WOPILA! GIVEAWAYS MAKE POWERFUL MEDICINE

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by Napecinkala (Little Paws)

In the cool of the evening, we gathered under a pavilion at the local schoolhouse. Before us stood two people who were to be married. The woman was dressed in a beautiful white buckskin dress covered in sky-blue beads and stars. Her long hair cascaded down, and the evening breeze lifted it away from her back. The man who looked down with rapt attention upon her was wearing a white and blue ribbon shirt she had made for him. The holy man said a few words to them and then wrapped them in a beautiful star blanket in shades of pink and blue. He turned them to face the 50 or so guests and said, "Only these two can make a family between them, but we are their family and we must help them in any way that we can."

That was the extent of the ceremony that married my two friends Alice and Francis.

Behind us, the tables groaned with food for the guests to this simple ceremony. Off to one side, there lay a pile of blankets, pillow covers, quilts, fabric, hand-made jewelry, Pendleton wool blankets, stuffed "Indian" teddy bears and piles of toys and gifts for everyone from the oldest to the youngest among us. The bride and groom had spent a year quilting and decorating the teddy bears and making the money to purchase the pile of goods that would be distributed after everyone had eaten.

The bride and her mother served the elderly first, making sure that all the grandmothers and grandfathers in the crowd were comfortably seated and tended to before the children and then the rest of the guests were allowed to line up at the tables and serve themselves.

It struck me, as I witnessed this little ceremony, how different it was from weddings elsewhere. It seemed all topsy-turvy. This was a wedding ceremony that was mercifully short and carried with it only the burden of two people. There was no reference to anything religious at all. All the guests were fed first, before the bride and groom. Then the bride and groom gave gifts to the guests.

When everyone had eaten all they could, and maybe a little more, just to fill the cracks, the couple stood by the pile of gifts and called up all the people for whom they specially had gifts. The person who performed the ceremony received a beautiful Pendleton blanket, and one by one every person in the crowd received a gift, even those who were the unexpected tagalongs of invited guests.

Near the end of the list, the bride and groom called my husband and myself up to be wrapped in a star quilt made for us by the bride's mother. We stepped into the center, my husband towering over nearly everyone in the room and I barely able to see above the crowd. When Francis wrapped that star quilt over our shoulders, I disappeared under its folds. It was strange and a little uncomfortable to be standing there taking this beautiful gift. But the gift had the feel of importance about it. It was the first gift that I had ever received in that way, and it changed me. It wasn't an all-at-once change but rather like the gradual wearing-away change that water makes to river rocks.

Generosity is one of the seven virtues of the Lakota tribe of Native Americans. I had read a lot about it by the time I attended Alice's wedding, but the gift of that star quilt impressed upon me something of the power that this virtue has to influence individuals. It made me feel important and respected and loved by the people who gave it to me. I felt honored and appreciated. Frankly, I was so unused to that feeling that it was uncomfortable at first. As I looked around that room, I thought about how all the other people standing with quilts around their shoulders must feel. The idea that this good feeling could be spread by such a simple thing was a real eye-opener. So, naturally, I started to cry.

The Giveaway (Wopila) among the Lakota is not exactly a ceremony by itself, but a part of nearly every important thing that happens in the life of the individual. The more important the event is, the greater is the gift to the people. Powwow princesses usually have a Giveaway when they have completed the year that they represent their home powwow. When a child is born, the parents and grandparents usually have a Wopila in honor of the new child.

The Wopila is done when tragic things happen as well. When a husband or a wife dies, the remaining spouse will give away everything that the other person owned, and sometimes everything they own, to the bare walls of their home. This is the most graphic demonstration of an attitude so pervasive that it doesn't even need to be spoken of to little children. They learn this important virtue of generosity from watching the adults around them.

I pondered for some time on how this attitude developed and what the advantages might have been for the Lakota. It is hard to see, through the materialistic culture of Americans, that generosity is deeply valued by tribal people. In prereservation times, it was the great hunters who were the most honored. These men could feed their own families and feed the elderly, sick and widowed among the tribe as well. Thus it came about that a man's status in the tribe was not dependent so much on what he owned as what he gave away. Even today, although the Lakota are among the poorest of Americans, they manage to enrich their spiritual life with this joyful generosity. To this day, it is the greatest insult to call a Lakota man stingy.

My first big Giveaway came as a result of a huge change in my life and my lifestyle. I quit my job, moved out of my house and into a Winnebago and relocated from Tampa, Florida, to Tacoma, Washington. My life had been given a very specific purpose, and a vision had brought me to change everything. I was so grateful for this vision that I felt that I had to express that to everyone in my community.

I invited everyone in my family and all of my friends to come and have a big dinner with us. I included my landlord, my college professors, my boss, all of the people in my lodge circle and many people who had no idea what a Giveaway was or why I insisted that they be at my house that day. I wanted to honor the people who had guided me, in one way or another, to be open to the vision that the Grandfathers had shown me.

My husband and I fed about 50 people fry bread and Indian tacos and roast turkey and buffalo stew. I had saved for quite some time to buy a couple of Pendleton blankets for the man and woman who had hosted our sweat lodge ceremonies for nearly five years. I am the world's most inept quilter, so I drafted a couple of my girlfriends to make two quilts especially for two people who had helped me through a particularly rough time when I returned to college.

After everyone had eaten, I stood up and began to give away all the things I had gathered over five years of living in Florida. This was a very different feeling than the one I had experienced at Alice and Francis' wedding. Now I was the giver. At first, I was almost reluctant to part with the blankets that had cost me so dearly. When I put them around the shoulders of my dear friends, I had butterflies in my stomach. My husband called up the next people, and I felt a kind of lightness of spirit as I wrapped them in a brand-new rainbow-colored star blanket. With each gift, a little more weight lifted off of me, and I felt better and better. When I had given away the new things I had bought or made myself, I gave away nearly everything else I owned, including two color TVs, a couple of computers, all my furniture, appliances, art work, everything. By the time it was all over, I felt so good that I was literally looking for other stuff to give to people.

As I thought about it, I realized that the accumulation of things, even books and beadwork, had begun to weigh me down so much I could hardly move. Giving away anything that isn't absolutely essential freed me from the responsibility for all that stuff. Now I was free to soar and follow my vision wherever it might lead me.

I know that there are other lessons that this virtue has to teach me. When someone dies, everything that belonged to that person is given away. Once he or she been buried, even the name is not usually spoken. This is for two reasons. First, so the dead person is allowed to take the spirit road and is not held here by the grief of his or her relatives. Second, so the relatives can grieve and then let go. What remains is usually given to the most needy people in the community. In this way, the dead person continues to help and support the people. While I have seen this as a guest on occasion, I know that there will be a time when I will go through it as a giver. It will be a different kind of giving than I have experienced to date.

Ceremonies and rituals are our way of communicating through the pipe with the spirits and Wakantanka. Wakantanka is often translated from Lakota to English as Great Spirit, but the literal translation of Wakantanka is Sacred Big. Most Lakota only concern themselves with the Earth Spirits and the Grandmothers and Grandfathers; the creator is not knowable, so they really don't think about it too much. When white missionaries came out to proselytize the Lakota, they used the term Great Spirit because they asserted that they did know the nature of the creator. I like my husband's interpretation of the term: Wakantanka is the great big "I don't know." Nowadays, the term is used nearly interchangeably with the term God, in the Christian sense.

From the point of view of the Lakota, Mother Earth gives us everything. When we receive a gift, such as a vision or a child or a husband, it is good to say thank you. When hard times come and we lose things we are attached to or people we care about, it is good to give things away to ease the burden of grief by spreading it around a little.

After I held my own Giveaway, I began to see the connection between the virtue of generosity and Mother Earth. She teaches us that generosity is not predicated upon the expectation that someone else will give to us at some later date. Generosity is not doing someone a favor. True generosity gives from the heart and expects nothing in return, just as the Earth gives us everything and asks nothing of us.

David Little Elk, a Lakota teacher and musician, summed up the philosophy behind the Wopila in such a clear way that I will quote him here:

"The foundation of the Lakota ways is the expression Mitokuye Oyas'in, which means all my relations or everything is connected. To keep our connections strong and healthy requires that we communicate as clearly and effectively as possible. Communication is the transfer of medicine (energy) via our thoughts, feelings, actions and words. Thus, we were meant to communicate. The Lakota Natural Law of Generosity states that energy we use to communicate with others will return to us fourfold."

It is with this in mind that many Lakota are generous. They know that if they are generous with others, the universe will return that generosity fourfold.

To me, it also makes the ceremony or ritual more meaningful when people gather together to eat and share, not just the material gifts given, but the "medicine" of the Wopila. In this way, the power of the ceremony can be shared with all our relations.

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