Before the Europeans came to America, it is estimated that anywhere from 1.2 million to 12 million Native Americans inhabited the land. The population of the Native Americans was reduced to 250,000, due to mass murder, genocide, imported diseases, slavery and suicide. There is no question about it, these people suffered a great tragedy. One could argue that it is the most devastating thing to ever happen to any population of people in the history of the world. Yet, little to no attention is given to this tragedy. One has to wonder, why?
Not only were the Native American people killed, but much of their customs, traditions and spirituality were lost along with them. Perhaps this was another reason for the genocide? These people were truly connected and in tune with Mother Earth, often referred to as the Keepers of the Earth. They taught to “walk lightly upon the Earth and live in balance and harmony.” Maybe, if more of the Native Americans were alive today the Earth wouldn’t be in as much turmoil as it is. We can all benefit from adopting some of the ancient spiritual teachings from the Native American elders into our daily lives.10 Pieces Of Wisdom From Native American Eldershttp://www.the-open-mind.com/10-pieces- ... 1YaUz.dpuf Bears, regarded as masters of the forests, are also special from an environmental point of view because they are considered to be a part of the land shared by both bears and humans. Whatever happens to bears will affect the environment which will also ultimately affect humans.http://www.freespiritgallery.ca/nativeamericanbear.htm 1:
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Grieved because of what is happening to this sacred land around me. Grieved for the woods which are being torn down for super sized houses on small lots. Grieved for the neighbors around me cutting down their trees, shrubs, and widlflowers for the perfect manicured lawn. Grieved for the black bear whose lands these have been for thousands of years, now that the porsche's, lexus', benz's, and beamers have come to town, is most likely doomed to die. "The white man, who possesses this whole vast country from sea to sea, who roams over it at pleasure and lives where he likes, cannot know the cramp we feel in this little spot, with the underlying remembrance of the fact, which you know as well as we, that every foot of what you proudly call America not very long ago belonged to the red man. The Great Spirit gave it to us. There was room for all His many tribes, and all were happy in their freedom."
Washakie - Shoshone - 1804-1900http://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm What I have witnessed of the developers who have more recently moved into the area lately is that they have no respect for the wood. The Wildlife Trust tried to save the lands, the developers won.
The only people I hear and see in the area who have a relationship with the earth are the weekly crews which come into the area with their commercial weapons of mass cutting, cutting down most of which is natural and wild to 'tame' and 'groom' the lands, poisoning the water ways with their roundup applications and lawn doctor chemical applications.Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
Cree Prophecyhttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm It's the new money from the mandated health care laws which seems to be generating the building boom. I live by large insurance corporations and since the mandating by law of the purchase of their insurance products, there have been more Mercedes, Lexus's, BMW's, Porsche's, and other luxury vehicles speeding on once gentle country roads. It is stressful to share the roads with these embodied beings. I experience them as competitive, it seems they must be the first. I also experience them as intensely aggressive, hostile, and dangerous if you do not move as fast as they want you to when they are behind you. It has been my personal experience that there is in their driving habits, an energy of monied entitlement and an energy of a people who seek in their vehicle's to aggressively force you to follow their agenda's and submit yourself to their values. There seems to be no fear of breaking traffic laws, I am assuming when you own an expensive car, a traffic ticket is of little financial consequence. And being privileged, even when law enforcement is contacted on blatant traffic violations, the violators are left for the most part, untouched and uninterrupted.
Where there was once the sounds of the waters around me, there are now the sounds of machines, large trucks, chain saws, grinders and speeding vehicles."Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. "This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. "One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Chief Seattlehttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm The animals are losing their habitat quickly. Hungry, they end up in the yards of humans who only spend time in them as they go from their car door to their front door. Their lawn care specialists spending the most time in their yards. These are not peoples you see in their 'yards' or sitting on the fancy attached porches.
The black bear first came to us this summer, our neighbor told us of the bear sitting and eating all the peaches off of one of our peach trees. I knew in my heart then, that the bear was coming out and being seen because their space was being destroyed and they were looking for new sources of food. The bear was gracious enough to leave the peaches on the other tree, as it made its way over to my neighbors house seeking the honey from the bees which nested in the crevices of the wooden chicken shed."From Wakan-Tanka, the Great Mystery, comes all power. It is from Wakan-Tanka that the holy man has wisdom and the power to heal and make holy charms. Man knows that all healing plants are given by Wakan-Tanka; therefore they are holy. So too is the buffalo holy, because it is the gift of Wakan-Tanka."
Flat-Iron (Maza Blaska) Oglala Sioux Chiefhttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm I worry for the life of this bear. That the people who have moved here with their luxury cars and golf course lawns would not stand for the bear coming into their yards. Their relationship with Mother Earth so distant, that bear to them will be seen only as a danger and a threat. I do not call this fate upon this bear, yet I am deeply concerned that one day I will hear of this bear's death and my sorrow for this bear will be completed."We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees."
Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation
Rain-in-the-Face - Sioux (???-1905)http://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm On this Indigenous Peoples Day, I feel just a small portion of the great sadness which has been in the hearts of the First Nations Peoples of North America since the Europeans first came to their lands and began stealing it, parcel by parcel. I feel, just a small portion in my heart of the great sadness carried in the hearts and memories of the First Nation Peoples, as I witness and listen to the woods around me being destroyed. My grief is just a small portion compared to the great sadness First Nation Peoples, Native Americans, carry in their hearts, as I see the wild animals being killed on the roads by the speeders. I feel just a small portion of grief in my heart in comparison to the great sadness the First Nation Peoples carry in their hearts, when I see the black bear showing itself, when in years past, it once had plenty of land to roam on, now foraging in populated areas because the people who have bought the native lands for developing, have taken their land and destroyed their habitat.Brothers -- My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequot? Where today are the Narrangansett, the Mohican, the Pakanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun."
Tecumseh - Shawneehttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm Although this country was once wholly inhabited by Indians, the tribes, and many of them once powerful, who occupied the countries now constituting the states east of the Mississippi, have, one by one, been exterminated in their abortive attempts to stem the westward march of civilization….If any tribe remonstrated against the violation of their natural and treaty rights, members of the tribe were inhumanly shot down and treated as mere dogs….It is resumed that humanity dictated the original policy of the removal and concentration of the Indians in the West to save them from threatened extinction. But today, by reason of the immense augmentation of the American population, and the extension of their settlements throughout the entire West, covering both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the Indian races are more seriously threatened with a speedy extermination than ever before in the history of the country.
Donehogawa (Ely Parker), (1828-95), a Seneca -the first Indian Commissioner of Indian Affairshttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm "In 1868, men came out and brought papers. We could not read them and they did not tell us truly what was in them. We thought the treaty was to remove the forts and for us to cease from fighting. But they wanted to send us traders on the Missouri, but we wanted traders where we were. When I reached Washington, the Great Father explained to me that the interpreters had deceived me. All I want is right and just."
Mahpiua Luta (Red Cloud), Oglala Lakotahttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm And for a moment the grief which is so very heavy in my heart, is nowhere near the depth of the grief carried in each heart of the Indigenous Peoples of North America, our First Nations Peoples, our First Native American Peoples, who have for hundreds of years, watched the forests being cut down, rivers poisoned, their lands for roaming and hunting destroyed and fenced in, the animals they once hunted slaughtered by settlers and cattlemen, and their peoples genocided for the lust of this land called America, the home of the free. Truly, whatever my level of grief as I watch the woods around me being cut down and the animals being displaced, can never fully encompass the depth of the grief my Native American brothers and sisters who have watched this beautiful land for hundreds of years since the white European came and 'discovered' America being systematically destroyed."Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest. "We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank."
Chief Maquinna, Nootkahttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm One evening, near the woods which are being destroyed by developers, I once saw two wolves. They say in this area there are no wolves. But I saw these wolves and the wolves saw me and I looked deeply into their eyes. Coyote does not look into your eyes as these wolves did. It was a profound experience.
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There are now just small strips of roaming lands left for the wild animals as money moves in and development continues. The peoples who live in the big houses on the small lots of land nearby complain of the deer coming into their manicured yards, eating their shrubs in the winter, mostly because their native food sources have been destroyed, and the deer are starving. There are those who want to come into this small area of semi wild land and water to kill the deer so they will not come into their yards. The elders here will not hear of it, but what happens when they pass? Will the new peoples moving into this area carry the same level of respect and care? As I now witness the new phenomena of people speeding up and down the road in front of my house, spewing gravel and dirt in their hurry to 'do', ignoring the numerous signs I have put up to 'please slow down", speeding anyway, I grieve for I think I am witnessing the death of what's left of this semi pristine eco-system. "Out of the Indian approach to life there comes a great freedom - an intense and absorbing love for nature; a respect for life; enriching faith in a Supreme Power; and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations."
Luther Standing Bear, Oglalahttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm And even then, my grief is only a small portion to the grief endured by the First Nations Peoples of North America."O ye people, be ye healed;
Life anew I bring unto ye.
O ye people, be ye healed;
Life anew I bring unto ye.
Through the Father over all
Do I thus.
Life anew I bring unto ye." Good Eagle (Wanbli-Waste) Dakota Sioux Holy Manhttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm Links:'Indigenous Peoples' Dayhttp://www.red-coral.net/Pow.htmlIndigenous Peoples’ Day was first officially marked in Berkeley in 1992. The year was significant because it signified 500 years after Columbus’s arrival to island on which the Dominican Republic and Haiti now exist. Indigenous resistance to colonization and its celebration has never enjoyed the luxury of downtime—but the years leading up to the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival were particularly crucial. Part of the reason is that Natives had moved to cities in unprecedented numbers in the decades leading up to the 500 mark.http://www.thenation.com/article/celebr ... oples-day/Black Bear Basic Facts:http://www.defenders.org/black-bear/basic-factsREINTRODUCING WOLVES IN THE NORTHEASThttp://wolfwatcher.org/north-american-w ... st-wolves/American Indian Articles IndexThese articles tell about the cultures of the Mayans, Pawnee, Choctaw, Apache, Comanche, Nez Perce, Wampanoag, and Chumash Indians. American Indians are often referred to as Native Americans as they were the first to inhabit the country. As long ago as 40,000 years ago, the Paleo Indians were living in our continent. Many Indian tribes were known for their fighting strategy and fierce warriors like the Apache and Comanche tribes.
The Indians contributed many wonderful arts, crafts, fashion, and music that people of all kinds still love today. Many people visiting Indian craft shops leave with colorful Indian masks, headdress, paintings, and other beautiful works of art. The Native American Indians are known for their stunning accessories such as necklaces, bracelets and belts often made of turquoise, garnets, and silver. Learn the significance of feathers in an Indian headdress and the name of the Indian tribe that was the basis for the tradition of Thanksgiving.http://www.indians.org/articles/First Nation Peoples - Native American Quotes"You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts. Speak Americans.. I will not lie to you; do not lie to me."
Cochise, (Hardwood) Chiracahua Apache (1812-1874)http://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm"We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them." . . . .Crazy Horse Tashunca-uitco (1849-1877)http://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."-Ancient Indian Proverbhttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.html"The white man says, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had "freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."From the 1927 Grand Council of American Indianshttp://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm
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