10 years Friday. I sure would like to have some of that long hair, too. I have heard a tape that, uh, that Don, uh, has talked, and he does make a good talk. So from Colorado Springs, let's all give Don C. a hearty welcome. Good morning, everyone. My name is Don C. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Don. I'm also a member of the Mohican Nation, and I am from the Coyote Clan on my father's side, and I'm from the Turtle Clan on my mother's side. And, uh, in our culture, whenever you introduce yourself as to your identity, that people say, uh, "Who are you?" First I have to– I even had to say I'm an alcoholic in front of my tribe or my clan so that I never get my priorities mixed up. I must always remember that first, and then I introduce myself as to my clan and, and to my people. And, uh, first I'd like to say it's really an honor, um, to be in your country here. This is very beautiful. And, um, we have been treated with dignity and respect from the moment we got off the airplane. Mike was there and met us, and, uh, it was, uh, really, really nice to be here. Um, before I start, though, um, in our way, whenever you, um, uh, speak, then, uh, in our culture we pay a lot of importance to our elders. And the elders, they always say, um, they always say, "Light some sage before you start." Sage is, uh, sage leaves. It's from a plant. And we use that a lot at our spiritual meetings. And sage has got the ability to, uh, make calm. It helps interconnectedness, and we use it for our purification. So the old people, they always tell me, "This is what you're supposed to do first." And so I'm gonna just light a little bit of that sage, and I'll put it on this cloth. And then they always tell us to put down these four colors: red, yellow, black, and white. And what that reminds us is, uh, of all the colors of the human race. There is only one race, and that's the human. And as we know, And it just so happens that the Creator made us different colors. And, um, and so I like to, uh, put those colors down, and that's to show honor to the human race, 'cause as I look about, I see we have representatives from all four directions. And, uh, the alcohol is like one of those EEO diseases, you know? It, it doesn't care. And, uh, in AA, you know, I was taught here eventually in AA that what I needed to look at was a person's heart and that we should just take off our earth suits and take the outer, the outer suit off and then look at one another just as humans and look at one another's hearts or one another's insides. And then I'm gonna just light a little bit of this sage. And in our way, that's what, uh, the sage, it, it turns to smoke. And this process is called smudging. And this is a eagle's wing, and I was given this some time ago by the elders. And, um, what we do with the smudging is you let, when that smoke, it releases that medicine in the, under the fan. Then that medicine, it sticks to the eagle's wing. And then when you spread that medicine out, that medicine gathers underneath the wing. And then you take this wing and you go, and it spreads it really long distance. But this is how the old people said that we're supposed to do this. And, uh, I do it also 'cause I'm nervous. That helps me. Then a second reason I do this is, um, I, I lay this feather on there. And, uh, the way it is in our ways, the old people, they say, "Whenever you stand in the presence of a eagle feather, you cannot lie." So I thought, "I better have that feather out here so that I tell the truth." I was taught, too, by you in this program that you always tell your experience, your strength, and your hope. And, um, sometimes, uh, I guess the best way we can explain things sometimes is tell a story. So I'll tell you a story about my, my journey. And my journey with alcohol, it was, um, I think the best way I could describe it, it was like, uh, this story I heard one time. And it said that in this arena, it was, uh, a match, a boxing match was going on in this arena. And in the black trunks was a person named Alcohol. In the white trunks, that was, uh, me. And you know, when they have, uh, events like that, they always save the front row for your family. They always get the special close-up view. And so this arena, it was, uh, really full of a lot of people, and I was excited about this match, and my family, my children, my family, they sat up in the front row, and they were watching. And as me and this alcohol, we started to have this fun with each other. In the first couple rounds, it was nothing. It was okay. We danced around, boxed a little bit, and the bell would ring. We'd sit down. They ring that bell again, we get up there, and we dance around some more. And about that third round, as we were dancing around in that boxing ring, the alcohol, somehow it snuck in a lucky punch, and it kinda stunned me a little bit. And the alcohol, it looked at me, and he says, "Hey, that was just a lucky punch. Just nothing." He said, "You just had your guard down." And I said, "I know that." And so they was, uh, just doing what they normally do at boxing matches, you know, selling popcorn and stuff. Everybody was watching. But by the time about the fourth or fifth round came, it started to get to be really boring, so a lot of the people, they just started to leave that arena. And, uh, as we danced around there, the alcohol, every once in a while, he'd slip in and hit me again. It'd sting just a little bit more each time. And, uh, I would kinda jump back, and I looked at him. The alcohol said, "Hey, that was just a lucky punch." And I says, "I know that. I know that was just a lucky punch." By the time we got to the eighth or ninth round, it seemed that the alcohol was doing that routinely. It was jumping in there, and it was starting to really sting, and it was starting to hurt some. Then pretty soon, my family come up to me, and they said, "You know," they said, "you ought to get out of this. Let's all go home, 'cause this isn't working very well." And, uh, the alcohol looked at me, and the alcohol says, "Let me tell you the truth. You have the ability to whip me." And I looked at that alcohol, and the way that it said it, I knew that the alcohol was speaking the truth. I knew that I could whip that alcohol. So I told to my family, I said, "You just sit here. One more round, I'm gonna go in there. This is the round I'm gonna do it." And as I got in there, this time the alcohol, it just punched away almost at will, and it really hurt this time. And by then, all the people in the arena had left except my family. They were still there. And I sat there quite wounded. And then during one of those breaks, my, one of my children, they come up to me, and they said, "Dad," they said, "if you don't quit and leave," they says, "we're gonna leave without you." And I looked at them, I said, "Just one more round. You just wait. This is the round I can do it." And so they sat down there, and this time the alcohol came out, and it just started to beat me unmercifully, even put me down on my knees. And as I was on my knees, I looked, and I see my family walk out. I could see them under the ropes. Out they went, 'cause they said they couldn't take it anymore. And so I looked up at alcohol, and the alcohol says, "You know," he says, "you can beat me. I'm telling you the truth. You can whip me." And I looked up at the alcohol, and I said, "I know I can." I said, "I can whip you." And I told him, "Ring that bell again, because I'm ready now." So as I got out there that next round, this time the alcohol, it started to really fight unfair. It didn't listen to any of the rules. It started to beat and kick and pound, and finally, I was out on my hands and knees, and I was crawling out there, and the alcohol would stomp. Finally, right to the point where I was on my stomach. Alls I could see was the alcohol's tennis shoes. And the alcohol was still telling me, he says, "You can whip me." And then finally, I think it sunk in. I said, "No, I can't." And so I crawled out of that arena. And I got out of that arena, and it seemed I started to get a little bit better. Things started to fall in place. And I remember this one day, I got thinking. I said, "You know something? I think I can whip that alcohol." You know, I still had it in the back of my mind that I could do it. So I, one day, night, I went back to the arena, and I walked in there. That, it was lit up there. Alcohol stood there with his hands over those ropes. And I said, "Alcohol, I'm back." And the alcohol said, "And I knew you would be," the alcohol says, "'cause you know you can whip me." So I went in there, and we started dancing around, and it wasn't like before. The alcohol put me to my knees right away. I saw his tennis shoes. And, uh, I said to myself as I was looking at the alcohol's tennis shoes, I said, "Man, I gotta get out of here." So I crawled out of that arena again. And I stayed out a little bit longer this time, but I started thinking. I thought I knew another trick. I thought I knew another way. And so one night, I went back into that arena again, and I said, "Alcohol, I'm back." And the alcohol said, "I knew you would be, 'cause you know you can whip me." And I went back in there, and this time the alcohol didn't even wait for the bell to ring. I think I was turned the other way. And it just started to beat unmercifully. And right away, I was on alc- on my knees, looking at the alcohol's tennis shoes. And I crawled out of there again. Stayed out longer this time. Thought about it really well. And I think I knew one more trick that alcohol wouldn't know. So when I went in there- The alcohol, I said to the alcohol, I said, "I'm back." The alcohol said, "I knew you would be." And that's insanity that we all know about. And the last time I walked out of there was August tenth, nineteen seventy-eight, and I found it not necessary to take another drink because I finally figured out that alcohol was lying. It wasn't saying the truth. And it was at that point that I came into AA. And I didn't come into AA to get my family back 'cause they were gone. I didn't come back to get my job 'cause I had none. The reason I came into AA, what put me in the A was alcohol. That's how come I came into AA, because there was no other place to go, and I was doing crazy things. I was a blackout drinker and, uh, pretty unpredictable. And when I came into your fellowship, I was, um… I remember a few years ago, I was riding to San Diego with a woman who runs a service office in Denver, Colorado. And, uh, we were riding in the airplane, and she says, "You know, I worked at that service office," she says, "fifteen years." And she said, "You know, in those fifteen years that I worked there," she says, "you was the most hateful, angry human being I ever saw walk through the doors of AA." And this was true. By the time I had come to you, that was about the only thing I had, was hate, and I had anger. And I remember my first meeting. I walked in there, and, uh, it was one of these situations. There was a parking spot right in front of where the meeting was. And I saw– I said, "I'm gonna ride around the block, and if that parking spot is still there, then it means I'm supposed to go in there." So I rode around the block a couple times, and that parking spot, it was right there. And I– One time, I remember I come around there, and there was a car, and that car shoulda went right in that parking spot, but they didn't. They went further down the block, and they parked. So finally, I went into the AA, and I walked in there and I looked, and I says, "Oh my God, there's all white people in here." But I was very prejudiced at that time, and, uh, I resented that. I sat in that meeting, and, uh, I remember there was two things I really hated. One is I hated your laughter. You laughed a lot in those meetings. And the other thing I hated was you were telling stories about yourself. I couldn't understand why you would sit in public and say things about yourself. I couldn't believe that. But there was something when I left there, there was this feeling. Later on, I was to come to find out that thing is tribal. That's, uh, it's a feeling of belonging. And I think for the first time, that first meeting, that I got that feeling. It's like I come home. Except my head, it was telling me other things. But there was something inside. I knew that I had made it to a place that was gonna help. And eventually, as I quit slipping, by the time I came to you, I was ready to do anything. I didn't resist too much in AA when I came, and I was ready. There was nothing else to do. And so one of the first things you told me I needed to do was to get a sponsor, and so I did that. And I went, and I found this man. They call him Big Frank. And he was, uh, from Denver. He's a very big man, kinda all scarred up kind of a guy. So I went, and I asked him, I said, "I would like to ask you if you'd be my sponsor." And he looked at me, and he said, "Well, we'll talk after the meeting." And so we went down, and we sat in York Street in Denver, and we talked, and he said to me, he says, "You know," he said, "I've been in here fifteen years." He said, "And I watch you Indians coming in, and I watch you leave." He said, "Most of you guys don't make it." He said, "I don't know what it is," but he said, "you come in, hang out a couple meetings." He said, "Just look around." He says, "You guys usually don't make it." He said, "There's something funny about you guys." And then he kept edging me on. He was kind of a sarcastic kind of a guy, you know. And, uh, so he just kept on. And you know how sometimes you take like a little puppy and, uh, you tease them, you rub your face in it, and you pretty soon you make that little puppy get mad. You make it growl. And I think in, in, in his wisdom, that somehow he knew about the only thing that I had to work on was hate. And so he just got that anger going, got the anger going, and he'd tell me things, you know. And, um, finally, I remember I got so mad inside at him. I remember I was thinking to myself as he sat there, and my jaws would get tight. And I remember he was saying, "You're not gonna make it," and, "I don't think it'll work for you," and, "You guys," and, "You Indians this," and, "You Indians that." I remember I– In my mind, this thought come. I thought, "You know something, you white son of a bitch? I'm gonna show you I'll make it. You just watch me." And so he said there's, he says, "There's a couple things I'll guarantee you." He says, "We work together 'cause we want to work together." And he said, "One thing I will do-" He says, "I will be your friend." And he said, "That doesn't matter whether you drink again or not." He said, "It has nothing to do with you. That's my decision. No matter what, I will be a friend to you." And the second thing he said is, "I'll share my experience with you." And he says, "Believe it or not, I do know things you don't." He says, "'Cause I'm sober and you're not." And he went on to say, he says, "I'll tell you some other things." He says, "First of all, you need to realize in this relationship," he said, "I am not your taxi cab." He said, "I'm not your banker. I'm not your daddy. I'm not your mama." He said, "What I do is," he says, "I will show you where the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is." And he held up this big book, and he showed me how thick was 164 pages. And he said, "What you're gonna do in that book," he says, "You are gonna bet your life that if you do what's in these pages," he says, "you will never have to drink again, that AA is about dying sober." And I remember when he told me, he said, "You will never have to drink again," that was an incredible thing to hear that some kind of program existed that I would never have to drink again. And those words, it just opened my ears because it– I almost felt like crying. Those words were so powerful, that I would never have to drink again. And so he showed me how many pages was in that big book. Then he took a schedule, and he circled some meetings. Circled one on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. Sunday, I got to pick the meeting I wanted to go. But the other meetings, he picked. And he circled step meeting, tradition meeting, big book study meeting, and he said, "I want you to go to these meetings." He says, "A lot of these meetings," he says, "you never see. They're not overcrowded." He says, "Not everybody goes to these meetings." He says, "Usually the groups are pretty small. That's in these meetings." But he said, "I want you to go there," and he said, "Until you take the third step," he said, "I want you to say when you go there, you say, 'My name is Don. I'm an alcoholic.'" And he says, "You don't say nothing else 'cause you don't know anything else." He said, "You just shut up. Don't talk." And so I, uh, I did that. I would go to these meetings, but I remember I got to this one meeting one time, and this woman walked in there, and I'm pretty sure she was looking at me. So I thought, you know how that is, I thought I had been to enough meetings, I thought maybe I could say some stuff, you know, make me sound pretty good. So I thought up what I was gonna say, quoted the big book a couple times. I could see I impressed her. She looked at me. And so anyway, we got done, and I got home. I wasn't home ten minutes, the phone rang. I said, "Hello." Frank says, "What the hell were you doing talking tonight?" You know, the sponsors, they, they, uh, they can hear. I mean, they find out things that you don't think that they should find out. But they do find out. And so, uh, I did that. I didn't talk anymore 'til after the third step 'cause sponsors, you know, they find, they find things out. But as, uh, we started to work together with this man, and he started to show me the instructions in the big book. You know, I used to look in that big book. To me, initially, that big book was the most boring book I ever read in my whole life, and I never could find the instructions in it. I didn't know where they were. I mean, I thought it was like, um, some place it would, "Instructions." That that's what I thought it would say, and I could never find them. And so he started me in reading that big book, and he told me it was a textbook, and a textbook is something you have to study. And he showed me where the instructions were for the first half of the first step, and my mind was pretty foggy in those days. So he was pretty adamant that I read that twenty-five times. He said, "You gotta read it again and again and again and again and again." And so I read that about that alcohol, and I started to see some things in there. Some of those things I read at first was scary. And I remember that time that I read that part in there where it says that the day will come when you have no mental defense against that first drink. I knew that sentence. And I read that sentence where it says that some people don't lack the capacity to be honest, and that some don't make it. And that scared me because I knew about my honesty, about my dishonesty. I knew about that. And I was going, "My God, will I be one of those who doesn't have that capacity?" He says, "Some don't, can't make it." And as I started to go to meetings, and you started to tell me some of these things that I needed to hear, some of your stories. You may be different color, different direction, but they were the same bars. It was the same destruction of family. It was the same stuff. It was the blackouts. You were doing the same thing that I was doing. And then that man, he showed me on page fifty-two of the big book, there's a paragraph he called the unmanageability paragraph. And in that page fifty-two, there are nine areas that I was to look at in terms of my unmanageability. And in that nine paragraph, there are some sentences, and I was to take those sentences and flip them into a question. And one thing I needed to look at the unmanageability was in the area of my personal relationships. And it went on to say to look at your emotional nature, and is your life full of fear? And do you have feelings of being useless? And did you have depression, or did you have misery? And he showed me how to look at unmanageability. See, I never knew how to do that. I never ever had the habit of looking inside. That was really a new experience for me. And as I came out of that, I started to see. I was able to admit my life was unmanageable in many, many areas. It wasn't working. And, you know, there's that definition of insanity, well, there are many, but one of the definitions that we hear is that you can keep thinking what you're thinking, you can keep doing what you're doing and expect different results. See, that's the way I was living my life. And then he went on to show me the chapter We Agnostics. It's where the instructions are for step two. And I was to read that many, many, many times. And then he taught me how to take those nine areas in step one, and I was to create a vision in nine areas in step two. In other words, once I saw how my personal relationships were not making it, then I was to ask myself this question: If your relationships were making it, then how do you think God would have you be? Not what would God have you do, but what would God have you be? Honest, trusting, integrity, understanding. And he showed me how to do step two. And then I went on, and I took that step three, and I didn't like that step three at first. Whoever's wisdom it was to put in that God as we understand Him, I think if that sentence wasn't in there at that time where I was, I couldn't have stayed. And, uh, I was so, uh, mixed up when I first came into AA, and I heard this saying that says, "You can make this God, you can call it whatever you want." See, I was raised in boarding schools on a reservation, and, um, I have a lot of experiences on the reservation with different religions. That the missionaries and things, they came in there all the time and, uh, oh, one year I'd be Pentecostal. They always brought food and clothes, so that's where we would go. So they bring the foods and clothes, and you have to do this, and then you could eat. And then next year it'd be the Catholics, and you have to do this before you get the clothes and you could eat. So I was kind of mixed up, you know, on religion. And I never could figure out until I got into AA. You know, they all had this thing about, uh… One of them, they always had these two goals. One, they were going to heaven, and if you weren't one of them, you go to hell. And I could never, ever figure out which one really was the one that got you to heaven. You know? But they all said if you belong to the other one, you go to hell. And so by the time I had, uh, grown up, I left that way. And so I chose at this time to call God Charlie, and I called him Charlie because I had met this man when I was in the university one time, a young man. He really treated me good. I liked this man. And so for no other reason than that, I said, "I will call this God Charlie." And so that was how I originally came in, uh, to AA. And I remember in taking this third step, I was shown the instructions, all that area just prior to the third step prayer. And my sponsor, he explained to me, he says, "Every one of those lines is like an instruction. You have to read it and then to see, does this apply to you?" Most people try to live their life by self-propulsion. Is that true? I had to think about that. Every sentence in there, I had to consider it, that that was the instruction, getting me ready to be willing to turn my life over to the care of this power. And, uh, I really had a difficult time doing that until I heard in AA, um, this man one time, he told a story, and it was about these frogs. And he said, "There's these four frogs sitting on a log." And he said, "One of these frogs decided to jump in a pond." Then he said, "How many frogs was left on that log?" And I said, "Well, three." He said, "No, there's four." He said, "That frog that made that decision to jump in the water," he said, "is still sitting on that log with the other three frogs. The only difference is," he said, "it's to do with the third step. When you turn your life over to the care of this power, then what God makes that frog is a orange frog. So you have three green frogs. When you turn your life over to the Creator, He makes you into a orange frog. That frog is still sitting on the log, but it didn't jump." Then he says, "The question is, do you wanna become one of these orange frogs?" 'Cause he said it works like this. He says, "Contrary to what you hear in the program," he said, "once you make that decision to turn your life over to the Creator," he said, "you can't take that decision back." He s- he says, "You can't go orange frog, green frog, orange frog, green frog." That once you become a orange frog, he said, "your ass belongs to God." And he said, "What happens…" He said, "What happens if you go and you get drunk three days after you take that– you make that decision to turn your life over to the care of the Creator? Then you are a drunk orange frog." That's what he said. What if you get angry and lose your temper? Then you are a angry orange frog. That once you make that move, that's it. And, uh, I found out that this was true. Somehow that made sense to me because I thought that you had to be so perfect, and you had to change or whatever. It had nothing to do with that. That's what the steps were to do. They would help you change after you make that decision. So I went over to my sponsor's place, and I told him, "I'm ready to make this decision." And so me and that old man, we got on our knees, and he all– each have our big book, and he read that third step prayer. And that was kind of strange because I was not even used to hanging on hands with men. Where I come from, you didn't do things like that. But that was, uh, made me a little bit nervous. And then I too, I read that third step prayer. And when I said that third step prayer, I meant it. I knew that this is what I wanted to do, because by then I found out the only hope that I had for any kind of sobriety, this type of sobriety where you never drink again, was to understand the spiritual walk, which today I call a Red Road. In our culture, we call that the Red Road to sobriety. And we took that third step, and then I asked him, I says, "Well, what next?" And he reached behind his chair, and he pulled out a paper and a ruler and a pencil. He opened up the big book, and he says, "Next, we launch on that course, uh, of inventory." And so before I was leaving there, I had examples of how to write inventory. He showed me how to do that. And I wrote my inventory on resentment, I wrote my inventory on sex, I wrote my inventory on fear. And when I got my resent– my inventory finished, I knew, I knew it was good. The reason I knew it was good, as I wrote my normal inventory, then I took… He was very adamant about the dark crannies. He said, "You gotta tell everything, every secret. You cannot leave nothing just to yourself." So I took those dark crannies, and I wrote them on another piece of paper. And so when I– day came to do my fifth step, I remember that day very well because I got that nervousness going. And I knew that that day I was gonna either fifth step or I was gonna drink. It seemed like the steps to me was always motivated. I always waited to the last part, and I knew that day I was thinking about drinking. So I called my sponsor, and I said, "I wanna fifth step." But when I talk– I called to his house, they had just taken him to the hospital, kind of emergency. He was gonna be in there. So then I called this other man that I knew, and, uh, his phone didn't answer. So I had a third guy 'cause I had to do it. I had to do it that day. And I called this other man, and he says, "Come on over." He said, "I'll put the coffee on." So we went over there, and we did that fifth step. I read him the things I had written about my inventory. And they showed me how to write five-column inventory and resentment inventory, four columns in fear inventory, and the nine columns in a sex inventory. And when I got done reading my inventory, this man said to me, he says, "Is there anything else?" And it's like, damn, he knew I had that piece of paper in my pocket. I says, "Well, I think I have a couple of things." And so in his wisdom, he started to tell me some of the things that he wrote in his inventory. And I remember the relief that it was 'cause he really told me some juicy stuff, and I had some of that juicy stuff on mine. And I remember I, I thought to myself, you know, as he's telling me that, I said, "I think I can do this now because if he tells on me, I'll tell on him." So anyway, we got through, we got through the inventory. I read those dark crannies, and I went back home. And he showed me in the big book, it says, "After you finish fifth step, you go back home." Some instructions again in the big book. Says, "First, you thank God from the bottom of your heart that you know Him better." And so I lit some of this sage, and I sit down in this place I was at, and I started thinking about this journey. 'Cause see, I had a, another plan when I came in to go through that set of steps. I said to myself, I said, "I am gonna put a effort into these twelve steps, but I'm only– I'm gonna do a check at step number five. And if I personally don't see this stuff working myself, then I am doing no more. But I will give it to that fifth step." And when I came home, I sat down there, and I was thinking about this journey and about the things that happened. And so I started, I says, I just kinda prayed. I just talked out loud to, like, Charlie. I said, "You know something, Charlie? Like, this is getting to be pretty cool." 'Cause I started to feel inside of myself that something was going on. And as that sage burned, and as I continued to talk to Charlie, I found myself on my knees, and I found myself not using the word Charlie no more, but I started to use the word God. And as I, my prayer continued, I started to use the word Creator. And as my prayer continued, I started to talk to . And I started to speak in my own native language again. I could just feel during that time that my prayers, it just really changed. Something was really going on inside of myself. And I think that, you know, with each of the odd steps, there is a set of promises. And with that, also true the fifth step. And I looked, and I read those promises. And, you know, for the first time that I could remember, I said, "You know something? This program is gonna work for me." I could tell something happened. And to experience a time of life after that first step when I was free of guilt, I was free of shame. I could remember the stories that I didn't. I could remember everything, and parts of my inventory was very, very difficult. I remember the struggle I wrote when I wrote about my sexual abuse by, by an uncle when I was a young boy. And I never told anybody that, about that sexual abuse that happened by that man. But I was able to put that out in the inventory. Now I'm able to share that when it needs to be shared. I have that freedom to do that. And I had this list of character defects, and he showed me how to take a look at those defects, and I went through and I did what I was told to do. Asked him, the Creator, to remove those defects, the ones that I wasn't willing to let go, to ask Him to help me with the willingness to let that go. And then I went on and I made my amends, and I had a lot of amends to make. My sponsor was very adamant about the effort needed to make these amends in person. He was really, said that's the way to do it. And I remember some of the amends, I didn't know where these people were, and he guided me down to the telephone company, downtown Denver. They have a library of phone books from all over the United States, and I had to go there and to look and to seek out to find these people. And I went through and I made these amends like I was told. A lot of my amends, I m- I didn't do them so hot. I, you know… I, I took my amends and I made them in three columns: light, medium, and hard. So I went and I tried a couple light amends, and they went pretty cool. I says, "This is, this is all right." So then I went and I selected a medium amend. And I remember I went to this person, I made it an appointment, and I went there and I started to tell him about this nature of my wrong, what I had done. And when I got done, they said, "Is that all?" And I said, "Well, yeah, that's all." They said, "That ain't all the shit you did. Let me tell you some more stuff that you did." And I remember they started to tell me that, and I got really upset, and I started screaming at them, and they started screaming back, and, you know. I says, "I…" You know. Anyway, I ended up making amends for making an amends. And, um , but it was good. And I learned to do that, and I got into steps 10 and 11. And it was, uh, very difficult at first to get that habit of looking at what the program, what it requires, this discipline of praying in the morning. Today, I believe the most important, most significant thing I can do during the course of the day is to pray. And that's been my journey. The steps has been very powerful. I go through the steps every year, just prior to my anniversary birthday, and the reason I do that is I was taught by my sponsor to do that. And one of the reasons he said, "You need to make that journey every year," he says, "your ego always works on right where you have your shit together. Right where you think you're hot, that's where you're in trouble." And that steps, it helps it, you see, to go through and to do that. And so as I got through the steps, I have so much respect for the steps today that I, I'm going through a set of them right now, but I have decided to make a vow that if I hear the steps read, I'm gonna stand up out of respect for them because of their power and because of what, the way they do. As I started to work in the steps, I had one set of steps my sponsor had me go through, and he had me just work through a set of steps just on being Indian. He said, "Being Indian will get you drunk." And I was really resentful, and I didn't know what he was saying because I had a lot of ideas, a lot of prejudices, a lot of things I had to look at. And I went through that, and I, when I come out of that set of the work, I saw what he was saying. I had to not look at it that way. That, that could, you see, get me drunk. And it was a long healing time for my family. It was a long time of reconstruction. Even though I wanted it to happen right away, it didn't happen that way for me right away. I remember the first year I was sober, I wasn't allowed… I could go to my place, but I was, uh, had to have supervision to see my children. And then the second year I was sober, I could go there, and when I go there, they'd say, "Hi, Dad," and they would leave out the back door. They would just leave. And I remember the third year I was sober was the first time I took them in a car and we went Christmas shopping. And as we come back from the store, I walked, was walking them up the steps, and we all kinda stood there 'cause we was gonna say goodbye. And I remember my oldest son, he turned around and he looked at me, and he said, "Dad has something to say." And I says, "What's that?" He said, "I wanna tell you I love you," and he give me this hug. And my second son gave me the hug, and my daughter, she did also. And I got in that car and I drove back to Colorado Springs, where I live, and I remember that feeling inside. I never, ever thought I would see the day that that would turn around, um, but it did. And, uh, at that time, I was working at a corporation, and I started to… You know, it says you need to apply these steps in every area of your life, and I went to this corporation, and I worked there for 14 years. And it actually was through you I started to find my culture again. I went back home, and I started to talk to the elders. I took the steps to the elders, and I asked them, I said, "These 12 steps about recovery." I was a little concerned about walking two paths, a white way and a red way, as I called it. And the elders, they looked at these steps, and they said, "No, that's our way too. This is the old traditional way. We used to do all of these things, always examining ourself." They said, "The only change I would ever make in these steps," they said, "is you put them in a circle because we always work in circles. We don't work in lines." And they said, "You take steps one, two, three, you put them in the east." And that is a direction like that new sun. It's a direction of finding the Creator or the Great Spirit or God, whatever we call Him. Then he says, "Steps four, five, six is in the south." And he said, "That is the direction that you find yourself. That's where the sun is high, the growth directions." Steps seven, eight, nine, they said, "Put them in the west of the circle." That's like the sunset, the letting go direction, the forgiveness direction. That that direction, it pulls things away. And steps 10, 11, and 12 is in the north, and that's the direction of the elders. That's the direction, direction of the buffalo, we call it, and that's the direction that the elders come down. But they said, "This is the way we… Only difference," they say, "we would do it in a circle." So I work the steps in a circle. I have learned today that I can use the steps. Like before, I have a s- we now have a way, uh, we do ceremony with every step. So first time before we decide to take the steps, we go in the mountains, and we really think about making this journey each time we go through them. 'Cause each time I go through them, I wonder, "Is those steps gonna have the magic again? Is it gonna work again?" And each time I think, "I don't think so. Maybe I'll learn just a little bit." But I learn much. And I come down from there, and then I do the work just like with a big book. I write inventory with my eagle feather in one hand and a pen in the other. I take the third step. I now take that with the chanupa, the sacred pipe, and I light my pipe, and I go out, and when I turn my will myself over to the care of the Creator, as I go through that, I smoke that sacred pipe, and I do that. When I get done with the fifth step, I go to the sweat lodge, and I go in there, and I leave all that for steps six and seven in that sweat lodge. I have since, uh, how it is now is, um, I run a organizations called White Bison. Uh, in the middle '80s, I started to have some of my culture come back. I started to have these visions, and I learned I could go on a vision quest. And it was in a vision quest I had that vision of the white buffalo came to me. And, uh, I took that vision for interpretation, and the elders, they said, "That means you're being called to do something." It wasn't too much later, year or so later, I started White Bison as a foundation, nonprofit organization. What we work today is in development of Native American communities. And we go there, as some of you may know, there's a lot of alcohol in the Indian communities. And in the communities, like for example, one community that we work with, they have about two thousand members. They have about eighty-five percent serious alcoholism above the age of twelve. Twenty-five percent of the babies currently being born are FAS or FAE babies, that fetal alcohol syndrome. Average lifespan is thirty-seven point six years. A lot of death, and then they have a lot of abuses. You know. We know what that is. And we take there, and now we have developed a community healing program that is modeled after the 12 steps. And we go, and we start working with the community, and we get the community to admit what is it powerless over. And then we go through a process that we look at community unmanageability, and we look at all of the things at a community level. And then we bring the community into step two, and then we do a ceremony to get the Creator to be involved and to help us this. And we found that the steps has many, many applications, that they can be used even in the community level. That community today, in three years, went from the eighty percent or so alcoholism to over sixty percent sober. And so we go around to the Indian communities. And last year, the elders, they told us, because they guide us in our community, and they said, "You have to do a giveaway." They said, "Now you have to give away as an organization." So last year, we made a recovery program called The Medicine Wheel and the 12 Steps, and we made this for the Indian men that is incarcerated, that is in prison. And we didn't have the money to do that, so we got a lot of volunteers, and it was really good. They had a three-camera shoot, and they have a director since then, and everybody come and help do this. And then we went to the lawyers, and they said, "You have to copyright this video series," because they were from the university. And, uh, so we got the brothers back together, and we said, "Well, the university says we have to copyright." And so we talked this over, and we decided to make an Indian copyright. So we wrote this Indian copyright back, and we went back to the lawyers, and we said, um, "This is the Indian copyright." And it says, "To be copied, to be borrowed, to be stolen, to be hocked, to be pawned." So they went into executive session, and they were in there a long time. They stick their head out, and they said, "You know, if you do this, it means people are gonna copy it." And I says, "Yeah, right. That's what we want them to do." And so that program has been going through the giveaway. It's being copied. We don't know all where it is. Um, last year, our organization trained a hundred and seventy-five facilitators, and it's in many of the prisons. Then the elders, they came to us. They said, "Now you have to make one for the women." In November, the Creator is arranging for us to make this Medicine Wheel and 12 Steps for the Indian women that's in prison, and it's just a different point of view is all. But it's the same, it's the same way. Um, I think what I, I found out is this, um, how much I respect AA and you is I actually believe that you are my tribe. You are my first tribe. My biological tribe is my second tribe because, um, I belong here, and I belong with you, and that you saved my life. You gave me back my culture. It was through you I found out how off-track I was, and I didn't know that I was off-track. Today my life is much different. I think if I were to choose the worst thing– If I had to pick one worst thing in my sobriety or my alcoholism, if I was to choose one thing that was the worst, it was the loneliness and how you have that hole. It doesn't matter if you're in a cr-crowd with people. You have that hole. Didn't know what that hole was. What filled it up was to find this relationship with a great spirit. That's what I was looking for. That was that hole. I think that if I were to take a look at the greatest gift that I have gotten from you in my sobriety, and it is my relationship with a great spirit, I call it. It's very practical. I have learned things from you like guidance is always available. I used to think guidance was something like you have to call God, you get voicemail, then you wait to see does He call you back. And I learned that's not the way it is. I learned how I get that guidance is get to get still. As soon as I'm still, that guidance is always floating in the air in the unseen world, and I have the ability to just get still. Be still and know. Um, a lot of my life has been restored. I– Last year, my two grandchildren, a grandson, granddaughter, and my children let me take them in my car for a weekend. That it's all right, and they trust me, you know, to do that. And, uh, I have lost a lot of things in AA, but the thing you told me was you says, "No matter what happens, you won't have to drink." You didn't promise. You promised me that if I do certain things, you say you never have to drink again. Go to meetings on a regular basis. Read the big book. Do the steps. Pray in the morning. Thank God at night. That if I did that, and I had a twelve-year sober sobriety, I had everything disappear, and I have it come back. And, uh, that's the way it's been for me. But what you told me about the alcohol and not drinking, this is true. Um, I have had many blessings in my sobriety, and I always, uh, feel really good when I see people from the four directions in here, my brothers, my sisters. And I look at them. We look at one another, and we say, "You know, we don't have to say it. We know we love one another." I met one back there. S-She's Indian. I could tell when I look at her. Sober twenty-one years, a sister. Man, that's something. We're sober. We got something in common. We didn't have to tell a story. She and I looked at one another. Everything was said. So it's really been– Life has really been an honor, you know, to live. I love life today. I think that life is sacred. I'm starting to look at many things with a sacred eye. Um, and I'm starting now to attract good relationships. I know what it's like to be in a good relationship. I know what it's like to be in a healthy relationship, that you can go through conflict in a positive way, in a respectful way. And so, uh, I, I think maybe the best way I could close this is to say this prayer that I heard. Of course, everything I know seems comes from the AA. And this prayer is very short, but to me it's always been very powerful. And that prayer says to God, Takasha, whatever you call it. But it says, "God, thank you for what you've given me. God, thank you for what you've taken from me. And God, thank you for what you've left me." And what I was left with is AA and you and these sacred steps in this fellowship. And what is left is way more than enough for us to make it and to die sober. So in just closing, I would just like to say I love you all. Thank you for having me in your community, and thank you for making me feel that feeling of belonging. And it's also in our way that what you– The elders, they always say this, is that the person that you are with, you must always, uh, honor them. And I would like at this time just to have Gene stand up. And so everybody knows, uh, this is Gene. So I would just close, and I ask you all to walk in beauty. Beauty above, beauty below, beauty before, and beauty behind. And you walk in beauty by working our twelve steps. Thank you very much.
