PRAIRIE
ISLAND INDIAN COMMUNITY, Minn. — Some Native Americans
traditionally bestow bald eagle feathers at ceremonies to
mark achievements, such as graduations, and as a form of
reverence for the bird they hold sacred as a messenger
to the Creator.
This year, many are doing so with elevated pride and hope. The bald eagle
is now the official bird of the United States, nearly
250 years after it was first used as a symbol of the
newly founded nation that's deeply polarized politically
today.
"The eagle is finally getting the respect it
deserves. Maybe when the nation looks at the eagle that
way, maybe there will be less division," said Jim Thunder
Hawk. He's the Dakota culture and language manager for
the Prairie Island Indian Community, a small Mdewakanton Sioux band on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minnesota.
This
wide, unruffled stretch of water framed by wooded bluffs
is prime bald eagle territory. The size of Minnesota's
population of the majestic, white-head-and-tail birds
that are exclusive to North America is second only to
that of Alaska.
The legislation that made the eagle official
came from members of Minnesota's Congressional
delegation. The federal act recognizes the eagles'
centrality in most Indigenous peoples' "spiritual lives
and sacred belief systems," and a replica of it is on
display at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha,
Minnesota, 40 miles (65 kilometers) downriver from the
Prairie Island community, which partners with the center
in eagle care.
"If you grew up in the United States,
eagles were a part of your everyday life," said Tiffany
Ploehn, who as the center's avian care director
supervises its four resident bald eagles. "Everyone has
some sort of connection."
Fierce symbols of strength and spiritual uplift
A
bald eagle, its wings and talons spread wide, has graced
the Great Seal of the United States since 1782, and
appears on passport covers, the $1 bill, military
insignia, and myriad different images in pop culture.
But
a prolific collector of eagle memorabilia based in
Wabasha realized recently that, while the United States
had an official animal (the bison) and flower (the rose),
the eagle was getting no formal credit. Several Minnesota
legislators sponsored a bill to remedy that and then-President Joe Biden's signature made it official in December.
With
their massive wingspan and stern curved beak, bald
eagles are widely used as symbols of strength and power.
In reality, they spend 95% of their day perched high in
trees, though when they hunt they can spot a rabbit 3
miles (5 kilometers) away, Ploehn said.
For many
Native Americans, the soaring eagle represents far more;
it delivers their prayers to the Creator and even
intercedes on their behalf.
"My grandma told me that
we honor eagles because they saved the Ojibwe people
when the Creator wanted to turn on them. The eagle, he
can fly high, so he went to speak with the Creator to
make things right," said Sadie Erickson, who is Ojibwe
and Mdewakanton Sioux.
Marking life milestones with eagle feathers
Erickson
and a dozen other high school graduates received a bald
eagle feather at an early July celebration by the
riverbank at Prairie Island.
Thunder Hawk said a
prayer in the Dakota language urging the high school
graduates and graduates receiving higher education
degrees to "always remember who you are and where you
come from."
Then they lined up and a relative tied a
feather — traditionally on the left side, the heart's
side — as tribal members sang and drummed to celebrate them.
"It just feels like I went through a new step of life," said Jayvionna Buck.
Growing up on Prairie Island, she recalled her mother excitedly pointing out every eagle.
"She
would genuinely just yell at me, 'Eagle!' But it's just a
special occurrence for us to see," Buck said. "We love
seeing it, and normally when we do, we just offer tobacco
to show our respects."
Some Native Americans honor
the eagle by taking it as their ceremonial name. Derek
Walking Eagle, whose Lakota name is "Eagle Thunder,"
celebrated the graduates wearing a woven medallion
representing the bird.
To him, eagles are like relatives that connect him to his future and afterlife.
"Being able to carry on to the spirit world … that's who guides you. It's the eagle," Walking Eagle said.
That deep respect attaches to the feathers, too.
"It's
the highest respect you can bestow on a person, from
your family and from your people, from your tribe,"
Thunder Hawk said. "We teach the person receiving the
feather that they have to honor and respect the eagle. And
we tell them why."
Persistent troubles, but new hope
In many Native cultures, killing an eagle is "blasphemous," he said. It is also a federal offense.
Historically,
Sioux warriors would lure an eagle with rabbit or other
food, pluck a few feathers and release it, said Thunder
Hawk, who grew up in South Dakota.
Today, there's a
nationwide program that legally distributes eagle
feathers and parts exclusively to tribal members, though
it's very backlogged. U.S. wildlife and tribal officials
worry that killings and illegal trafficking of eagles for their feathers is on the rise, especially in the West.
In
Minnesota, eagles are most often harmed by road
accidents and eating poison – results of shrinking
wildlife habitat that brings them in closer contact with
humans, said Lori Arent, interim director of the
University of Minnesota's Raptor Center.
The center
treats about 200 injured bald eagles each year. Of those
they can save, most are eventually released back into the
wild. Permanently disabled birds that lose an eye or
whose wings are too badly fractured to fly are cared for
there or at other educational institutions like the
Wabasha eagle center.
The official designation could
help more Americans understand how their behaviors
inadvertently harm eagles, Arent said. Littering by a
highway, for instance, attracts rodents that lure eagles,
which then can be struck by vehicles. Fishing or hunting
with tackles and ammunition containing lead exposes the
eagles eating those fish or deer remains to fatal metal
poisoning.
Humans have lost the ability to coexist
in harmony with the natural world, Thunder Hawk said,
voicing a concern shared by Indigenous people from the Chilean Andes to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
He
hopes more people might now approach the eagle with the
same reverence he was taught. It's what leads him to
offer sage or dried red willow bark every time he spots
one as a "thank you for allowing me to see you and for you
to hear my prayers and my thoughts."
Erickson, the new graduate, shares that optimism.
"I
feel like that kind of shows that we're strong and
united as a country," she said by the Mississippi, her new
feather nestled in her hair.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration
with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly
Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this
content.
