Prophetic Flying by Guest Writer, ElizaBeth Hill

ElizaBeth Hill is a Mohawk writer and singer from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Canada.

Prophetic Flying

I’ve always dreamed.  In my Mohawk world, dreams are extremely important.

Sometimes the dreams are stark and frightening, and some are in such a kaleidoscope of color I wake feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Or perhaps the Scarecrow since I may spend a while humming “If I Only Had A Brain” as I figure out what message my dream has presented.  

Prophetic dreams are neither good nor bad they just are. 

These dreams can be terrifying or encouraging, and I believe are given to us to strengthen our minds. As I relate to the following dream, I can still feel a bit of the anxiety that drove me to seek out others who had similar dreams. I searched for comfort, finding none, and left with more questions than answers.

✬ ✬ ✬

I am flying low over the ground alongside a large river.  There are no houses, buildings, or people. The soil bubbles with huge blistering pools of red, black smoke rising like long skinny worms struggling to escape. I turn and fly along the river where dead fish are bobbing and sinking in the viscous mire. As I fly higher, I see the ocean.  It is not the sparkling beauty I have seen before when the sun shines to dance on its waves. It is churning heavily as if it’s moving in slow motion. From my bird’s eye view, the water is burning close to the shore and there are no birds.

Sea creatures float to the surface and I gag. Feeling afraid I fly back across the land in the direction of home, but no matter where I fly there is nothing resembling the land of my family or my people. The land is liquid now and the small bits of soil still visible are smoldering. Suddenly I zoom upwards as though I am picked up and placed inside of a glass ball. I lay still inside the ball as it flies and the Earth heaves and retches chunks of lava and rock into the sky. One huge flaming rock nearly reaches me, and I scream waking in a sweat.

✬ ✬ ✬

I sat for a long time after waking, struggling not to go back to sleep. 

I grabbed a writing pad and scribbled the details of the dream, and wide awake now, I rose to make myself a cup of tea and waited for understanding to come.

Awareness and Understanding waited like enemies outside the door until I came to accept that I might never know what this dream was about. Then suddenly, they rushed in clamoring to be heard, both speaking at once. Thoughts and visions swirled through my head at such a rate, another cup of tea, and a trip to the bathroom were required. For what seemed like hours I sat curled up in a blanket, hands tucked around my cup begging Awareness to be still and let Understanding get a word in.  All she had to say in the end was “prophecy.”

The memory of this dream has never left me, nor have those that followed over the next several years. 

They were all detailed images in ambiguous reference to prophecies I had grown up hearing. One of my questions was “What could make water burn?” Bits of information and accompanying questions flowed on for years until a picture formed. The last piece of the puzzle was a news story from Alberta, Canada.

In April of 2011, the CBC reported¹ a woman whose private well had filled with methane gas from nearby hydraulic fracturing. The CBC states that in the early 90’s the gas industry dug approximately 10,000 shallow wells then fractured everything below destabilizing the geological formations to create leaks everywhere. 

Eventually, animals stopped drinking the water and this woman could light a match to a glass of water and watch it burn.

✬ ✬ ✬

I have had many flying dreams, some quite beautiful and entertaining. 

It is this dream however that surfaces immediately when I’m asked if I have them.  This, and the ones that followed, began when I was in my mid-thirties, coming in clusters depicting four elements. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. I didn’t have to write the first ones down since they were branded into my memory so well that years later, they are still clear. 

“Pay attention,” the dreams said.

So, I have. We all watched in horror as a busted oil pipe rushed billions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but the lesser-known and much more devious contamination continues around the world. Along with gas fracking, mining continues to contaminate the fresh water supply on this planet at a mind-boggling rate. Pristine wildernesses of North and South America and every other country in the world have been poisoned to the point that during my visit to one far remote First Nations community, I was warned not to shower but to boil water to wash with. Bottled water was available for drinking. This is currently the case in many native reserves in Canada.

Neil Young, Canadian artist, and rock icon took up the staff and ran at the Canadian government in a fist-shaking attempt to bring awareness to the Athabasca River and Alberta watershed contamination. It is a direct result of irresponsible mining to devastating proportions. I wonder what he dreamt.

✬ ✬ ✬

Now I have futuristic dreams of flying over woodlands so thick a squirrel might never have to touch the ground and I can stand in the canopy looking far into a woodland horizon.  I dream of flying over landscapes and diving into the water so clear I can see to the rocks on the bottom. Thanks to humanity’s insatiable greed Earth will eventually be uninhabitable. My dream suggests it will happen not far beyond my lifetime. 

Earth will sigh knowing we aren’t the first civilization to destroy ourselves as she transforms and purges our mistakes. Then she will roll over, lay her head down, and keep on dreaming.

---

ElizaBeth Hill is a Mohawk writer and singer from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Canada.

She has worked with many traditional and contemporary Indigenous artists and performers such as Oscar Winning composer and singer Buffy Sainte Marie, Grammy Award Winner Bill Miller, and Estelle Klein Award winner Sadie Buck.

ElizaBeth has scored music for independent films and was nominated for 'Best Female  Artist' and 'Best Producer' along with co-producer, Bob Doidge (Gordon Lightfoot, U2, Ani DiFranco, Bruce Cockburn) at the 2000 Canadian  Aboriginal Music Awards AND Best Music  Aboriginal Canada in the 2000 Canadian JUNO Awards for her release 'Love  That Strong' on which she shares a duet with great American songwriter, John Hiatt. ElizaBeth’s Mohawk language CD 'Peacemaker's Lullaby' was nominated in 2 categories for the 2005 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards including ‘Album of the Year’.

(Photo by Luis Domínguez on Unsplash)

(https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/video-flammable-well-water-1.1028484)

1.