  
 |
Forrest Borie, our man in the Sierra Nevadas reports . . . “They were talkin’ about water babies. They heard a splash up by the swimming hole, saw them little footprints,” IM says to the other Elders gathered around the card table. It’s the second Elders Committee meeting, which I am facilitating for its infancy. “There’s another story about a tribe of three hundred Indians up North. Bigfoot took them away to a secret valley.” There is an air of reverie in the room. “Myths, what the white people call them, right?” IM says, putting a piece of cheese on a cracker. She is unfazed that, I, a white man, am sitting beside her. Her face is stoical. I admire the way her skin is textured like the land, with sandy divots and wrinkles like valleys. Her eyes are moist and sharp like two still pools and her complexion is deep and dusty. IM continues: “they say that the lost tribe is filtering back into California, coming up in all these tribes…” I wonder if IM is suggesting the psychical return of the missing tribe. The consciousness of Bigfoot (or Stickman as he’s often called) and the secret valleys will wash over the Mono Indians. This is contradictory to the didactic secular Anglo-American reality that stifles the culture of the Mono Indians. The Mono way of living encompasses everything from food preparation to spirituality into the same cultural system. Each practice is reliant on others. There is a right way of doing things and everything is done for a reason. Early on, when I was looking for ways to preserve the tribal culture I ran into the roadblock wherein there was no territory that was less sensitive. Even erecting a sweathouse, something I figured was more about architecture than anything else, required a long sequence of practices that would extend well into the next year. The Rancheria I work on is in a hole in the otherwise sinuous topography of the Sierra Nevada foothills. With mountains on all sides, this community of around one hundred and twenty California Indians is windless and dry. There is a Baptist church by the Tribal Offices. I have never seen anyone go in or out. The Sierras rise impassably on the Eastern side of the congregation of double-wides and for sixty miles halt the flow of civilization, their bald rocky tops breaking from the deciduous pine. With such physical hardship, stories of rapture, of Stickman and water babies offer psychic support in an up-hill battle to maintain traditional tribal culture. Recently LB, a friend of mine down there told me about a footprint he’d found in the mud hole. It was over two feet long. For the Mono, Bigfoot is real, but not in any way that would elicit a cryptozoological study. He is one piece of a greater spiritual structure. He is an elemental, I suppose you could say, and as LB once described to me: “He’ll be there and then fffffff,” he hissed through his teeth and waved his hand to suggest the sudden disappearance of the entity. “Leaves behind a rainbow up in the sky. Goes to a new place.” Leave a Reply |
