Yellowknife public library to host prophet from the Prairies
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Feb 16/01) - A lone traveller with a message, a prophet from the Prairies. A Cree with long braids wrapped in leather thread and a walking stick with hawk feathers. He took the long bus ride up Highway 3 to tell the world about his dream.
This is part of his story. A modern day prophet who sleeps at the Salvation Army drop in-shelter. He rolls his own cigarettes. He says he has the Truth.
He dreamed a dream.
"I saw myself travelling in a van over a far distance. The land with trees I didn't recognized."
Red Apple. Andrew BigSmoke, 40, Cree from Beauvall reserve in Saskatchewan, holds a cup of coffee in his left hand.
With a hard look he says it started with a dream.
It was 1990, the Oka crisis unfolded through news-bites. Mohawk warriors protecting traditional burial grounds from a golf course.
After meditating for two days a voice told him the trees he did not know were cedar trees in the East.
"Then I realized I had to go to the Oka crisis," says BigSmoke.
In the evening of the following night he stood out his door facing east.
"Like northern lights a smoke signal in the east," he says. Green smoke.
And so he followed.
But it began years before, a foster child under the care of great-grandparents Earl and Ardina Acthison on the Beauvall reserve in Saskatchewan.
Both lived to be over 100. They were told they were too old to care for him and his brother Lawrence. Social Services took them south, to Union Beach, New Jersey. He was 11, it was the 1970s.
"They sent me down there to be adopted," says BigSmoke.
An Italian family took them in. They didn't want to stay. They didn't want to be adopted. They wanted to go back to Saskatchewan.
He jumped from foster home to foster home until he was 16.
Got into trouble after that.
"I was in and out of jail until I was 21," says BigSmoke.
He says he fought like a switchblade. They never got to him and he found the Creator.
"I went to my first native brotherhood society meeting there," says BigSmoke.
"I found such a love and understanding amongst these people," he says.
He started to look. He wanted to know the path the old ones took. He learned.
He had a vision of green smoke and he went to the cedar trees. Oka.
To meet with Mohawk chiefs BigSmoke had to first meet the clan mothers who would decide whether he was fit. They approved and he and another man who knew the way of tobacco rituals sat together in the sleeping quarters. There the man gave him the message of the rainbow eagle.
"'It's time for the rainbow teaching' he said to me," says BigSmoke.
"He said it was time to acknowledge an ancient prophecy that has taken place," he says.
"A great smoke signal through the eastern door has risen and a message will be sent to all the world," says BigSmoke.
"All red nations would seek the symbol, that's why 163 chiefs showed up to meet with the Mohawk people," says BigSmoke.
BigSmoke stayed in Oka manning the barricades for a week then moving to the sleeping quarters to work with the spiritual leaders at the request of the chiefs.
In 1995 he received his rainbow bundle from two travellers, one was Cherokee the other white.
They travelled up from North Carolina to find the young man who would talk about the rainbow teachings. They gave him the rainbow bundle. The contents a mystery to all except the carrier and the giver.
There are 49 rainbow bundles in the world. Each one carried by a messenger, says BigSmoke.
Now he has to tell the world.
On a cold Thursday this past January he was sitting in his apartment. A voice from the fourth heaven told him to go into the world with the message. His room filled with thousands of tiny brass trumpets. He had to go so he started at the top. He took the bus.
On Thursday, Feb. 21 at the Yellowknife Public Library, Andrew BigSmoke will tell the rainbow teachings to any who will listen for free. 7 p.m.
BigSmoke rolls one more cigarette and looks at me.
"My message is to tell my people to go back to the old ways of praying."
