Delta Pilgrimage Flower Ritual: Return, Remember, Release

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The text of a ritual held on the river as part of the PANA Pilgrimage to the Sacramento River Delta (March 29-30, 2008).

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The Hawaiian tradition of giving a lei to the ocean waters as one is leaving is symbolic of a heartfelt return. We offer a lei brought from Hawaii for our ancestors whose suffering and spirit mark the delta waters and levees, and promise our return to remember. We will also offer flowers as the closing of our flower ritual for all of our common ancestors. When possible, the response will also be spoken in the language of the ancestors. We face the back of the boat, watching the waters and leis recede, symbolic of facing future by remembering the past and all it wants to teach us.

We are standing here
wanting memories to teach us to see the beauty in the world
listening to the voices above the storms of life
Voices that whisper what we need to hear.

We remember you,
we listen to your whispers in the wind,
we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.

To our First ancestors of this land

Coast Miwok, Patwin, Plains Miwok, Bay Miwok, Ohlone (Costanoan), Yokuts and so many more...You suffered under the militarization of California as a Spanish territory, enslaved to build the missions, forbidden to speak your own languages, dying from disease and broken hearts. The Gold rush ravaged the land, your hearts, your bodies. Yet your spirit deep within the land itself beckons us to return, to remember, to repent, to release new life.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.

To our Native Hawaiian ancestors

You crossed the Pacific, bringing your ocean wisdom to guide the watery journeys through the Delta, bringing earth wisdom to care for the land, bringing aloha spirit to counteract a growing inhospitality to the Other.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.
(Pause to offer flower lei)

To our Chinese ancestors

You reclaimed land in this delta with innovative levee techniques, started truck farms, developed and harvested asparagus, potatoes, onions, celery, strawberries, salmon, abalone, crab and seaweed. You built temples, constructed miles of solid rock walls for the fencing of cattle and huge underground tunnels for wineries in the north. You laid miles and miles of railroad track where no one dared.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.

To our Japanese ancestors

You began to fill the labor needs when our Chinese ancestors were excluded from entry in 1882– working sugar beets, grapes, fruits, berries, vegetables and hops, sleeping in fieldsheds on the edge of the orchards, in camps worse than dog and pig pens, unfit for humans, dying premature deaths. Yet you became farmers and tripled the fruitfulness of the land.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.
(Pause to offer flower lei)

To our Filipino ancestors

You began arriving in the San Joaquin Valley after the Philippines became a U.S. colony in 1902 (after the Philippine-American war) and were brought in to fill the labor needs when our Japanese ancestors were excluded from entry in 1924 – by 1929 you were nearly nine thousand in Walnut Grove alone, expert in the asparagus harvest. Yet you suffered the same living conditions and psychological impact of racism, cultural alienation. You suffered from the shadow of intraethnic competition with Japanese farmers leasing from white landowners. Yet you invoked the spirit of struggle and unity with strikes and a Filipino-Mexican union of fieldworkers, roots of the United Farmworkers today.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.

To our Sikh ancestors

You labored in logging, railroad, mines, road construction and all type of agricultural work, bringing expertise in irrigation methods of developing rice fields and fruit and nut orchards. You built a Gurdwara, providing spiritual home and welcome to all.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.
(Pause to offer flower lei)

To our Latino ancestors

You labored in fields that by 1930 had excluded Asian workers ... and labor in those same fields today, enduring welcome and unwelcome, perceived as threat and peril. Yet you continue to offer the spirit of la lucha for the fulfillment of life for all.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.

To our Cambodian ancestors

You suffered in the killing fields and sought refuge across the Pacific, laboring in agricultural fields... and continue to labor in the slow process of healing from the traumas of war... sharing with us your vulnerability and strength, your deep humanity.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.

To our European ancestors

At times, some of us really don’t know quite what to say to you but we know you are there and that your many of your own stories have been silenced. And we know you were suffering. We reach out to you and remember.

RESPONSE:
We remember you, we listen to your whispers in the wind, we rock you in the cradle of our hearts.
(Pause to offer flower lei)

To all our ancestors to come

ALL:
Remember, Listen to the whispers in the wind, Let us rock each other in the cradle of our hearts.
(Pause for everyone to offer flowers)

Life persists and is relentless.
Where terrain, though desolate
Channel a people’s spirit to hope deeply
To see beneath the veneer of discomfort
To claim life upon a land that has both
Spat and embraced them.

There is stunning hope here
There is gratitude from which we draw life

We encounter the voices of our common ancestors
May we learn to see with their eyes
Hear with their ears
Touch with their hearts
And so hope as deeply.

We remember
and we are blessed again and over again.

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Prepared by Joanne Doi with inspiration from Mike Campos, Corinna Gould, Zoe Holder, Gordon Lee, Keali’i Reichel,. Special mahalo to Gordon Lee for bringing leis and gathering plumeria blossoms in Hawai’i to bless our journey with the ancestors with their beauty and fragrance, evoking also the remembrance of double plumeria leis brought by pastors from Hawai’i for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other key civil rights leaders during the second march in Selma, Alabama, March 1965.
3/29/2008