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 Editorials | Issues | March 2008 
Native Americans On "Longest Walk 2" to Grand Canyon, Colorado
 Darrin Mortenson - t r u t h o u t
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| | The activists struck out from San Francisco on foot on February 11 and say they hope to reach the nation's capital on July 11. | | |
Beale Springs, Arizona - When northwestern Arizona's Hualapai Indians got in the way of the Anglos' westward expansion in the 1860's, US soldiers rounded them up, penned them in and forced survivors to march some 100 miles across the desert to a reservation far from white commerce.
"We became strangers to our own land," said Loretta Jackson, the tribe's current director of cultural resources, who says the tribe now suffers a scourge of alcoholism and health issues, encroachment from rampant development and invasions of their sacred sites.
It's a story familiar to Native American tribes across the continent, and one of many such stories now getting a fresh hearing as activists of the American Indian Movement once again take the "Longest Walk" across the nation from Alcatraz, California, to Washington, DC, visiting the Hualapai and other tribes and spotlighting Indian and environmental issues as they go.
Traveling in two groups - a northern band of some 40 hardy souls now entering snowy Colorado, and a southern group of about 100 trekking across the Arizona desert near the Grand Canyon - the activists struck out from San Francisco on foot on February 11 and say they hope to reach the nation's capital on July 11. Once in Washington, they plan to deliver Congress a "manifesto" relating what they learn from tribes and other Americans they meet along the way.
"We're messengers," said Larry Bringing Good, a 53-year-old former US Marine and long-time Indian activist. "Our message is that all life is sacred."
Bringing Good, a tall, dark Cheyenne-Arapaho native of Oklahoma, was among members of the southern group this week who met with delegates of the Peach Springs Hualapai reservation near the town of Kingman, Arizona. Their roadside camp in a dirt lot behind the local American Legion post was rustled awake at 4 a.m. by drumming and chanting of Japanese Buddhist monks who march with the group. After breaking camp, they gathered to hear Hualapai elder Emmett Bender bless that day's leg of the journey before they moved on foot toward the Grand Canyon.
"You know what I want to see? I want to see everyone dance," said the 85-year-old Bender in a shaky voice, obviously moved by the visit and the chance to share his tribes' concerns with the walkers. "Just like Martin Luther King, we'll walk like brothers and sisters," he said.
Shaking a gourd to an ancient beat, Bender led a short traditional song before the walkers headed east on Highway 40. From there they walked about 15 miles, a distance boosted to about 100 by a select group of "spirit runners" who relay the estimated 100-plus miles a day that both groups try to log so that there is a "footprint on every mile," as one of the walkers put it.
In spirit at least, "Longest Walk 2" is a commemorative reenactment of the first "Longest Walk" in 1978, at the height of the American Indian Movement's strength and notoriety, when the then-militant AIM and its leaders topped the FBI's counterintelligence agenda. As thousands converged on Washington that summer as they completed the 4,000-mile trip, the original group managed to garner enough moral momentum on its journey to help defeat legislation that would have further eroded Indian control of their reservations, and they helped push legislation protecting Indian rights.
Dennis Banks, a founding member of AIM who served time in a federal prison in the 1980's for his part in protests during AIM's violent heyday the previous decade, led the original walk in 1978. At 75, he now leads the southern group quietly and without warrior bluster or revolutionary rhetoric. With him as guide, the journey seems less a protest march and more of an educational tour that takes in all comers of all colors; at each stop they learn a little and teach a little as they meet with locals and then move on. They also pick up hundreds of bags of other people's roadside trash along the way.
Banks and other leaders say the support and newcomers they've received along the way have confirmed that their simple and ancient message resonates across the land. So far, they've been invited to stay at private ranches, local campgrounds, temples, gymnasiums and Indian reservations, and have attracted curious locals at each stop.
Among them are Curt Warren, 71, and his wife Jean, non-Indian residents of Golden Valley, Arizona, who said they saw the walkers along the Colorado River near Bullhead City, Arizona, and stopped to investigate.
"We got to talking about taking care of the earth and all that," said Curt Warren, "and the more we talked, the more I got to thinking. And I said 'yeah, this is what I believe anyway.' They're right and they're gettin' out there and doin' something about it."
Not able to walk with the group, the Warrens helped out by shuttling some of the activists around to meet with local tribal leaders.
"We're a moving community," said Emmett Eastman, 76, a tall, silver-haired Wahpeton native who has traveled with Banks and other AIM leaders for decades and has strode the trail of the "Longest Walk 2" since it left Alcatraz. Translating his native name as "His Many Lightnings," Eastman said he wants America to listen to their message.
"Take care of your health. Take care of your environment. Pick up your trash," he said while slurping down a juicy orange at a brief rest stop this week. "The message we're carrying for the country, for the world, really, is that yellow, red, black and white, we're all involved; so get involved! And we want to plant the seed in the minds of the governments to be peaceful, not warrior-like."
After forming a circle and chanting a prayer led by a Buddhist monk, Eastman and some 45 of his cohorts were blessed by a medicine man burning a sage stalk and then stepped out again along the highway shoulder, some of the group beating drums and others holding feathered staffs in the lead. They and their logistical caravan of cars, vans and a converted school bus that serves as their chuck wagon are heading to the Grand Canyon this week to meet with members of the Havasupai reservation. From there they'll go to Flagstaff for a week-long series events meant to attract Native Americans and environmental activists from the whole region.
Compared with the group traveling the northern route through snow-covered Utah, they've had it relatively good. The 30-40 men and women on that northern route, which more accurately retraces the original 1978 route, have struggled through snow and steep mountain passes but should reach Colorado in a few days.
Still, those walking in short sleeves through the Arizona desert this week say the trek takes dedication and heart, and they hope more people will join them for the journey.
"I knew this was a sacred walk and a spiritual walk," said 59-year-old Margaret Morin, a Chumash native and grandmother who closed up her apartment in Bakersfield and put her things in storage to make the journey.
"I had to come. It was a calling," she said. "Every step we take is a prayer."
More information on the Longest Walk 2 can be found at www.longestwalk.org. |
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