Psychic Telephone · 28
Steven
Steven is a Lakota medicine man. There are lots of different types of medicine men. Steven’s called a yuwípi. It’s about a particular ceremony he does—yuwípi means “they bind him.” He’s iyéska, which means he’s an interpreter for the spirits. These are things his partner, Lisa, can discuss better than he can. Because medicine men don’t talk about themselves in that sense. He can’t talk about himself that way.
Lisa says he offers the yuwípi ceremony whenever it’s needed. It’s done for doctoring, and to communicate with the spirits, to ask questions. Like somebody has cancer or kidney failure or liver failure. Lisa has seen all these, and many different things, cured in these ceremonies. Steven works with herbal medicines as well. And he does it for anybody who needs it, who asks, not just Lakota. He won’t volunteer it—it’s only if it’s asked for. And it’s a daily responsibility. That’s all he is, is a medicine man. So Steven and Lisa are hardly ever home. They get in, unload the trailer, reload. Like they collected a bunch of medicine this summer, herbs, but she hasn’t gotten a chance to go through and jar them up and put them away. Because they’ve been on several trips since then. They just touch base and take off again.
Steven has traveled the world doing this, Lisa says. He’s been all over Europe and speaks like nine languages fluently—she’s never seen anybody pick up languages so fast. And she thinks that’s part of his gift, because he has to communicate with people. But usually when the Lakota talk about it, it’s whispered—I went and saw this medicine man. Not something they throw out there in public. They know who the medicine people are, though. And when they need them, they’re there for them.
A lot of the people in Steven’s family are medicine people, his grandfather and his uncles. His family is known for that on the reservation—Rosebud, in South Dakota. And he’s well known on all the Lakota reservations, not just Rosebud. His cousin too, she’s a medicine woman. She owns an herbal business in New Orleans. She’s bringing the medicine part from the plants to mainstream society, but from a Lakota perspective.
As an iyéska, Steven’s a go-between, between the spirits and human beings. During ceremonies he’ll go over to the other side and come back. The other side is the spirit world—where we came from. And where we go when we leave this place. All’s it is, he says, is being born into another life over there. The thing is, you don’t want to get lost when you go over there. Because you can get lost and not come back. What’s important is mostly just staying focused. Staying focused and knowing where your body is, so you can come back to it. And the singers in the ceremony make a difference. The singers open the doorways in that for him. And while they’re singing, he can be over on the other side and he can still hear them. And that’s what brings him back. They sing all the proper songs that they need. And then, the hard thing about doing a ceremony is to get it all to combine. Working with the singers, with the songs, with everything. It all combines.
He doesn’t always have to go over to the other side, he says, but it’s actually pretty nice over there. It’s beautiful—there’s trees, grass, birds. Everything. It’s just a different dimension. And it’s a big, big, big universe of beauty. Things that will scare the hell out of you, that’ll make you think. For him that’s—you come to an understanding that the Creator does exist, no matter what. The Creator does exist out there.