If you have not yet heard, my friend Pete Seeger passed on
to his last journey from this world yesterday. He was a good friend to all native people (Floyd Westerman
also appeared with me telling stories at Pete's Clearwater Revivals) and for
nine decades a singer, storyteller, fighter for working people, for equality,
justice, peace and a healthy planet. In his song “To my Old Brown Earth”, Pete
asked us not to cry, but you and I know that crying is a good and healing thing
that allows our feeling our strong and deep emotions. The words of Ecclesiastes
that he set to music say that there is a time to mourn, and we may take time
for that now. Sadness is important
also to share.
It was not unexpected, of course. When I visited them last spring Toshi was much reduced and
Pete was taking pains to include her in our conversation but it was clear that
dear sharp energetic Toshi would not be long with us. And that would mean, of course, that after 70 years
together, their lives being so entwined, neither would care to hang out very
much longer without the other half.
The occasion of my visit was to give them my latest book
Have You Lost Your Tribe? because of the brief memory of Pete I included at the
end of the chapter on “The Rainbow Tribe.” I left soon, not wishing to take up their time together, and
I doubt now if Pete even had the time to check out that part because I failed
to mark it.
Now I am realizing that I spend quite a bit of my free
musing time in writing letters to them in my head, explaining what I am doing
and telling them how their example has helped to fuel the work with people that
Ellika and I do. Not wanting to
add to the great volume of correspondence that they would be receiving, I
actually sent those thoughts very seldom and visited even less. And of course after the fine memorial
for Toshi at Ethical Culture I have been thinking to check in once more with
Pete but this time put it off too long.
My friendship with Pete Seeger began 38 years ago at a one
of his concerts (I know the time because my oldest son was in his mother’s womb
at that concert and when Pete played the banjo she said Tokeem was dancing!) my
old friend David Amram introduced us, and the first thing Pete said to me was
how much he loved Indians when he was a boy. I stayed in touch during my tenure as an editor of Akwesasne
Notes and when we formed a community in New Hampshire later our whole community
would go to the Clearwater Revivals to do the recycling while I was telling
stories at Story Point.
Following my elders advice to go wherever I was invited, my
path led me to Europe, where I met Ellika and most of you who are reading this
have kept our connection through community building camps and family camps that
we have led for 30 years, now in 12 countries. Most of you have watched as I showed Pete’s story, The Power
of Song, and you know what an inspiration he has been to me for maybe 60
years. You have heard me say that
his integrity and unflagging zeal for peace and justice and compassion, for the
Earth and all our animal and plant relatives was unequaled by any public person
in America. He did not care to
sing solo but always enjoined all present to song together, and his attitude
was encapsulated in his remarks that we must change the end of “Over the
Rainbow” to remind us that none of us will get to our vision of a world fit for
humankind until all of us can go together –“If happy little bluebirds fly
beyond the Rainbow, why can’t you and I.”
As you all know, I am just 10 years younger than Pete, and I
really hope I have another 10 years in me because our community building is
only just really getting started and I have at least another 10 books to write
and add to the 10 I have perpetrated already. I am slower, but I will keep traveling until I have to stop
and let you come to me. Lucky I am
to have Ellika to hold me up and keep me in line – as I say in a poem to her,
,”insisting on vegetables and seat-belts.”
So wherever you are now, join in a chorus of Pete’s that we
often sing together:
One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping all our shores,
One Earth, so green and round, who could ask for more?
And because we love you, let’s give it one more try
To show our Rainbow Race, it’s too soon to die.
And as we remember Pete, recall his belief that the human
race has a 50/50 chance of having a human race here in a hundred years, that
the scales are evenly balanced and one grain might tip them in either
direction, and that we are, all of us but one grain - we must all be involved
and get active in some way.
And listen once more to the farewell of his last song:
Guard well our human chain,
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun shall shine.
And this our home,
Be pure and sweet and green,
For now I’m yours,
And you are also mine.
Be Well – I love you all,
TOGETHER THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT DO
Medicine Story
ps I attach a photo from the last time we visited - a model
for us of a couple who showed us all not by teaching but by doing -and that
courage is not something we are born with but something we choose, a decision
we can continually make.
