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Siaing in the Solomon's kitchen, you II" glimples of the importance of this elder with the long black braid. The lllp, warm room is full of people: a Nadve law student and his wife who have driven far out of their way to get here; their small son, who toddles across the floor in pursuit of a large dog; Eva Solomon, preparing a massive hmch oo the big black wood stove. Talk flows freely around the table - apartheid, religion, the prison sys- tem, the future - while Solomon pro- vides his blend of blunt realism leav- ened with hope. The world as we know it is disintegrating. After Oka, "we have to re-establish our sovereignty as a people. Nature abhors a vacuum. As one nation is corning apart, we have to step in and fill its place. " That means accepting the idea of Native self-government. "Mulroney said, 'We would think about establish- ing Native self-government' They have no power to do that. We have to assert our own self-government. Ourselves. And we have to do it individually, by raking charge of our own lives." Solomon has little patience for leaders who say one thing and do another. "Mulroney has been bragging about tying aid to human rights. But look at the Innu, the Lubicon, what's happening in Barriere Lake (Que.), James Bay. For over 50 years the peo- pleat Lubicon Lake (Alta.) have been looking for some rights, and both gov- ernments have been playing with them." Again, the prophet emerges, blunt, outspoken, fuelled by a vision. "Our destiny and the destiny of our children is not negotiable with any govern- ment. We are dealing with criminal captive state governments - captive in the sense they are dancing to the music of the corporate agenda. They arc totally corrupt and on the side of the corporations. They're all about making it safe for money." It's not a cheerful vision for any of us whose lives are built around profit. "But they are going to lose it. When lbat happens we are going to look at each other as human beings and say who is sister and who is brother. That i all that is going to matter. 'Falaebood woo 't work any more. " It distresses me no tnd that so many pray to God And a.rk Him-Her to do this and do •. ht seem not to Understand that our part is to bt God's hands and feet And voice. Outside, the snow falls. Eva stirs potato soup and slices ham; the tod- <ller makes himself at home on Art's lap, and talk turns to religion. Solomon has long dissociated himself from his Roman Catholic upbringing in Killamey, Ont. "I'm a born-again pagan," he chuckles. But the interna- tional body for which he has the most respect is the World Council of Churches - "the most legitimate body I know," he says. His work with the wee and the World Conference for Religion and Peace has taken him to Geneva and Nairobi, China and Mauritius. Carter describes his attendance at an All Native Circle Conference (ANCC) gathering in British Columbia three years ago. "He talked about men and women in prison. and prison as blasphemy. The room was electric. His physical health was not good, but he had travelled all that way to speak with us. The elders were hanging onto every word. His rich- ness was so evident, his passion against the prisons we have construct- ed so evident, yet his underlying spiri- tuality so evident" The woman is tht foundation on which nations art built She is the heart of her nation ... The woman is the centre of every- thing. Eva calls everyone to lunch. Talk slides smoothly into the dining room. past walls filled with offerings from their 26 grandchildren. Art glances at Eva and talks about women. This is where he finds hope for the world. At a meeting in Fredericton, of the Native Women's Association of Canada, he was sitting on a woodpile, listening to a woman "teaching other women to affirm each other instead of ripping them apart." He was moved further along a line of thought he had been pursuing for a while. "It is time for women to pick up their medicine and heal the sick and troubled world. I have noticed women have been the driving power in making things better. Women have more power than men have, because it was given to them. That's one of our teachings." At the same ANCC gathering in which he had mesmeriz.ed the elders, he challenged the women to pick up their medicine. "What is our medicine?" a young woman asked. Typically, Solomon took his time replying. "I bad to think about it all that winter. And the only conclusion I could come to is that the woman is the medi . " cmc. He pauses, reaches for a way to explain this crucial concept. "You look at a baby nursing, contented; that is the medicine in action. The woman has love in abundance for her chil- dren. That is one of the ways they manifest their power." Laurel Claus-Johnson, a Queen's University student who is frequently Solomon's host when he visits federal institutions in Kingston, says that "if a Native man is ttaditional, he has been taught about the power of women, and most likely encouraged to live that out. But Art is naming women's power, and as he names it, he attempts to liv it, and that is the teaching process gives back to women - and the again, to men too." Not all elders are willing to grant women the power he does. The drive for equal recognition that has "endeared him to the female inmates al o put him in a precarious posi- tion in his own culture, a position he is willing to carry," says Carter. "There are still pockets of male chauvinism in the Native communi- ty." For all Native women - not only those in prison - that position is crucial. Claus-Johnson says that "in our journey back to spiritual re- birth, there is a lot of unan wered question in our mind . To have this man name things that are important to his own piritual journey, it is then much easier for us to make the connections." There is nothing more to say except That good will triumph over evil. Solomon comes quietly out ide to say goodbye, padding around on the snow in blue knit slippers with small fur porn-porns. His accomplishments sit lightly on him. He has been a director of the Union of Ontario Indians; a founding member of the World Crafts Council and a piritual elder in the American Indian Movement; he was instrumental in founding Newbery House, a halfway house for Native people who have been in prison; he has received Ontario's Order of Merit, received a Doctor of Divinity from Queen's University, and a Doctor of Civil Laws from Laurentian University. Honor sometimes softens prophets. Not this one. He continue to be, in Carter's words, "affirming in his radicali m, and yet persis- tent." And he continue to make connections, not only between men and women, but between Native and Christian. "I recognize there are good people in all those faith tradi- tions. We all have the same Creator anyway. There is only one sun in the sky. And there is only one Creator. Our responsibility as Native people is to teach the people how to live in harmony with the Creator, which means men and women living in harmony with each oth= e ... r._"~~----