The PlowBoy Interview Rolling Thunder

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We had very poor soil to begin with here, because this sandy, alkaline area is an old lake bottom. We had to drill 200 feet down for water . . . through the layers of sand, mud, and gravel that the lake had left. But we've built up the land with compost and manure, and it's now supporting crops pretty well.

There used to be cottonwood and juniper forests all along the nearby hills, but these days we have to haul our wood from 200 miles away. The first white people that came in here cut the trees down for firewood and railroad ties . . . and then turned their sheep and cattle loose to graze on the new growth. With the help of our young men and women, though, we're planting seedlings around every irrigation ditch, and we hope that our reforestation efforts will eventually return this land to health.

We raise rabbits and goats to provide us with our meat and dairy needs, too. In fact, we have one of the largest dairy-goat herds in this state . . . numbering about 50 head. The 262 acres also support our sheep, horses, cattle, chickens, ducks, geese, earthworms, and honeybees.

Meta Tantay's day-to-day work isn't just agriculturally oriented, either. We have a well—equipped automotive shop . . . and we're now building a modern bathhouse, which will provide running water and hot tubs for our residents.

In short, we want to develop skills similar to those that were once second nature to our people, as well as "modern" abilities that can help us survive.

PLOWBOY: What sort of future do you foresee, then, for your community, your tribe, and the world's people as a whole?

ROLLING THUNDER: A lot of my hopes are based on a very fundamental symbol in traditional Indian belief: the circle. This figure, with its ultimate simplicity, was revered in many aboriginal religions—including ours—and it's long been used as a symbol of the continuity of the Indian nation. Most "primitive" peoples have dances that follow circles, and many of our important ceremonies and rituals are held in a circle formation. In fact, the circle is found every-where in the natural world: The very atoms in our bodies are composed of concentric circles orbiting a spherical nucleus. The earth itself is round . . . and we're told that if you beamed alight out into space for billions of miles, it would eventually arc back to its starting point to make a huge circle.

The continuity of that giant ring of life teaches us that the spirit of cooperation can start with us and loop around to include all living beings. About 15 or 20 years ago, I was at a meeting of medicine men in Oklahoma-the first such gathering our people had had in over 100 years, with representatives of tribes from all over the continent, the West Indies, and even Samoa-when an ancient board with Indian writing on it was brought out. It said that the spirit of brotherhood will be born among the native peoples here, in this land, and then spread all around the world.

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