Hyemeyohsts Storm
"Thousands of Native Americans are not enrolled in their tribes because their bloodlines have become diluted over the years, as is happening with the Comes Last family. Even some full-blooded Native Americans lack enough of any one tribe's heritage to qualify for enrollment."
Blood Quantum
from
High Country News
Printable Version (Adobe Acrobat/.pdf Format)
This page is written because no one else is doing it. As detailed Here, Hyemeyohsts Storm's web page "disappeared" from the internet over a year ago (this is written in March of 2014) after being online for at least 10 years and probably more. It was never a very "fancy" site, offering little more than a brief biography and Amazon links to his books. A sort of "mock up" of Hyemeyohsts Storm's old page can be seen Here, though its image links are broken and its future survival as a web page seems precarious.
Furthermore, what took it's place in top ranking of Google on a search for "Hyemeyohsts Storm" was an ugly, racist and hateful attack page that I will not do the dignity of hot-linking here. The above, top-linked page, describes some of the controversy surrounding Hyemeyohsts (Wolf) Storm and my own defense of what I thought Mr. Storm was really about.
So I decided that a well-known author who has written three primary books, Seven Arrows, The Song of Heyoehkah and LIGHTNINGBOLT, deserved some recognition as an author be he "controversial" or not. This simple motivation began the Wikipedia adventure detailed below.
Storm was born in 1935, though his attack page likes to throw doubt into even this and say "or 1931", and I am a bit concerned as to what has happened to him. No real information can be found on the web concerning his fate at this time. This all being so, I decided to try Wikipedia. Result, absolutely nothing beyond one reference to him being the author for a picture book called "Singing Stone" and illustrated by Stella East. That being the case, I followed Wikipedia's prompts to request a page be made. This started a 12 hour adventure where following the prompt to request the page, I was given a blank page to write myself.
I should have known better. First appeared a message over the meager outline I had written...a bare bones bio with his name, year of birth, books he has written and mention that he was considered by some as controversial...telling me I need to use "reliable sources." Suggested in the message were a string of links that all seemed to be books.google or scholar.google or freaking NYT search. Nevertheless, I added those links. I thought that was "good" but in a blink of an eye another zealous moderator or "new page police" shows up and tells me that my link to the word "controversial" was not a "reliable source"...again. At the same time, this person noted (as I had already found) that the attack page I was going to link to the word controversial was "banned" by Wikipedia. So I used another page to link to the word controversial.
The posted text originally read as follows:
"Hyemeyohsts "Wolf" Storm, (b. 1935) also known as A.C. Storm, is a Native American author. His mother, Pearl Eastman came from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. His books include:
Seven Arrows,
The Song of Heyoehkah,
and Lightningbolt.
Storm's career as author and teacher have not been without controversy. Described by some as a plastic shaman, he is nevertheless a valued author and teacher by others. Storm's picture book Singing Stone was illustrated by Stella East."
I am thinking I may be getting somewhere with the Hyemeyohsts Storm page, but a new and improved version of "reliable sources" pops up along with a slap on the hand for getting fed up with so simple a task as getting the most basic information on Hyemeyohsts Storms online, and writing what I knew would ring all of Wikipedia's fire alarms. At this point things had gone beyond ridiculous and became a theatre of the absurd so I wrote what can be seen in the screen shot below before the Wikipedia's hammer fell again and it would disappear.
Click to Enlarge
My smart ass comments begins with the words "Apparently the Wikipedia Police... and if the image is unclear you can read the text below:
"Apparently the Wikipedia Police are unsure that there ever was an author named Hyemeyohsts Storm, that he was born, and that he ever wrote three books called "Seven Arrows", "The Song of Heyoehkah" and "Lightningbolt." The unreliably existent Hyemeyohsts Storm can not therefore be assumed controversial because Wikipedia has banned the pages that show the unreliably existent Mr. Storm was unreliably controversial.
Readers are cautioned, therefore, not to believe any of the unreliably controversial material above. However Wikipedia does believe in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and Stella East (even though she is listed as the illustrator of a book the unreliably existent Mr. Storm wrote).
Readers may, however, always believe in Wikipedia."Needless to say, the Hyemeyohsts Storm page no longer exists.
Let me go on a bit further with all this for there is an incredible amount of racism involved in the controversy over Hyemeyohsts Storm. In the image above you will see that the wise ones of Wikipedia, after removing any and all valuable links, did insert their own Wikipedia reference to the term "plastic shaman". Included in this diatribe is a reference to the Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality. What is particularly odd here is that Hyemeyohsts Storm is not, nor ever pretended to be "Lakota." He is of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe as referenced Here and is quoted as saying, "I was born in 1935 on the Northern Cheyenne reservation and raised on the Cheyenne and Crow reservations, which exist side by side in Southeastern Montana. I am an enrolled Indian on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation; my enrollment name is Arthur Storm Jr. Hyemeyohsts is my Cheyenne name; given to me by Frank Waters of Busby when I was born."
"As a mixed blood Native American youth, (called a "Breed" on the reservation), I was confronted with racism from both Indians and Whites alike. Certain Indians taunted breeds for not being "full-blood" and the whites called Breeds and Indians "prairie niggers." But powerful and educated elders of different tribes saw that my "mixed blooded-ness" could be a strength -- especially with my curiosity and love of the old stories and knowledge. They recognized that I could become a bridge between them and the world beyond the reservation. Slowly certain elders began to quietly teach me."
Further, as noted in the first link on this page, He has never denied his ancestry is mixed, in fact calling himself a "breed." Storm lists his teachers and his primary teacher as a Mayan Holy woman named Estcheemah who taught him the teaching of the Zero Chiefs. I have read the three primary books he has written and never felt that he was claiming in any way to be teaching ANYTHING which could be considered "traditional" Cheyenne and certainly not Lakota. What he taught was what he learned from Estcheemah, and it is NOT Lakota or Cheyenne. But so it goes with racism, which no "peoples" can be assumed as immune from.
The "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality" was signed by only three individuals , though claiming it represents a conference over 500 representatives of the Lakota Nation. Hyemeyohsts Storm is not Lakota, nor ever pretended to be. What of American Indians who explore any other spiritualities...Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc.? Do Buddhists, Daoist, or Christians feel exploited. Since when did spirituality become a "object" or "commodity" that can actually be stolen?
It is notable that almost every pretender to being a "factually accurate" (but unreliable?) attack site on the web has as it's root source one entry in the Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature (page 346) by one person. That is a truly remarkable demonstration of "consensual reality". Note the line, "His story took a bizarre twist when members of the Crow tribe...claimed he was a distant relative...", so here is the Crow Nation saying he is at least partially "Indian", contradicting the Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature's earlier statement "Storm is German-American." So many ready to tell us who Hyemeyohsts Storm is not, but not one who will then show you who the "real" Hyemeyohsts Storm is! You know, like "where was he born then?", "where did he grow up?", etc.
I have no respect for what is commonly grouped under the umbrella term "New Age", feeling it lacks a center and is generally drowned in eclecticism, and it may be that many "New Age" oriented people did flock to Hyemeyohsts Storm's workshops...I don't really know. If you are teaching something are you to be judged by who shows up to learn, or by what you teach itself?
Anyone who wishes to read Hyemeyohsts Storm's response to the "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality" can read it HERE.
I am seeing Love and I am seeing Hate...you choose, dear readers. I am also seeing the ridiculous and absurd. FINE!
