An Interview Of Trace Lara Hentz.

By Jerry Alatalo

race Lara Hentz, editor of Lara Blog here on WordPress, has graciously accepted an invitation to participate in the new interview series we began recently. She offers an impressive, unique voice and perspective which readers will appreciate, and adds valuable perceptual contrast to the worldview spectrum compiled from the excellent contributions by previous guest interviewees.

Thank you Trace Lara Hentz for kindly sharing your insights, found in the following words.

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An Interview with Trace Lara Hentz (journalist-author-blogger)

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Question 1.) What was your primary motivation for entering the world of blogging on the worldwide web – the internet?

Thank you very much for this invitation.

In 2009, I joined the blogworld, first using Google Blogger. Experts say if you have a book, you must blog. Well good. That is great advice if you are a writer-author, but technically speaking, there are a million little things you won’t know about blogging until you have blogged awhile. Take sidebars and widgets, for example. That first blog: American Indian Adoptees [www.splitfeathers.blogspot.com] has hit ¾ million reads in 2017. And we’re in the top 100 adoption blogs. I’d say it’s because we are providing vital history, support and information to Native American and First Nations adoptees like myself. I found a niche and know my audience.

Soon after my book, I decided to try WordPress and I’m coming up on my 7th anniversary (January 2018) doing my Lara blog [www.laratracehentz.wordpress.com] for more serious writing. Time does fly. And I do blog experiments on blogger, just for fun. A few years ago I taught both blogger and WordPress at the local community college here in western Massachusetts, along with Social Media 101. They fit together like a glove. Sharing is important, as well as having good solid interesting information on your blog.

One thing I told my students is to blog/write once a week. More than that, you might get blogger-fatigue.

Question 2.) How would you describe yourself with regard to spirituality – what were some of the most memorable transforming points across the years (books, personal contacts, mystical experiences, etc.) in the developing of your current spiritual perspective?

In my early 20s, I embarked on a spiritual quest. Being adopted, for me, meant searching for people and answers. Over many years, I worked to reconnect and find relatives. Along the way, I’ve had meaningful experiences in ceremony, in the sweatlodge, doing purification before the Sundance in Rosebud, South Dakota in the 1990s. I studied with a Northern Cheyenne in Seattle prior to the ceremony, and he helped me with contacting the medicine man who was running it. You need permission to attend and you need to know what to expect, what to bring, etc. One of the most important things I learned: do not pray for yourself in the sweat. It’s not for me to say what I experienced, but it changed my life and improved my health. On that trip, I visited an Oglala Lakota family in Porcupine, SD, and soon became a relative (a member of their family). Sitting at Ellowyn’s kitchen table, I learned so many things, historic things, significant things, huge things, not found in any book.

The 90s were very big years for me. In Seattle where I was living, I met with a Face Reader who was Sikh. And my Kinesiologist-Herbalist was also a Sikh. Both men were healers, definitely, and both started healing the broken parts of me. I chose to do co-counseling (trauma therapy) for three years, which was transformative. The goal: tell your whole life story, in your own words, without holding back. It’s like an inner powder keg exploded. Since then I’ve studied herbal medicine and seek out holistic doctors for treatment. Even after all that personal growth, writing my memoir produced the biggest results in my mental health and outlook. The key is: “Know Thyself.”

The one book I recommend to everyone is John Fire Lame Deer Seeker of Visions. If you feel a need to understand Indian Country traditions, and the work of medicine men, particularly the Lakota Oyate (Nation), this is the book to read.

Question 3.) What is your greatest wish for readers as a consequence after reading and considering your writings?

My greatest wish is for those who read my blog is to be excited, and learn something new and unexpected. I share news from Indian Country, my perspective on being adopted, and I write and curate history and current events.

In case readers don’t know, it took me five long years to write my memoir, prior to my first blog. Good Grief! The one thing I had not fully realized with doing a memoir or biography, I needed to write in the first person and share my own story and the long search for my father. I was writing mostly Indian Country history in the book as a journalist. Then a literary agent read it and made recommendations. Writing friends told me similar. That started a major rewrite and a new process, while emotionally processing all of it. Writing can be a very healing thing, even writing on a blog, but it can also take you down a path you won’t expect. In those five years, I healed more than I ever dreamt possible.

Writing my first full-length book was synchronicity, very well-timed. After my memoir came out, I’ve done a four-part book series on the Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects, narratives from adoptees in North America and the 60s Scoop in Canada. And I have contributed to other books on the topic of adoption.

I hope that readers who visit my Lara blog will be glad to read about Indian Country. What is news-worthy to me might be news-worthy to you.

For those new to this blog world, as you blog, you will change and evolve. Remember, it’s your words and experience that people will want to read.

Question 4.) Can you offer any advice to people having a difficult time dealing with government and media lies, especially as it pertains to so many average citizens who hold erroneous perceptions on important events and situations around the Earth?

If 2017 feels like a beginning, 2018 will be even more so. Yup, hold onto your hat!

It is very apparent in 2017, this is a surreal time for many Americans. The Hopi and many tribes predicted this time would come. It is a very important time, in that we are waking up and seeing things in a whole new light, with some shock and outrage and fear thrown in. History (his-story) happens in cycles, so we need to learn world history, so we can see events happening today in a historical sense, and that way discern the truth from the lies. If we don’t discern, we are doomed to repeat until we do learn. I fully understand the constant news-cycle can be too much to handle… News might cause distress and bitter arguments among friends and family. That means we need to find new words, good words, better words, and to listen carefully.

I trained as a journalist in 1996 and took my first salaried job as an editor that year. Prior to that I freelanced and kept journals. Something I find most distressing today is so much history and world news is not taught in school, or included in history textbooks. There are huge chunks of history missing, mis-told, or told in a very biased, one-sided, colonized, misogynistic manner. Bloggers can change that, and I hope they will.

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(BIO) Known for her exceptional print interviews with influential Native Americans such as Leonard Peltier, John Trudell and Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Trace Lara Hentz (who legally dropped the name DeMeyer in 2014) started intensive research on adoptees in 2004. Her memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE is an exposé on the systematic removal of American Indian children from their mothers, families and tribes for adoption into non-Indian families while she weaves in her own personal story. Her adoptee journey takes her around the country, finally meeting her birthfather in 1994 and learning about her mixed ancestry (Cherokee-Shawnee-Delaware-French Canadian.) Trace is former editor of tribal newspapers the Pequot Times and Ojibwe Akiing. She has contributed to adoption anthologies: Lost Daughters, Adoption Reunion in the Age of Social Media, and Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists. In 2013, she was co-editor of the anthology Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time: Indigenous Thoughts Concerning the Universe with MariJo Moore. She is currently writing history with her cousin Dr. Charles Bland on one of their cousins Dr. Thomas Augustus Bland, editor of Council Fire, and a friend of Red Cloud and Sitting Bull.

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Thank you again, Trace Lara Hentz. Peace.

Standing Rock And The Spirit Of Sitting Bull.

By Jerry Alatalo

“It matters little where we pass the remnants of our days – they will not be many. A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land, or lived in happy homes protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant but it surely will come, for even the white man whose God walked and talked with him as friend with friend cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.”

CHIEF SEATTLE (1780-1866) Native American leader

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ROLLING THUNDER (1916-1997) Medicine man, spiritual healer:

“Modern man talks of harnessing nature, conquering nature, and making nature a servant of man. This shows modern man doesn’t know the first thing about nature and nature’s ways… and the condition of the environment today proves that. Now everyone’s afraid – afraid of air pollution, radioactivity and poisoned water.”

“The land is becoming contaminated and the resources are disappearing or becoming unusable, and now people wonder if it’s too late. You can’t make any kind of laws or system to control nature or to control man’s inner nature, his consciousness or his natural behavior – the way he thinks and feels. That cannot be controlled.”

“No individual or group can block another individual’s path or change it against what fits his nature and his purpose. It might be done for a time, but in the end it won’t work out. It will only lead to danger and fear for everyone. Even in healing we take that into account.”

“A true healer considers a man’s karma and his destiny. He has a way of looking into and understanding what is meant to be according to each individual’s own progress and unfoldment. That way things are more realistic and it saves everyone a lot of trouble. Nature is to be respected. All life and every single living being is to be respected – that’s the only answer.”

“Back in Oklahoma some years ago there was a meeting – the first such high level meeting in over a hundred years – where chiefs and medicine men came together from all over the continent, and some from South America. The Iroquois came from New York and they brought a board with writing on it. On the last day of the ceremonies we formed a huge circle.”

“The circle is the Great Spirit’s emblem. All life is a circle. The world is a circle and the atoms are circles. The circle is seen on the rock writings and it goes around all things, it takes in all things. When we met in Oklahoma, we formed a huge circle of all native tribes and we smoked the peace pipe to the sun, and it stayed lit around that huge circle.”

“Then the Iroquois brought out the board with writing on it and interpreted it. They said: ‘Today our tribes are united again.’ The emblem showed a chain of hands – people holding hands in a circle – and they said: ‘Today our people have formed the circle of brotherhood and friendship here.’ ”

“Eventually this circle will go around the world. The brotherhood and peace that the world is seeking will now start on this land here. All the people here will be joined in the circle of friendship and brotherhood, and that circle will go around the world.”

(Thank you to Jill Stein for President Booster Club at YouTube)

From “The Morning Prayer” (Sapji Sahib – Sikh):

God’s seat and his stores are in countless worlds created by him.

Everything is put there once and for all, enough forever.

Having created the creation God is beholding it.

The works of God are true.

Instead of one tongue may I have hundreds of thousands and twenty times that, and with each tongue over and over again I would repeat God’s name.

This is the path of stages leading to the master ascending to make union with God.

By hearing such sounds of the songs of heaven, even the meanest worms would desire to compete.

God is obtained by his grace, and false is the boasting of the false ones.

It is not in anyone’s power to speak or to remain silent.

It is not in anyone’s power to beg or to give.

The man has no power to live or to die.

The man has no power to acquire riches and kingdoms which stir a big commotion in the mind.

It is beyond our power to gain understanding of divine knowledge and meditation.

It is not in our power to find the path of freedom from the bondage of life and death.

God who has the power exercises and beholds it.

None can be good or bad by his own strength.

God created nights, seasons, lunar days and weekdays.

God created wind, water, fire and the nether lands.

In between these God established the Earth as home to practice truth and virtue.

God created different kinds of species with various colors and habits; such species have countless different names.

They are judged according to their deeds and actions.

God himself is true and true in his court.

There the accepted saints look graceful.

The marks of blessing and mercy of God is poured upon all.

The good and bad of everyone are judged there.

True facts become known in his court; when you go home you will see this.

The above is the moral duty of the realm of righteousness – now we narrate the working of the realm of knowledge.

Countless are winds, waters, fires, Krishnas and Shivas.

There are countless Brahmas who are fashioning in various forms, colors and clothes.

There are a number of Earths and mountains for doing various deeds, and there are innumerable lessons to be learned.

There are many Indras, suns and moons, galaxies and countries.

There are countless yogis, enlightened ones, and countless forms of goddesses.

There are countless gods, demons, saints, jewels and oceans.

There are countless sources of creation, languages, and many dominions of kings.

Countless are the men of knowledge and countless the servants of God.

There is no end to God’s bounds.

In the domain of knowledge spiritual learning shines brightly.

There it produces endless delight, melodies, amusement and joys.

The language of reaching the realm of spiritual happiness is beautiful.

Unique beautiful forms having no parallel are finished there.

What is happening in that sphere cannot be described.

If anyone tries to describe it they shall have to repent afterwards.

There inner consciousness, intellect, soul and understanding are molded.

There the genius of the pious persons and men of miracles is molded.

In the sphere of action and grace the spiritual power is the main force.

No one else can reside there but those blessed with the spiritual force.

The very powerful warriors and heroes reside there.

In them the might of the pervading God remains fulfilled.

Everyone is fully merged with God’s admiration there.

Their forms of beauty are indescribable.

They never die nor are they created because God’s name resides in their hearts.

The saints of various worlds reside there.

They cherish the holy eternal ever in their hearts.

Formless God resides in the realm of truth.

God beholds the creation which he has created, and grants his kind glance and bestows upon them happiness.

There are continents, universes and solar systems in that region.

If someone tries to describe them, he knows there is no limit or end to this.

There are universe upon universe and creations over creations.

They function according to orders issued by God.

God beholds his creation and feels happy by contemplating over it.

To describe the realm of truth is as hard as steel.

Make purity and modesty your furnaces, and patience as your goldsmith.

Consider your mind as your anvil and divine knowledge as your tools.

Consider fear of God is as your bellows and practice of penance is the fire.

Treat the love of God as thought where in filters the nectar of God’s name.

Thus in the true mint the divine word is fashioned.

This is the daily routine of those on whom God casts his divine grace.

God with his kind look makes them happy.

Air is the guru, water is the father, and Earth is the great mother.

Days and nights are the two nurses in whose laps the whole world is at play.

Good and bad deeds are judged by the God of justice.

According to their deeds some will be adjusted near him and some will be distant from God.

Those who have contemplated his divine word would pass through all toils.

Their faces flow with the glory of the divine light, and many more are saved along with them.

(Thank you to naapiakii at YouTube)