On the cliff at Hat Point, near Grand Portage Ojibwe reservation's harbor in northeastern Minnesota stands a 400-year-old sacred cedar tree -- Manido Giizhigance, Little Cedar Tree Spirit. The cold winds of her long life on the cliff-edge of Lake Superior have twisted and bent that tree, but she has bravely survived.

She represents sacred powers. Her sculptured form is of great beauty and inspiration. It is very annoying to Indian people that this tree has been called "witch tree" by the state of Minnesota hustling tourists. Crowds of disrespectful tourists come out to the edge of the cliff to see it. The tree has been vandalized and its existence is threatened by the hordes.

If you have ever tried to pray, quietly or perhaps with singing, alone or in a group of Indian people, all at some natural sacred place for that sacred purpose, you know the importance of quiet and openness to what is there. Of general respect by everyone in the group. The only time I went there, with a family from Nett Lake to pray for their brother, we were actually photographed and pointed at by repulsive, noisy tourists. I never went back, it was somehow spoiled for me. When I think of that tree, I can't help but feel it is spiritually dead, because for us it was killed spiritually by those tourists, their silly babble, their cameras.

Grand Portage Reservation has tried to protect it with blocked trails and limited hours of visitation. The name given the tree by the non-Indian hucksters -- witch tree -- is something like calling Notre Dame Cathedral "Our Lady of Evil Temple of Sin". It is indicative of the way the dominant white society regards everything Indian people hold sacred. If, anywhere near you, there is a landscape feature: lake, rocks, mountain -- named Devil's Anything, you can be sure this was once a sacred place to local Indian people.

Red Cedar is very much alive spiritually. It has the power to help us by purifying our own spirits, our selves. We pass around a shell or little bowl of burning red cedar to purify ourselves for some ceremonies, like Pipe ceremony. Everyone fans the smoke over their hair, face and heart, greets the spirit, thanks it. At sweat lodge, a few bits of red cedar frond are dropped first on the hot rocks. Its fragrant smoke purifies the lodge even if there is not enough cedar around where you had to build it to line the floor around the hole with it, as you should if you can.

People burn larger amounts of cedar, using branches or bowls, to smudge or purify places, to invite the spirits to help us there. Its fragrant, aromatic smoke helps us clean up our thoughts and emotions of bad, hurtful, harmful things that the world is all too ready to put into our minds and hearts. I smudged the computer lab at school, for example long after everyone had gone home and locked up for the night, I stayed (working) until dawn to do it. Some computer experts might think the cedar smoke would harm the electronics, but in my work life I am a computer expert; I knew this smoke would not hurt them and it didn't.

Cedar smoke speaks to us of a very old time when plants, animals, and people were all the same kinds of beings, and all communicated together in a very old language our body's cells remember. We cannot remember anything else of that time, but when we smell the aromatic cedar smoke, maybe we do even if it can't be put into words.

There are several ways to tell the difference between Red Cedar and White Cedar ("the deceiver"). Red Cedar likes shallow, limy soil, tends to grow in high or at least rocky places. White Cedar likes swampy boggy soil or at least deep humus and lots of water. The trees' foliages are different too. Compare Red and White Cedar: