One Fine Morn

Growth is a painful process.

—Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee

On one fine morning in the summer of 1997, after having spent some three years or so inching my way into the Native America powwow culture, I was invited to a Native American religious ceremony, and without knowing what I was getting myself into, the word yes flew right out of my mouth.

I was introduced to the world of powwows through my first wife, a woman of Lakota decent, who had been raised by an Italian family and discovered some elements of her heritage through majoring in Native American studies in college. It was through random invitations from friends that we found ourselves regularly attending powwows on the weekends.

While there are many non-Indians who feel a certain drive to learn from, be a part of, and gain acceptance by Native American people, I don't think I have ever been driven that way. Yet I recall my first two powwows distinctly for the radical difference in culture that I observed and found highly compelling. The starkest contrast I saw to the modern culture I grew up in was the complete and total integration of all ages into one collective social gathering and celebration. I observed children barely past the point of having taken their first steps dancing around in a circle alongside teenagers, adults, and elders well into their eighties, all together with one unified drum and song. I found it beautiful, and it felt like home.

At my second powwow, I watched a coming-out ceremony performed for a young boy who was coming out as a northern traditional powwow dancer. The ceremony was conducted by a man I assumed to be a father or uncle, who took him around the circle, stopping at each of the four directions, who leaned down to speak softly into his ear, appearing to convey some great teaching or wisdom. Then as the drumming and singing started, the boy danced around the circle alone, as the official coming-out as a young man and a dancer tasked with maintaining the traditions and respect for the old ways. Watching this young boy dancing in a large circle for all to see with such grace and dignity was moving.

I was very much taken by this simple rite of passage. I observed what seemed like a deep respect from everyone present for the importance of what was taking place; a hush fell over the arena, with focused attention and a seeming mutual understanding for the experience of a lifetime for a young boy discovering his path in life.

This cultural unity and identity is what attracted me to powwows and compelled me to seek more of it. I knew then of how so many non-Indians attach a certain romanticism to Native culture, possessing an image of a proud people riding swiftly on horseback with the wind flowing in their long hair, feathers draping gracefully from hair and clothing, made of buckskins and beads. Personally, the only Indians I have met like this lived in Southern California, had headshots and agents, and mostly worked as extras in the film business.

The Indians that I have known have been as varied as any other culture I've experienced, and yet most, but not all, have possessed some similarities that I have continued to find enjoyable and enriching, such as a sweet and playful sense of humor, a slow deliberative way of communicating, and an intuitive sense that land and respect for it are extremely important, that elders are people to be highly regarded, that Little House on the Prairie is really good television, and that family and lineage is how a person identifies one's self.

I made friends in the powwow circuit, some become close friends, and one in particular, a Comanche brother named John, phoned me on that one fine morning in the summer of 1997 to ask if I wanted to take part in an actual Native American religious ceremony. With drumming and singing and God knows what else, I had no idea what was in store for me. And what I did not yet know was that all that I thought I had learned about their culture, their ways and values, was only scratching the surface; that simple coming-out ceremonies or their sense of humor or even their pride in lineage could not begin to shed light on the depth of purpose and values that are so deeply engrained in their culture. I could never have imagined the journey I was about to embark on, what was in store for me, and the life that was to flow from dedicating much of my life to their spiritual ways and teachings.

So there I was, several days later, sitting in this ceremony, referred to in the casual sense as a house meeting—a meeting yes, conducted in a house yes, but really a ceremony with roots that stretch back for thousands of years as far as we can tell, with ancient songs, use of natural elements such as sage and cedar, a drum, a gourd rattle, tobacco, and lots and lots of prayer.

There was a man affectionately referred to as the sponsor, who provided the purpose for which we were gathered together to pray, who was suffering from a life-threatening disease. There was a roadman, who conducted the ceremony; and a fire man, who maintained a fire outside the house and continually brought coals in, from which cedar was burned for purification. There was a drummer; a water woman, which I didn't really understand at the time; and some thirty or so other people, all seated in a circle having come to pray for the sponsor and blessings in their own lives. Many were Native, but most were not.

We started right at sundown and continued all through the night until a couple hours past sunrise. We did not sleep or eat. We sat on the floor in a circle on folded blankets and struggled to keep focus on prayer and song, without conversation or distraction.

The experience for me was nothing short of completely miserable. My feeling driving home was that those people were crazy to want to go to such ceremonies, experience such sacrifice and physical discomfort, and then to go back again and again as they do. Yet the peace that came over me in the days following was indescribable. Somehow, and in rather short order, I developed the desire to get back into another ceremony. I called my good friend and started inquiring about the next ceremony.

What I thought of myself at the time of my first ceremony was that I was a very spiritual person, as I had always had an inclination in that direction, had studied many different philosophies, had practiced and learned about many different traditions, had read all kinds of self- help books, and had meditated, yet I had never really understood what prayer actually was until that first ceremony. Miserable as I was through long hours of focus, with my back, butt, and legs in pain, dehydrated, nauseous, and with a headache, something happened for me, something I could not quite define until a few years later, something profound and powerful; and yet it would be another ten to fifteen years before I came to fully understand what the road I had taken was and where it was leading.

Thus began my most amazing journey of self-discovery, transformation, and happiness.

In Parallel

Dissimilar things were fitted together to make something beautiful and whole.

—Nippawanock, Arapahoe

In parallel to my journey in the world of Native American spirituality was a gradually advancing career in the business world. I was young in business at the time of my initiation into Native American culture, and outside of a desire to work in and around sustainability, I had no sense that a parallel purpose could potentially exist. As it took me many years to discover my purpose in Native spirituality, it took equally as long to discover its parallel to my working life.

Graduating from college in 1990 with a degree in criminal justice, I initially thought of continuing on to law school, and for many reasons, not the least of which was the glut of lawyers in the market at the time, I decided instead to launch a plastics recycling business. Four years into that project and out of capital, I jumped into investment sales, thinking that that would be exciting, but for me it was not. Then I bumbled around in various sales jobs before landing a position at a big-city newspaper.

I worked extremely hard at the paper, received several promotions in my first two years, and wound up producing their large-scale consumer festivals and trade shows for the next nine years. Having launched a start-up, sold investments and business-to-business products, understood contract law and finance, I came to the newspaper business with an inordinate amount of knowledge of how business works, yet lacked many of the critical social and people skills necessary to be effective on all levels.

It was shortly after joining the paper that I attended my first Native American ceremony, and so my journey at the paper, being hard and messy as it was, paralleled my development in the tepees, sweat lodges, and house meetings. It was gradual at first. I experienced small imperceptible changes in my way of relating to the world and my relations with people. Over time, my personality shifted, along with my values and ethics, and in the process I found that I had become really good at my work. Then I realized that the improvement in my work had more to do with the frequent trips I was taking to the Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, and time spent with the elders, teachers, ceremonies, and being immersed in the culture, than from my business experience itself.

This was a crazy realization, as I felt like I had my feet in two completely different worlds and that the two worlds were incongruent. I realized what I was discovering was that all that does not work about the business world is really what is incongruent with tribal cultures with a strong connection to Mother Earth, and all that works beautifully in the business world is actually very compatible.

With this realization, I continued to progress on both fronts, seeking career advancement and continuing with the ceremonies and teachings from my Native relations.

I was recruited in 2008 by a boutique event company in North Carolina, which was great timing as I was at a stage in life where I felt the need for some big changes. So I left my California ceremony community and moved across the country. I also left behind a long and difficult marriage and a job that I felt had become stagnant. I took on the role of selling sponsorships to green and sustainability-related events, doing business development, formulating strategy, and managing a sales team.

I had my Navajo brother Daniel come out from Arizona to live with me for a short time. We built a sweat lodge and held ceremonies. We spent a great deal of time together, which enabled my training in the Navajo traditions to deepen. I also traveled around the East and Midwest attending more ceremonies and connected with ceremony communities in North Carolina.

Moving to North Carolina was a great transition and provided me the opportunity to ease into more substantial life changes that were to come shortly after my relocation. In the three years with the boutique event company, I continued advancing my knowledge of Native culture and spirituality, and also grew immensely in business savvy. Yet again, I have to credit the work I was doing with indigenous culture and spirituality for the ways in which I advanced in capabilities related to my work.

In the summer of 2011, it became evident that it was time for me to fulfill more of my purpose and self-expression in the working world by branching out on my own and serving more than just one company. So I launched a consulting company and began the work of even more deeply discovering my true gifts to the world in relation to the work that I do.

This process of career self-discovery could never have occurred if I weren't in parallel, deeply advancing my understanding of my purpose related to my indigenous practices. By this stage in my life, the two courses and their inextricably linked nature had become self-evident.

At Its Core

To be able to greet the sun with the sounds from all of Nature is a great blessing, and it helps us to remember Who is the real provider of all of our benefits.

—Thomas Yellowtail, Crow

The parallel I experienced in my walk with indigenous people and my work in the business world can be described in relation to the core purpose for our work in general. For example, how many of us would continue in our present line of work if we just came into a large sum of money? Most, I think, would promptly quit, or at least radically change the nature of their work. We try to work at things that we generally like. Some are lucky enough to work at things they truly love and are passionate about, but more commonly, we work to make a living.

While ego gratification can serve as a powerful motivator guiding us in our work, for some it is the accumulation of power and control that drives them. Yet on a basic level, we are dealing with livelihood, the method of our physical survival in life.

This purpose of basic survival is not incongruent with Earth-based cultures; they just perceive a different paradigm around how to go about accomplishing livelihood, and it is precisely this paradigm that is the focus of this book, along with the underlying intention and intrinsic core values that drive their way of being.

Simplistic as it may sound, it is important to make the distinction that what we do at a core starts with the motivation of generating a livelihood. So too with the values reflected in tribal-based cultures; they are also about living, livelihood, and perpetuation. What we all hope for is a kind of life and work that supports our happiness and good health emotionally and physically, feels at least somewhat meaningful to us, and brings about prosperity and abundance.

I would ask the reader to consider this exploration to be a process. As we are dealing with core cultural differences, and as culture serves as a framework of beliefs and behaviors that bind us through commonality, contrasting cultures and understanding the value in their differences requires us to be willing to think differently. Even if only for a moment, we must imagine, what if the world were like this or that; or what if the axioms that we assume are valid are only so because we believe them to be; or what if a radically different way of life could actually be enjoyable, or at least no worse than the one we have; and so on.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." So I would ask the reader to follow along, enjoy the ride, and seek to channel a little bit of Fitzgerald in the process.

Beyond the value of grasping a radically different cultural perspective and learning from those differences, there is also the possibility of transforming the very paradigm, the model for our active engagement in the world, which can bring about success, fulfillment, and happiness on a level never before imagined.

I believe you can.

Indigenous Principles

Search for the truth. Indian values teach the holistic approach to the use of technology for mankind's good.

—Al Qoyawayma, Hopi

Five years or so into my immersion into Native American spirituality, having taken many trips out to Native reservations, participated in dozens of ceremonies, and been adopted into a Navajo family, I found that I was changing on the inside in a subtle, almost imperceptible way. I found that I was becoming calmer, more patient, and wiser in my interactions with people. I still had a long way to go at the time, yet the changes were becoming manifest.

A few years after this point, it started to become more clear that the very principles that underlie indigenous culture were permeating into my thinking and way of being, that I was finding a direct applicability of these principles to the business world, and that they were empowering me to a less chaotic and more effective, fulfilling, and successful business career.

Beginning with the most basic of all indigenous principles, one that spans cultures from one end of the globe to the other—that we are all connected in a fundamental way to Earth—we could, in fact, stop right here and explore this one concept and its implications for our life, and find the topic to be vast. Yet there are many deeply profound and powerful principles shared universally within the realm of indigenous cultures, each of which provides far-reaching implications for a new paradigm of how to live our lives, be with our families and our communities, and conduct business.

For this exploration, I have selected thirteen indigenous principles (twelve in section II, and one in section III) to examine and digest, and have attempted to maintain a largely secular approach to indigenous culture so as to allow these principles to be palatable to the largest possible audience.