For years when I would discuss with the BLM or the Forest Service my planting back the native plants, I would be told all about the laws that forbade me doing it. This is somewhat changed. 

America is just now starting to work for me;  let me tell you how:  When I go to the Camas Prairie, to public lands, the Camas is trampled by cattle. It is plowed out and replaced by some non- native plantings and grass, starved of water, and tiled under for road ways.  This is how public policy regards these Camas lilies. How then can anyone object  if I dig them out of certain doom and plant them where, with the least regard and protection, they will live. They no longer object. When in the face of massive die-offs all across the West, it is now plain for all to see that my wild onions, bread roots and bitter roots are much more desirable than the cheat grass and knapweed that is now replacing even the Piñon forest.  When I tell them what I'm doing, the overseers of this public land want to work with me. They are more scared of what they are watching in the death of so many things than they are of my attempts to plant them back.

There is a small grove of Piñon pines at the City of Rocks in Idaho. This grove is separate and way north of the traditional range of these pines. I can tell you with certainty, that this is not a so called "natural" planting. It was the long dance of the Shoshone that did it. The West was much more abundant in these native foods than would occur naturally because the people here worked with them to make it so. What is now your narayar'ndo was the vehicle with which it was done.   This is a part of why I write.   I would like to see that aspect of the old round dance restored to narayar'ndo:  this eating of this Mother's manna and its deliberate planting back in the ceremony that was the move after praying for these things, this deliberate work to give them life.  

This was accomplished by the people walking the hoop of their lives. The traditional hoop that the Shoshone walked was huge, and much practical work was accomplished as the people followed the sun and their hoop. This hoop is a real place that still exists. It extends from central Idaho to southern Nevada, still with many areas somewhat intact.   In the early spring the people would begin at the southern end of their hoop, digging roots, Sheepsh, Kousch, Looksh, lilies and onions, and heading north.  By early summer, they would be in southern Idaho, still digging roots of the same kind, but including the amazing and easily gotten amount of Camas. They would hunt buffalo here and head north from here to the vast richness of berries, fruit and salmon in the central mountains of Idaho. As the fruit began to wane in August or early September, the people would head south to Nevada again to harvest the super rich Piñon pine nuts. By November, the people would head south  again to winter in the more moderate geothermally rich country of central to southern Nevada.   The people depended on these foods for survival, and followed the sun not only for their own comfort, but because you must harvest at a time when the seed is ripe—that it may be planted back to provide unto the seventh generation.  This was done in a very deliberate way. Dances were held where many bands would meet at the most abundant places and everyone would share what they had from each hoop, that everyone would have everything. The practical work of planting everything back at these places is what narayar'ndo was.

"The Camas Root Gatherers" by Vern Russell

We are planning to walk this old hoop and do the practical work that needs to be done so that these places, these plants, and this way, will not disappear. We plan to do this walk with horses and dogs, and establish camps (properties) in at least four main places on the hoop: winter camp, root camp, berry camp and Piñon camp. Our walk may be joined by any and all, in any conveyance, for long periods or short, to do the practical work of restoring the once abundant Mother. In the face of the continuing devastation being inflicted upon her by the practices of farming, ranching, lumbering and the decimation of essential animal communities, this work must be accomplished. It takes the return of the once abundant people on the land doing the work if we hope to keep pace at all. We are the people. The rainbow warriors, the link between spirit and earth, who possess the magic to restore this place. We are the answer to the millions of prayers.

Badger, Cesar, Buck and Greg came to Piñon camp, as did many other fairies. What they saw was a direct correlation of this hoop and life-way to the dance. The tree of life was there: Piñon pines feeding us. The dance is in a circle with markings for the four directions. This was the lodge "Dirty Skirts," and they entered at the east. They were met by the fire, as in the dance at the base of the tree, there represented by the rope pins that hold the lodge, the altar, with the root digger as a stake there—each of them a sacred bundle, and as they were fed by these evergreens, they stole many of her seeds into the earth at her feet, doing the work of that prayer filled bundle. They planted their own "Bigfoot" gardens of bread roots and fruiting shrubs.

I see an inner circle. I see a vibrant circle. I see the necessity for an outer circle to complete the dance, cultural preservation of a gastric religion. The outer circle is walking the walk, and nothing other than walking the walk provides an outer circle.

An example is the Wasco, who claim a seven-drum longhouse representing seven beating hearts on the hoop. There is no outer circle that can replace "Stick Indian," the resurrection of a thing now 150 years dead. Walking the outer circle is the only way that makes sense to me. What do you see providing the practical walk? Is narayar'ndo a longhouse in that traditional sense? Do we speak in a dream lodge? Are these beating hearts a part of your dance?

Johnny Bob, a spiritual leader of the western Shoshone in Reese River, and his friends and family have been praying for the berries and the wild flowers that are all disappearing or gone for years. One week after these prayers were made, they were answered by fairies pooping berry seeds in his Stoneburger, Nevada meeting site, and planting Camas and yampa and plumbs and onions, bitter root with looksh in colonies everywhere. After the prayers are said, someone serves up dinner. Is this your outer circle?

We met Johnny and heard his story, and told him ours. We marveled at the synchrony of the spirit. Is this practical work and its joy, not the dance completed?

We would like to invite people to continue the dance by joining us in the outer circle to do the work and learn the walk. We are the working model, the answer to many prayers of renewal. We would like to be a continuation of your dance for those called to embrace the real work that needs to be done to heal the Mother, and those interested in practicing a difference social model from which this work may be accomplished.

If you know you need to do something and then you don't do it, then you do not know your need. Bright Owl and Barry Hail are in the process of moving their Chaneeg Chaneesch community to Arco, Idaho to work with this hoop. Kim Slayton is buying property for the hoop. Finisia has given her property to the hoop. Hollis Melton and Toddy Perryman, both of narayar'ndo, have stepped forward pledging property to the hoop. These properties are necessary in this age of private property. There is a 14 day limit on stays on public land. They will provide places of Protection for the plantings of permaculture of these native foods.

We would like eventually to have four potlatches or dances for the four seasons and four directions on these lands. I hope to see narayar'ndo drums hosting these long dances for all to join. I hope to see this narayar'ndo working in Europe and Asia in this planting back dance, and I want to thank you for hearing us.

Finisia Medrano

P.O. Box 113
Arco, Idaho, 83213