Attendees at the 2005 Wellbriety Conference in Denver, as well as participants at the many White Bison training events taking place nation-wide now, are inspired by a very simple message: We’re Eagles, Not chickens! Here is a story about eagles and chickens that came out of the Conference experience, a blending of words from both Don Coyhis and Bill White that will also appear in the new book Alcohol Problems in Native America: The Untold Story of Resistance and Recovery––“The Truth About the Lie.” What does it mean to be an Eagle and not a chicken? What does it mean to have the Values, Outlook, Purpose and Vision of an Eagle? What are the “chicken” values, outlook, purpose and vision that we all must function within? How do you reconcile these on a daily basis? To share any of your thoughts on Eagles and Chickens, please send us an e mail at info@whitebison.org

We want to begin with a simple proposition—the proposition that the character of Indian People has been deformed by the sustained assault on Native cultures. To take our lands, non-Indian people had to convince us we were something other than what we were. To kill our ancestors and take our lands, they had to define us as something less than human. To colonize or exterminate a people, you must first define them as a weed. You must transform them from a person to a pestilence. Once objectified, they can be killed without thought or remorse. But this process is even more insidious. The ultimate evil inflicted on Indian people was teaching us to hate ourselves so deeply as a people that we began killing ourselves and killing each other.

Non-Indian invaders created a caricature of the Indian. They described us so often and so consistently over generations that we began to believe the lies ourselves and act in harmony with this view. A lie told a thousand times often becomes the truth to those who tell it, to those who hear it, and even to those the lie is about. We want to illustrate this truth by sharing with you a story about how deeply imbedded lies can shape who we are at a most fundamental level.

A Story About Chickens and Eagles
There was a farmer out in the forest and he heard gunshots. He walked to where the shots were fired and found on the ground two eagles lying there. Somebody shot both of those eagles. As he stood there, all of a sudden he heard a little noise and he looked up and there was a nest up above. You cold hear little eagles in the nest. So he climbed up that tree and looked in the nest to find two little eaglets. He didn’t know what to do so he put them in his pocket and climbed back down the tree and went back home. He was trying to figure out what he should do with the baby eagles so he said to himself, “I’ll just put them in with the chickens.” He took them out to the chicken coop and put those eagles there.

As time went on they grew a little bit and one day they were talking with each other in eagle language. And one said to the other, “You know, we’re different. We don’t look like them.”

Then the other one said, “Don’t be talking like that. We’re chickens. I talked to some of those chickens and they told us that we’re chickens. So don’t be talking like that.”

Time went on and they grew a little bit. Pretty soon one came back and said, “You know, we are really different.”

The other said, “Just shut up! They taught us how to crow, we flap our wings like they do, we walk like they do, we do everything like they do. We’re chickens.”

Summer came and one of the eagles went walking down a path and kind of strayed away from the flock. As he got into the forest a little bit he began to hear laughter. It was a really hard, gut-barrel laughter. He looked up to see an owl sitting in a tree. So the eagle looked up at the owl and said, “What are you laughing at?”

The owl kept on laughing and he said, “I’m laughing because you’re acting like a chicken. You’re an eagle but you’re acting just like a chicken.”

But right away the eagle says, No, “I’m a chicken.”

“No,” said the owl, “you’re an eagle!” The owl couldn’t convince him so finally the owl flew down and landed by the eagle land he said, “I want you to get on my back and hang on.” So he got on the back of that owl and the owl took off down the runway and made elevation and started riding the air currents. Pretty soon the owl was way up in the sky. He said to his passenger, the eagle, “This is you. You soar with the wind. You look way out. You can fly higher than anything.”

The eagle is hanging on the owl and he’s so scared of the height and he’s saying, “No, I’m a chicken, I’m a chicken. Get me back down.”

By then the owl is getting ready and he says, “I really hate to do this to you but I’ve got to do it.” The owl just flipped over. The eagle went tumbling through the air and the owl dived down alongside the eagle and he said,

“Spread your wings, spread your wings.”

“I can’t, I cant.”

“Spread your wings!”

But pretty soon the eagle started to put out his wings and the wind started to catch them, and all of a sudden…all of a sudden, he just started soaring. He couldn’t believe that he was soaring. He was just amazed.

After a while he landed and went back to the chicken coop and the other eagle was still sitting in there. He was trying to snag those chickens, and all that stuff. Making the moves and competing with the roosters, but the other eagle said, “Brother, come over here.” He whispered into his ear and he said, “You know something, we’re eagles, we’re not chickens.”

But then the other eagle got indignant and said, “Oh no! Don’t you be talking like that. They trained us, they told us what we are. I can do it really good. I can be a chicken really good.”

“No,” the other eagle said, “that’s not who we are.” They argued a little bit and the one who had flown said, “I want you to come for a walk with me.” He took his brother for a walk and met the owl, and together they put him on the owl and up they went, riding the air currents, just like the other time. Pretty soon the owl flipped over and down came the eagle with his wings out. He began to soar. And he learned. He learned that he, too was an eagle.

We heard this some time ago and knew the meaning behind that story. Did you ever have that happen? Sometimes you sit there and your heart is just heavy. It’s just heavy and you can’t understand how come. Or you feel like you belong somewhere, or there’s things people are telling you about yourself and you say, “No, that’s not me. I don’t think that way.”

Except when you write grants and other things, because you have to do those kinds of things in chicken language. We’ve learned that we have to do that. But we can’t forget, we’re not chickens. We’re eagles.

In this story, the eagles forgot who they were when they lost the guidance of their parents. We, as Indian people, forgot who we were as we lost our world to genocidal wars, epidemic disease, forced dislocations from our lands and the forced loss of our children to Indian boarding schools. Cut off from our history and cultural traditions, a race of sober eagles was defined as drunken chickens. Lies and labels deformed our view of ourselves and our view of Indians as a people. We were taught that our alcohol problems were an expression of our inferiority. We were told that we were alcoholics by birth—that if we drank alcohol, we would inevitably become an alcoholic. We were told that we are born with an insatiable craving for alcohol, that we are hypersensitive to alcohol’s effects, and that we are prone to violence when intoxicated. We were told, in short, that a love of alcohol was part of our Indian nature. These firewater myths are deadly toxins that have poisoned our minds and shamed our communities for generations.

There is no scientific evidence to support any of these contentions. We are at not at risk for alcohol problems because of any racially determined (biological) vulnerability. We are at risk because our personal, family and cultural protective factors have been under sustained assault for hundreds of years. We are at risk because lies have been perpetuated against us that we have believed.

These lies have been heard across so many generations that we have defined alcohol intoxication as an expression of our Indianness—as a personal protest against our attempted colonization. We were taught to poison ourselves and then we were blamed for our own self-destruction. The Wellbriety Movement is asking us to reject these destructive lies. The Wellbriety Movement is asking our intoxicated brothers and sisters, “Why are you acting like a chicken when you are an eagle?” Being drunk is not the Indian way. It is not an effective protest. It is a form of personal and cultural suicide.

It is time Indian People rejected alcohol, not because some Indians develop alcohol problems and alcoholism, but because alcohol is a symbol of efforts to exploit and destroy us as a people. It is time Indian People rejected alcohol because it is not part of our nature. When you return home to your people, spread the truth about our true nature. Tell the people to cast off the lies that have been told about them. Invite them to write a new chapter in our history—a chapter written not with words, but with lives lived in Wellbriety. We will destroy the “Drunken Indian” stereotype with every sober breath we take. We will call upon Indian nations and Indian families to detoxify themselves from the poison that was injected into their histories. We will sweat this poison from our bodies and our minds and rediscover the essence of ourselves as Indian People.

The stereotype of the drunken Indian is the image of the chicken that has been foisted upon us. The eagle is the symbol of our sobriety and strength as a people. It is time we declared clearly and boldly: We are not chickens; we are EAGLES! We must teach our children that they are not destined to be chickens, they are destined to be EAGLES! Our new history begins today!