The Story of Native Hope

Last Autumn, I was participating in something called Inktober. A global 30 day challenge to draw everyday with a different prompt for each day. This prompt was Hope. 

Hope. What an invisible thing to draw. A mysterious thing to define. An impossible thing to keep. This elusive cliche seems to be just out of reach for me, but for others, like something they’re born into. And born with. The light hearted dreamers. The ones that life, or God, has chosen to protect and preserve from harm, from illness, and from death. The ones that don’t have to choose to live against the resistance, and naturally live. 

I don’t know about you, but that’s not a box I fit into. I’m no stranger to broken things, and maybe you aren’t too. Those stretches of depression, cycles of addictions, and dare I say, thoughts that kill have woven in me off and on for as long as I can tell. So when the day landed on the prompt for Hope, the blank page in me stared at the blank space in my sketchbook and I lingered with the question: What does hope even mean?

In true artist fashion, I see the world through metaphor. Flipping through the pages in my mind, I landed on the times I found an eagle feather in the wild. Now that feels like hope. A spark of joy out of nowhere. An element of surprise. A residue from something else, someone else, somewhere else. Something that falls off, renews and regrows, but something that is illegal to keep.

Except for Native Americans. 

Feathers of eagles may not be sold, purchased, or traded, but can be given and handed down to family members from generation to generation, or from one Native American to another. But Native Americans may NOT give eagle feathers to non-Native Americans as a gift. Eagle feathers are illegal to possess, and hope feels like that for me. I’m never allowed to keep it unless I return to my native land. 

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m not made to belong here. Does death feel natural to you? Or sickness? Are we, as humans, in a natural state of conflict with each other? I used to think these things were natural, until I learned I was confused with familiarity. Normal doesn’t mean innate, or the way it should be. Death is painful because we’re not designed to experience it. We’re designed to live. And as I’ve adventured around, I’ve found people to be exhaustively more friendly than the TV ever broadcasts. 

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m made of the essence of somewhere else, from someone else. Where I came from is out of sight. Like an eagle feather laying in the sand on a pristine beach. Fallen, and left to the Native. Those beautiful people hold on tightly to their legacy. Their art, culture, and language in a world that steals from them as much as it can. 

I don’t know if you can relate, but I live where a thief is on the prowl to kill and steal what I love. For now, there’s demons in the story. There’s beauty I can’t keep. Even the strength of my body has been stolen by disease. A darkness, a death reigns over the land I was born into, but it’s up to me to hold tightly to the invisible, fickle as a feather, ever fleeting thing called hope? Impossible. And for what reason? Because people just expect that out of people, to be hopefully? And hope for what exactly? Hope is an illegal thing, taken if I’m caught having it. So I stopped searching for it. 

Loss has abounded. Both Grandfathers died before I was 9. Father was abusive, and been out of my life since I was 14. And that was an obscure, fading kind of grief that grew as I got older. My buddy Brett died when I was 16. A girl friend I had a huge crush on died when I was 17. I vowed to never fall in love again. The point in some backstory here is that the bulk of my 20’s were spent navigating through these big events. Hope wasn’t on the table, and life wasn’t wanted either. The rejection from dad was ongoing while confronting the pain of it. Self-hatred was fuming while trying to get a handle on the anger and rage I’ve felt since I was a boy. And how does a man become a man without a man around anyway? 

Along the entire way, I leaned into creativity to navigate through these big pains that were difficult to make sense of, or communicate. Journaling was a lifeline. The canvas was my best friend until I was introduced to the mountains and a life of camping and outdoors. I was changed by Awe and Wonder, spent time with them as much as possible. And then of course, my husky came along and won the tittle of lifelong best friend. And somewhere in there, with the help of a mentor, we pursued the process of forgiveness together, and uncovered the sadness that needed let out. I never thought it would stop. But it did. And so did the rage and hate. Crazy how forgiveness changes a man. 

This was a long progression to resolved Sonship, and there’s peace in me I can’t make sense of. But a little while later, I got chronically ill with Lyme disease and derailed my life, even still. And I fell in love again, carefully, and she made me believe in everything. Renewing, and healing me. A catalyst of wild dreams. 

I remember when I was camping for a few weeks on the Northwest Coast, a few miles from Ruby Beach in Washington, I found an eagle feather on the sand. I held it up, took a picture to send to her, “Look what I found!” A moment of joy I stumbled upon in the wild. I laid it back on the sand, and she died in a car accident 6 months later. Hope, an illegal thing to keep. 

A pursuit amiss. 

Now hear me out. Even though all my life I’ve felt like something was off, there’s always been something deeper in me that felt right. The need to create. Creativity is the substance of life. It’s in the water, the blood, and the ink. Hope is just a fruit we sometimes eat and share with a friend. Creativity is the life force. 

As long as I’m an active artist, scribbling, journaling, or painting, I’m tapping into my source of life. The essence I’m made of. The fabric of my being. The purpose of my existing is to beautify life a little bit more. My lifelong pursuit, the chase for beauty, for the next creative spark, this is the current that moves my life along.

Creativity and Hope. My yin and my yang. My balance of things. In one hand, my life force. My reason to live, my proudest moments, my lifeline and fulfilling joy. In the other, an eagle feather I found in the Northwest. Something that falls off, renews and regrows. A residue from someone else, and somewhere else. Something I can’t keep, but find in the wild.