TACOMA, Wash. – Philip Red Eagle, with the acumen of a nuclear scientist and the power of a winter storyteller, built a bridge between the age of the atomic bomb and the wisdom of the old ones with his new book. “Red Earth.”
“I don’t think you become a warrior until you hit your 30s, and you really determine who you are,” he said. “That brings you to a place where you are able to redeem yourself and become spiritually proactive, because then you become a servant of the people.”
“Red Earth” is two stories in which the hero heals by disconnecting and realigning the time-space continuum.
“The more I think about it, the more I think there is something absolute about time, but we don’t know what it is, Red Eagle said.
“I had a dream. I encountered a spirit and it opened a door. It was really bright in there and it slid an object out to me. I saw it as one thing, a toolbox, but when I went to pick it up, it was a shiny dark onyx. That was my dark stuff. It came through that door way. I picked it up and was embracing my dark stuff.”
A product of diverse worlds – his mother, Coast Salish, and his father from the Northern Plains – Red Eagle’s ancestors span the continent.
“My conceptions of time started when I heard a story about White Buffalo Calf Woman. What happened in the story was two guys were out on the Plains, they were young men. When a woman in a whirlwind approached, one man desired her, but the other was so in awe of her, he revered her. She gave them each their wish. She said to the one who desired her, ?Come with me into the whirlwind.’ When it stopped, she was standing there with a pile of bones. ?Don’t worry about your friend,’ she said to the one still standing, ?He got what he wanted. He desired me. What you see there is the bones of an old man. We lived a life together and he got what he wanted.’
That’s where my notion of time comes from. I think the White Buffalo Calf Woman is much older than we think.”
Reflecting on Vietnam, Red Eagle said, “We were young-old. We went too young but had old spirits. The difference between a soldier and a warrior is that a soldier follows orders and a warrior follows his own destiny.”
That destiny is to become a servant of the people, that’s your duty, and this is the role you assume. If you survived it, and you were a warrior, it is now your duty to speak for peace.”
Remembering his own survival, physical and spiritual, Red Eagle’s eyes turn inward. “I was talking the other night with some friends about mental illness. Individually, we are not provided with things to sustain ourselves. We’re living out of balance, in the time of the opportunist. This is the Western way, the way we have learned, instead of the way of sustainment. We’ve gone over to the side of ruin, and we’re shortening our time, our human longevity.”
Red Eagle countered this with the experience of the warrior, “where more things are possible and probable. The probability is everywhere, but it depends on what sort of relations are given to you.
“In the realm of relationship, we are surrounded by several worlds. Some people have the ability to cultivate these relationships. They are the ones with the ability to ask and to compel the doors to open.
“This relationship is the basis of Native American culture. We didn’t always understand this. It was brought to us when we were capable, when we were desperate to understand. Our current view of time is based on our position in the physical world. But there’s a belief the people understand, that we are going from one age into another.”
Utilizing “the intensity of brightness in the explosion which slows the human time scale,” Red Earth reverses the death light, creating a potential for human redemption.
“In this world we have associations with light. We know it from dreams and visions. Not hurtful light, the light of explosions, but light that is bright and doesn’t burn. This is the kind of light I’m talking about.
“The heroes in my book are disappointed in themselves because they are young. They are vulnerable like Achilles. Achilles’ life was in mythic proportions because of his relationship with God, but he had a weakness. My heroes have the weakness that they are human … We’re brought up in a world that doesn’t have respect for anyone, where each human being is a commodity or a working tool for making money.
“Now it is time to rewind. Back in the old days they went on journeys to fulfill a responsibility, to learn and to teach their young people. This is what the vision quest is, a journey to the self.”
