The Importance of Corn Deities

First grown in Mexico some 5,000 years ago, corn soon became the most important food crop in North and Central America. Throughout the region, Puebloans, Mayans, Aztecs, and other Indigenous peoples worshiped corn deities and developed a variety of myths about the origin, planting, growing, and harvesting of corn, also known as maize. Secular and ceremonial life centered around the growing cycle of corn. Corn became an archetype planted in our collective unconscious.  
 

In the process of writing my spiritual memoir, Riding Spirit Horse, I discovered a recurring theme. One motif that keeps repeating itself in my shamanic journey and trance experiences is that of corn. On my first shamanic journey into the spirit world in 1988, I met a spirit guide who became my lifelong mentor in the ways of the spirit world. Known as Corn Woman or Corn Mother, she is an important deity archetype in Pueblo mythology. She represents fertility, life and the feminine aspects of this world.
 
The importance of corn deities in Pueblo mythology reflects the importance of corn in the Pueblo diet. Each pueblo performs a ritual Corn Dance to honor Corn Woman and pray for rain, growth and fertility. A drummer and a chorus of chanting men support the lines of colorful dancers who move in a continually changing zigzag pattern. The graceful dancers turn and pause, then turn again, creating a sweep of movement that ripples through the line like a breath of wind through stalks of ripening corn. The dancers make gestures to indicate their requests to Corn Woman: lowering the arms depicts the lowering clouds, moving the arms in a zigzag motion denotes lightning, lowering the palms signifies rain, and lifting the hands symbolizes the growing stalks of corn. It is a dance that evokes the timeless Pueblo way of being.
 
On my first pilgrimage to the Maya pyramids and ceremonial centers of Mexico in 1995, I had a vision of the Maize God, giving me insight into the mystery of death and rebirth. The Maya Maize God is a mythical dying-and-reviving god who was killed by the Lords of the Underworld, brought back to life by his sons, the Hero Twins, and emerged from the Underworld as corn. For horticultural societies like the Mayans and Puebloans, maize is the substance of life. Its growing cycle is a metaphor for the death, burial and rebirth of humans. When the corn seed from the harvest is blessed and interred in the earth, it is as though a dead human is buried. The embryonic seed germinates in the dark, moist earth and begins to grow. The corn plant turns its leaves toward the light of the sun, growing taller and taller. At the end of the season, when the corn cobs are fully ripe, it is as if the dead person surfaces to join the living. Just as darkness gives rise to light, so life grows from death.

Kamloops Indian Residential School

A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada won the prestigious World Press Photo award on April 7. The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Indian Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times. 
 

It was not the first recognition for Bracken's work in the Amsterdam-based competition. She won first prize in the contest's Contemporary Issues category in 2017 for images of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.
 

Her latest win came less than a week after Pope Francis made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples for the "deplorable" abuses they suffered in Canada's Catholic-run residential schools and begged for forgiveness.
 

Last May, the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 unmarked graves near Kamloops, British Columbia. Established in 1890, it was Canada's largest Indigenous residential school and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.
 

"So we started to have, I suppose, a personification of some of the children that went to these schools that didn't come home," Bracken said in comments released by contest organizers. "There's also these little crosses by the highway. And I knew right away that I wanted to photograph the line of these crosses with these little children's clothes hanging on them to commemorate and to honor those kids and to make them visible in a way that they hadn't been for a long time."

 

Source: World Press Photo

Storytellers and Drums

An excerpt from my new memoir, Riding Spirit Horse: A Journey into Shamanism.
 

In the fall of 1991, my wife, Elisia, and I decided to travel for several months visiting bookstores and promoting my first book, The Shamanic Drum. At the time we were living in Bend, Oregon. We put our personal belongings into storage and ventured south through California and the Desert Southwest. We visited national parks and the Pueblo villages of Zuni, Acoma and Laguna.
 
After departing Laguna, we visited friends in Albuquerque. We spent the night in Albuquerque and then headed north to Santa Fe. We stopped at Cochiti Pueblo along the way. Cochiti Pueblo is renowned for its deep-toned ceremonial drums. Cochiti drums are crafted from hollowed logs, usually aspen or cottonwood--trees native to the high desert climate. Wet cowhide is stretched across the hollowed log and fastened with rawhide lacing. Different cowhides create different tones, and experienced Cochiti drum makers know the characteristic sounds of different skin types. Drums may also feature traditional artwork on the rawhide drum heads.
 
We arrived in Cochiti on a Sunday and roamed the sun baked streets of the ancient adobe pueblo looking for drum makers, but none were open for business. We circled the great round kiva that stood at the heart of the village and then spotted a hand painted sign in front of an adobe home: "Storytellers Here." A storyteller doll is a clay figurine made by the Pueblo people of New Mexico. The first contemporary storyteller was made by Helen Cordero of the Cochiti Pueblo in 1964 in honor of her grandfather Santiago Quintana, who was a tribal storyteller. It looks like a figure of a storyteller, usually a man or a woman, and its mouth is always open. It is surrounded by figures of children or animals, who represent those who are listening to the storyteller.
 
We parked in front of the house and knocked on the door. A smiling middle-aged man opened the door and invited us into his home. He invited us to sit down on comfortable armchairs in the living room and asked if we would like to see some of his daughter's storytellers. We nodded our heads, and he called out to his daughter to bring out her pottery. A dark-skinned, beautiful young woman entered the room with some of her exquisite hand painted figurines. Elisia purchased one of the storytellers and thanked them for their hospitality. The Cochiti people are known for their hospitality and friendship towards visitors who are welcomed to many of the annual ceremonies. I asked them if they knew of any drum makers open for business. The man shook his head no and suggested that we visit the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe where Pueblo artisans sell their wares.
 
We headed north to Santa Fe and made our way to the Palace of the Governors. The Palace of the Governors is an adobe structure located on Palace Avenue on the Plaza of Santa Fe in the historic district. It served as the seat of government for the state of New Mexico for centuries and is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States. Pueblo artisans display their handmade wares on blankets under the portal of the Palace of the Governors. We strolled the plaza and admired the fine work of the artisans, which included pottery, textiles and jewelry made of traditional materials such as turquoise, coral and silver. At last we came upon what I had been searching for: Cochiti drums. Renowned Cochiti drum maker Gilbert Herrera sat on a folding camp chair with his drums displayed on a colorful blanket. Gilbert, a fourth generation drum maker, learned the craft from his father, Redbird. I purchased a log drum with a deep resonant tone and complimented Gilbert on his fine craftsmanship.
 
From Santa Fe, we drove to Taos and visited the famed Taos Drum Company. The owner gave us a tour of the large drum making facility. I left a copy of my book with the owner. We then visited the shop of resident artist and third generation drum maker Frank Mirabal in Taos Pueblo. Mirabal, a Taos Pueblo Indian, followed the example of his father and grandfather and became a drum maker. He acquires and processes the hides: deer, elk, buffalo, horse and cow. The frame of each drum is made from a hand-hollowed log of aspen or cottonwood: trees from his area that will not dry and crack easily. The pitch of the drum depends on the diameter and the depth of the drum.
 
We purchased three of Mirabal's beautiful log drums, one of which was later gifted to Wallace Black Elk, a traditional Lakota elder and spiritual interpreter. Born and raised on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Wallace was one of the original spiritual advisors to the American Indian Movement, a grassroots organization formed to address issues of poverty and police brutality against Native people. He was present at the occupation of Wounded Knee and was instrumental in the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978.