* As with all other articles on the Tomorrow’s Ancestors Speak video pages, this article is meant only as an accompaniment to the video message containing the speakers’ main ideas.
Chief Al Baker is an Anishinabeg* elder known to many as Mino Ode, or “Good Heart”/“Thunder Heart”. He received this name from the Creator during a four-day vision quest on a hill in Wisconsin, and is the eighth Mino Ode in a long unbroken chain of Mino Odes’. Al lives most of his passionate existence amongst the La Courte Oreilles/Chippewa Indian Reservation in the Hayward Lakes region of Northwestern Wisconsin. Here and elsewhere he is recognized as an Ogichida – a ‘Golden Eagle Warrior’/‘Spiritual Warrior’. Al is also said to have arisen from the Star Nation – a nation believed by the Anishinabeg people to have descended from great Thunderbirds. The Thunderbirds are said to be a more advanced culture living amongst the stars who occasionally surrender some of their own to come to Earth during troubled times. Their purpose is to teach humanity how to live, and so to come from the Star Nation means to be hand-picked by Creator to bring about the changes that the Mother Earth and many of us so desperately desire to have occur.
Throughout our time spent with Al it became very apparent that he is a man of much wisdom, strength, and love. Wherever he is present there is an underlying force of understanding and appreciation for the cycles that we as individuals and humanity must go through to attain the ultimate goal of a harmonious planet living at peace with all of our relations. Al seeks to help others honor the sacred nature of life through ceremonies and prayer, and to cultivate the awareness that we are all a vital part of this grand mystery. A recurring message that he brings forth is that not one of us is here without divine purpose. As an Anishinabeg, Al also embodies their first prayer of honoring the spirit within “all my relations” – recognizing that we are all related. Accordingly, one of the main Anishinabeg instructions is to help the younger brothers and sisters of the Earth to recognize this interconnected Sacred Spirit within us and all of life. This interdependency is demonstrated especially well through water, as it joins all of life on this planet. Al personally feels that one of the most dire changes needing to take place is the remembrance of the Sacred nature of Water and how it is to be honored through our daily lives.
Though this message was made apparent to Al throughout his youth, it became ever more apparent while participating in the Sundance ceremony. During the four-day ceremony Sundancers surrender themselves to the Sun and refrain from taking in any Water or food. The dance is their way of surrendering a little bit of themselves so that others can live. He remarks that during the Sundance it becomes crystal clear how important Water is, how much it is missed when it is not around, and how crucial it is to take care of it so that the Water Spirit can continue to bequeath life to the next generations. Al would like to see everyone who understands this message carry it back to their families and communities, and to teach them to pay attention to the Water – showing it love once again.
Chief Baker desires to witness the coupling of this message of loving the Water with the notion that we are all in charge of our own thoughts, prayers, and actions. Once these messages and the significance of ceremony are returned to the home and the church, Al believes that healthy parenting and influences will be able to re-emerge. He feels that some of today’s parenting is ailing due to unhealthy influences arising from the effects of colonization, and that Americans have been colonized just like the Native Americans. Indeed, just as foreigners took away Native American’s spiritual way of life and replaced it with something else, American’s lives have also been replaced with foreign ideas. While American’s lives were once filled with courage and empowerment due to the belief that they had a system of politics that benefitted the people, they are now often filled with fear and an inability to correct a situation that they feel deep in their hearts to be unjust.
Through this fear and apathy criminals are able to take our energy and the valuable resources that humans need and turn it into garbage and waste that we can no longer use. Those in charge are stealing from their own Mother Earth and becoming intoxicated with the illusions of power that these ill-conceived behaviors produce. According to Al, those under this particular illusion of power are not only violating laws that would upset their own court system, but also Spiritual Law. These laws are being broken by their production of chemicals that contaminate the waters and the land, and by their inaction of doing anything to correct it. Al personally feels that their efforts are to decrease the human population while increasing their quest for ever greater profits.
Apathy to this situation and other challenges is also one of the biggest obstacles facing Al’s Chippewa community. In his eyes the whole community is easily controlled through the media, what they hear on the radio, and who they talk to and what they say. There is also much poverty and environmental degradation resulting from politics, urbanization, mining, and deforestation – activities from which they receive no financial compensation. The ones that do become sharp and empowered are often driven out of the community to somewhere else where they are able to obtain the things that they need to survive. Other problems are similar to what we are witnessing across the globe – lack of vital information and an unwillingness to step outside and learn new things. Al remarks that there are few people struggling to be excellent and that there is a state of mediocrity that exists and has been ingrained in the system that we call “leadership.”
Chief Baker is one of those who have chosen to step outside the prison of mediocrity and into the quest for excellence. He attributes his strength to the land that he lives on, remarking, “everything that I am is that land.” The land that he lives on is the land where his ancestors are buried and where his father and mother walked their path. This land, known to many as Turtle Island, is also graced by the flight of the Eagle across its beauteous water-adorned landscapes. Though Al has witnessed much disrespect and degradation to the water living amongst the land, he strongly believes that through faith and putting into action the changes that we desire, humanity can move forward towards the goal of healing the Earth’s waters. He encourages everyone to pray with the water – to take that extra second to say a few words and change the energy of that water before drinking it; to have faith that you just healed the water.