Native Americans aim to end Georgia's drought
Weekend ceremony at Stone Mountain Park will seek to bring back rain, heal Earth
By JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/15/08
Gov. Sonny Perdue prayed. The rain came. But the drought stayed. So now an Eastern Shoshone wise man will give it a shot.
On Saturday morning, a couple of hours before sunup, Bennie "BlueThunder" LeBeau will lead a group of Native Americans in a Stone Mountain Medicine Wheel Ceremony at Stone Mountain Park to wrest rain from a dry sky and finally break Georgia's historic drought.
 Rich Addicks/AJC | ||||
| In this photo from last November, Gov. Sonny Perdue and his wife, Mary, pray for rain on the steps on the state Capitol, along with other political and religious leaders. | ||||
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LeBeau, 58, is an elder with the Eastern Shoshone tribe and lives on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fort Washakie, Wyo. He was invited to Georgia by members of the Cherokee and Muscogee nations to lead the ceremony.
"This is not a rain dance," LeBeau emphasized in a telephone interview Wednesday. "And please don't call me a Shaman because people think we're devil worshippers. We are not. We are just trying to heal the Earth and bring back the rain and fill the streams and stop the tornadoes."
The Stone Mountain ceremony is at the center of a "wheel" of eight simultaneous ceremonies that will be staged in Columbus, Hawkinsville, and Louisville, Ga.; Talladega and Fort Payne, Ala.; Athens, Tenn.; Cherokee, N.C.; and Greenwood, S.C.
The public is invited to the ceremonies, which begin at 4 a.m. and last until sunrise Sunday, about 26 hours. (Stone Mountain Park will not be open to the public Saturday until its regular opening hour of 6 a.m. There is an $8 parking fee.)
LeBeau said his ceremony will, in a way, pick up where Perdue's prayer vigil on the state Capitol steps left off last November.
"What he [Perdue] said is how we believe," LeBeau said. "If we get everybody to think we can bring water, the more people that can get up there, to think that — on eight points, and towards the center — guess what we'll get? The rain."
Originally, LeBeau planned to stage the ceremony on top of Stone Mountain and include an outdoor fire in the ritual.
But Chief Executive Officer G. Curtis Branscome of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association said Thursday that the winds on Saturday were forecast to gust to 18 mph, so the ceremony will be moved somewhere else in the park. "It won't be on top of the mountain," he said.
LeBeau said Wednesday the group was considering making a smaller fire — "maybe an hibachi." But as of Thursday, LeBeau and his entourage were still trying to reach an agreement with the park on the details and location of the ceremony.
The idea of an Native American ceremony atop Stone Mountain to heal the Earth and break the drought has been in the works since about January, said Maureen Grady Tatge, of Marietta, who has helped coordinate the ceremonies.
"Stone Mountain is considered a sacred site," Tatge said. "And BlueThunder has performed ceremonies such as this in other places such as Los Angeles. We felt he could bring the tribes together and is the best person to explain the philosophy and reason behind it."
LeBeau said that land development, the building of highways, the digging of mines — and the television tower and Confederate carving on Stone Mountain — have wounded the Earth and brought about the drought and other devastations such as tornadoes.
The ceremony, he said, will heal "the holes in the cuts and seal the electromagnetic energy that is seeping from the Earth's crust," and that "will bring the water and rain back."
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