Sweat Lodges in Wisconsin - IN WINTER....BRRRRRRRRR!

Doing Sweat Lodges in Wisconsin - IN WINTER

Doing a sweat lodge in Wisconsin in winter.

Although doing a sweat lodge can be challenging in any climate, there are some peculiar challenges for the the hearty Wisconsin lodgers.  Although I've never put a thermometer in a sweat lodge, it is HOT!  The heat sucks the fluids right out of your body.  In contrast, Wisconsin winters can and usually ARE brutally cold.  It's leaving lodge that's the challenge.  Your body is hot and full of sweat and the air outside is sub-zero.  Lodges are small and low to the ground so we crawl out on our hands and knees.  When we pop out, we become instant pop-cycles.   We are standing in snow, steam rolling off our bodies like line-backers in a December Green Bay Packers game.  Hair freezes immediately.  For the women (in a traditional lodge) their dresses freeze like bells around their bodies.
In our tradition, we all stood in a line till everyone was out and then we were "wiped down" with a feather fan before we could dash to the house in the snow, fingers and toes turning numb as we awaited our turn.  I'm not sure why, but in all of the lodges that I attended were at least a half mile from the house.
I'm sure there is great symbolism in the contrast heat and cold.   But having described it, I'm too cold to talk it.

Dedication: CJ Doxtater, Robert BJ Jones, Mildred Schuman, Richie Plass, John Cappert, Nikki Cappert, Vern American Horse, Bill Miller, Louis Webster.

My First Sweat Lodge INIPI Ceremony

So the invitation was before me to attend my first Inipi Ceremony (sweat lodge). "What am I supposed to bring?"  I live in Wisconsin and it's the dead of winter,  20 degrees below 0 windchill.  "Bring your swimming suit and a towel."  OK? At that time Sandy and CJ Doxtater lived in a farm house outside of Black Creek, Wisconsin.  The beginning gatherings were very small.  Sometimes it was just me, Sandy and CJ.  Sometimes we were joined by CJ's brother and later others would join the hearty Wisconsin band. 
CJ couldn't keep a beat on the drum and couldn't carry a tune.  Sandy was a classically trained European descendent who sang like an opera singer.  I knew nothing.  BUT, the songs were belted out with the gusto of a drunk polka band from Polaski.  The words were in the Lakota language and our pronunciation would have made any Souix roll over in his respective Teepee.  What the little group had was heart and spirit. "Wiyokpayata Kaya!" we would sing, inviting the spirits from the various directions to join us.   I'm sure the Lakota spirits woke from their respective directional abodes wondering what the hell the sound was.  But they must have come because these were some of the best lodges that I remember.
CJ was under the tutelage of Basil Braveheart from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  He would traverse to the Black Hills region often to bring back the new (ancient) teachings to the rest of us  newbes gathered in the circle.

Dedication: CJ Doxtater, BJ Blackwolf Jones, Mildred Tinker Schuman, Vern American Horse, Richie Plass, John Cappert, Nikki Cappert.

CJ Doxtater

The Gentle Teacher

This Gentle soul,  CJ Doxtater was the first was the first Elder to cross my path.  How he came to me is a story in itself.  Back when I was in the addictions counseling business (1990's) my friend Tim Haukenness (also a counselor) would speak of his Native American teacher.  Tim was Native American blood (Ojibwe) but not tribal...same as me.  In the strange world of "qualifying" for tribal membership through blood quantum, both Tim and I fell below the line.  According the Bureau of Indian Affairs standards, you must be 1/4 of one tribe in order to qualify.  I don't know Tim's blood quantum, but mine was 1/8 Cherokee and 1/8 Meskwaukee, which would NOT qualify for tribal enrollment.  But for those of us who are Native American by blood but fall below the blood quantum, there remains a longing to be part of the tribal experience and there is something in most of us that longs for Mother Earth Spirituality.

One day Tim was offering tobacco to mother earth and praying.  I asked him where he learned to do that.  He said, "From my Native American Teacher."  I asked, "How did you get one of those?"  His reply?  "I prayed."  He then showed me how to offer tobacco to Mother Earth and pray.  I started to do this daily with no real expectations.

About a month later, I went to a Psycho-therapy conference in our city (Appleton, WI) and there I met CJ and Sandy Doxtater.  We hung out together at lunch time.  During lunch, CJ invited me to come to their home to experience my first sweat lodge.  That was the beginning of the journey that has lasted to this day.  It became my introduction to the Red Road, -- the spiritual path of Native America.
Dedication: CJ Doxtater, Robert Blackwolf Jones, Mildred Tinker Schuman, John Cappert, Nikki Cappert, Vern American Horse, Richie Plass.

My Connection to Native America

NATIVE AMERICAN

It was Ragani who said to me, "Dennis, don't quit being who you are to become a chanter.  Bring what you have been doing and who you are with you."  I had already produced 6 CD's with with a Native American flavor, so she suggested that I roll that right into my Kirtan and yoga music.

Why Native American?  My mother's lineage is colorful and far more complicated than my father's.  He was of German descent via Pennsylvania and Ohio who ventured to Northeast Kansas in the mid 1800's.  They were all farmers,--a very hard working bunch.  I have the original Hawk dinner bell that hung from the windmill to call the farm workers for lunch and dinner when they were in the fields.  Tracing my father's family was easy.  All I had to do was go to the little town of Effingham, Kansas.  Most of the people buried in that cemetery are relatives of mine.  There are huge marble grave markers with H-A-W-K engraved on them.   Everybody in Atchison County where I grew knew of the Hawks.

CHEROKEE

My mother was born Ellen Lee Marie Willis.  Her mother was a Guthrie from Scotts-Irish Cherokee descent.  There was a fairly large group of Scotts-Irish Cherokee who made their way from the Oklahoma Reservation prior to and during the Civil War.  Some of the Southern Cherokee owned slaves and the tribe sided with the South during the  Civil War.  In protest (and fear for their lives) my Scotts-Irish Cherokee ancestors made their way to St. Joseph, MO.  There's actually a street on the south-side of St. Joseph, MO called Cherokee Street.  One of my great uncles on the Guthrie side, who was a piano tuner, lived on that street.  We would go and visit him when I was a small kid.  The Guthrie name is still prominent on the rolls of the Southern Cherokee.  As far as blood quantum goes who knows?  The Scotts-Irish had been intermarrying with the Cherokee since the 1600's.  The Cherokee didn't make much of blood quantum however.  John Ross, the principle chief and hero during the Trail of Tears when the Cherokee were force-marched from their homes in North Carolina and Georgia was only 1/8 Cherokee.  He would not have qualified for an "Indian Card" today.  Here are a couple of really poor pic of my grandfather William Guthrie.  One of my great uncles on the Guthrie side told me that we are part of the same Guthrie family as Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land.  Maybe?  As one of my musical friends responded, "That would explain alot Dennis."  Ha!

Great Granpa Wm Guthrie is in the back row.  My mother, Ellen Lee, is in front with her head in her hands.

Looking European and being a Cherokee descendant is a tough gig.  It has to do with this phrase (one that we Native American musicians have heard over and over) "My great grandmother was a Cherokee princess."  The Cherokee princess is simply not true because being a prince or princes is a European title.  On the flip side of this issue, the Cherokee tribe was huge in comparison with the others in America, numbering 40,000 people in the early 1800's.  After the Trail of Tears, the tribe became scattered throughout the country and intermarriage was common.  Many people died on the trail of tear with estimates of up to 4,000.  There were many more who simply got off the trail.  Others hid in the woods and mountains of Georgia and North Carolina.  But to this day, if you ARE a Cherokee descendent and Creator chose to paint you white? You WILL be  diminished by other Native American people.  As Kathy Miller from the Stockbridge-Musee band of Mohican's once said, "You can never be enough Indian."

MESKWAKI - THE KEEPERS OF THE RIVER

My grandfather was Meskwaki/English.  The Willis name is English.  My great grandmother (the stern one in the picture below) was Meskwaki.  Her maiden name was Moutry. {Often times Native American people would take on Anglo names to avoid discrimination, or names were given to them by the American Government simply because the soldiers couldn't pronounce the names that Native people called themselves.  Native Americans were also given European names to make them more "civilized" in the eyes of the European invaders.  A third reason for name change was to give "Christian names to the "heathen."}

The Meskwaki were pushed from the East coast to the Detroit area and then shuffled with the Ojibwe to Wisconsin. (circa 1650)  They were of the same language group as the Anishinaabe Ojibwe.  Eventually (about 150 years later...early 1800's) they ran for their lives with Black Hawk's band to what is now Iowa.  Then they were herded  off to a Reservation located near Topeka, Kansas called Reserve, Kansas.  Meskwauki were  the "keepers of the river."  They were misnamed 'Fox" by the French.  'Keepers of the River" meant that they would charge a tariff for safe passage for the French fur traders who used the rivers for commerce.  The French didn't like this agreement at all.  The French King put out an edict of extermination on the Meskwaki.

There was a large village (over 8,000 Meskwaki) on Little Lake Butte Des Mortes near what is today Neenah, Wisconsin.  The French came up the Fox River from Green Bay (the Fox River is one of the few Rivers in the US that runs from North to South).  The French had just obtained shoulder-held cannons from the home land.  They disguised themselves as a hunting party and came near the shore.  Many tribal members came out to greet them.  The french soldiers pulled off the tarps and started firing their canons.  The Menomonee tribe had aligned with the French and they attacked from the West catching the tribe in a cross fire.  So many Meskwaki were killed that day that they piled them in a huge pile and put dirt on their bodies in this mass grave.   Thus the name of the Lake - Butte des Mortes (the hill of the dead.) The year if this massacre was 1730.

Ironically, even though I was born in Northeast Kansas, I presently live about a mile from this site an often take walks across the trail bridge that spans Little Lake Butte Des Mortes.  The earth cries in that spot.

My home town was Aitchison, Kansas located between Kansas City and St. Joseph Missouri.  I've never strayed far from the river.  Ironically I married a Mohican (Stockbridge-Musee band of Wisconsin).  The Mohicans are "the people of the waters that are never still"

Dedication: C.J. Doxtater, Robert Blackwolf Jones, Basil Braveheart, Migiizique - Midred Schuman, John Cappert, Nikki Cappert, Vern American Horse.