I'm Phil Crazy Bull. I'm an alcoholic and addict. My name is Phil Crazy Bull. I'm a full-blood Lakota from Rosebud, South Dakota. I just said in my language that I am Lakota and that's where I'm from. I'm from Rosebud, South Dakota, but I've been transplanted to Albuquerque because of a need to work. I'm also a licensed substance abuse counselor and a coordinator for the substance abuse program for seven tribes in the state of New Mexico. I came here today with a good heart and good mind and I want to welcome all you relatives here today like this today. We have a very spiritual purification at this time. A little rain came down, so we're all going to stay here for the duration of the night now. It looks that way. But I want to begin by saying that, you know, that I'm an alcoholic. I grew up on a reservation in Rosebud, South Dakota. I went to Catholic boarding school and I went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. But my first experience with alcohol was at the church. I was an altar boy and I got into the priest's wine because I wanted to see what it tasted like. And at that time, when I was a young boy, prior to that, at the age of two years old, I lost my mother and father. I lost them to an alcoholic-related accident, which they both died. And so I was raised from family to family to family and as a result became a product of the Bureau of Indian Affairs social services program. And as a result, I carried a lot of rage in my life, a lot of hate, a lot of anger. And especially my thinking wasn't the way it should have been as an imbalance. I grew up traditionally. I grew up knowing all the ceremonies, knowing about all the herbs, knowing about everything that had to be productive in life. But I ran from it because I didn't want that. Because I had so much rage in my life as a young man that I didn't even want to believe in God. I didn't want to believe there was a higher power because I felt that as I was growing up, I lost 13 brothers and sisters. I lost my grandma and grandpa on my mother's side and on my father's side. And I lost my mom and dad. And so I blamed this all on God for taking everything away from me and leaving me out here all alone. And so I started the process of understanding how I could relieve my pain. And my pain and my rage was through alcohol and drugs. And I led a life like that for quite some time until about 21 years ago when I started my sobriety. A very short time ago. I've seen over 50 winters now. And so it's been a while. At that time, I was very, very crazed. You know how alcohol can become masters of your life. And it became a master for me because I lived it every day. I lived it to the point where I decided that I was going to die too. My parents had died from it. My brothers and sisters had died from it. And so I said, well, I'm going to die from that too. And one day, 21 years ago, I had a spiritual experience. I had known about the sweat lodge. I had known about all what took place in there. But I played very dumb. I played it because I was in denial. I was in denial about my problem. I was in denial about my spirituality. And as a result, I went into a ceremony pretending that I didn't know anything. And it was at that time that I had a spiritual experience. And I had met my ancestors. My ancestors stopped time for me in the lodge. And to this day, that's why I believe in the spirits of our ancestors, in the spirits of the rock nation, in the spirits of Mother Earth, and the Creator, how he can make things different in your life. I know that I had a lot of things to work on. I had a lot of rage. I had a lot of disrespect for women. And I have seven children. But these seven children were from seven different women because I didn't know anything about respecting women. And because I had been growing up in a boarding school, I had been parented by, say, per se, men. Men who never showed us or demonstrated to us in my lifetime about what it was to how to respect women. And so it took some time for me to go back to my reservation and learn about that. I took four years of celibacy. And I learned in my first year of taking how to take care of babies. And let me tell you, that is something some chore to do. I learned some lessons from that. Plus, I stored it in my memory bank because now I'm married, and I have a, I have a little boy. He's, uh, 11 months old. He's half Japanese. My wife is Japanese. He's half Japanese and half, half Lakota. And so I learned a lot about, about that, about how to care for, how to care for, uh, little girls and little boys, babies from the ages of newborn all the way up to about almost two years old. So that was a chore. The lesson I learned for a whole year. The second year, they had me take care of teenagers, and that's another job. Many of you know that, you know. The teenage years are something that is, uh, a lesson in all of us that we learn. We learn about boundaries. We learn about anger. We learn about manipulation, and we learn how to lie, and we learn how to cheat. And so through all that misery that I had to go through in learning about that was that I had to learn this from young ladies and learning these things and learning about how, how to deal with those kind of, uh, emotional problems, behavioral problems, and learning ab– and teaching them about the herbs, teaching them about different, uh, aspects of, of the Lakota culture, teaching the language, teaching how to set up a tepee, teaching how to make a fire. All the basic things that you learn, that you take for granted. And so, you know, sometimes we… Or today, our young people, we ask them, "Go build a fire." They say, "Well, you got any gas? Any kerosene?" You know? And so learning to, learning to do that is, uh, is also something that, you know, that all of us think we know how to do until we're, until we're challenged with it. And then also, I have to take care of… My third year, I had to take care of, uh, uh, divorced and single mothers, and that was another hard job because I was also faced with, with, uh, social problems of some of them were alcoholics, some were drug abusers. And learning how to cope with that and learning how not to get mad, learning how to understand patience, and learning that was very hard for me and, but it was a lesson in itself that I've learned about learning how to respect women. And my last year, my fourth year, I had to take care of elderly, and that, that is even harder than taking care of the all three prior, let me tell you, because I had many, many, many, many jobs to do that the elderly are kind of time-orientated. You know, "The sun's up over here, and you're not here. What happened to you?" You know. "Well, I was helping over here." "Well, you're supposed to be here," you know. So I had a lot of, you know, understanding and learning how to run one place and go hunting for them, and go chop wood, and go paint houses, and fix r- fix roofs, fix porches, fix the electricity system, bang on the refrigerator, make it work, you know. It's a lot of, you know, things like that I had to learn. And so to this day, I'm very grateful for that. And after I had finished that, I had, uh, I had asked about what I should, what I should do with my life. What am I gonna do with my life now after I've learned these lessons? And the elders of our community, the Gray Eagle Society, told me that I needed to go on a hanbleceya. A hanbleceya is a vision quest, a four-day ceremony that, uh, you go for four days without food or water and to go up as pitiful as you can without… with just one blanket and, and a sacred pipe. And as I went on this here hanbleceya, I learned something very valuable in my life about my spirituality. I learned that through the ceremony that I could, that I could learn how to die. And from learn- and from learning how to die, I learned that we, as human beings, can be reborn again. We can change our life. We can change our behavior. We can change our attitude. And learning to die meant that I could cross over into the, into the spirit world and see the beauty on that side and also see the beauty on our side. And learning this came, came the decision from, from our, from our medicine men that I, too, one day would take up the altar to be a medicine man. And so today, I have achieved that, to be a medicine man among my people. And I was told at that time that a- as a result of losing everybody in your family, that you would gain new relatives. You would gain a new family. And so today, I come here like that today with a good heart, a good handshake to all of you, to realize that you are my relatives, that you are my, my family, that you are deep in my heart, deep in my prayer, for without you, we would not have this, this precious time of being together in order to sing together, to pray together, to acknowledge one another, to be thankful for our lives, to be thankful for our sobriety. And so today, I wanted to thank you like that today. So I just wanna say that much today on behalf of, of the Lakota people. Hold on. I did not… I, I just thought I was supposed to come up here and just say that, but, uh, I got more to say. I just thought he says to share a little bit about your life and about, a little about how things are. But, uh, well, I'm up here, so at this time I wanted to say something about, about something about all of us, and that's all of us, you know, have good memories. We have good memories of those things that have happened to us, about when it, about how things used to be, about how we were when we were out there on the streets. I mean, I, I know many of you have experienced some of the things I have experienced. I've experienced homelessness. I've experienced loneliness, sadness. But through it all, if you really take a look at it, that's our own fault. That's our own fault for being homeless and sad and lonely. And the reason why is that because if you turn around and look around, you have family right beside you, behind you, in front of you, and people everywhere wanting, want to, want to help you in a good way. And so I've realized that, you know, that help comes when you are ready. Help comes and is acknowledged by someone who sees you trying to make a change in your life, who sees you trying to offer yourself to do something, some kind of good in your, in your life. And as time goes on, you then you learn to take responsibility for yourself. You learn that there's something in life that each one of us has a gift. Maybe you, maybe you're a, maybe you're supposed to be an artist. Maybe you're supposed to be a doctor. Maybe you're supposed to be a plumber. Maybe you're supposed to be a mechanic. But all of these are valuable as human beings to whatever we do in life because it contributes to one another so that our lives can be better. So it's knowing that, I just wanted to say that, you know. Back in Rosebud, there was this here Lakota medicine man, and he was there, and, uh, a man came from one of the universities who was a researcher. And, uh, he was talking to some of the people, and he t- some of the people said, "That Lakota medicine man over there, he can remember everything. He's got a good memory." He said, "He can even remember what he ate years ago." So he went over there and, and, uh, asked him. He says, he says, "I heard you have a good memory." He says, he shook his head, "Yes, I, uh, I do," you know. He said, "Well," he said, uh, "what did you eat in the morning of December 2nd, 1976?" "Sausage and eggs and pancakes and coffee." "Geez, I wouldn't remember that." He said, "What about," and he says, "What about in, uh, in March, around March 16th, 1989?" "Oh, that's easy," he says. "I had soup and fry bread." And so he says, uh, "But," he said, "why, why did you have that for, uh, breakfast?" He says, "Because most of the time we used to go out and hunt for, uh, goose eggs. And so when we go out and hunt for goose eggs," he says, "we usually eat, uh, fry those up and cook those and, and have those to eat." And so he says, "Well," he says, uh, "how do you, you know, how do you like your eggs?" And by that time, the ground really shook, and it was like a earthquake tremor. And everybody ran out and took off, and, and the researcher went away. And about a year later, the researcher came back and was looking at him and says, "I remember that medicine man. I'm gonna go talk to him and see if he remembers what he ate." So he walked over to him, and he looked at him and he says, "How?" Lakota medicine looked at him and said, "Scrambled." But anyway, you know, you know, and that's kind of like a, like a joke because sometimes, you know, we have to have laughter in our life. Sometimes we have to, we have a lot of seriousness in our life, and that's good. But duality in our life is very constant. It's with us every moment of our life because duality is one of our Lakota teachings of duality. Likewise, there's man and woman, night and day, hot and cold, love and hate. And so duality exists like that, and it's constant even in our sleep. And so I want to remember that, that duality is always constant. You have to remember one thing, that sometimes you can be angry, sometimes you could be sad, but you must always remember this, that you were not born that way. You were born innocent and with a good heart and a good mind. And you were born that way because Creator, first of all, put innocence and love within you. And from there, somewhere along the line, something happened. And it happens to everyone. But today, you're able to come back and to be able to share with one another just how you feel, that that support is here, that love is here, and it exists. Likewise, there are relations out there who are still using and abusing and still with that rage. And like we all say, you know, it's going to take them, their whole self, to realize that time has come, that they're going to have to make a change. And how this change comes about, sometimes comes about very tragically. Sometimes it comes about very spiritually. Sometimes it comes, uh, come, comes about because you are the ones that are doing the work of the Creator. If you are doing what you're supposed to do here, the Creator doesn't– has not asked you to save the world. He asked you to help just one person in your lifetime. Be responsible for helping one person. When I had experienced death, when I went to the other side, I was allowed to ask one question, and that question was… As I stood there and asked, ready to ask my question, I was thinking, "What, what do I do to help people? What do I do? What do I say to help people?" And so a voice came from out, out from out there and asked me, "What do I seek?" And I told him, "I only seek wisdom. I only seek knowledge." I asked the Creator, "How do we, how do we help people?" He said, "By everything that you have learned, by everything that you have known, it's through prayer. Pray, and pray, and pray, for your prayers are always heard. But always be careful of what you pray for." So that's what I wanted to share with you about duality and about death, that it is something that we all– it's all gonna happen to each and every one of us, and we're all gonna die someday. And we're all gonna die, and that we need to leave a legacy. Each and every one of you have that responsibility to leave a legacy. We leave spir– we leave wills, but we never think about leaving a spiritual will. And today, spirit people said we have those words that we could use, that we could leave. So you could leave those words now today. You could leave them on a disk, leave them in a, leave them in a vault. Leave them, leave them for your children, for those that are gonna come three or four generations from now. One day, each and every one of you will be an elder, and you have to leave something. If you don't want to leave something oral, you can. But if you leave something written now, you could leave spiritual wills. And spiritual wills are about the values of the life and how you value, how you grew out of your own traumas, so that we won't have generations of abusers, alcoholics, addicts. That we can leave this will for the future generations, for, for them to take a look at and say, "This is what Grandma left. This is what Grandpa left." So one day you will all be there. You will all be at that time when you could do that. So one day you must think of writing a spiritual will so that you could leave something for the legacy, for the generations to come. So I run out of words now, so that's all I wanted to share with you today. And thank you very much.
