Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Winona LaDuke: What Our Seventh Generation Will Have Is a Consequence of Our Actions Today

Every Tuesday morning between 9-10:00 on KBOO, Portland's independent radio station, David Barsamian presents a variety of speakers on his Alternative Radio program, something I've been listening to for years. Before the Koch brothers and other large corporate interests wove their way into so much of our media, NPR also used to broadcast Alternative Radio every Tuesday evening between 8-9pm. I have a box full of tapes of these programs that I recorded years ago. These are the voices of the wisdom keepers, truth-tellers, activists and authors, poets and artists, and wise and courageous visionaries and Elders that are so vitally needed. 

On today's program, I was able to listen once again to the voice of Winona LaDuke, which inspires me to do this post today. I am also mindful of the deep sadness I feel with the reminder of so much that has been lost and destroyed because of our ignorance, disconnection, dismissal, denigration, disrespect, denial, and demonetization of Indigenous wisdom. So many have lost our deep and abiding connection with our Sacred Earth Mother. And listening to Winona LaDuke this morning highlights once again what the First Peoples have always known that we are all connected, all related, and that what we do to one part of the web of life impacts the greater whole. They knew. May we listen. May we remember. May we be inspired to act in whatever way we can to make the difference that has long been so deeply needed. Molly


 Honor the Earth

The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world's resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people's lands. That's what's going on.

Water is life. We are the people who live by the water. Pray by these waters. Travel by the waters. Eat and drink from these waters. We are related to those who live in the water. To poison the waters is to show disrespect for creation. To honor and protect the waters is our responsibility as people of the land.

I would like to see as many people patriotic to a land as I have seen patriotic to a flag.

The military is the largest polluter in the country, and so you have a lot of military waste contaminating reservations as, for example, on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, where 5,000 sheep died in some kind of experimental military nerve gas test 10 years ago. Many of our communities are dealing with that kind of waste, and an absence of political will to clean them up.

The insecticides kill the black flies, but also destroy much of the food chain for the bird, fish, and animal life which also inhabit those regions. The fish of the Great Lakes are laced with mercury from industrial plants, and fluoride from aluminum plants poisons the land and the people. Sewage from the population centers is mixed with PCBs and PBS in the watershed of the Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes, and the water is virtually nowhere safe for any living creatures. 

Uranium mining in northern Canada has left over 120 million tons of radioactive waste. This amount represents enough material to cover the Trans-Canada Highway two meters deep across the country. Present production of uranium waste from Saskatchewan alone occurs at the rate of over 1 million tons annually. Since 1975, hospitalization for cancer, birth defects and circulatory illnesses in that area have increased dramatically between 123 and 600 percent in that region.

Native people about two-thirds of the uranium in the United States is on indigenous lands. On a worldwide scale, about 70 percent of the uranium is either in Aboriginal lands in Australia or up in the Subarctic of Canada, where native people are still fighting uranium mining.

Brothers and Sisters: Our ancient homeland is spotted today with an array of chemical dumps. Along the Niagara River, dioxin, a particularly deadly substance, threatens the remaining life there and in the waters which flow from there. Forestry departments spray the surviving forests with powerful insecticides to encourage tourism by people seeking a few days or weeks away from the cities where the air hangs heavy with sulphur and carbon oxides. 

Native communities are focal points for the excrement of industrial society. 

Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn't make a corporation a terrorist.  

What gives these corporations like CONOCO, SHELL, EXXON, DIASHAWA, ITT, RIO TINTO ZINC, and the WORLD BANK a right which supercedes or is superior to my human right to live on my land, or that of my family, my community, my nation, our nations, and to us as women? 

I see a lot of damage to Mother Earth. I see water being taken from creeks where water belongs to animals, not to oil companies.

In the time of the sacred sites and the crashing of ecosystems and worlds, it may be worth not making a commodity out of all that is revered. 

The aboriginal peoples of Australia illustrate the conflict between technology and the natural world succinctly, by asking, 'What will you do when the clever men destroy your water?' That, in truth, is what the world is coming to. 

The Lockean assumption that if we put our labor to it then it becomes our own is totally fallacious. We have to figure out how to leave things alone, and build an economic system that's not built on a linear model, but instead on a cyclical model, because that's the natural world - it's cyclical and not linear. That is going to take a lot of transformation. 

Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists. 

The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.

In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures. 

It is essential to collectively struggle to recover our status as Daughters of the Earth. In that is our strength, and the security, not in the predator, but in the security of our Mother, for our future generations. In that we can insure our security as the Mothers of our Nations. 

We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws. 

It's time to transition beyond our fossil fuel addiction to a just economy based on green jobs, renewable energy, and local organic food.
 
If we build a society based on honoring the Earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms.

We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.

The difference between a white man and an Indian is this A white man wants to leave money to his children. An Indian wants to leave forests.

The only compensation for land is land.

To native peoples, there is no such thing as the first, second, and third worlds; there is only an exploiting world ... whether its technological system is capitalist or communist ... and a host world. Native peoples, who occupy more land, make up the host world.

The idea is the least labor and capital and resources you put together and the more you accumulate the better capitalist you are. So the suggestion I will make to you is that the idea of constant accumulation, which is what America is about, what consumerism, NAFTA are about, means that you always take more than you need and you don't leave the rest. So I suggest that it is possible from an indigenous world view that capitalism is inherently out of order with natural law. 

One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the Earth; it is in your relationship to the Earth. 

I’m not a patriot to a flag, I’m a patriot to a land.

It's time to respect the treaties our ancestors signed and care for our land, water, and cultures so that they remain healthy for our future generations. 

Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognize that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time.

You've got to get people to believe that change is possible... You have to show that you can fight things successfully even if you don't win. 

What we all need to do is find the wellspring that keeps us going, that gives us the strength and patience to keep up this struggle for a long time. 

I find that I have more allies on the left than on the right, and that is because the left is, by and large, filled with people who are challenging the present paradigm and power structure. I’m interested in totally transforming the structure that exists now, because it is not sustainable. 

I don’t understand all the nuances of the women’s movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth came from and the relationship of that wealth to other peoples and the earth. That is the only way that that I think you can really get to the depth of the problem. 

Across the continent, on the shores of small tributaries, in the shadows of sacred mountains, on the vast expanse of the prairies, or in the safety of the woods, prayers are being repeated, as they have for thousands of years, and common people with uncommon courage and the whispers of their ancestors in their ears continue their struggles to protect the land and water and trees on which their very existence is based. And like small tributaries joining together to form a mighty river, their force and power grows. 

Ojibwe prophecy speaks of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It is our choice as communities and as individuals how we will proceed. 

What our Seventh Generation will have is a consequence of our actions today.

Mother Earth needs us to keep our covenant. We will do this in courts, we will do this on our radio station, and we will commit to our descendants to work hard to protect this land and water for them. Whether you have feet, wings, fins, or roots, we are all in it together. 

Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank. 

Winona LaDuke 

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