An event of note this week: from a log cabin on an Indian reservation in eastern Ontario, Six Nations of the Grand River, Indian Country Today Executive Editor Tim Johnson, Mohawk, interviewed an American Indian astronaut circling the earth some 250 miles up in space.
Directly networked to Indian Country Today via Houston, Navy commander John Herrington, a Chickasaw tribal member, NASA flight engineer on Shuttle mission STS-113 and a superbly trained pilot, waxed philosophical about the heavens, the Mother Earth, Indian spiritual sacraments and the meaning of life.
For many of us, it was the experience of a generation – to see and hear an Indian-to-Indian uplink to the heavens. Perhaps this event, as momentous as it was, is not as pressing as are the many political and economic issues confronting tribes. But, regardless of that argument, and regardless, too, of opinions on the merits or demerits of purposes and technologies of the space program, we felt a great honor to interview one of our own, an Indian tribal citizen, at another pinnacle of American and global scientific achievement.
To this newspaper’s communications group, that such a conversation could take place signaled one of those marker-in-time moments of the first decade of the 21st Century. Remember that in 1900, Native peoples were considered “vanishing Americans.” Here, over one hundred years later, a brave and vigorous American Indian astronaut walks in outer space. Less than half a century after the first manned space explorations, an American Indian has achieved his own dream, a transcendental vision to fly into the Skyworld. The resulting story reveals a great new hero role model for Indian and indeed all youngsters. It provides a great reality to contemplate at the start of the new Millennium.
We salute John Herrington: NASA mission specialist, a master of hard sciences, a person endowed with excellent physical dexterity, Herrington has sustained his tribal identity throughout an arduous career as Navy pilot and astronaut. In his quiet demeanor, often noted by his colleagues, in his superb accomplishment, and in his willingness to grasp the meaning of his Indian identity, we find a role model of the highest quality.
Herrington is modest enough not to have recognized his own unique example, but his Chickasaw Nation and all of Indian country does. It is an Indian value to recognize courage (heart) and intelligence in following a dream, in the fulfillment of one’s vision. The boy who sat in a cardboard box in Black Forest, Colo., and dreamed he was an Apollo astronaut going to the moon, has now flown beyond the earth, and he was impressed with “how insignificant we are in the great scheme of things.”
It was a tremendous thing just to talk to an astronaut on the hoof, Earth to orbit, but to sustain an actual indigenous conversation, one that pondered the great mystery and gave glimpses of our common sentiments on the sacred, this was of particular magnitude. Experiencing the grandiosity of the Cosmos, said Harrington, gave a “spiritual sense” of how grand was the reality of life, of “how grand is the grand scheme of Mother Earth.” Imagine that, an astronaut, engineer and pilot, speaking to the whole planet about the grandness of “Mother Earth.”
Commander Herrington shared an anecdote of great interest: although he was not allowed by NASA to take sacramental tobacco out into space, he and “a very good friend,” used tobacco to “smudge ? outside of crew quarters prior to flight, recognizing, using smoke for purification.”
Commander Herrington flew with the feather of an eagle; he carried sweetgrass and other medicines “that represent the spiritual sense we all feel.” He traveled Skyworld territory not only as an American Navy officer, but as an American Indian, as a Chickasaw. Herrington speaks in two currents: he is the modest, pragmatic astronaut (flight engineer); and, he is member and representative of his tribal nation.
Editor Johnson, whose Mohawk family includes ironworkers, observed that Herrington’s mission, which involved steel construction on the space station during a risky spacewalk, qualified him “the first Indian steelworker or construction worker in space.” Herrington responded by citing his visit to the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation on the St. Lawrence River. He recalled a monument to Mohawk ironworkers who perished when a bridge collapsed in Kahnawake in 1907. “I thought about that as I was working up here. I am working on something that is considered high steel and in my thoughts [are] condolences to those folks that perished in that mishap.”
Again, to the new Indian generation, this is a wonderful example of capacity and humility. From the vanishing American Indian to Indian policymakers in Washington and Ottawa; Indians at the United Nations; Indian business leaders; Indians in the cosmos. We value the exemplary life of John Herrington, as a lesson in what is possible. We celebrate what it tells about the fulfillment of vision and what it signals about this time of American Indian renewal. And we encourage our young ones to aim high. For John Herrington has taught us that our potential is unlimited.
