My Story About Alvino Siva, Cahuilla Elder and Bird-Singer

In 1997 and '98, a Native American Cowboy Jubilee was held in the San Jacinto Mountains town of Idyllwild in Southern California with both Native American and cowboy performers on stages all over town. The first year, I was asked to perform in the jubilee by Alvino Siva, an elder of the Cahuilla people for whom Idyllwild was ancestral land. Alvino was a storyteller, a teacher, a leader of the bird-singing tradition of the Cahuilla, one of the last of the Cahuilla-speaking people. His sister, Katherine Siva Saubel, a tremendously-respected elder, founded the Malki Museum on the Morongo reservation in Cabazon and authored books on the Cahuilla language and their ethno-botany. Their nephew, Ernest Siva, carries on their work and their tradition today with the Ushkana Press and the Ushkana Foundation. I was very honored to be invited by Alvino to play my flutes and tell my stories - himself a storyteller, Alvino could be fierce in his critique of the latter-day inhabitants of California. Before the first jubilee began, Alvino approached me and asked me for a favor - he held in his safe-keeping a 100 year-old Crow war-bonnet that was passed to him by the son of a man who was gifted with the bonnet by its original bearer - or at least that is what was explained to me by Alvino. After consulting with a spiritual leader of their people, Alvino had been told that, once a year, the bonnet needed to be brought out and worn by a suitable person so that it would not lose its power. So, he asked me to wear it while I performed - me! I was at once struck by a sense of pride in the honor being bestowed on me by Alvino and also by a huge sense of trepidation since I had not earned the right to wear those feathers, nor were war-bonnets a tradition of the people of my ancestry, the Cherokee. I might be accused of 'chiefing' like the Lakota-style buckskin-clad bonnet-wearers who haunted the sidewalks of the Cherokee tourist town of Cherokee, North Carolina, at Qualla Boundary - to be paid for having their pictures taken with unwitting tourists. I didn't want that to happen. When the day came, I wore the bonnet as briefly as possible without offending Alvino. When a wind came up and it became difficult to wear the bonnet correctly, I removed it with as much respect as it deserved, hopefully before any photos were taken - but I was too late. Some years later, a painting surfaced on the internet, prints of the painting being sold on various fine art websites. It was titled "Elk Whistle" and was obviously painted from a photograph of me in my regalia, holding one of my flutes, and wearing the 100 year-old Crow bonnet. That is the story of the painting that graces my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/BillNealElkWhistle and my blog page at elkwhistlebillneal.blogspot.com/. About two years ago I attended the memorial service for Alvino at the Malki Museum with all the others who came to pay their final respect for a man who had a long, meaningful life of work on behalf of his people and I wondered to whom that war-bonnet had been passed again for safe-keeping. I hoped that it had found its way back to the Crow people where it was meant to be.