The Tiger Blood Remembers | Through the Eyes of a Mystic

You know… when I look back on my life now, sitting here as a middle-aged man, I realize something that took me decades to truly understand.

Some part of me was always being called home.

And my heart tells me our younger generations need to hear stories like this.

Because sometimes we spend our whole lives trying to figure out why certain places call to us… why certain music moves us… why certain cultures feel familiar… why we feel homesick for something we can’t even explain.

But spirit remembers.

Even when we don’t.

When I was a little boy… maybe four, five, six years old… there was one thing I looked forward to every single year:

The Miccosukee Arts Festival.

Now remember… we’re talking about the 1970s here. Long before the casinos. Long before paved parking lots and polished tourist attractions.

Back then the festival grounds were mostly dirt roads and open air in the middle of the Everglades.

Wild Florida.

Untamed Florida.

Real Florida.

And the moment I’d hear the festival was coming, I would beg my father to take me.

I loved everything about it.

The dancers… the singers… the smell of food cooking in the humid swamp air… handmade crafts hanging from wooden booths… the sound of drums echoing through the Everglades.

And of course… TIGER TIGER.

I thought they were the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life.

A Native rock band? To a little kid in the 70s that was pure magic.

I remember standing there absolutely mesmerized watching them perform. Long before I understood ancestry or bloodlines or spirituality… something deep inside me already knew:

I belonged there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shIZF2CPxb4

After spending the whole day there, completely exhausted and completely happy, it was finally time to leave.

But before we left, I begged my parents to let me go into the Miccosukee Village gift shop because I wanted a souvenir.

Now my adopted father, bless his heart, was a little frugal when it came to keepsakes. Even though he had plenty of money, he picked up this little toy drum-rattle thing with a spray-painted arrowhead and some dyed feathers glued to it.

And I still remember turning it over and seeing the words:

“Made in China.”

And I burst into tears.

Because even as a little child… I didn’t want something fake.

I wanted something real.

Something authentic.

Something truly Miccosukee.

Well… my mother worked her magic.

And somehow she convinced him to buy me the moccasins I had fallen in love with.

Simple suede moccasins. Soft tassels around the ankles. No rubber soles. Nothing modern about them.

And let me tell you something…

I wore those moccasins EVERYWHERE.

To school.

To church.

To friends’ houses.

Playing outside.

Those moccasins were probably the most treasured possession I had as a child.

And looking back now… I realize they weren’t just shoes to me.

They were connection.

As the years went on, every time TIGER TIGER appeared somewhere , whether it was a cultural festival, the Dade County Youth Fair, or maybe Young Circle in Hollywood, I begged my father to take me.

I was fascinated.

Before adolescence… before spirituality… before politics… before I even knew who my biological family really was…

I was already being pulled toward the people of the Everglades.

Toward the Seminole and Miccosukee peoples.

Toward my lineage.

And what’s truly extraordinary to me now… is that decades later I would discover that Lee Tiger, whose family name I had unknowingly been gravitating toward my entire childhood, was in fact, my biological father!

Think about that for a moment.

As a little boy, I was obsessed with attending Native festivals… listening to TIGER TIGER perform… learning everything I could about the Miccosukee and Seminole peoples… visiting local tribal museums like the small Seminole museum at Secret Woods Nature Center… completely unaware that somewhere deep inside me, something ancestral was already calling me home.

I didn’t know why I felt so connected back then.

But my spirit knew.

Long before my mind ever did.

Then came my teenage years.

I got into rock music myself and became the lead singer in a couple of bands. And after high school, when I went to FIU around 1985 or 1986, one of the very first classes I signed up for was Ecology of the Everglades.

And that class changed my life.

Now you have to understand… South Florida was a very different place back then.

The Everglades weren’t just scenery to me.

They felt alive.

I learned how the geography of South Florida created this sacred river of grass… how the coastal ridges sat higher than the center of the state, allowing water to settle there for thousands upon thousands of years.

But more importantly…

I learned about the people.

How Seminoles and Miccosukees survived removal, war, colonization, and unimaginable hardship by retreating deep into the wilds of South Florida.

How they adapted.

How they protected their communities, traditions, and identity in one of the harshest environments imaginable.

And something clicked inside me.

Because this wasn’t just history to me.

It felt like memory.

Something kept pulling me home to the Everglades.

And honestly…

It still does.

That class eventually led me into environmental activism. My professor asked me to represent FIU in a statewide environmental organization fighting offshore oil drilling.

We traveled around Florida organizing conferences, educational events, and activist campaigns.

And I loved every second of it.

That work led me into Greenpeace… environmental justice… political activism… indigenous advocacy…

And eventually spirituality.

In my early twenties I met an Algonquin man with knowledge of Native medicine practices who taught me how to do my very first vision quest.

That experience opened a spiritual doorway in my life that would change me forever.

I know today many people use the word “shaman” as a broad umbrella term to describe Indigenous healers but, most Native American people do not use it to describe their own spiritual leaders, and some find it inaccurate or culturally reductive.

And the truth is…

No matter where life took me… no matter how disconnected I may have appeared on paper…

I was always walking toward my ancestors.

Always.

Another powerful memory I carry was my second vision quest a couple of years later, which a friend and I performed in the Everglades themselves.

I remember halfway through the experience, exploring trails and pathways through the marshes, eventually ending up at the top of the Shark Valley Observation Tower.

And something profound happened to me up there.

From the top of that tower, all you could see was nature in every direction.

The vista stretched endlessly around us — miles upon miles of Everglades beneath the great blue dome of the sky.

For the first time in my life, I experienced what it felt like to stand surrounded entirely by the natural world.

No buildings.

No highways.

No cities.

Just Earth.

From that tower I could see the micro-environments of the Everglades unfolding around me like a living tapestry.

The endless River of Grass.

The teardrop-shaped tree islands rising from the marshes.

The sloughs crossing through the wetlands like subtle ribbons of water.

And standing there… it was almost as if I could feel the spirit of nature itself moving through me.

That moment changed something inside of me.

For the first time in my life…

I felt home.

I’ve worked with indigenous communities around the world.

Years ago, during the Hopi water crisis, I had the honor of working alongside an international nonprofit that supports indigenous cultures around the world. Through those connections, I was trusted and allowed to help spread awareness about the urgent need to protect Hopi water, land, culture, and traditional ways of life across my social media platforms, which at the time reached over a quarter of a million followers and still does.

What made the experience especially profound was that it was one of the very first times a traditional Hopi elder had ever agreed to be videotaped and publicly share his message outside of traditional circles.

And somehow… I was entrusted to help carry that message forward.

That was a true honor.

That experience stayed with me deeply.

Because to me, indigenous wisdom is not some relic of the past.

It is living knowledge.

Living spirituality.

Living relationship with the Earth.

I was also blessed to know and interview John Trudell on my radio show, who many people remember for his powerful work with the American Indian Movement, A.I.M.

I’ve been blessed to work with other Indigenous people for years now.

And through every chapter of my life… one truth remained constant:

I have always been aligned with the people of the Earth.

Always.

And in one of the most unexpected turns of my life… thanks to a chain of events that began with someone giving me an AncestryDNA kit for Christmas years ago, my birth sister eventually figured out who I was.

She reached out to me herself.

And after DNA testing confirmed everything… I was finally able to meet members of my biological family, including my brother and my cousin.

For a brief moment, it felt like pieces of my spirit were finally finding their way home.

My sister, my brother, and my cousin all tried in their own ways to help me be acknowledged formally by the tribe. My brother even went as far as taking an additional DNA test himself so there would be absolutely no doubt.

But in the end, we were told politics would prevent my case from even being heard.

And truthfully… all of this unfolded during the same period I lost my son Daniel.

So while I was navigating overwhelming grief, ancestral discovery, family reconnection, and tribal rejection all at once… I don’t think I handled everything perfectly.

Part of me was looking forward to following in my birth father’s footsteps — working with the indigenous peoples of South Florida, helping educate the public about our culture, our history, our relationship with the Everglades, and the importance of preserving those traditions for future generations.

And looking back now, I understand my grief probably created distance at times.

But even with all of that… I remain deeply grateful.

Because despite everything, I still got to know where I came from.

I still got to hear their voices.

I still got to look into the faces of my bloodline and recognize myself.

And that is a gift I will carry for the rest of my life.

And maybe now I finally understand why.

Because blood remembers.

Spirit remembers.

Ancestry remembers.

Even when families are separated… even when history becomes complicated… even when politics and trauma and colonization create walls between people…

The soul still remembers where it came from.

Now remember… no institution… no paperwork… no politics… can erase the calling written into someone’s spirit.

I carry the Tiger bloodline in my heart.

Not through ego.

Not through entitlement.

But through service.

Through remembrance.

Through honoring the Earth.

Protecting sacred wisdom.

Helping people heal.

And standing beside indigenous voices whenever and wherever I can.

That is my inheritance.

And maybe that’s the lesson in all of this.

Sometimes ancestry is bigger than enrollment numbers.

Sometimes spirit is bigger than borders.

Sometimes the old ones continue speaking through us whether the world recognizes it or not.

And so I will continue walking this path with humility, gratitude, and love.

For my grandfather, Chief Buffalo Tiger.

For my father, Lee Tiger. My uncle, Stephen.

For my son, Daniel.

For my sister, my brother, my cousins, and my aunties.

And for the generations still to come.

Because the Tiger blood remembers.

And so do I.

And maybe… now the younger generations will remember too.