Lives on the line

Finally taking a moment

This is the first time in months that I have taken a moment to write about what has been going on in Cannon Ball North Dakota. I have written, Facebook posts of one length or another, but I mean sit and write… And so excuse me if this is a scrambled mess of words, but my heart is in many places all day and night long for months. And if I am this exhausted, how must those on the front lines feel? We all need some healing.

Some of my beloved sisters are about to get to camp after a tremendous effort to get them there… #PrayersUp for their time bringing music and healing and love… And now, I must slow down for long enough to do some dishes and go to the dump…

Today is what i have been referring to as Colonizer Thursday… which some call Thanksgiving, some call it ThanksTaking, some don’t pay it no mind… all in all, there is no way for most who “celebrate” it to ever know what any of it means.

I wrote something after spending the morning talking to my sister in ND.

Little Rock Big Sister

My sister is fasting today.
This, a day of mourning… she prays…
She prays with every breath every day anyway…walking in connection with her truth.
Three massacres on this very land, travel through her heart and veins… it’s in her DNA. 

Protecting Our Protectors

On sunday November 20th, 2016, the lines were further blurred between Native and Ally, and many many were severely hurt. Please include all of our brave and resilient Water Protectors in all of your prayers.

The front lines are wider than we think, and I am not just talking about the front lines we are facing in our own communities. There are people across the globe working tirelessly to support the #NoDAPL Water Protectors. We need all of the prayers we can get, and there are many people in pain.

Young people, including The International Indigenous Youth Council, took some hard hits, Our Elders are suffering terribly. They, holding the trauma of a devastating historical the journey to here. now. .

It is difficult to hear the words, “This is not the America we know...” because this is the only America our First Nations People, and many other communities across the globe have ever known. This America, and intimately.

Wake up to the privilege you are just now noticing slide away… 

This came across my radar today:

A white man, feeling close enough to his friend, an Elder Native Man, to ask: “What do you think about Indian mascots?” The Native elder responded, “Here’s what you’ve got to understand. When you look at black people, you see ghosts of all the slavery and the rapes and the hangings and the chains. When you look at Jews, you see ghosts of all those bodies piled up in death camps. And those ghosts keep you trying to do the right thing. “But when you look at us you don’t see the ghosts of the little babies with their heads smashed in by rifle butts at the Big Hole, or the old folks dying by the side of the trail on the way to Oklahoma while their families cried and tried to make them comfortable, or the dead mothers at Wounded Knee or the little kids at Sand Creek who were shot for target practice. You don’t see any ghosts at all. “Instead you see casinos and drunks and junk cars and shacks. “Well, we see those ghosts. And they make our hearts sad and they hurt our little children. And when we try to say something, you tell us, ‘Get over it. This is America. Look at the American dream.’ But as long as you’re calling us Redskins and doing tomahawk chops, we can’t look at the American dream, because those things remind us that we are not real human beings to you. And when people aren’t humans, you can turn them into slaves or kill six million of them or shoot them down with Hotchkiss guns and throw them into mass graves at Wounded Knee. “No, we’re not looking at the American dream. And why should we? We still haven’t woken up from the American nightmare.
Paraphrased from:”Wolf at Twilight ” by Kent Nerburn

It is time to see that we are being and have been colonized, and not just the obvious in our face current corporate colonization of our health, safety and well being… We must stand together to wake up.

They expect this treatment to ignight a Revolution… But we must evolve instead. We must come to know clarity about the direction we are working toward. Hold each other and build the kind of trust we need to hold in porder to do this together.

I am in deep and striking reverence for the resilience that we are all drawing from, and I am doing as much as I can to give what I can.

Honor our Native brothers and sisters and daughters and sons and mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers because what they are teaching us now, is going to be more and more valuable in the coming times, if we finally listen.

This is it folks, and we must take serious action to mend this Sacred Hoop that we have considered  lore for far toooooo long. It is time… It is time to protect the sacred. Please stand up and #StandWithStandingRock. It is time .

And this is why I am standing behind the prayer that the Evolution will be Indigenized. That we can slow down, scale back and progress into more tribal and simple ways of living in connection with our mother earth. 

Because, the way we have been living is killing us, and we don’t need to do it this way…

Yesterday, community members, met for the first time, gathering remotely and physically to support Sophia Wilansky in Minneapolis, hundreds of miles away from Standing Rock where she,  a water protector from New York, was airlifted after being struck, at close range, by a concussion grenade on the front lines on Sunday night. She had been bringing water to remedy mace inflictions on drenched Water Protectors.

Today, Sophia was to appear in court in West Roxbury, NY, after being arrested in an action to stop the pipeline in their community.

I met Sophia while raising awareness about a 42 inch fracked gas pipeline that is currently being directionally drilled underneath the Hudson river and headed for Indian Point nuclear power plant. That segment of a massive pipeline project is called the “Algonquin” otherwise known as “AIM” Pipeline.

It is coincidental that Clyde Bellecourt, Founder and Leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM) made his way to Sophia’s family’s side as soon as he heard she was in Minneapolis where he is located. But the significance is not lost on me.

As the world continues to watch on livestream, there are First Nations people continue to be brutalized, this time for protecting the water for millions. Now they are watching non native people be brutalized in the same manner of disregard, and it is waking people up. May they stay woke.

The sense of community, the unity and support that is mobilizing amongst the Water Protection family is remarkable, and understandable as more begin to wake up to the situation around us. Perhaps people will begin to mobilize within our communities to take action right here at home, and address the massively dangerous projects the amerikan government has planned for us.

There are communities all across the nation in similar threat as the Standing Rock Sioux are facing, many just don’t or didn’t know what the First Nations communities have known, and been telling us for far too long. Some are standing up, on the front lines in Cannon Ball and across the country to take action.

For instance, here in New York, looming are, the “Pilgrim” pipeline, “Algonquin/AIM” pipeline, “Dominion” pipeline, and we are still grappling with the Constitution pipeline as the court finalizes the denial of the 401 water permits. The Spectra, “Algonquin” pipeline is headed for “Indian Point”. The coast guard has just petitioned for the building of enough barge anchorages to fit up to 50+ long term crude storage barges.

The threat looms, of a merger between Enbridge (DAPL Stakeholder-CRUDE) and Spectra (AIM Pipeline-“Natural” Gas) is called “Project Rainbow.” And if Enbridge were to get into the Hudson Valley, those long term crude barges barges proposed by the National Guard wouldn’t be enough to satiate their export “need”.

The naming of these pipelines points directly to the corporate colonization of the health, safety and well-being of the people. It is as if there is direct intention to instill historical trauma in naming these violations to the earth and her people as such. As we can see, the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies are fighting a pipeline that also appropriates a name they have no right to.

What is happening at standing rock to stop DAPL has been happening for months, and it is unacceptable. It is not any different than any other time in Native history. And when the words, “the treatment of Water Protectors is “un-American” I have to shudder, because this escalation of militarized force is not only unnecessary but it points to the reality that the people don’t have value and corporate personhood stands above health and safety, and it is exactly how the governing forces of this country have been doing to the First Nations People of this country and many others across the globe. This, sadly, This…. is very much American.

As our president turns his head to the left and ignores his duty to stop this violence to our mother Earth and upon our people, we can all take a moment to how we have been dodging the reality that this is happening everywhere, and if we are not directly inflicting the pain we likely supplied the weapons.

The Standing Rock Souix Tribe and their allies are working for not only their water and the water of those who will drink from the Missouri River but for everyone working to address the massive fossil fuel infrastructure build out that is being placed before us as the industry itself dies. It is time for people to wake up. And now, people are waking up to find that this country has been Webbed with pipelines and bomb trains and traversed by oil tankers in massive proportions as a dying industry rushes to empty out the Bakken shale fields and store is under ground in other places endangering millions on all sides of this industrial takeover.

We are continuously told that one method (which, depends on who you talk to) of transport is more sustainable then another and yet we have no need to pull any more oil out of our earth. It is time to re-indigenize our minds. And the way we live and in order to continue sustained life on this planet we will need to learn how to live in a good way.

When you sit with your family this year, if you celebrate the day… Please take some time, a lot of time, to lay down prayer for the hundreds of Water Protectors who are healing from the experience on the bridge on Sunday… Pray for those taking such tender care of them, pray that the hearts open within the (I heard—now volunteer) policing force. And remember. Honoring the First Nation People of this land does not mean going back into the recesses of your mind for a creepy image of Miles Standish and an unknown savage Indian eating turkey and laughing.

Don’t bother with any of the old stale and musty untruths… Just look around you, there is likely someone, with the blood of those who came before you coursing through the veins, sitting not far away.

We are still here…

UPDATED LIST OF NUMBERS TO CALL:

424-353-2016  NBC wants you to text them your opinion. Tele. #s won’t be recorded.

701-333-2006 National Guard Public Affairs

701-328-2200 North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple

701-667-3330 Sheriff’s office in charge of the police on site

202-456-1111 White House

202-456-9431 White House Situation Room

701-328-4726 North Dakota Attorney General:  object to the illegal
sale of farmland to a corporation….

202-353-1555 Dept. of Justice comment line

202-514-2000 Dept of Justice switchboard:  Tell them you are watching and to have the police stand down

Please call the JUSTICE DEPT. Community Relations Service – Tribal Relations: 202-305-2935…..

Let them know that Lives are endangered at Standing Rock – at this point, people could die from the police actions being taken….

ADD; SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND :  202-224-4451.  She is taking a talley of opposition to DAPL & atrocities against Protectors

– Donate to the camp medic & healer council: https://medichealercouncil.com/donate/
– Donate medical supplies by ordering online through their list – https://amzn.com/w/284OV04OWXQG9
-Dontate to the International Indigenous Youth Council-https://www.gofundme.com/nodapl-winter
– Donate to the Oceti Sakowin camp and help them thru the winter: http://www.ocetisakowincamp.org/donate