"There was a white man invited to the peyote ceremony," says José Barreiro, Taino scholar and elder by marriage of the Mohawk Tribe of Akwesasne. "He was sick, thin as a skeleton, wasting away with muscular dystrophy, his back hardly able to hold him up. Night after night, they prayed for him until the sun came up.

"The young men said, 'Why are we doing this?' The old man, the ceremony leader, said, 'We may never know, but the spirit said it's right.'"

We sit in an 1800s manor house in Malone, New York, a stone's throw from Akwesasne. Eleven young people, many of us white like the sick man in the story, sit before five elders of the Mohawk and Lakota tribes.

We came with a question: How do we live well together? What does interdependence mean? They welcomed us with a ceremony at the edge of the village. They asked us, "Do you come in peace?"

The fire crackles. Large snowflakes fall outside. We sit at the feet of the elders and listen to wisdom shared in the ancient way, through stories.

José continues. "The doctors had told the man in a few months, his body would be too weak for him to walk. They prayed for him for five whole nights. After that, the medicine man told him he would walk for three more springs."

José sits with the other elders at his side. As he talks, they nod or sigh or shake their heads. They seem to be even more transfixed than we are.

It has been like this all week. It took two days before I realized they always talked in order. Always oldest to youngest. Always handing over the stage by speaking of the next person with an honored name. "My sister-cousin Katsi." "My husband Tom." "My brother-in-law José."

I watch the other elders as I listen to José speak. I have already heard this story. José told it when I first met him. I know what is coming as he speaks, how after that ceremony he would travel to that white man's farm. They'd stand in the farmhouse, the man's grandfather sitting silently in a shadowed corner sharpening an axe.

José would say, "I wonder why the elders did that, five nights of prayer for a white man they would never see again?"

The grandfather would look up from his axe and say, "I know why. It was because of Otto."

He'd tell José that Otto, his grandfather, got off the boat from Germany in New York City and walked to Minnesota. He got there and became a farmer, and that same year the U.S. army started killing Indians to drive them from the land.

Otto found an Indian family hiding in his woods. He shared what little he had to feed and clothe them and keep them alive through winter before they could escape.

I know what is coming when José throws his voice like an old farmer and says, "It's because of Otto." To my amazement, all the elders gasp. Even Tom Cook gasps, José's brother-in-law. Tom was there when I first heard José tell the story. They have lived near each other and worked closely together for the majority of their lives.

I have heard this story twice in the few days I've known José. Tom must have heard it a thousand times.

José chokes up. He says, "That young man walked for three more springs." I see that Tom is crying. All the elders are. They are weeping at the punchline of a story they have heard a thousand times.

Then I understand. They show someone reverence by letting that person's life story touch them every time.