The Struggle for Sacred Ceremonies
A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky. — Crazy Horse (Lakota)
The following is excerpted from A Seat at the Table: Huston Smith in Conversation with Native Americans on Religious Freedom (UC Berkeley Press). Smith is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Syracuse University and has written widely about religion. Here he interviews Lenny Foster, a Dine/Navajo and a prisoner’s rights advocate for the last 30 years. A member of the Native American Church, Foster participated in campaigns at Wounded Knee, The Longest Walk and the Occupation of Alcatraz.
Huston Smith: I have heard a very moving story about your ministrations to one of your people on Death Row. Could you tell us that story?
Lenny Foster: There are a number of American Indians on Death Row in the US. One of the people on Death Row was served a warrant of execution and afterward he contacted me. His name was Derrick Gerlaugh. He was a member of the Pima Indian Nation and he was incarcerated in the Arizona State Prison in Florence. I started visiting him and taking the sacred pipe into the prison. I requested through the chaplain and the warden at that facility, and they approved my visits. We prayed with the pipe and sang songs. It made him feel at peace, because he wanted to get ready for his execution on Wednesday, February 5, 1999.
I visited him for two-and-a-half months, and finally it came close to the date of execution. I made a request to the chaplain to take my brother to a sweat lodge ceremony as part of Derrick’s last rites. He didn’t see any problem with that. But when I went to the warden, he said no, because of security risks. He claimed that the prisoner was going to be moving out of his chains and out of his cell, and that we were going to be using a fire in our ceremony, which he couldn’t approve of because he thought that the ceremony posed a security risk. I tried to impress on the warden that I had taken this individual to the sweat lodge on several occasions throughout the last 15 years. But he said Derrick wasn’t allowed to leave his cell and was going to be executed.
Eventually, I appealed to the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections. We had a discussion and the director said he would give the idea of a spiritual ceremony some thought.
Well, eventually the director approved our request. This was the first time in U.S. history that an imprisoned Native American was given approval to participate in a sweat lodge ceremony and allowed to use the sacred pipe as part of his last rights. When the Department of Corrections approved it, the department stated that I would have to go through a complete strip search and the type of process that a preacher would not submit to. Reluctantly, I went agreed to the stipulation. Once I did that, we were approved for one sweat lodge ceremony and one pipe ceremony a few days before Derrick’s execution.
It was a very beautiful ceremony, despite the fact that there were eleven guards, three chaplains, one German shepherd police dog, and two cameras present. The prison authorities had their reasons for having that many security people around. They wanted to document out ceremony and make sure we didn’t do anything like try to escape.
Altogether, we spent five to six hours outdoors. It was just me and my brother. We built a fire and prayed, and covered up the sweat lodge, and once the rocks were ready, we put we put them into the sweat lodge and we did four rounds. We prayed and we sang and, by the end of the ceremony, Derrick was ready to meet his maker. I told him that he had to let go of his pain, his anger that he might still have in him. I reminded him that, to meet the Great Spirit, he needed to have some love and some joy and some happiness in himself.
Finally, he was ready. After we smoked the sacred pipe, he made one last request. He wanted to braid his hair before he went to meet the Great Spirit. On Wednesday, February 5, he was allowed to braid his hair. Then he was executed.
The lethal injection took two minutes. I was a witness to the execution, per the family’s request that I be there for him as his spiritual advisor.
Again, I want to say that this was the first time anywhere in the country that a request to use the sweat lodge and to use the pipe as part of the last rites was approved for an incarcerated Native American. This decision opened the doors to and set a precedent for future requests of that kind, which is important to us because the reality of the situation is that there are Native Americans on Death Row in California, Arizona, and other places who will at last have the right to use the sweat lodge.
That is what the whole thing is about, allowing our people to have some dignity and pride in who they are, which is the heart of the recovery movement and the spiritual healing taking place among our Indian people. We have to continue to advocate and push for that, whether it is through negotiation or legislation.
SMITH: It is an immensely inspiring story, while at the same time just stark in indicating the discrimination toward you as a recognized spiritual counselor. In contrast, the notion of a Catholic priest being forced to a strip search would be regarded as a profanation.
FOSTER: We have been subjected to many degradations and been made to feel ashamed of who we are, but we still stand up, and we resort to our spirituality as a foundation, as a base, so we can have some pride and some dignity about who we are. We have endured, and we have prevailed. Through our prayers and through our ceremonies, those blessings will come. That’s how we believe in the Creator.
SMITH: Can you tell us about any efforts on the part of Indian people to try their own traditional form of rehabilitation?
FOSTER: One of the proposals pending in Indian country is for a 2,000-bed facility. The contracts were being proposed between the state and the federal prisons to send medium- and minimum-security inmates to this facility, and certain rights would be given to be allowed to practice one’s culture and spirituality as part of the rehabilitation.
Right now you don’t have any real rehabilitation taking place in the prisons. The current concept is to detain, to isolate, which is just punitive. There is no real official effort to rehabilitate ad person. It only happens if people from the outside go into the facility to teach and instruct. But I think we could put an Indian flavor on that type of private-prison concept, where we would work with out own people, teach them a trade, and teach them the language and the culture and have them relearn. On my own visits to these facilities, I see that many native people don’t understand their language or their culture. The prison is the one place they are given that opportunity to relearn. When it’s offered, I think the majority are trying that.
SMITH: Recently, I heard from my friends in Indian law, that there are attempts at reviving traditional forms of peacemaking because the current system is just not working for native people.
FOSTER: Yes, there is an initiative by the Dine/Navajo Nation to return to what’s called a peacemaking process. There you bring together the two parties in conflict to create some resolution. Let’s say you bring two families and their problems together; then we use a prayer, we use the Creation stories to highlight what went wrong. We might try some restitution, some work, some solution that does not involve an adversarial process but where an understanding is created. It works. It has worked for thousands of years, and we are finally using that practice again. Anyone wishing to use that practice today, as opposed to going to court, is able to, and I think that each particular Indian nation in the United States could have some form of a traditional peacemaking process.
We need to have this movement recognized by the state and federal agencies.
I have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate and are incarcerated. This is my calling and my passion.
A spiritual healing is taking place in a movement throughout the country but the authorities continue to suppress the practices, the beliefs, and the ceremonies, which is tantamount to cultural genocide. Again, those are very strong words, but one must look at the evidence. So we continue to seek the support, the prayers, the sympathy, the solidarity of concerned people around the world.
If the United States truly wants to reconcile with its original people, then they could do some good by releasing our brother Leonard Peltier. They could allow our Indian people in prisons consistent ceremonies once a week so they can have that healing of the mind, the body, and the spirit.
