In the summer of 1995, filmmaker Scott Kecken, then 28, walked across the United States in a native American ceremony intended to bring healing to the Earth.
Between Elk Neck in Cecil County and Los Angeles there were miracles — the real kind, which cannot be proved, bigotry both from within and without, and death threats.
One of these days, Kecken hopes to produce a film that captures all of it.
“We became a microcosm of the world,” said Kecken, a Baltimore native whose maternal grandfather was part Cherokee. “There was politics, abuse, the best of the human condition and the worst. We carried medicines used by native people and a lot of prayers.”
Called the “Sunbow 5 Prophecy Walk,” the journey took more than half a year, moving south along the Skyline Drive of Virginia, west across Tennessee, over the Mississippi River into Arkansas and then Oklahoma, named for the Choctaw words “okla,” meaning red and “humma” for people.
“We saw a lot of poverty in Indian communities, sad, appalling poverty,” said Kecken, now living in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Joy Lusco, and their 4-year-old son Tawadi, which means hawk in Cherokee. “Yet, they would always feed us. Even when they didn’t like us, they would feed us.”
From Merle Haggard’s Muskogee in the east to Bobby Troup’s Amarillo in the Texas panhandle 400 miles west, a core group of some 30 walkers kept pace.
They fasted, took part in sweat lodge ceremonies, lived off of donations along the way and were followed by two support vehicles, one towing a mobile kitchen.
From Amarillo, they crossed northern New Mexico — traveling old Route 66 — and hit the Grand Canyon city of Flagstaff (anyone heading there must stop in Alvin’s Mason Jar diner for homemade cobbler) before spending Christmas in Cornville, Ariz.
“A couple families put us up, and we had a traditional Christmas dinner,” said Kecken, who has let go of some — but not all — of his conflicted feelings about European traditions supplanting native culture.
“Christmas captured the spirit of family and friends and love. There were no gifts … it captured what the elders kept telling us along the way — to live our ideals of unconditional love and forgiveness.”
The walk ended with a skirmish near Zuma Beach, north of Los Angeles, between the walkers and members of the Chumash tribe.
Rafael Alvarez can be reached at [email protected].
