S.E. Ruckman: Shorn locks and the knowing of hearts

We weave a strange pattern while we are here on the planet. Still, the intricate crisscrossing of people, circumstance and places in our lives produces a beautiful design in Indian Country.

Recently, my family experienced the sudden loss of my former brother-in-law. A kind and gentle soul, the call to mourn him was intense and traditional. As a head man for the Cheyenne Dog Soldier Society, he had spent years living his life in thought of others. His give-all and take little philosophy taught me much about generosity and how to tell real from counterfeit gestures.

I will keep my personal feelings about him to myself. But as we sat in the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma community center, a larger imprint clarified. His brother, three daughters, grand-daughter and two adopted daughters (one of them, my child) sat in the family seats all sporting newly shorn hair. Most had hair that reached down their backs, but as a sign of respect and to announce their period of mourning, they relinquished it.

As a Plains Indian, this ritual is a familiar one but is often over looked as past practices fade against newer things like Power Point presentations of the dearly departed.  I am all good to welcome in the new rituals but I cleave to the traditional utterances. It says who we are.

Cutting off one’s hair goes back in our culture to the times when the only ownership we could claim was family, tribe and pride. All of those went a long way to securing a full life and surely it was enough because it had carried us on through the years when we became landowners (of sorts) and foreigners in our own lands.

The idea is that the mourning family is calling out to those who might see them from afar. It says: This person has suffered a terrible loss. As such, loved ones are granted ample bereavement as mourning allows.  Hair-cutting is sufficient unto itself. When the hair grows out, its length similarly signals that the official mourning period’s end approaches.

I was speaking to a Southeastern tribal friend who was still lamenting the loss of his mother from the year prior. I told him about the hair cutting and he had no idea what it was.  Pulled by compunction, I began to look at tribal viewpoints on hair cutting. I found that other tribes outside of the (Northern and Southern) Plains did likewise in mourning, like the Senecas.  Sociologists might call this cultural similarities but I see the crisscrossing.

The sudden disappearance of our hair announces the loss of our prior identities.   This was highly visible in the boarding schools attended by legions of Indian children in our collective past.  Not only were the tribal clothes removed but the badge of our outer selves.  Thankfully, our tribal languages and Indian names could sufficiently masquerade the inner heart.

As for the hair that was cut from my brother-in-law’s immediate kin, it became a beautiful song. The various switches were placed in his casket so he would take them as he made the journey toward spiritual sunshine. The gesture wrung from me tears that I had probably stored for decades. I was comforted that he would carry them along; a physical remembrance of his loved ones as he walked.

For those in Indian Country who are looking forward to 2012, it is unquestioned that some have also recently lost a loved one. Maybe it is not so recent, but the hole is still there. These are the ones who are quizzical to see what will bloom in the flower of the New Year. Where they will go, what is in store, and who they will love becomes as a present to be unwrapped. At the same time, they are ever alert to scan the horizon for a remembrance or signal from their departed one as they reach forward.

For the record, I now know those hearts.