Among the things Mat King taught me:

Of those Wisdomkeepers I've known over the past twenty years, none has had more profound effect on my thinking and on my life than Lakota Wisdomkeeper Mathew King--Chief Noble Red Man, one of the towering Native Americans of the late 20th Century. I originally interviewed him in 1983, thinking I might include him for a page or two of a magazine article I was contemplating writing.

Though the article was never published, those few interviews with Mat turned, first, into a chapter of the book Wisdomkeepers (1990), coauthored with Steve Wall, and then an entire book of Mat's visionary words, Noble Red Man (1994). Though Mat died in 1989 and hence never, alas, read either book, I have worked closely with his family over the years to bring the words and message of this great Wisdomkeeper, as per his wish, "to all of humanity."

... When I first turned up at the screen-door of Mat's little government-built house in Kyle, South Dakota, on the Pine Reservation, I had no idea that the elderly gentleman who came to the door to answer my knock would be someone who would set my soul to spinning like a weathervane in a high wind. It still hasn't stopped spinning, more than fifteen years later. Mat's words continue to astound me with their poetry and spiritual power. ...

... Mat King's smile had a wonderful power. He could modulate it many ways, from the wise old Wisdomkeeper's knowing philosophical smile to a jokester's mobile grin to an utterly innocent smile of such sweetness and glowing radiance that it could light an entire room. ...

"Life's not an entertainment. Life's a holytask." He also explained the Indian concept of Original Instructions--that each person, like each People or Nation, was given Original Instructions for the path they're supposed to follow in this life. "Unless they find that Path and follow it, their life'll be empty, meaningless," Mat said. "But if they do find it, that is, if they find themselves one day walking on the Path, following their Original Instructions, then they'll know a kind of meaning in their lives that they never even dreamed of. Then they'll know what life is for... not pleasure and power or money. Those are all wastes of time. Life's for living in a holy way. Life is a Path! And you've got no choice, if you want to follow your own Original Instructions, but to follow the Path that's yours, wherever it leads." "But where is the Path, Mat?" I remember asking him and he grinned that radiant toothless grin of his, and he told me: "The Path's always in the same place!" "But where's that?" I pleaded with him. He winked and pointed a finger to the floor in front of me "Right beneath your feet!" he said, his eyes alight "That's where the Path always is!"

Mat King by Harvey Arden

(internet source)

english