SENTIENT TIMES April/May 2003

Walk In Peace

By John Darling

At the Solstice and Equinox celebrations that go on for several days in Ashland, it’s like stepping back into some combination of rock festival, country fair, mountain man rendezvous or pagan tribe gathering.

Except there are no drugs or alcohol, the music is mostly Native American drum and chant, and it takes place in a meadow west of Bear Creek, near Valley View, which according to wispy, surviving legend was a Takelma sacred ground for birthing and ceremony.

In the logbooks of the earliest white exploration party, a Takelma woman was seen on this spot setting fires, which burned up through the hills. The explorers said it was an aggressive ploy, meant to drive them away. But ethnography revealed it was meant to clear out the scrub, making a park-like environ, so the Takelma could walk, hunt and gather foods freely.

Today, it’s called Wellsprings, a natural hot springs and gathering spot dotted with tipis at the seasonal holidays, a place where you find yourself relaxing and getting high on the beat and rhythm that went on here centuries ago—and for tens of thousands of years before that—honoring Mother Earth and the endless round of tribal life.

It’s the creation of Walk In Peace, an organization started five years ago by Steve Traisman, to stage summer solstice cele-brations and a Fall Equinox Country Fair, featuring town meeting, craft fair, dancing, bands, workshops, yoga, prayers and ceremonies, drumming and chanting—all leading toward eventual fulfillment of an ancient Indian prophecy that “all nations would come together to live in peace.”

Traisman is a tall, lanky, thoughtful, quiet man who speaks in the measured, respectful tones absorbed from eight years living with Native Americans in Nevada—and from countless hours in sweat lodges. In front of a microphone, this equanimity takes a back seat to a rough, plain-spoken outrage that often unsettles listeners.

“The First Nation people (Native Americans) suffered a holocaust equal or greater than the Jews,” said Traisman, who is Jewish. “Fifty to 100 million of them have been killed over the last 500 years. It pains me deeply. But now the holocaust is happening against all of us. We’re doing Walk In Peace to learn alternatives to this Babylon—this very toxic system that is American society. I’ve lost four family members to cancer and my mother has ovarian cancer now. The air and the water are poisoned. One of the many things I learned from Native Americans, is that we (whites) are the privileged class and, as such, we have the most responsibility to change things.”

This year’s Fifth Annual Solstice Celebration, June 21-22, will be held in conjunction with many World Peace and Prayer events around the world and will feature messages of peace from many reli-gions, including First Nation, Buddhist, Jewish, Islam and Christian. Peace activist and author James Twyman will sing songs of peace from many faiths.

The event will focus on building peace between the genders and creating an economically livable future by shifting off a fossil fuel footing—with its war-engendering needs for Mideast oil—and on to more environmentally friendly sources, such as industrial hemp, which, Traisman said, has the potential to put a lot of unemployed loggers and farmers back to work.

World Peace and Prayer day was begun by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, following the birth of a white buffalo calf in Wisconsin in 1994—an event signaling a big shift to a higher level of consciousness and com-munity leading to world peace.

“That’s the long-range vision of Walk In Peace,” said Traisman, whose writing is published in Shaman’s Drum magazine. “We envision buying land and creating community with a closeness to the earth, so that eventually small agricultural com-munities might pop up. We are very social beings and we need community. The nuclear family is an experiment that failed. It’s put all the pressure on the parents, or a single parent, and they’re stressed out trying to pay the rent, insurance and bills.”

Adolescents in our culture have few rites of passage beyond drugs, sex and drinking, often in a car that will bring about the death (sacrifice) of some of them, said Traisman, who, as a youth crisis counselor in Nevada, used to take “carloads” of teens to sweat lodges.

“I know it saved the lives of several of them. It’s like changing the dial on a radio to classical or jazz. The spirits come in and heal. The spirits are attracted by the cedar, sage, drums, prayers and the beauty of the ceremony. It’s an ancient purifying ritual that invokes earth, fire, air and water. Your thoughts manifest in the world as beauty and consciousness and it gives people hope for the future.”

Traisman, a doctor’s son with “the best education money could buy,” woke up suddenly to his mission in life when, at Northwestern University, he read Doug Boyd’s 1974 classic, Rolling Thunder, about a Cherokee Medicine Man. From there, he went to a traditional Native American community called Meta Tantay (“Walk In Peace”) near Carlin, Nevada.

“I didn’t find any spiritual juice growing up as a Jew in the suburbs. I’ve reconnected with Judaism now but it’s only when I got around Native Americans that I began to sense my purpose. I’ve learned a sense of community from them. Community means, well, like when an old person is not able to get out of bed, someone brings them wood and water.

“What community isn’t is when you relocate Indians so you can mine their land. Or you ignore poverty and injustice and don’t see that they stand in the way of peace—like we’re doing in the world now. That’s why, this June at World Peace Day, the stakes are so high.”

“We can create a way of life to replace the way of death we have in this country. If 10 people are committed to peace, they’re more effective than 10,000 who are not. Ceremony, music, drumming and praying teach the ways of nature and of the earth—you’re never more alive than when you’re doing that.”

Cruising through the sunny and raw late winter landscape, fresh and raw ourselves from a sweat lodge, Traisman speaks of his gratitude for First Nation people, whom he feels informed and opened his spirit, not just to what it took to save his own life, but what is needed now to guide the dominant white culture out of its thicket of materialism, isolation, “soul anemia” and disconnection from the great mother, who wants only to teach us the ways of peace and community that First Nation people practiced for 50,000 years, right here on this land we drive over at 75 mph.

“The ancient prophecies of the First Nation people said white brothers would come from across the sea and be their friends,” Traisman said. “That’s why they welcomed us and taught us how to hunt and survive here. Then we commenced to wipe them out. But they never gave up on us. It’s inspiring to me that they still love us and are willing now—once again—to share the spiritual knowledge we need to survive.”

Walk In Peace, a non-profit organization, is currently seeking grants from the Oregon Jewish Foundation and other sources, as well as volunteers for future events. Please contact Steve Traisman, (541) 535-1398, 220 Rapp Rd.#32, Talent OR 97540.

John Darling is an Ashland writer, essayist and counselor, and a frequent contributor to the Medford Mail Tribune, Ashland Daily Tidings and a documentary writer with Southern Oregon Public TV.

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