Just listen to, The Animals


John Mahkewa

When I Was Young, was thinking I was about 12-13 when I first heard this song, even back then I felt out of place or step especially in the lyrics, “ my faith so much stronger then, and I was so much older then, when I was young.

I was in the early morning when my Sayha would pour me a cup of coffee, with canned milk Creme and sugar. I was about 8-9 yrs so I felt like a man when I got to drink coffee.

 One morning She, started talking about how powerful our words are because they can make life.  What I wondered?  The way I recall, our words were water or like a life breath   The same breathe/water Tawa brew into you at birth.  So be careful of what you say..always promising would.  A promise short lived.  Although I hid it my heart.
 So when I was a kid I loved going outside with my Sayah!  I was told to be outside barefoot, facing east, black then there was no electricity,  even then then we had to close our eyes, we, sometimes my cousins got up to join us.  I think to she knew they hadn't held it for awhile so she made them get up!  With a promise of a treat!  On those days I didn't get coffee, it was tea just like everybody else."

So there we stood with our eyes closed as she said to go to the black place, it is quite you can only feel air. It’s in your brain make your brain grow so you can feel the peace and quite..you feel safe? This the place of life, it brings us altogether, to the stars, trees, water , birds..it’s like our roots growing together. As I stood there I could see my body become a truck of a tree and I would as she told us, push your roots deep into the ground. The Air and the Ground are Mother and Father to all. So this is why we need to remind ourselves that we belong here and have our right to honor and keep this truth in ones on heart. As we all told her we’d pushed as deep as we could, she had us push our noses into the air, even saying stand on your toes! So we could breath in our days, Life Breath.

Knowing now that it made sure we were never alone, we were being watched and heard by all of our relations on so many levels. So take that deep breath and hold it as long as you can…and share it as you let it go! I say a billion times more life giving because you chose to do this, I so many ways she was showing me how to create sacred ground or space, in that place We knew we belonged. More importantly we had many relatives.

Elder John Mahkewa, Tewa/Hopi is a member of the Hopi Nation, Artice Story Teller

"My brother and I have been coming to their camps since we were little. They have all been great, we never know what to expect, each one is always better than the one before."
—Kobe
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
—Albert Einstein
"Nature is a profoundly deep part of us. Our species has spent 99.9% of the past 200,000 years thriving in nature, building shelter, making clothing, making fire, finding drinking water, tracking and harvesting food. For our species survival we had to be deeply connected to nature."
—Brian King