A pagan friend of druidry, Dave Shorey, posted this on another site, but I thought it was important enough to repost here.

The Wild Hunt: Who are the Elders?
(by Brendan Myers)

In the last few years I’ve started to hear more and more about Elders in the Pagan community. The people who first joined the movement back in the 60’s are in their 60’s now (in terms of age, if not a decade!) and many of them have done so much work for the movement in that time – running a festival, writing books, managing a shop, teaching new people – that the word Elder is more frequently being attached to them.

In the spring and summer of 2006 I worked as a contract researcher for the branch of the government of Canada responsible for peacekeeping and policing in the First Nations. During this job, I came into contact with 50 traditional indigenous Elders from all across Canada. I think that as the Pagan community begins to acknowledge Elders of its own, it would benefit from a look at the way Aboriginal people understand their Elders. Here’s a short account of my own experiences.

The first traditional Elder I met was from the Cree Nation of northern Ontario. I arrived at the Friendship Centre about half an hour early, and so was directed to a boardroom near the front door, where I waited. Around twenty minutes later, a man in his 50’s who was at least a head and shoulder taller than me came in and said, “You Doctor Myers?”. I said yes. The man then nodded and left. I suddenly realised that this was the Elder I had come there to see. I quickly gathered my notebook and followed him to the Elder’s Lodge, a room in the centre dedicated for the use of Elders. I started to introduce myself and describe the nature of my research. He politely interrupted me, and asked if I had any tobacco. I had just made my second mistake: the tobacco should have been offered first. So I produced the tobacco offering in the little red cloth pouch and handed it to him. This was now my third mistake. The tobacco is to be offered to the Elder in a particular ceremonial way. I explained that I knew very little about First Nations culture, and that he was the first Elder I was to speak with for the project. He was very patient with me.

Who are the Elders? What do they do which entitles them to this quality of respect? There are several answers. In the course of my work I found that the most important reason is that Elders are teachers for the people around them. They are acknowledged as Elders by their people because of a lifetime accumulation of cultural and traditional knowledge and wisdom. Almost all of the Elders I met emphasised that an Elder is usually involved in a teaching relationship with various people. And many people I consulted said that an Elder fills that role particularly in relation to children. It also seemed important that the holders of this knowledge be unassuming about it. “I only know a little”, one Elder told me. The impression I got from this statement is that his knowledge, while comprehensive, is ‘only a little’ when compared to the totality of all human knowledge. An Elder, it can be affirmed, is one who possesses a great store of cultural knowledge, but he is not normally inclined to boast about it. A little bit of modesty, or perhaps it is better to say unpretentiousness, seemed to be a necessary quality. Indeed many people pointed out to me that if someone stands up and proclaims herself to be an Elder, that is the surest sign that she is not an Elder!

Some of the knowledge that an Elder possesses is personal and experiential in character, rather than ‘traditional’. Someone can be acknowledge as an Elder because he or she overcame enormous personal hardships, survived various forms of trauma or suffering, and came out the other side as an honourable person. Several Elders described to me how horrific traumas were inflicted upon them when they were students at a residential school. Some had their hair forcibly shorn, and their clothing forcibly cut from their bodies and burned in front of them. Many described physical and sexual abuse at the hands of priests and nuns in residential schools. An Elder is sometimes a person who emerges from the other side of these traumas as a good and respectable person, at peace with himself, able to forgive, able to be happy. If he or she learns to stop drinking or gambling, or if he or she learns to control anger and violence, or otherwise overcome the traumas he or she experienced in early life, and, most importantly, is able to teach others to do the same, then he or she is likely to be regarded as an Elder.

Such people become valuable to the community as role-models. They are admired for their perseverance, their strength of will, their fortitude, and for other qualities which are seen as necessary for the healing process. Their presence alone shows others who are still grappling with the effects of trauma that healing is possible. Elders also help others by telling the stories of their own traumas and their recovery process. The honouring of role-models is a powerful value for Aboriginal people: and of all role-models, the Elders are the most esteemed.

This leads me to a discussion of how someone’s standing as an Elder requires the acknowledgement of a community. Many of the Elders I spoke with told me, several times, “I don’t call myself an Elder”. The first time an Elder said this to me, I thought he was trying to deny being an Elder. But he explained that it is other people who acknowledge him as such. It is simply not given to anyone to declare himself an Elder: indeed, if someone did declare himself to be an Elder, he would be seen as an attention-seeking egotist. Similarly, as one Elder taught me, “No one sets out to become an Elder from the beginning, especially if they knew how much work they would have to do!” Almost all the people I spoke with were very clear on the point that there is no such thing as a self-proclaimed Elder. The acknowledgement from the community is absolutely vital. How, then, does someone become an Elder? How is the community acknowledgement obtained? One of the Elders I met in Ottawa taught me: “You sit at the feet of your Elders and learn from them and learn from them, starting when you are young, and continuing maybe for twenty or thirty years. Then people start to notice that you know stuff. Word gets around. Then one day someone offers you a tobacco pouch and asks you a question.” The process is thus quite spontaneous and organic. There are few formalities and no institutionalized criteria, and yet there is a system which works.

Finally, yet perhaps most importantly, Elders in Aboriginal communities have a sacred and a spiritual function. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is. I was in the lobby of an Aboriginal-focused public health clinic in Ottawa, when an elderly gentleman arrived, and I did not know at the time that he was the Elder I was going to meet. Yet somehow I knew that he was a person of importance. My attention was drawn to him immediately. He was unperturbed by the noise and the busy pace of the clinic. Rather, he was calm, composed, unpretentious; he gave me the impression of a man at peace with himself and his surroundings, no matter what those surroundings may be. When he moved to the stairs to find the room where the “Tea and Bannock with the Elders” event was to take place, I suddenly felt motivated to hold the door open for him. If by chance I happened to be ahead of him then I might have done so anyway, since it is a polite thing to do. But on that occasion I suddenly felt as if there was an extra significance in the act, and so I moved quickly to be in the right place to do it. When he was speaking to the group, it was very easy for me to imagine that there was something or someone speaking through him; something powerful, wise, and loving. I felt this way in the presence of the other Elders I interviewed as well.

As already mentioned, the most significant difference between Aboriginal values and those of Europeans, or European-descended cultures like Canada, is the spiritual dimension. Elders are people with special responsibilities for the spiritual part of Aboriginal culture and life. They are not exactly like priests or shamen or magicians. I’d like to say instead that they are ‘carriers of the sacred’. The ‘sacred’ which they ‘carry’ can take many forms: traditions, objects or artifacts, teachings, or even social responsibilities. In particular, Elders carry the sacred in their person, their presence and their character. They express it through the voice, they reveal it through the gaze. A person who, by word or deed or by his general character, appears to embody the presence of the Creator somewhat more visibly and tangibly than other people, is likely to be considered an Elder.

Mainstream ‘western’ society does not have the same attitude toward Elders. For one thing, we do not usually call them ‘Elders’; rather, we call them ‘senior citizens’, or (rather uncharitably), ‘old people’. We also do not take care of them in quite the same way. We expect that they will have made preparations for their own old age, for instance by investing in pensions or in retirement plans. And we put them away in separate retirement facilities or in hospitals. People often respect and wish to care for their own aging parents and grandparents. But they may not have the same feeling for other people’s aging parents and grandparents. There is simply nothing in Western society that corresponds neatly or closely to the Aboriginal idea of an Elder. The idea of a community-acknowledged Elder, and the respect due to Elders, may be something that modernity could learn from the Aboriginal world view.

My proposition for the pagan movement is that we should use the word Elder to signify people who work to benefit the pagans of their immediate area, in whatever way appears good to the people who are so benefited. It obviously includes what we have hitherto meant by ‘teacher’, ‘organiser’, and even ‘leader’, but I have in mind something a little wider. It can mean someone who organizes or helps to organize a local pride day, or pub moot, or public pagan temple, or camping festival, or the like. It can signify those who lead open teaching circles, in any tradition, or who regularly perform public or semi-public pagan rituals, be they seasonal, like the Sabbats, or who do rites of passage like handfastings, wiccanings, or first blood ceremonies. It can include people who possess significant cultural and traditional knowledge, whether practical, as in the case of blacksmiths and carpenters, or spiritual, as in the case of teachers, counselors, and perhaps even seers and prophets. It can include musicians, artists, painters, storytellers, and artistic performers of just about any kind. It can also signify those who work for the whole tribe of pagans everywhere, on a national or international scale, for instance by writing well respected books, or managing organisations with hundreds of members, or regularly publishing a journal or magazine, or some online electronic equivalent. But most importantly, they have been doing it well, and they’ve been doing it their entire adult lives.

Here are a few points to consider.

• If there is someone in your community that you regard as an Elder, treat him or her with great respect. Don’t interrupt them when they speak; don’t jump the queue in front of them; don’t speak poorly about them behind their backs. Of course I don’t mean that they should be treated with the deference of royalty. Nor do I mean that they cannot be the subject of some good-natured practical joking once in a while.

• Don’t feel yourself under an obligation to call someone a Elder, just because other people do, nor even just because the person happens to be old. It is up to everyone on their own, and with the advice of those whose opinions they respect, to call someone an Elder, or not, as they judge appropriate. In this way, the scale of values may be flexible, meeting the needs of each local area.

• If you seek the advice, the help, or the services of a Elder, for more than just a casual question or two in a setting like a pub, it may be useful to present your request in a formal and recognisable way, with deep respect, and with gift-giving. Although it may seem contrived, it may be very useful if the request for the Elder’s help included a formal statement of some kind. You might offer a flask of mead to your local gothi, or a pouch of acorns and some uisce-beatha to your local druid, and say, “Dear (name), I seek your help as an Elder…” In that way, that everyone knows exactly what is going on and there are no doubts that a sacred activity is in progress.

• The request should be presented in such a way that the Elder can decline the request without making the petitioner feel snubbed or brushed off. After all, these are people, not gods, and if they have a headache that day, then they should be able to gently refuse the gift. The Elder could suggest a future time, or another person better qualified to answer the petitioner’s question, or briefly explain the reason he is unable to help at that time.

• If you that whatever service or help the Elder provided was beneficial, and of excellent quality, she should offer another gift, perhaps a few hours or a few days later. I think the second gift can be a sum of money, the amount to be determined by local precedents, the petitioner’s ability to pay, and his or her assessment of how good a job the Elder did. (I used to give $200). But I am also happy with the thought that it could be a material service too. Why not make dinner for her that night, or weed her garden? Isaac Bonewits has suggested that pagans should “adopt an Elder”, and I find much merit in his suggestion.

• Finally, I think it most important, above almost all other criteria, that the word Elder should designate someone who does this kind of community-building work consistently, effectively, and in accord with the very highest standards of excellence, over the space of a lifetime.