The Webs We Weave

​Dream catchers did not originate in New Mexico, but if you know where to look, you’ll find them everywhere. Powerful symbols, they have spawned numerous metaphors to help us understand life. 
 
One version of the original dream catcher legend says that the Spider Woman (Asibaikaashi), was the custodian of all Ojibwe. However, as the tribe started spreading out across Northern America, she could no longer care for every member. So to help Asibaikaashi keep unity and peace within the growing tribe, the Ojibwe women started weaving magical webs for their infants. These orbs hung above the children's beds to protect them from harm or bad dreams. 
 
The orb shape is powerful. As Black Elk, the early 20th century Oglala Sioux Holy Man said,
 
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round . . . The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls, birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.

Native American tribes now share the dream catcher. They understand suffering and injustice on a painfully fundamental level, having paid the consequence for others’ entitlement, selfishness and irresponsibility time and time again. 
 
As entitlement, selfishness and irresponsibility show no sign of waning, it is not surprising that other cultures have turned to the dream catcher as both inspiration and warning: a reminder of our interconnectedness. Rather than be angry that other cultures turn to the dream catcher, Native Americans, the Ojibwe tribe in particular, have reason to stand tall.
 
For another way to see the dream catcher is that our world is one ginormous web, into which we each weave the tiny thread of our lives, with no boundaries of race, religion, nationality or gender. We end up belonging in many different smaller webs: those of our families, our jobs, our schools, our neighborhoods, etc. 
 
We each carry a thread and trust that the person with whom we interact will meet us and hold up their thread, to create a solid stitch in the web. 
 
Sometimes this filament is impersonal but nonetheless essential: we trust the pilot will safely land this plane, we trust this chef will adequately cook this chicken. If each one of us holds up our end of the thread with integrity, we carry on in harmony. 
 
Often, the filaments are more personal: a parent, spouse, sibling, friend, co-worker. 
And when people with whom we are interwoven die, they take their thread with them, creating a hole in the webs of those connected to them. Just as the myth says, sorrow, loneliness and all sorts of pain enter into this hole that is created.
 
When those we care about die prematurely or violently, their string is yanked out of our webs, and the hole is larger, deeper.
 
It is almost impossible to build a healthy web with those who are selfish, entitled or irresponsible. In the legend of White Buffalo Call Woman, she passed this wisdom down in her Lakota Instructions for Living:
 
Friend, whatever you do in life, do the very best you can with both your heart and minds… When one sits in the Hoop Of The People, one must be responsible because All of Creation is related. And the Hurt of one is the hurt of all...
 
So it was this past summer that the hurt of Vice-Principal Susan Montoya became the hurt of all who knew her when she soared into our Big New Mexican skies on her fatal balloon ride. Shortly before the balloon fiesta, authorities released the toxicology report of her pilot: the amounts of cocaine and pot found in both his blood and urine were at near fatal doses. 
 
Because of his irresponsibility, entitlement and selfishness, the string of trust Susan placed in him was torn asunder. With her string violently severed, a gaping hole was created in the webs of her family, co-workers and friends.
 
So it was also this month, on the set of a low budget Western called “Rust”, shot under our Big New Mexican skies at Bonanza Creek Ranch. 
 
The web of a successful film set must be tightly woven: the hours, proximity and locations dictate it. When they are not, unspeakable tragedy can ensue, like the death of Director of Photography Halyna Hutchins.
 
Those who lack integrity, who live under delusions of entitlement, irresponsibility, or selfishness cannot hold up the threads others entrust them with, and the web suffers. 
 
The 24-year-old armorer from Arizona is the one responsible for the guns and any ammo on set – (and they found 500 rounds, some live). She is the one who alleged in an interview that although her father is a well-known armorer, she is largely “self-taught”, and almost didn’t take her first job, because, she shared, “I wasn’t sure I was ready”. She dropped many threads on this, her second job.  
 
The AD from California, the one charged with running the set, the one who handed the gun with a lead bullet to the actor, telling him it was a “cold gun” admitted after the fact that he didn’t actually take the time to properly check the gun. There were even two prior misfires of the prop gun on set the week before. This AD also dropped so many threads.
 
The star who fired the gun was also a producer on the film, in town from New York.  Who is responsible for a set if not the producer? Where he could have knit a tight web, he didn’t. In fact, hours before Halyna was killed, six seasoned camera operators and assistants quit, frustrated by subpar working conditions – safety being one of their concerns. It was reported that Halyna had been advocating for safer conditions for her crew; to no avail. Money, it seems, trumped people. 
 
When these qualified crew members threatened to walk, they were replaced with non-union workers. In fact, the qualified crew was informed that if they didn’t leave that fateful morning, producers would call security to remove them. This is the set the producers created.
 
These very same producers hired the AD who had been fired off a 2019 set for ….wait for it…the negligent discharge of a firearm.  
 
However, remember: a dream catcher is an interwoven circle. As Long Man (Isna-la-wica), a Teton Sioux observed:
 
I have seen that in any great undertaking, it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.
 
So because this web is a circle, one must turn 180 degrees and consider its other side: the power of those threads that were woven with integrity and trust. The talented and beautiful Halyna clearly knew how to weave threads with others.  
 
Her gaffer Serge Svetnoy had worked with her on at least five other productions.  “We took care of each other,” he wrote after her death. “I can say with 100% confidence that she was my friend.” This confidence is the result of webs that make life worth living.
 
Because Halyna knew how to build wisely, Serge also acknowledged and thanked camera operator Reid Russell for being part of their web.  When Serge signals out Reid as part of the team, I know what he means. Reid is one who holds tightly the threads others give to him.
 
My favorite memory of Reid is from my brother Jake’s wedding. Jake and his bride danced to Bobby Darrin’s “Under the Sea”.  I remember thinking, “Wow, I didn’t know Jake could dance!”. That thought lasted until the bride’s cousin Reid later started to dance with her. And I mean DANCE.  As they began to twirl and groove, the dance floor emptied. In fact, the entire wedding party actually stopped, mouths agape. Reid moved with unabandoned vitality and grace, and the bride morphed in to Ginger Rogers to keep up. At the end of the song, the whole place burst into enthusiastic applause. “Oh my,” I whispered to our sister. “Cousin: 1, Groom: 0. Let’s hope Jake has some moves we don’t know about.”
 
Serge wrote, “Reid was with us and helped save Halyna”. 

But wait, you say, Halyna was not saved.  
Yet because she knew how to build a web of trust and love, Halyna was saved from dying alone. In the worst hour of her life, it was this web she had carefully built with those around her that held her tight.  She bled out in the arms of her friends: “We all loved Halyna,” Svetnoy declared.  “All loved” because that is how tight threads work, even in a professional environment: Love. And love never fails.
 
And Serge is right: with these strong threads, people live on. 
 
Chief Seattle Suquamish believed:
 
There is no death. Only a change of worlds. 
 
Halyna, a master web builder, will live on in every tightly woven web she built, despite the hole her departure tore.  Her threads to Serge and Reid reflect the artistry of shared interests, shared values, shared talents, the beauty of life: love of art, of family, of horses, of music & dance, and of the Big New Mexican sky. 
 
Yes, this self-described “restless dreamer,” Halyna will live on, especially in her husband Matthew and son Andros' webs.  But while she lives on in 9-year old Andros, the hole in his web is deep and irreparable, the kind that occurs when a parent dies when you are still a child. Ironically, this mirrors Reid’s childhood web. 
 
I hope to one day see Reid dance again at a family celebration. I am no fool. I know a deep piece of him forever lies in the ground in the church at Bonanza Creek Ranch, under the Big New Mexican Sky, tied with Halyna and Serge. I understand that he will never again dance with the unabashed vitality and possibility of youth that I remember. But to see Reid dance again at all will be a triumph of sorts, grace in its glory.
 
I do not know what it is like to lose a friend like Susan or Halyna so violently and suddenly. But like many, I do know what it is to lose someone I love with all my heart. So many of us are walking around with webs torn asunder, with holes into which grief, fear, doubt, disappointment, and pain fester. 
 
But it is this – this having loved and having lost - this is what shows us the need to hold all the tighter to the new threads people give us, and to the old threads friends and loved ones continue to share with us. This understanding helps us appreciate the daily chance to connect even casually, to live with integrity, so that we hold each other up. This understanding motivates us to eschew any irresponsibility, selfishness and entitlement we feel because we deeply understand we are all in this together.
 
Legendary musician and songwriter Robbie Robertson, of Mohawk and Cayuga descent, understands these dream catching webs. He does not believe in boundaries: not of race, religion, gender, nationality.  His song Ghost Dance can be seen as a powerful testament to those who weave strong webs in the face of those who do not:
 
You can kill my body
You can damn my soul
For not believing in your god
And some world down below

You don't stand a chance against my prayers
You don't stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again
We shall live again