"In April, there were the planting songs, ceremonies to loosen the ground and to soften the ground to plant on it, dance on the earth to shake the ground and plant."
You are Listening to
"The Water Song"
The Storyscape Project recorded Corbin Harney's Mother Earth Songs (Newe Huvia) in May of 2001. The songs speak of the sacredness of the earth and our relationship with its precious life and spirit. Harney is a Western Shoshone elder and leader and an internationally known anti-nuclear weapons and indigenous rights activist whose traditional lands has been used as a nuclear weapons testing grounds for the last 50 years.
Harney has performed his songs at protest actions, rituals and celebrations from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site to the United Nations and the former Soviet Union. Harney lives at Poo Ha Bah, a traditional indigenous healing center near Death Valley, California. All rights regarding the recordings and use of his songs are retained by Corbin Harney. For more information about Corbin Harney contact the Shundahai Network, www.shundahai.org.
What The Songs Say

Corbin Harney has performed his songs at protest demonstrations from Tahiti to the Russian Nuclear Test Site at Khazakstan to the Nevada Test site. At 82 years old, you can find him swinging a sledge hammer and directing the construction at the retreat center. He has led thousands of activists past the front gates of the Test Site in mass acts of non-violent resistance.
Many gatherings around the world have been grounded and blessed by Corbin's songs, seven songs to the accompaniment of his drum, before the sun rises every morning. At the ceremonies, Corbin would welcome the people in the circle to make an offering to the fire. "Pray your way, not my way, your way," he would say, standing like a big bear in the light of the fire, an offer of tobacco filling the valleys of his palms.
The United States government took over lands ceded to the Western Shoshone people through dominion and treaties and turned it into a domestic war zone. The Department of Energy has been detonating nuclear weapons above and below the earth's surface on former Shoshone land for the last forty years. The Shundahai Network has been working with other groups staging large demonstrations at the Test Site challenging the government's plans for a high-level nuclear waste dump on the same lands.

Ground zero for this country's nuclear addition is the high desert region of snow-dusted mountains, Piñon Pine forests and riparian refuges in a charged landscape of wastelands, wildlands and traditional lands.
< "Doctor Water":
Outside the wind is still and the only sound, aside from the morning chatter of birds, is the constant flow of spring water emerging from heated depths.

The weather is excellent for recording and the sound of running water is a fitting background for the songs. We have been invited to Poo Ha Bah (Doctor Water), a traditional indigenous healing center outside of Death Valley, founded by Western Shoshone activist and spiritual leader, Corbin Harney. Corbin has traveled the world calling for action against nuclear weapons, testing on indigenous lands and for a return to a spiritual relationship with the earth

We recorded Corbin Harney's seven songs called Newe Huvia, Mother Earth Songs. The large hulking elder sat on a pow wow chair in the courtyard of the center with the spring water flowing behind him. He rubbed the skin of his drum in a circular motion and spoke about each song he was about to sing.

"This first song is about a bear who returns to this land. He's crying because there's nothing left to eat. His food is not there no more, he's looking for food and he's crying."
Corbin strokes the skin of his drum and prepares for the next song. "Now I want to sing about all the living things, everything tied to gather in a circle. All the plant life, everything is in a circle. The native people say the circle can not be broken unless we break it. All over the land we all circle together." Corbin Harney then sings a slow, repetitive, hypnotic chant while staring beyond his surroundings and beating his drum. His voice is like raw silk, tough eloquent and deeply textured.

"This next song is about darkness, the importance of darkness to our people, important to the native people so they could escape their enemies. And all the animals need the darkness to hide from us. Today that darkness is used by a lot of creatures. Darkness rolls over the Mother from the east to the west, the day comes right after that. That's how important the darkness is."
You can hear a question, a request, a warning in the slow cadence and color of his voice. Constant through the songs and the stories water emerges heated from the depths and flows down a series of baths and onto a wide salt marsh.
Corbin pauses to take a deep breath and in the quiet we hear only the hot springs.

"Now I want to sing about water, how important water is. Water is flowing over this Mother. Water is something we have to appreciate, clean water, drinking water, soon we will have to buy all our water. All the living things need water. We need to sing to the water to keep it happy so it will flow. We have to sing to the life of the water, the spirit of the water so that it will flow."

"Now I want to sing about the Horned Toad, a creature that used to be here at one time and now has disappeared. They have been gone from here because we have not been singing about them. They came onto my shoulder and started singing songs asking why we had stopped singing about them. Now that we are singing about them and they are coming back. This is a very important animal, he bleeds us, he helps us, he's a doctor and we have to appreciate him and he's happy if you sing about him. He disappeared and now he's coming back."

"Now I want to sing about the water life here. The mineral hot springs here. It's flowing over the Mother Earth. The hot water comes from the hills, from under the land and flows over the land. The water is an really important part of the healing. He's a real doctor, a healer, Doctor Water, the mineral water. I'm singing about the Poo Ha Ba, the Doctor Water."

"Now I want to sing about arrowheads. Arrowheads are very important to the native people. We make the arrowheads and we use them to hunt, to take fish, birds, other animals. You have different arrowheads for different animals. The smaller the arrowheads the smaller the game, the bigger the arrowheads the bigger the game. Arrowheads kept us alive, they kept us in food, we have to appreciate them."

"Now I want to sing about the sun, how important the sun is. Without the sun our Mother Earth would be an ice ball. All the living things depend on the sun. We depend on the sun. We have to appreciate the sun, we have to make sure the sun is shining upon the Mother Earth."
Corbin finished his songs with a deep sigh. I had heard these songs many times before, at conferences and protest actions, in small groups as the eastern sky began to, and in large circles with hundreds people as the new light crept across the land. We danced on the earth and prayed in our own way.


We returned to San Francisco to duplicate Corbin's songs onto a long-lasting digital format. With permission, we will keep a copy for our archives, another copy will be placed in archival storage at the University of California and Corbin will keep the copyright, the master and distribute the recordings as he wishes.