Umbilical Cords for Keeps!

You never know what a day at the Pine Ridge Retreat Center will bring your way.  This particular day, I was blessed to learn about the new life rituals.  Since being here, I've had an awful lot of deaths.  I think I'm up to six funerals/wakes/memorials.

One of our regular artists stopped by to visit and shared the materials that she was going to be gifting to her first grandbaby.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet or not, but in Lakota tradition, all family is family.  This woman is celebrating her first "grandbaby," but it's actually her great niece.  The kids talk about their brothers and sisters, who often times are biologically cousins, nieces/nephews, etc.  Sister, brother, daughter, son, etc, are all relative...hah!  I'm funny.  There's a connection between the gender of the parent and the gender of the siblings.  For instance, to my sister's children, I would be their mom, even as their biological aunt.  To my brother's kids, I would be an auntie, since he's a different sex.

Back to the baby stuff.

I learned that when a baby is born, it's up to the grandmother (biological...I think, or an auntie deemed as such) to gift the baby her or his first star quilt.  The baby star quilts are much smaller and often have bright colors, with pink for girls and blue for boys.  In addition to the quilt, standard gifts are leather moccasins and an amulet, which the artist called a "chekbah," but I can't find a spelling to confirm what I heard.  These amulets are a couple inches long, made out of leather and beads and have some stuffing on the inside.  If you're gifting it to a boy, you buy a lizard, since the lizard is able to defend itself by losing it's tail and regrowing it.  If you're gifting it to a girl, you buy a turtle, since the turtle has a hard shell and lives a long life.  Now, the exciting part of these amulets is that once the baby is born, the amulet is cut open and the stuffing is removed.  Then, the baby's umbilical cord, once dried, is placed inside the amulet for safekeeping.  This amulet, according to this website, is then buried with the mother of the child when she dies.

This website also adds:

"A priest will pray to the Creator to give baby girls the qualities of the turtle through the Turtle Spirit, things like long life and strength. He will also pray so that the lizard spirit will give the qualities of a lizard (speed and the ability to change, among them) to baby boys."
I can't help but wonder what my friends Zak and Katie would think if I mailed them a small beaded lizard to place Henry's umbilical cord in, but then again, why do some parents have the first lock of hair?  It doesn't make any more or less sense; it's tradition.  Pretty cool.