Eagle Feather || Migisi (Zahgi-di-win')

Eagle Feather is a profound and magnificent North American Indian teaching about what is a real life on this earth. While there are many tribes with many different ways of doing ceremony, different objects considered sacred, Eagle Feather is honored by every North American tribe.

Eagle Feather is so important to Native Americans that special United States Government regulations and permits protect their use and possession by tribal members for ritual and ceremonial use. Eagle feather is so powerful that many Native Americans insist on having as many of them as possible for dancing with a number pinned to their butts at commercial prize-money pow-wows. These diverse worlds of the most sacred and the most vulgar are combined into the life of the Eagle Feather. In this document I will present some of the views about this important Native American ceremonial object.

Sometimes, when people ask me "what is an Indian", I tell them it might be a man or a woman sitting on the earth before a small fire holding one Eagle Feather. A ceremonial leader, sometimes called a "medicine man", was once asked if he was a medicine man. He replied that sitting in the room of the public space with all the other people, that he was not. "When I put on my sacred skins, hold the sacred Eagle Feather and sit upon the Mother Earth, then, yes, I am a Medicine Man", he said.

There are more than 500 recognized American Indian tribes and more than 200 American Indian tribes that seek 

or have lost federal recognition. Practices vary widely in how, when, where and why to use Eagle feather. 

It would be impossible for any single method, teaching or idea to represent all of these diverse groups.

The pow-wow subculture has created dancers, sometimes even the smallest children, who parade around 

with dozens and sometimes hundreds of Eagle Feathers. In historical times, in traditional cultures, 

a person in possession of many Eagle Feathers was very rare, very unique and an exception. It is in 

this vulgar  but important "tradition" that most modern people will see Eagle Feathers.

Possession of Eagle Feather is an assumed right of most tribal communities and members. There is a great

difference between possession and intent. Some of the most sacred and beautiful moments may involve 

only one Eagle Feather. Some of the most confusing energy one can imagine often exists where there are 

more Eagle feathers than people present. Much depends upon the context and intent. While the pow-wow 

culture feels secure in its possessive posturing over Eagle Feathers worn for social dance contests, 

in other circle of American Indians the Eagle Feather is profoundly respected, used in a conservative, 

protective and guarded way.

Most modern people know so little about Eagle Feathers that it is difficult to know how much to say or where to begin. Very often the circumstances and ceremony around some Eagle Feathers is so private that any public commentary would be invasive. On the other hand, the fundamental truth of what an Eagle Feather is, and 

why, is so profoundly simple and pure a concept that most clever people over analyze it and miss the point entirely.

I was gifted my first Eagle Feather by an elder of the Tewa people. I still hold that feather nearly every day, almost 30 years later. That one Eagle Feather means more to me than any treasure I could imagine. Every time I am near it the spirt, soul and image of that beautiful and masterful tribal man comes up all around me.

In my world travels I have seen a surprising number of people in possession of Eagle Feathers. This has happened where ever I have traveled in this world. I have seem them in flower vases, in the dust under the bed, hanging from rear-view mirrors of automobiles and once in a make-up jar of a famous hollywood personalty. I had, in a moment of great weakness I think, gifted this actress a small Eagle Feather for some great favor she had done for me. It is easy for American Indians to get swollen hearts, filled with happiness at some strong moment and make a give-away like this. later I visited her home and going into the washroom discovered that she was using the Eagle Feather to apply cosmetics and makeup to her expensive face. I quietly put it into my luggage and never said anything about it to her. She never asked me about it at all. We tribal people often find it a big surprise that these tender sacred things mean absolutely nothing to modern people.

Modern society has taken some satisfaction from diminishing minority cultures. The language typically used in talking about tribal sacred objects and ideas is very dismissive. Academia has learned how to use language to explain away what is most sacred to some people as having no basis in science or psychology. People without creative skills in accessing those inner abilities of vision, inspiration and sacred expression (compassion) often do not attribute them to others. Psychologists refer to this perception that another person is like yourself as a great mistake in consciousness. The truth is people can be very different. Anyone who has traveled around in the world understands that there are great differences in perceptions, expectations and in how reality is experienced.

The kind or type of human being who can work with one Eagle Feather and cause something to happen, something to change, thinks, feels and responds differently than most of the people you will ever know. That inner experience of that person embracing the original instructions is a quantum in which an entire history and a culture unique in all the world was born and sustained. Those who have been writing about these things are from the other side. Entirely.

Most tribal people are reluctant to speak for the public record on the details and ideas of tribal sacred. For reasons that remain unclear, theft, abuse and re-interpretation of these ideas by modern people is an epidemic in new age cultures all around the world. Internationally there is so much confusion, pretending and hype published on these subjects that a reasonable tribal person could hardly know where to begin to set the record straight. While the world clearly would like to hear authoritative information on subjects of the tribal sacred, the abuses of academics and popular publishers, and internet blogs make the possibility unlikely.

Life with an Eagle Feather is an exploration of the void, of the sacred silence. Some tribal elders have speculated that silence is in fact the true voice of "God".

When young tribal people go to a commercial pow-wow and put a number on their behinds and dance for tourists and money they are taking Eagle Feather about as far away from sacred silence as one person can travel. Desperation in combination with arrogance and pride has contributed to the poison and confusion about the original instructions of Eagle Feather. What modern people know as "pow-wow" has very little to do with traditional tribal culture and everything to do with the most shallow values of modern society.

.....most tribal people understand there is protection. If we tell you nothing, then you cannot lie and play pretend. However, in the real world the Rule of Silence contributes to the confusion and the mountains of bad information being published about tribal sacred matters largely goes unchallenged. Most tribal people are so offended and astonished at this odd behavior out in the modern world that no one knows quite what to say about it.

Silence also creates surprises. As many tribal teachers pass away without sharing what they know, important teachings and ceremonies are being lost. Everyday.

I recall that the Dalai Lama of Tibet has commented that abuses and failures of the leadership of Buddist Culture was a powerful contributing factor to the loss of Tibet by an invasion from China in the 1950s. While the people of the modern world may be perpetuating enormous errors in the perceptions of the tribal sacred, these Rules of Silence held by so many tribal teachers is taking the real truth into the grave, lost forever.

Kill people, forbid them to speak their language, take them away from their family and culture, give them no opportunities, education or hope and you have a good idea of what the last 400 years have been like for American Indian people. Slowly matters are getting better. It has been about 25 years now that the US Government removed laws that prevented tribal people from using their language and ceremonies. Just a couple of generations of a new freedom vs so many generations of "management" and suppression. While it will take more time for any hope of a spirit of great openness to find its way in the expressions of American Indians, the path continues to be "the shrinking path". It has become a life of contradictions and leaderless independence.

Mostl American Indian tribes that hold their sacred very close. Most of them are quiet American Indians most people have never heard of, unlike the incessant noise made a handful of some other tribes. Using the Rule of Silence in a powerful way, the Kiva Clans and Societies of the Southwest have preserved, protected and kept to themselves what is most sacred in their world. More than any of the other tribes. While most Kiva Tribes have some modest public ceremony, the real intensity of their sacred work with the original instructions takes place privately. Modern academics and new age shamans have not been able to steal and feed off their teachings as they have with the teachings of the Northern Plains tribes.

Eagle Feathers are guarded and maintained as sacred property in these southwestern tribes. They are never seen in great abundance at ceremonies. Important eagle Feathers have names and a family that is their guardian. In fact, inn most tribes, the really important Eagle Feathers are in the bundles, the gathering of sacred objects that is the basis for that tribe's sacred opportunities. Very important sacred bundles are in many tribes. They contain Eagle Feather, Sacred Pipe and other more private objects. Many of the ancient Great Bundles are kept with their original Eagle Feathers.

There is a great difference between tribal objects immersed in generations of the sacred behavior of the tribal elders who maintained them and pipes and feathers that come and go casually. The casual objects are not right. They call upon the idea of the sacred without fulfilling any of the requirements of the original instructions. Americans Indians are as deceived and confused on this subject as much as anyone, more perhaps. 

Not everyone, of course is set upon the wrong idea. There are those tribal Keepers of their sacred that know these differences and these original instructions very well. My point, to repeat it, is that most of these people are quiet people. Most of what is commonly available in the media and the books on these subjects is not reliable information. While academic standards tend to create more detailed examinations of ideas like Eagle Feather, they rarely have any actual contact with tribal people directly when they write. Most of all the original instructions, and all of its ceremonies and rites, require that people speaking the truth stand together face to face, eyes wide open. Very few academics have done this.

Some tribes hold that if you take the sacred property of an enemy, you have prevailed against his spirit. Some tribes maintain that if you take the sacred property of any other person, you break the contract of the Creation.

 

I have a good friend of some 20 years who has stolen an eagle Feather from me. I think his mother actually did the stealing and then gave it to him as a gift. When I visit his studio, I see that feather hanging there. He may or may not know it was "my" feather.It is an odd meditation. I have visited him many times and watched my feather, but have said nothing. the sacred cannot be argued about. You cannot use lies or rage or negative energy to understand the sacred. When I visit I watch my old sacred feather and breath. Why his mother thought it was ok to steal this feather is not a question I need answered. This kind of broken behavior is very common in the reservation life.

I have seen Eagle Feathers in museums that I wish I could set free. I would take them if I could figure out a way. But I would find good elders to give them away to. I would not keep them. 

I have taken photographs of Eagle Feathers being held prisoner in museums. later I take the photo and make a painting of it, trying to restore the emotion and spirit of that object. I call this series of painting my "rescue" series of paintings. It does not rescue the imprisoned tribal sacred object, it rescues me from anger and sorrow and grief. The paintings help me understand what the sacred might have to say to me, and through me, what I might be able to say to others.

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