leaves”, October. Many Indians did not know what year they were born, much less the month and day.
Matriarch.
Mary’s mother was Susan, a member of the Wishram tribe. Her father was Tomalth. * (Amanda pronounced it “Tum’uth”.) He was the 6’4″, red-haired chief of the Cascade tribe of Chinook Indians.He was the son of Chief Stilgat of one of the tribes at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Mary was only eighteen months old at the time of the Battle of the Cascades, in March 1856. After her father was hanged by order of the U. S. Army, Mary went with her mother and other family members back to the Wishram village.
In the 1870′s, as the young widow of Henry Will-wy-ity, a Wishram Indian, she traded a team of horses to Kenzy Marr for 160 acres of his donation land claim at Marr’s Landing. Here, at the end of the present lndian Mary Road, her brother built for her a nice wooden cabin.”
Old photo shows “Indian Mary” Stooquin, right, with daughters and a friend. From left is Nellie Arquette Miller, 18, a friend; Amanda Williams, 14; Abbie Reynolds Estrabrook, 7; and Mary Will-wyity, 40. Photo taken at Moffett’s Hot Spring about 1894.
Many felt that a dream had led them to Standing Rock in 2016, myself included. Many spoke of how it felt like their Ancestors had nudged them awake, as if the Earth was rising in a chorus of resistance.
Turtle Island, November 2016. | Photo: Si Matta (H a v e n)
Time stood still in the liminal spaces of the day to day of camp life… and the ritual of living was a Sacred space.. one worth defending.
I was at Standing Rock, because I felt I needed to gather and bear witness to what was happening there as relatives put their lives on the line to defend the Sacred. I was there to bear witness to prophecy and resilience, and the meaning of dreams and place. I was there for my own Ancestors, and the future generations. There was a collective joy and togetherness in camp, that many of us felt ripple through our hearts, melting intergenerational traumas to the ground. We all felt that fire in our hearts!
I share this video I made, to show more of that feeling of what it meant to be there. I have tons of riot footage, and footage of anger and despair, but I wanted to show that, even though they tried to break our Spirits, we were remembering what it meant to be human.
This is no ordinary Bridge! This is a Bridge that spans more than just 706 ft, it spans time itself. This spot, a vortex of memory, a portal to the Gods, a gateway to the mountains of fire.
Bridge of the Gods, 1926 & 1912.
As a child, I always thought it was funny that we would bridge the Gods via, a car. But as I got older, and I walked the span alone, the wind would rise and flap like a Thunderbird all around me, and I knew then why the Gods called this Home. I would look down, 140 ft below me, and see the old Cascade Rapids straining against the stagnant waters of the 21st century, as the Ancients laid in silent wait below. I knew why I called this Home, where water is blood, and Gods do roam.
From the Oregon State Archives “A 1940 Journey Across Oregon”:
“… SHELL ROCK MOUNTAIN, 136.9 m. (2,068 alt.), is opposite WIND MOUNTAIN, which is in Washington. The Indians believed that the Great Spirit set the whirlwinds blowing in constant fury about Wind Mountain as a punishment to those who, breaking the taboo, had taught the white men how to snare salmon. …”
My auntie, Virginia Miller’s canoe in the shadow of Wind Mountain. Edwards S. Curtis photo.
This is a photo of my hometown of Carson, Washington taken in the year 1925. The domed mountain in the right hand side is Wind Mountain. Growing up, I could see Wind Mountain directly from my bedroom window. I would get lost in daydream, which is a pretty common occurrence for me, and wonder how my ancestors revered and interacted with this landscape. What was it about this mountain that made it holy or sacred? Was it because of it’s stand alone features in the middle of the Cascade Mountain range? Was is it because of the sacred mineral waters that bubbled and boiled in her shadows? Or, was it because it could have been where the actual land bridge, known as the Bridge of the Gods, could have crossed the mighty river? – And Who had the first Vision on her lofty peak? Was it Coyote?
Growing up, I could see Wind Mountain directly from my bedroom window. I would get lost in daydream, which is a pretty common occurrence for me, and wonder how my ancestors revered and interacted with this landscape. What was it about this mountain that made it holy or sacred? Was it because of it’s stand alone features in the middle of the Cascade Mountain range? Was is it because of the sacred mineral waters that bubbled and boiled in her shadows? Or, was it because it could have been where the actual land bridge, known as the Bridge of the Gods, could have crossed the mighty river? – And Who had the first Vision on her lofty peak? Was it Coyote?