I read Edgar Villanueva's book out of morbid curiosity and the naming story is bizarre. The quoted text below are excerpts from
Decolonizing Wealth, Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance.
Around the time I left KBR, I got my Indian name. I wish I could tell you a romantic story about a vision quest where I became a man after spending a month building my own shelter sleeping under the stars, foraging and nearly starving, and having hallucinogenic experiences that revealed the true nature of things. But that's not how it happened.
No, it was a beige conference room in the Marriott in Denver. I had found a job, finally, in the direct aftermath of KBR, and was running the North Carolina American Indian Health Board, an organization that represented the six tribes around the state, working toward improved health in our communities, and the National Indian Health Board conference was taking place in Denver. At the conference was a sign-up sheet to meet with an Ojibwe medicine man.
Obviously, I signed up.
There was a line of people waiting their turn to go into the room and have a session with him and I was nervous. In my church, growing up, this kind of thing - shamans and the like - would have been condemned as heresy.
"What's going to happen in there?" I asked the woman waiting in line in front of me. I felt like I was on my way to see the Great and Powerful Oz.
Then Villanueva talks about the woman in front of him giving him a piece of her tobacco to present to the alleged medicine man. He discusses what the alleged medicine man is wearing and how they each sat in conference room chairs.
He asked me why I'd come. The truth was someone had suggested that if I were lucky, he might give me an Indian name, even though it's pretty unusual for someone from another tribe to give you a name. There are different traditions around naming. My tribe does not have a naming ceremony. You are just who you are, whatever your mama names you. I felt I'd be more legit with a real Indian name, but of course I wasn't going to express that to the medicine man.
Then Edgar Villanueva talks about the alleged medicine man saying he sees colors coming from Villanueva and "ancestors and spirits flying around the room."
And then he said it: "I want to give you an Indian name."
My moment had arrived. My prayers had been granted.
Niigaanii Beneshi.
It's in Ojibwe, from northern Minnesota.
"It means 'Leading Bird,'" he added, sparing me from having to find someone who speaks Ojibwe to translate it for me. "When birds are flying in the V formation, there's a bird that's leading the formation. That's you."
I thanked him and floated out of the room, feeling all spiritual and mysterious after the experience. Niigaanii Beneshi. Leading Bird.
There are a significant amount of problems with this story. Villanueva even acknowledges that "it's pretty unusual for someone from another tribe to give you a name." Yes, Edgar...it is unusual.
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