Some day I'm going to pile up all this crap and call it a book.

Being a contemporary "native American" student is part spirituality, part history, part science for me. And part pain. As a mixed-breed, I have never really been a part of any culture. Tribally I am intermarried, our kids are full tribal members but I'm not. I was picked up by Llennappe as a young kid and basically all my teachers....(he makes the cut-off sign) and I was pretty lost and lonely after that for some years until some Lakota picked me up and took mercy on me and my teaching continued. And by their grace and wisdom I was able to formulate some kind of a direction or plan for my life.

Because in the path of development, when it came time to name me, it was clear that I was not going to be adopted into Lakota, the "chief" who taught me also had the good sense to...(he makes the cut-off sign) which again left me sort of on the outside.

So I chose the name Oyate which in Lakota means "all of the people". I figured I'm my own tribe now. And my warrior service will be to all people. All of them. And this is why I became an EMT and it's why I am competent with firearms and all other skills, to be of service to Oyate.

But here is a reason why I tell you these things. Being kind of pan-tribal (I spent much time on the reservations of many tribes) allowed me to put together pieces, fragments, in a way that I have pieced together a picture. It's not like the picture you get from books but I have read almost every book on native history I can find, dusty old tomes buried in local libraries, old documents and such but to also hear it, like HEAR IT from the people, it starts to come together.

I guess it's like "macro indian studies" or something. The big picture is so complex and yet simple. Everybody including most indians thinks of everything as being FRAGMENTARY, a bunch of almost isolated tribes doing whatever.

OK, in historical terms this was true but it was practically YESTERDAY. Before that, it was incredibly UNIFIED. The Incan empire UNIFIED THE ENTIRE NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICAN CONTINENTS in trade, in tribute, in currency, in technology, in spirituality, in almost every aspect.

Even just to say this out loud will piss people off because I am basically being an apostate. Becasue every tribe these days has their own creation story but I can tell you for a fact, the very 4-Directions teaching, the Sacred Hoop, the whole cosmology and the lunar calendar everybody kept, all of it, ALL OF IT came from Inca.

In fact, as we study Inca, I can kind of see 4-Directions and Sacred Hoop as a dumbed-down version of Incan cosmology for the masses. Because, and I hate to say it, but all the great tribes of the North American continent were nothing more or less than illiterate primitives compared to these.

I mean come on, who are we kidding? My people were drawing pictographs on cave walls on two continents while these dudes had writing and higher math going on. Forget about it.

So this is actually a really exiting time to be a native American or any part of one. We now know more than we have known for a fairly long while.

I told you there is a reason I tell you this and here it is: we now know more about the disintegration of the Incan empire than anybody previously suspected. Spain didn't just fight the Incan empire, Spain fought the entire Americas.

I'm serious. By trade and tributory alliances, at that point, the ENTIRE PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY OF THESE TWO CONTINENTS SUPPORTED AND UPHELD THE MONARCHY AS LONG AS WE COULD.

With fish, with corn, with furs, with every single commodity, we supported the emporer because he told us to do so. And I will swear by this. Because all of the tributory cheifs said "should we now rise up against them?" and emporer said no, no, keep the system going, return to your fields and fisheries, we need you to do your jobs now more than ever" because at that point, emporer thought that he could still MANAGE THE SITUATION but the European diseases hit and we had, by coincidence, been through a major 10 year drought and the combination of these factors weakened us to the point the Conquistadores did a walk-through.

And the diseases re-drew the entire political map long before the Mayflower. Because the entire system literally ceased to exist there for a while. It went out like a light. A few generations later, nobody on the periphery (meaning here in North America) even knew what the empire was or that it even existed.

So a couple hundred years later, you can go into present-day New York state for example and find people who are called "The people of the standing rock". Howdy, where did you folks come from? Why, we come from the Standing rock.

Oh reeeeeeeeeally? Do you recall the Place Of Emmergence?

Why sure, it's the Standing rock over there.

Hmmmmm........ok, no problem.

See that's where you get into trouble being a pan-tribal. Everybody has their own place of emmergence. Be careful when you walk in the woods boys because according to native beliefs, there are babies popping out of every hollow tree and ditch and gully.

Now in case you think I can explain every mystery of pre-Columbian America, I can't. Won't pretend to. There are some massive gaps in the puzzle. Like who were these mound-builders in present-day Montana?

Nobody I know has any clue or they ain't talking. Honestly when I want answers I go to Hopi. They remember like phreaking EVERYTHING. But we're not sure who those mound-builders are or Hopi ain't telling and they are kind of notorious for keeping secrets.

For another thing, the people who made those huge-ass animal effigies you can only see from up in the sky. Hopi will tell you a bit about that but they don't like to. Part of it has to do with Katchina and some of them came from the sky, from out there, from some place not here, so the people who made those drawings on the Earth were communicating to somebody up in the sky, somebody not from here. And I can shoot a wild guess that given this level of sophistication or social organization, Inca/Maya had something to do with it.

Paradoxically, Hopi are saying their knowledge is on the wane because they can't compete with MTV and Brittney Spears for the attention of their young people and when a phratry dies at Hopi, it's forever gone. Because not even another Hopi of another phratry is even allowed to know what the other guy knows. So whole chunks, whole endless books are being lost to human memory right now, right as we finally learn to read Incan language again.

In terms of pure human knowlege, I can't tell if we're in a process of remembering or forgetting. I think we're developing some sort of "third sphere of knowledge", in other words, we are becoming aware of what we DON'T know.

At least we're at the point to where we know there's a lot we don't.