OSEU One: Jesse Taken Alive– The Story of Tobacco

The Story of Tobacco - Jesse Taken Alive - OSEU 1 The story was… there was famine amongst our people… and there was people dying. There was fear. And the elderly men asked this young man to go on a hill and pray for some guidance… pray for some protection… pray for some help. And as he was up there… and of course, the ceremony is called Haŋbléčeyapi… Cry for a Vision. And after a while, you understand what that is when you when you see and feel the need to cry. Because when that happens, we say the creator's touched you. The Creator has touched you and loves you for offering yourself to get closer to him. It's like putting a step one of your feet in the spiritual world and the other foot in this world, as we know. And it's a commitment. One of our seven ceremonies is really a… one of the most awesome or dynamic ceremonies because you're by yourself. No one is with you. You see no one. No one sees you. And of course, along with it comes the fasting. Well, this young man, while he was up there… and he went past the hunger and… in somewhat the fear… And you never get past the thirst by the way. He began his prayers and the tears started coming up because the Creator touched him. Let him know that I'm here with you. I'm here for you, grandson. And where his tears hit the ground over the course of the two days or day or so, he noticed where his tears hit the ground… the ground was dry because there was nothing growing as a famine… and up grew a little plant. And during his time up there, as miracles have it, it grew where he could recognize it. So, when he got done and he went back down to the hill from the hill, he told the elders what he had experienced. And that was one of the many things that he had experienced. And their interpretation was that this plant is going to someday be a part of a teaching that the Creator is going to bring to us. And they said, takoja, you always have to remember what that plant looks like. You described it to us. But because you were shown… because that happened to you while you were up there, the opportunity, the responsibility is yours. It's a spiritual, it’s a special one. And what that ended up being… long story short… I apologize for cutting it short like this… it was that what we call cansasa, the red willow tobacco, is what that little plant was. And of course, it's used in the canunpa today… what the books call a peace pipe… what we call our pipe, canunpa. That's what we use… it’s prepared a certain way. So, you scrape the red bark off… and there's another layer of bark that you scrape, and you dry… and that's what you put in into the pipe. And of course, there's no chemicals in it or anything. It's natural. It grows abundantly throughout the Dakotas. And through that of course, the use of putting it in the canunpa… when you're going to give somebody tobacco, they call it opagi… ask for all of your help… your spiritual help, your mental help, your physical help. And you're respecting that person's being: the physical, spiritual, mental. And the person that accepts it is saying, “I can help you. Whatever it is that you're asking, I can do that. And you've honored me.” So, in turn, what that person is doing is saying, “Creator, one of my relatives, one of your creation, is asking for help. You've shown me something. You've taught me some things and created help me to share with what it is that my relative is asking.” And although today we encourage our young people to use the cansasa; a lot of them are doing it now. But at the same time, until we all get to that point, it still works… whatever kind of tobacco it is… because it's grown from Unci Maka. We see it using all kinds of ceremonies… and we especially encourage our young people to use the cansasa and the canunpa. Don't use the chemically ladened tobacco in the canunpa… to use it if you need to in other ways… and sometimes it's hard for relatives to get that. We understand that. And like I said, there's no rules. It's just respect each other and how we can help each other. And we encourage that. But likewise, like I said, if you have just a regular tobacco, when you offer that to somebody, what you're saying is, “I need your help spiritually. I need your help mentally and physically.” And there's an awesome connection there. And the receiver of that gets that help. It's kind of it's becoming a way of life again, if you will, for a lot of our relatives. It was that way of life for elders when we began to relearn our Lakota ways… when it was legal to do so back in the late seventies. They kept that. As I said earlier, it was underground, but they kept that. So, we in turn share that in the simplest way that we can. And at the same time, if somebody offers tobacco to you and you can't do it with that honest, you say, “My friend, my friend, I don't know how to do it, but I'll take you to somebody that can.” If you want me to do that, I'll accept your tobacco to take you to somebody that can and will help you. So it's just about respect and being honest, you know, to what it is you're being asked to do. So, there's that spiritual connection, if you will. And that's what we say, wolakota, we want to live in that way all the time. LAKOTA PHRASE. You know, we want to walk in a prayerful way. We want to recognize our relatives every day in that way. So that’s essentially, in its simplest way, as I can explain it, why we use tobacco. And like I said, it's not we encourage to use to cansasa, but if it's not there, that's okay too. Because there's always been misunderstanding of that… that Lakota ways are really promoting cigarette smoking and cigarette smoking causes cancer. But you always don't have to smoke the tobacco that's given to you. You can make it into a prayer flag. You can make it into tobacco ties, and you don't have to smoke those. It's just that that spiritual connection that you seek and desire so… LAKOTA WORD.