(gentle music) - I noticed myself just feeling some healing.

And to this day, it's still a healing.

I call it an instrument of peace.

(gentle music continues) Hi, my name is Bill Birdsong Miller, and I'm a visual artist, a songwriter, recording artist, musician.

I been doing this all my life.

I can tell you the flute means a lot to me, but it took years to understand what it's about.

I first purchased a flute back in 1975 at a bluegrass festival from a native man who was having problems with money.

And he said that he would eventually teach me how to play it.

And he got some elders about six months later who called me and they taught me the ways of the spirit, basically not even touching the flute, but basically learning about nature, signatures in the wind, the time signatures of the river, all these incredible things.

And then once I connected my spirit to it, just like any instrument connecting it, that spirit line, I started to realize the value of it.

And my elders told me to never lose touch with that, not to commercialize it too much.

(gentle music continues) The three parts of American Indian art: function, beauty, and spirit.

Function meaning that everything we make, whether it be bows and arrows or moccasins or anything we make had a function.

They beautify it with bead work or quill work or any type of thing that would make it into a beautiful piece of art.

And the most important part was the spirit.

The spirit was a connector to the creator themselves and the creator, himself, was connecting that all together with the art.

So function, beauty, and spirit tie things together.

And I still use that with my songs.

(gentle music continues) Time is everything to me.

Timing and music, it's everything too at whatever time, four four time or whatever.

But for me, when I'm playing, when I play live, it's very intimate timing that I grew up with was present tense.

They kept telling me, you only have now, speak up now.

You only have now to say you love somebody.

You only have now to speak up about something that's disturbing you and take advantage of the present tense.

(gentle music continues) I want people to understand how deeply human we are, and we love this land that we consider it sacred and my time with you is sacred.