Water, Water, Water!

When I was a boy, about five years old, I told my sister, Tinker, I wanted to learn to swim. We were at a beach, at Godfrey's Pond. It was a local swimming pond  near our home in LeRoy New York. Tinker was laying on a blanket on the beach reading a book at the time. Dad and Mom were getting a picnic lunch ready. My brother was up the beach at a deep water end of the pond with his friends. Tinker didn't say anything and got up. She waived to me to follow her and said, "Come on!" We waded into the water until I was up to my neck. I stood there waiting for her to tell me what to do. Tinker didn't say anything. She simply put her hand on my head and pushed me down under the water and held me down. I struggled but she would not let loose. Finally I went down deeper and out from under her reach. When I came up a few feet away I started to cry and yelled at her. "Why did you do that!" . She simply turned and started walking back to the beach. As she walked away she said, "Now you can swim." . After that I swam like a fish!

I often think of that time when I think about the water. Then I think about how people use the water to anoint one another. In most traditions a form of blessing includes anointing with water. In a sense that is what Tinker had done. 

Finding stones in the water

Many years ago I attended an Ojibwe medicine ceremony. It was my first time going to such a ceremony. I met an Elder the first day and sat at his fire that night. His name was Austin and he told me: “Tomorrow you need to go down to the beach and walk up to the point a few miles from here.  As you walk, watch the water and you will see two grandfathers in the water.  Gather those grandfathers and take them with you when you go back to the east.  They are waiting for you and they are to be your teachers.” 

The next day I was at the ceremonies watching all the things going on.  The sun was high and it was getting hot, so I decided to take a break and go for a walk.  I figured that this was as good a time as any to walk down the beach.  I climbed down the embankment about 150 feet from the top to bottom, took off my shoes and began to walk down the beach.  It was a beautiful day and the water was calm and clear as glass.  There were groups of stones here and there in the water.  I was not sure what a grandfather would look like or if I would recognize one if I saw one.   The stones on that beach were all different colors, sizes and shapes.  They were so pretty that I couldn’t resist picking some up for my kids at home. 

While in my thoughts and collecting the rocks I had walked nearly a mile down the beach.  I glanced out into the water and saw a beautiful round gathering of colored stones.  The gathering was perfectly round and looked like a beautiful table top with all imaginable colors. I stopped and walked a few feet into the water and looked closer because it was such a pretty sight.  Then I could see, right in the middle of the gathering of stones, a perfectly round stone about two inches in size.  I walked out a little further and reached down into the middle of the gathering and took that stone, that grandfather.  I held it in my hand and I looked at it and I couldn’t believe how perfectly round it was.  I noticed that all around that rock there was a line as if someone had carved it outlining into it exactly a straight cut all the way around the stone.  I thought to myself, “This is really an amazing stone.”  I then continued to walk down the beach and I looked even harder than I had before but there was nothing there. 

Eventually I reached the point a few miles down the beach from where I started and I turned to walk back.  I was walking back and was about halfway.  I could just barely hear the sound of the water drum at the ceremony and knew that another person was being inducted to the medicine society.  I looked into the water and again I saw another beautifully colored gathering of stones.  This was the same as before but further out in the water.  Again in the middle of those colored stones was a perfectly round stone looking as if it had been placed there on purpose.  It was a beautiful round stone, a little bigger than the one I had found before and the line wasn’t quite as deep that traveled around that grandfather.  I had to go waist deep in the freezing water of Lake Superior this time.  I reached down and tried to keep my head out of the cold water but could not reach the stone.  Finally I put my head under water and reached for the stone. 

Years later I wrote the book, "Walking Spirit in a Native Way ~ White Mocs on the Red Road". I shared the manuscript with several Elder's for approval of what I had written. After all, I was talking about things they had gifted to me. One of the Elders was Josephine Mandamin. She came to me a couple days after I gave her the manuscript and asked, "Did you put your head all the way under water to gather that stone?". I told her I had. She then told me that I needed to publish my book.

Watching the water ceremony at Bad River

 A few years after finding the stones in Lake Superior I was at another ceremony. It was a winter ceremony. Before a ceremony the women will gather to make a water offering to bless the ceremony that is to take place. This year they made the offering on Bad River in Wisconsin. The river was frozen over but one could see wet spots on the ice. Under the ice, the river was running very fast and the ice was not safe. I remembered when I was young and living along the Oatka Creek how people would skate on the creek and fall in and drown on the thin ice. Being concerned for the grandmothers walking out to the middle of the river on ice, I found a long pole and walked out adjacent to them about twenty five feet away. The grandmothers each made their water offering and walked back to the shore as I watched. When that was done, the lead grandmother for the ceremony completed the offering. Then she called over to me and asked me to approach. She told me to bend down close to the hole in the ice and she took hold of my head and gently pushed my head into the water for a moment. It was an acknowledgment for being a protector of the grandmothers and the ceremony.

Water, Water, Water! 

Water is not something to be taken for granted! Josephine walked to the four directions of Turtle Island to bring attention to the importance of the water. Acknowledge the water!