How and why are really hard questions because you don’t become one, you’re born that way. In Lakota culture, men follow a lineage system; their ancestors are medicine people, they become medicine people. I didn’t come to this till late in life after a couple of stays in federal prison, including one long stay where I began to learn these ways. You’re given a choice to become a medicine person by the spirits and you’re only given the choice once. They never come back and ask you again. They ask you?
They ask you if you want to accept this (responsibility). The spirits that work with us in a good way are not invasive. They don’t come unless asked and they don’t make you do anything without asking you first, because it’s a choice. So I was asked. I took it to my cousin’s altar and he verified what they wanted and I accepted that responsibility at the age of 46. I’m 50 now. How did you know what to do in terms of particular ceremonies and knowledge of healing medicine?
I am a heyoka medicine person and in Lakota heyoka is translated as is sacred clown. The sacred clown in our tradition is the person who is upside down, sideways, backwards, goes against the norm and is there to help the people see themselves. He’s the mirror of the people but his teachers are the Thunder Beings, his teachers are spirits. In Lakota thought, all ceremony comes from the west where the Thunder Beings live and they give us ceremony. So each medicine person is given his own ceremony through dreams, visions, vision quests, sweat lodge, and sun dance. There’s a progression, You have to start sweating and you have to come into the caretakership of a chunupa, a pipe. From there you go on vision quests and then you start to sun dance. I’ve yet to meet a medicine man who is not a sun dancer. And once you become a medicine man, a healer, then you have your own ceremonies. So I have my own ceremonies. I have my own particular brand of healing ceremonies, I have a sun dance, I have a children’s dance that I take care of. They’re not mine." Get the Story:
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