Melissa Bennett: Abundant Listening
Melissa Bennett was a guest at the very first Interfaith Muse Artists in Conversation event. We met to get to know each other and had a long lunch downtown talking about chaplaincy, poetry, and challenges. I enjoyed it so much that I forgot all about my parking meter limit. Melissa’s grounded humor and presence was a birthday gift to Interfaith Muse for that first event, as it is in the conversation that follows, which we had over the phone.
Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo: How do you describe your religious identity?
Melissa Bennett: Confused! [Laughter.] My faith life comes from Native community and Native cultures. There’s a group of women here in Olympia and we have a sweat lodge, we do ceremonies together. Spending time in Native communities feels like a ceremony. And there are all these other layers. When I went to Divinity School I said I was a “Buddhikan,” a Buddhist Wiccan. And then a teacher said to me: you know, you’re Native; everything you’re writing and describing is Native culture. I was grabbing ahold of the pieces I could because I wasn’t connected to the Native community at the time. Because of my adoption, I grew up on an onion farm with white people. Whatever books I could find at Borders is what I got [of spirituality.] There was a tiny little section of Buddhist books and a little section of neo-pagan Wiccan books. That’s where I was for a long time.
EHF: So when you were growing up you knew you were Native, despite the adoption?
MB: Yes. There was my baby book, my little book of pictures that my mom kept. It had pictures of them taking me to sign the adoption papers [when I was an infant.] The whole family was there. They were open from the beginning so I always knew that was Native. And also Umatilla, that piece of tribal identity. That is really rare in native adoption. They call us ‘lost birds;’ most of us don’t know our tribal affiliation. I feel really lucky that I knew that information, at least part of it.
EHF: Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t there a law against adopting Native kids out of the community?
MB: Yes, that happened right after I was born. The [Indian Child Welfare Act] ICWA. It’s a very flawed system. It was meant to keep Native children with Native families. It tries.
EHF: I had no idea it was passed so late.
MB: Yes, late 1977 or early 1978. It wouldn’t have mattered because at the time I was born, my birth mother was not an enrolled tribal member. And she was 15 anyway, and she was being raised by her father. who was white. It wouldn’t have gone through that system. So I ended up on an onion farm!
EHF: Would you say that growing up on an onion farm contributed to your spirituality?
MB: So much! Everything depended on the cycles of the seasons: planting and harvesting onions, the growing season, how much rain we got, and how much sun we got. The focus on the seasons, the earth, being outside — everyone was working outside all the time — connections to community, to family. A lot of the culture I had growing up in that small farming community is similar in some ways to Native community, especially connections to place, family stories, ancestors. I’m the fifth generation of onion farmers in that same community. It was a lineage of connection to place. It’s in my DNA as a Native person but it was [also] how I grew up. It feels very natural to me in a lot of ways, all of it.
EHF: Could you talk a little bit about how you understand spirituality as being community and family?
MB: I think there’s two parts of my spiritual life. Part is solitary at home: praying, meditating, in communion with God — that’s the language I use, Mama God. There’s this other piece about connecting to the sacred through the knowledge that my community has: story, and connections to land understood through story. It’s understood through the way we talk to each other, remember our ancestors, the way we laugh together and tell jokes. It’s culture and it’s story and it’s humor. All of that is how I understand what is sacred.
My ancestors and that ancestral knowledge, those traditions, those ceremonies––everything has survived genocide through community. When everything was being taken from us — language, land, children — somehow these things had to survive. They survived through connections to each other through community. It’s super nuanced. Those connections are essential to understanding Native spiritual life. You just can’t do it by yourself; it’s intergenerational. I ask my elders questions and I have young people come and ask me questions. We are passing on that knowledge that way.
EHF: That idea runs so counter to dominant white culture, individualist culture. When I’m teaching religion, any kind of religion, that is one of the major things I have to teach: being a spiritual person is about being accountable to a community.
MB: For us, our ceremonies teach us how to be accountable to each other. You’re in a sweat lodge and you have to have people who are tending to the fire. They are taking care of their grandfathers that are the stones in the fire. They have to prepare the fire, get the wood. There has to be someone at the fire to bring the stones into the lodge. Someone at the door gets the stones from the person who brings it in from the fire. And then someone else puts the water on the stones. There are different roles for people in the ceremonies. Everyone by has a part to play. Maybe you’re in the kitchen helping to create the meal for when they get out the ceremony. All of that is part of the ceremony, part of the prayer.
EHF: Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to say about it, because I know you said it’s super nuanced?
MB: One of the things that non-Natives say is, “Native spirituality” as if there’s only one. I think there’s 568 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and more in Canada, more in Mexico, in Central America… aboriginal people everywhere. Each tribal community has its own faith traditions, ceremonies — its own way of doing certain ceremonies. Even within tribal communities you’ll have families that have their own spiritual traditions, and individuals that have their own. It’s really diverse and really nuanced. It depends on where you are. There are so many ways to do a sweat lodge. So a lot of communities have a sweat but lots of different protocols, like which way the door faces, how you enter, who can lead it, what songs you sing…. I always tell people it’s not Native spirituality, it’s Native spiritualities. The diversity is immense.
EHF: How do you define yourself as an artist?
MB: I am a storyteller and a story listener. Listening to story is a big part of my art. The way that we listen to each other is part of my faith practice and is also part of my art. I’ve realized that just like my faith, I can’t do art by myself either. And so my art and spirituality are really closely connected. I’m a poet and a writer; those are the words I use, interchangeably.
EHF: Something that I wrestle with as a writer is that kind of push and pull of isolation and community. How do you how do you navigate that balance?
MB: It’s really hard, because I’ve got a million things happening at once. At AWP [conference in Portland], I was there with Macondo Writers Workshop which is a workshop that I feel so blessed to be part of. It’s been through that community that I’ve really learned that I can’t do it by myself. Right now I don’t feel a lot of balance. I haven’t been creating because I’m going through a lot of physical and mental health issues and working a full-time job. Then I have my spiritual life and spiritual care work. I’m writing some new stuff and sharing it with people, and before I put it out in the world, I want other people to look at it. So that community really helps.
And I just feel really inspired by other artists and writers. When I’m around a community of artists — visual artists, musicians, dance, whatever it is, creative people — I feel more creative. Again, it comes back to Spirit and this feeling of the world as an abundant place. The more we generate the more gets generated. When I go to an art exhibit that my friend is putting on and I’m talking to them or to their artist friends… it’s like I catch a cold — of art!
EHF: What questions does your work try to answer?
MB: I’m trying to understand broadly where I come from. My family of origin, my Native community more specifically, and the stories of mental illness within Native communities. What is the role colonization plays in that? Were they mentally ill or were they just being Indian in a white world? How is this another tool of genocide?
I’ve been writing about my grandmother who was incarcerated in a mental institution in the 1960s. I worked at the same institution as a chaplain, and I didn’t know that she had been a patient there. There’s all these stories in the family, these narratives that I really want to understand: my own story of my own mental illness with these layers of generational trauma and historical trauma, and then this history of federally-run Native-specific mental institutions.There weren’t very many officially. But I know of at least two that were for Native people and Native children that were called “Insane Asylums for Indians.” I work with a lot of Native students and one of the things they really want is culturally specific mental health care. I’m interested in the whole question of mental health and Native people and the layers of generational historical trauma, where we’ve been, where we’re going… You know, just simple things like that! [Laughter.]
EHF: Wow, I had no idea about those institutions. I feel like that could be a constant refrain about Native history… I had no idea I had no idea…
MB: When my biological sister was getting married, and as we do in our American culture, the women are in the basement of the church helping her get ready, talking, laughing. At the time, I was working at the state hospital and my Auntie was like, how’s your job going and I was like, it’s okay, it’s hard. And she said, you know, your grandma was a patient there. I had no idea! And suddenly this door opened on [my grandma’s] story that I had never heard, and not even a lot of people in the family knew. I’ve got her medical records and am reading the story of her journey to that point, and seeing parallels in my own life. I knew intellectually what historical trauma was but I didn’t understand it in my body because I didn’t know the specific stories to my family. And then I had [the stories] and I see how it’s perpetuated.
EHF: So much of the spirituality that you’re experiencing expresses itself through story.
MB: When I’m doing spiritual care work, I’m listening at different levels: listening to my ancestors, to the clients’ ancestors if they’re showing up (most of the time they do) and I’m listening to Creator, Spirit. And I’m listening to my client’s story, what’s on their heart. And then being able to communicate what I hear from all of these places. Writing is the same, a really similar process. I’m listening to the story, whatever the story that needs to come through me. I think that’s why creating has been hard because I’m going through the historical trauma stuff and it’s hard for me to listen to Spirit. Because my mind doesn’t want to be quiet.
EHF: You can tell me if this offends you, but you were saying this and it struck me — it must be loud to be an Indian! All those voices coming at you!
MB: [Laughter] I don’t know if all Native people have this thing going on but it’s definitely been my life. I am a spiritual care provider and and thank God not all of us are. Then we’d be really in each other’s business! [Laughter.] But it increases the number of voices. When I’m sitting with a client, I’m listening to them, their ancestors, my ancestors, I’m listening to Creator, and sometimes I’m listening to place. I don’t want to sound hippy-dippy, but I’m in this altered state of consciousness. Let’s be real: we don’t listen enough. The world is so noisy!
EHF: I think silence is really scary to a lot of people. For a spiritual person, of course, of silence is required.
MB: Only so the Spirits can talk louder!
EHF: That’s your question right? I mean, what you’re trying to figure out — what makes somebody ‘crazy?’
MB: When I worked in the mental hospital, there were Native patients who would tell the Native folks like me, I can’t tell the doctors about my dreams or about what my ancestors are telling me because they will medicate me. Because [the doctors] think [the Native patients] are hearing voices, when it’s just part of traditional culture.
EHF: Yes, part of the whole colonial and genocidal project is to wipe out the ways of experiencing and managing that in life and community life.
MB: Could you imagine if everyone could hear the wisdom of their ancestors, of place? White supremacy wouldn’t work so well because we’re all connected, [and] we’re connected to place. We’re all interconnected. White supremacy doesn’t like that because it’s like, I’m better than you. Indigenous culture says we are all humble human beings.
EHF: I think we have covered a lot of this, but I often ask what you wish people understood about your work or about your religious identity.
MB: The diversity piece is a big one. And I wish people would not say that they are shamans.
EHF: Or the spirit animal thing?
MB: I hate that so much. No! No one has a spirit animal or all the other stereotype stuff. I wish that stuff would just stop. The appropriation of indigenous spiritual ways, or what people think they are.
When it comes to writing, what I really want people to know is that it doesn’t look the same for everybody. One person can crank out a book and for somebody else it just takes a decade or more. It’s connected back to the way I identify as a Native person — when we’re in ceremony, it takes as long as it takes. When we used to do sweat [lodge ceremony] at the hospital, the hospital was on a time table. They would come out and say, it’s 2 o’clock, I gotta get my patient and get on to the next things. But prayer takes a long as it takes and you can’t predict what people need to share. This time thing! It doesn’t work like that. We have to just give ourselves a break. If you try to force the art it’s going to be shit. Let it be and let it find its own way.
EHF: What artists inspire you?
MB: Sandra Cisneros is one of my heroes. And Nikki Finney! Her poems feel like prayers to me. When I was at AWP I heard Nikki Finney read and she said, when she’s writing, she’s sitting for a long time with the ancestors she’s writing about, asking permission and listening to their stories. Honoring them in that way, by taking her time with them. Maybe [I admire her] because she spends so much time with these ancestors and stories she tells in her poetry. I’m really interested in world-building and fantasy writers like N.K. Jemison, women of color who are building these worlds, understanding how we created and we create. Walida [Imrisha] talks about this a lot, thinking about it in terms of social justice. We got here because people dreamed it up. They created it! So we can dream up the world we want and what we want the world to look like. And all these white folks are like, it’s apocalyptic, and I’m like, we’ve been in apocalypse for so long!
EHF: You’re saying that for Native people, this is the post-apocalypse right now.
MB: In Native communities we talk a lot about seven generations. I think about the seven generations, especially about the women who came before me. Seven generations ago, what was that grandmother praying to get me here? I believe that my life is built on their prayers. So my work is to be praying for the next seven generations. What do I want to leave for them? We are creating our world. And we’re restoring our world during the apocalypse. I think of that when I think of incarceration and missing indigenous women and border politics and the genocide that’s happening at the border. We’ve got to do this work and part of this work is being a writer. I feel this responsibility — if Creator gave me this gift of my pen and my poems, then I have to use it to help my people.
Melissa Bennett (Umatilla/Nimiipuu/Sac & Fox/Anishinaabe), M.Div. is a writer, storyteller, educator, and spiritual care provider. She is interested in story as medicine, especially its ability to heal historical trauma among indigenous communities. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Melissa’s work focuses on social justice, culture, tradition, and spirituality. Melissa was a 2015 recipient of the Evergreen State College Longhouse Native Creative Development Grant and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop — an association of socially engaged writers working to advance creativity, foster generosity, and serve community. Find her work at www.womanstoryteller.com and www.melbenn.com.
