Wolf. Wow! My goodness sakes. I was wondering when this was going to happen. There's an amazing thing that happened. Nobody ever did things like this for me before, ever. I got my hair cut by a person we had known for several years. And, very connectedly, he put something in my hand. And it was a crystal. I said, "Oh! Thanks." Very much like this.
I put it in my pocket. Touched it. Thought about it. I'm from the west. Crystals and medicines of the west. What am I going to do with this? Swan washed it four or five times. She told me "Don't leave stuff in your pockets!" But, the little crystal wasn't hurt. She always saved it at the right moment! Well, we went to a book store. And in this bookstore were maybe eight people who showed up, because they didn't do any advertising. They forgot we were coming!

Swan. We had been in bookstores where maybe 200 people showed up, and we walked in and there was maybe eight. We were pretty shocked!

W. Well, first the woman said we didn't have to speak. I said, "Yes, I do." Can you imagine if I came to Estcheemah (Wolf's teacher) and I'm only one and she said "You're only one? Get out of here!" So, these eight are meaningful people. And some of them just stopped by because they see a guy with a gray cowboy hat on. So, they sat down and listened.
It was a very intimate talk. We talked about Medicine Wheels. And, they could ask me intimate questions, like, "How come she picked you?" "Were you different than other people. Were you somehow shining?" This one woman said, "Did you glow in the dark?" I said I kind of did, because I am a survivor. And Estcheemah would wait for people who came to here who were survivors. And she (the woman in the bookstore) said, "Wait?" And I said, "Yea, I'm using that word particularly, because in her case, as a woman, she could not go out and say: This is a temple, and I am a great and wondrous person!" So, only the people who had some sense of Spirit would ever get to her. That's a... kind of a wonderful thing. So, I had some sense of Spirit. But, she was still unsatisfied, that lady in the bookstore, and she said, "What kind of sense of Spirit?" Well, I said I thought my sense of Spirit was "searching." And, I think that Medicine people like that. They look for that little "search."
But, I think about what if she wouldn't have been there. Perfect questions! Maybe I would have found it at the ocean. To me she was the ocean. And we continued the talk about many of the things you will hear tonight. And, after the talk, this woman walked up and said, "Please, could you give me something? I'm going in to have a terrible operation and I need something." And, I gave her the crystal and she took it with her. The operation was perfectly successful. We found out that there was an 80% chance of it not being successful. So, from a hair dresser who cared, to me, and Swan washing it four times, to its place. So, this will go to its place right now

Rick. Well, I've kept it for a while and it's time to pass it on ...

W... the sense of these things is important. People will read my words on a page...all these ordinary words we have. However, the words I also add are "Earth" "Self"...you can be with Mother Earth. Then people will have an immediate question: "How can I be with Mother Earth?"
Even though we're breathing with Her every minute, we still believe that this restaurant is separate from Life, from Mother Earth. But, if you can't pray sitting in a restaurant, then what? Remember that old apple pie little bit of propaganda where it has this Christian man and Christian lady. We've all seen the picture (Norman Rockwell.) Heads bowed down and they're praying in a restaurant. It's letting us know, because there's crosses all over them, that they're Christians, so to speak ...
Estcheemah would say "Why are you so angry with those people? They are praying."
Wolf: "It's fake!"
Estcheemah: "It's what?! I beg your pardon! What is this anger?"
She would make me look at the anger. Well, I found out that I wasn't angry at the people who really prayed. I was angry at the people who pretended that they pray in a restaurant like those people in the picture. In other words, some of the preachers I know would never do that unless they have a huge audience. Those people in that picture, Estcheemah said, wouldn't have an audience. The picture is saying there is no audience for these people. She said "Look. Is there anybody else in the picture?" She said, "They have only one audience. Spirit."
"Who are you?" she said "To be so angry with the Moslems, and the Buddhists, and the Christians? Fight 'em all. Go on. Make enemies of them all." I said, "I don't want to make enemies of them. I don't even know who those people are."
She said, "I'll tell you who they are. They're your uncle, your aunt, your cousins...your extended family. Don't get angry at those people. If you're going to get angry, get angry at the propagandists."
I had never heard the word "propagandist." This was a reservation...I was young. Propaganda sounded like something a tire would do if it went flat (all laughing). She was speaking Indian, then all of a sudden this English word. "What does that mean?"
Now, that I'm 60 years old, I know, as a teacher, at that second, I put her on the spot. "What does that mean?" She couldn't refer me to an encyclopedia, or lexicon, or dictionary, because that wouldn't have meant anything to me. But the amazing thing she did was ask "How many words did you look up in the dictionary that weren't there?" Every boy in the world looks up that certain word ... (all laughing) ... and the certain word wasn't there. She said to me, "Now, what if you put the word there? What if you had the power to put that certain word there for all the little boys to see? What would you say?"
"I would have to say that it was...magic...and beautiful...and promising." I said.
"Not bad, not bad. I'm surprised," she said. "Say that in English."
I said that in my native tongue, but to say it in English, it suddenly became very hard. Promise wasn't quite the word meant in English. I was stumbling all over myself. I then realized in that second, that English wasn't a true language for me. It wasn't an expressive language. But the word I was looking for (in the dictionary) she said was not in the white man's tongue. "That's a white man's book your looking in .. .it's not in there. Now, come on. What are you going to do?"
"I will have to make it something good...and something powerful...and something that will have meaning," I said.
"You're a propagandist!," she said. I began to see instantly what propagandist meant! It's not the words we're taught, it's the propagandists who follow up and say they mean other things.

R. Where have you been for the last fifteen years?

W. Well, I dropped out of the world of teaching. I taught at the University of Iowa and at the University of Manitoba, Canada. I had been a guest speaker at many universities, colleges, and reservations. Places like that. I did not continue working at a lot of those places for two very complicated reasons.
At the time I had published Seven Arrows, the world had never heard of Medicine Wheels. Of course, there were experts who immediately set upon me personally. The personal attack on me was never on any information that I had given. Because the information, of course, was Native American ....

R...the fact that it was given at all?

W...yes, I'll get into the fact that it was given, because I think it needs to be handled, as the controversy did exist. The controversy was over me being a "breed." They never did attack what I said...they attacked me personally. The way it came out is very racist. If you take all the arguments and put them all together. I was just a little bit too white to be able to have the authority to speak about anything at all that was Indian. Breed Indians cannot do this, because I'm not brown enough. That was very difficult for me to answer, so I chose not to. I continued to work.
You have to also understand that the tiniest fraction of Native people in America, maybe six or seven people, were vociferous...and loud about me. Some of them were not even native people. I'm thinking of some character from San Francisco who wasn't even Native American. He's long since been made a fool of.
I felt, and knew, that in time there would be people who would investigate my work, and they would be scholars. One is from the Goethe Institute (Frankfurt, Germany) ... Dr. Ernst Payer, who wrote the dissertation on Seven Arrows. They spent thousands of dollars...and time...seeing whether or not I was a charlatan and seeing what existed in Seven Arrows. The dissertation does exist, and anyone reading this article can write to the Institute and get a copy. Anyway, the beauty of this is amazing...again!
I just wrote a letter to Dr. Payer. What's very interesting is that Dr. Payer did the translation of Seven Arrows and he did a beautiful job. Well, I knew of the controversy...and we became great friends...but I had never known he wrote a dissertation. I was traveling all over and my mail was floating all over the country. I was trying to take care of it and also handle suddenly being in the public eye...I was a construction worker...a "nobody," know what I mean? All of a sudden I was in the limelight, and I didn't know how to live that way. So, anyway, I learned of the dissertation later.
What's also amazing, for anybody who's reading this...and I share this because everybody needs to know that time goes by, and we grow up. We become adults. I wasn't an adult, really...I had written Seven Arrows when I was in my twenties. And then, in my middle thirties it was published. In your middle thirties you're not ready for things like that. I needed time to mature...to get a hold of everything I had learned. So, I'm not the same person sitting here. Sixty year old Wolf, that was doing all this 30-some years ago. It's not the same at all.

R. Having gone through all you did with Seven Arrows, I thinks it's interesting you went ahead with Lightningbolt. What occurred that made you want to tackle this again and make yourself vulnerable again?

W. Well, you'll notice my books aren't just tossed off on a whim. The reason is that I have to live my material to write about it, and then it takes time to write. What I discovered back in the late 70s, soon after my book came out, was that I was becoming a part of a genre of people that I really didn't want to be part of. Not that I didn't want to be a part of the people, some were really beautiful people. I'm talking about the way things were done. The way some of the people were involved with it. I didn't want to be caught up in the "jet-set medicine man" business. Of course, that hurt me financially, but I didn't care, because my career was more important to me than money. So, I dropped completely out of that seventeen years ago.

R. When did you actually start working on Lightningbolt, then?

W. Well, the first thing I discovered in getting older, in my forties now, was that all of Estcheemahs contacts, all of her apprentices, all of her people, were getting old. Very old. That shock made me realize that I had to get in gear, so to speak, get my machine back moving, to see these people before everything was gone. That meant that Swan and I and my son Falcon had to do a lot of traveling. As an example, my son and I went to the far North, almost to the Arctic Circle, to work with dreamers up there. And be in ceremony with them and learn a lot of things. And, we had to do these trips more than once.
Swan and I had to go as far as Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, seeing all these other people who were getting very, very old. That takes time. You don't just say "Let's go around the world now!" You have to plan for this, you have to work for it.
In the meantime, my son and Swan and I, and a very close student at the time, Osprey, we decided what we would do, because this is not a one-man operation, so to speak, is allow a certain amount of people to collect around me. I couldn't do this through the university, though the university is a wonderful place to be, but let's say the direction, the form that exists in a university, is not the same as we could have on our own ranch. So around 22 people, with their children, gathered around me in the early 80s.
What I did was I concentrated with all these people on the Medicine Wheels. However, when you have that many people around you, and they're isolated out in the country with you, there has to be a way of feeding them. None of these people were wealthy. I wasn't wealthy. I did something that worked. I did it through prayer.
I'm an artist. So I started teaching all my students art...to have a craft. First, we were like a small craft industry. Some of my students, at the time, were on food stamps. But no one was on welfare. Within two years, all 22 of my people were independent! Financially independent. That is one feat I'll give myself a pat on the back for!

R...if I can just get one to do it, I'll be happy!...(all laughing)

W. Not only did this work, but I was able to utilize this craft and art to focus my people on the Medicine Wheels and Mother Earth. Of course, we had ducks, chickens, geese, cattle...all these real things in life...we were ranchers. The people didn't have to pay rent because we owned the property. That was all a help. I say this because I like people to know about real life...real Mother Earth. The fact that these things work through prayer, and sometimes we have to "chop the wood." All these things are important.

R...it makes it available to the rest of us. We can do it, too...

W. Right! That's really what I'm saying to you here. We took our work from craft to fine art. You will see some of these tonight. Many of my students are now world famous artists. All of my students make their living through fine art. No more craft.
We have, through the International School of Metis Art, a part of our organization that goes beyond the borders of the ranch...people in Italy, people in Germany...also mixed blood heritage; metis, meaning mixed blood, who are part of our circle. In other words, you can be part black, part Asian, part American Indian, part anything you want to be, and your a mixed blood person in our book.
My students know about the Medicine Wheels. Why? Because if anything happened to us, the Medicine Wheels, and what we know about them, may die. We had to save that.
Lightningbolt, even though a lot of people will think it's an enormous amount of information (530 page, 9 x ll hardcover), and Seven Arrows, it's only part of the other five volumes I have written on it. I just haven't been able to publish it.

R. Do you intend to?

W. I don't know if I can or not. Publishing houses are funny. They want things that...they want. It takes a lot of effort to make something readable for the public. This is almost scholarly. Some of it would be "boring" for the public. Teachings of psychology and psychiatry, modem words I'm using. Our Chiefs did not use (these words) in the kivas, but were certainly well versed in these things. I have five other volumes of that information. Also, I haven't been able to publish my children's stories in this country, and I've had to publish things in Europe that I couldn't get published here.
The publishing business in America, and I'm not trying to make an enemy of it, also have their hands tied. They're under enormous pressure to do "A, B, C, and D." So, it's not that they're saying to me "We don't think it's worth it." It's the opposite. Ballentine is very much our friend and thinks our work is worth it.

R. It seems you're trying to build a bridge to all cultures. What has been the reaction now from the Native American community to your willingness to share the teachings, not the actual inner workings of eremonies, but the concepts and teachings. Any feedback since Lightningbolt?

W. When you say "Native American communities," you're talking about some complicated issues. Let me say that 50% of the Native people we are in contact with are not satisfied with how much I have done. They think that I am being conservative. I am not being conservative and maybe by reading this article they can see I have not "drug my feet" as some of them say (laughing). A person can only do so much and I have utilized all of my personal wealth and health, everything, to get this done. And, I will do more, which is why we are on the road right now. They will see much more of me, I promise.
As far as the people who are "against" me, I hear there are, but I don't know who they are. Whenever I question certain Indians about it, they say "Well, it's those people saying it"..."It's these people saying it..." There's a lot of finger pointing, and so forth.
What are they criticizing? They're criticizing" some very strange things. They're saying what I have said is just pure bunk. The other side of the same people say that I'm giving away sacred secrets. So, they haven't got their act together too well. But, that's always the way it is whenever any information is brought out about any culture. Tennessee Williams, I think, wrote on the South. At first, the South didn't like it. They thought he was a bad guy. But, the rest of the South enjoyed his work. Said he didn't do enough (laughs).

R. Let's move more directly into something I know is a very important aspect of what you're doing; Mother Earth herself. We've interviewed quite a few people in the last two years who are very interested in this topic from many different perspectives. Some have said we may have gone beyond the point of no return (environmentally). Do you have any sense of where we might be with this...

W. Anybody who speaks of the "end of the Earth," or their end ... they're probably right. Even if tens of millions of people were to die, humanity would endure. The Earth would endure. The only thing we are saying, we should say it in a different way,is: do we really want to lose our loved ones? Do we really want to lose what we've loved so much? What we are endeared to. Do we want to see our civilization totally destroyed by greed and this kind of madness? I think a lot of times, right out front, we should say things like that. I think that the word "environment" is not a good word, because environment doesn't say "life." We should be "life conscious" instead of "environmentally conscious." So, a lot of this stuff has been conservative, in that sense.
What do I have to say about the end of the Earth? I think that everybody who dies has come to the end of their Earth. But, can we lose our civilization? Yes, we can. What will do it will be pollutions. Will people endure? Yes.

R. But, not as we know it.

W. And not very many.

R. What are your views, then, on population expansion?

W. That same fact. We will experience in our time, this same kind of wild onslaught that generations before us have experienced, through Civil Wars, World Wars. All these awful wars, where millions of people died. Those things, even though they're social and human balancing and change, we will now be going through famine...flood...disease...all of these awful things. And, we're going to have to get ready for it.
All of the old chiefs that Swan and I ran into just in one little place in Mexico, all said the same thing. Especially in one place, the Otomi Indians, they're called. They're real psychic people. They all said: famine, flood, death through disease, destruction, pollution. It's coming. Yes, China can go on from 1.3 billion, then to 2 billion, and on. But, then all of a sudden, they're going to be down to 2 million.
All of the work in the world trying to control disease is not going to save us. We're going to have to control population. I think we need to get the voice of women into politics, into decision of where to put schools. Where to put all of these things. Women are very much an important part of what our world is, and we have not had that. We have not had anything like that for the past 2000 years. Once women are back into politics, churches, the communities, we're going to have balance.
Once we have women and men talking together in a balanced way, not 40-60 and all these little games, but balanced, then you'll have balance back in the community.

R. Some have suggested that the environmental crisis is actually a spiritual crisis. How do you see it?

W. I wouldn't put it in those same words. Many people don't realize we are spirits living in a physical world. And, we're in this physical world to learn and to grow. Then we're growing back to "death," spirit. Too many times people are not given the understanding, very directly, that the way you join the Great Spirit is you have to die. You come from "death," you're born into life. When you talk about spirit, you're talking about death. You have to go back to death to go back to spirit again. This is left out of a lot of religions. It's just not said out front. We need to say it out front because we are spirits living in a physical world for a very brief time.
If people began to realize that in this little bit of time we have, that we have to grow to know who we are, and then we begin to cherish life in this substance world, and cherish what is given to us by creation Wakan, Sskwan, Creator Father and Creatress Mother, then we become conscious of ourselves living in a physical world. And why we're here. Then you begin to respect what life is. Then, the word "environment" just doesn't quite do it anymore. Now, you have to say "life." Mother and Father Life. Because, now it's intimate to you. So, I would be different in what they said because I think of it more intimately. Remember, I'm a Pagan!

R. It reminds me of the statement of April Horse: "Appreciation of Life is the most honorable of all tools of the mind." Which causes me to ask, first: do you believe it is the natural state of the human to love?

W. No.

R. What do you think our natural state is, then?

W. It's the natural state of the human to respond to love. To feel love. I had to learn that. I was a child who was thrown out in the community because I was poor. I was a homeless child. Not an orphan. My mother was too poor to care for us. So, we floated from one Indian family to the next. Through all those families, I experienced different kinds of love. I learned of that love. We also have to learn about our own love. I had to experience a love for myself. It took many years to do that, because at first I did not love myself.
So, I don't think this thing we call love is so automatic. I don't think we just inherit it because we took a breath. I think we have to win love. And we do that through understanding.

R. So, if we grew up in a "perfect" supportive culture, that wouldn't guarantee the individual would be "loving."

W. The child in that perfect society may be loved by parents and be given an enormous education. And be the biggest rat born! Because that child did not learn love or how to respond to love. It's a learning situation, love is.

R. Presuming that all the crises in the world today are the result of a collective spiritual or respect for life crisis, yet knowing that getting society as a whole to see it in those terms would very difficult inside of any meaningful time period, if not impossible, what do you see as the quickest, most direct route to bring these ideas into social consciousness?

W. Did you ever notice that a fire drives everything before it? So does a flood. Those are two places on the Medicine Wheel: East, Fire and Spirit, and South: Flood, Emotions. These have been driving human beings for many centuries. (laughs) If you'll notice that the mind is North: Wisdom. It's also cold-bloodedness, so to speak. Notice that the West is Body, the care and nurturing of our Earth and body. These things are Life. What we have to do is not say that A is against B, C against D. (The points on the Medicine Wheels are not in opposition, but are complementary) This is more of this thing I was talking about. Separating out. Diablos.
Life is the witness of who we are. We cannot hide from that. Life is part of Wakan and SsKwan: Creation. Life knows exactly what we're doing, so you can't sit on the judges stand and make believe God doesn't know about the decisions we make in our courtrooms. None of these things can be hidden. And so, knowing that Life is your witness to creation is a big little item. It can be a burden or it can lift you up. Personally, I'm lifted up by it. And, it's made me kind of a better person, because of it.