The Walking People

A Native American Oral History

This story has its beginnings on a day long ago when Earth rolled and heaved, and rocks fell like rain. A day when sheltering Ocean became like an angry Mountain bringing crushing rolling death. A day when all leaders and all learners were washed away. A day when all wisdom was washed away . . . “And the people stood naked against this change.“

Thus began what some today would call a “migration” of The Walking People. Leaderless and without the shared knowledge of tradition, they set off on their journey. The story of their journey, thought epic in proportion, is not merely one of travels across distance and time. It is the story of how one particular group of human beings was able to start anew; and to learn through difficulty and changing circumstance to prosper as a Whole People.

These are a People who came to perceive and apply daily the principles of balance and harmony. These are a People who came to perceive the Wisdom of Ordered Council, respecting the knowledge and understanding of each human being gathered around the Central Fire. These are a People who learned, together, to preserve their Wisdom through songs and stories shared by all . . . so that all this gathered Wisdom might not again be washed away by a towering Ocean of Change.

  • Across 10,000 years The Walking People have reached our own time . . . a time when our society begins to learn that wisdom may have greater value than success, that individuals need respect and an opportunity to participate in their communities, that spirit may mean more than just determination, that no one single view of history can be fully accurate.
  • The Walking People is an affirmation of the human potential to develop as one Whole People. It traces the threads of connection from ancient Native American thinking toward the thinking that underlies many of our present political structures.
  • The Walking People show us in their own way, who they were and how they thought, contributing to a re-conceptualizing of the history of human development.

An awareness of other views of history . . . other ways of organizing . . . can contribute to global healing, to greater awareness of our common and ancient ancestral roots, to our mutual struggle for understanding. This story of survival through sweeping change has a message for our own circumstance today.

Paula Underwood

The Walking People

A Native American Oral History