What We Want You to Know
This is what we want you to understand:
Indigenous people know how to live well. We rock. We have been the main ones taking on [doing something about] the destruction of the environment for generations.
We modeled how to live in respectful community. We modeled how to hunt in a sustainable way. We knew how to fish and care for the rivers and oceans. We knew how to give and take in a respectful way. There was no homelessness, no prisons. Everyone shared. We understood reciprocity and living in balance.
And then people came from other lands, with oppressor patterns that were beyond our comprehension. They invaded our lands all over the world, and took things that were sacred, turned them into resources, and tried to kill all of us so that their patterns of greed would not be interrupted. Policies of genocide spread across the world, policies that are still actively used today.
Even though they didn’t kill us all, even though they are still trying, they also managed to become blind to our existence and not notice our leadership, forgetting about all the agreements with us that they had made (by treaty or law or acts of Congress).
Because it was our human way, some of us saved their lives or tried to build relationships. Some of us decided to respond with violence. Others tried prayer. Others tried organizing. At that time, we just didn’t understand about oppressor patterns or how to give people a hand [help people] with these patterns. We did finally figure it out, but by then the world was a huge big mess. These patterns of greed and overconsumption were destroying everything we loved and needed.
So... the deal now is that we are defending and protecting the very source of life—water and the land—that will determine whether or not any of us have any descendants and are ever remembered as ancestors. We put our lives on the line, our bodies in front of the mines, the extraction devices, the dams, and the refineries. We are paying the price for their toxic extraction with cancers, deaths, and suicides.
We need all of you to put your resource behind us as Indigenous peoples across the world, because we know what to do. We are for the water, the land. We are the main protectors of that which allows life to exist. We respect nature. We respect creation. We need you to follow us, to be quiet and listen, and to dedicate yourselves to healing so that you can actually see us, follow us, and learn the things we know. Some of you just need to decide to follow Native leadership. Others will heal and become our best allies.
That’s it. Do the work.
Mohawk, Palatine German, Scottish heritage
(Present Time 214, January 2024)