We are beginning the season of transformation. It is the
time to bring in the harvest. The squirrels in my mother’s neighborhood in
Tulsa are putting away for winter. We are all reaping what we have sown. This
is happening at many levels of our existence.
I remember our beloved Mvskoke person Phillip Deere ’s words
as many of us stood together at America’s Capitol at the end point of The Longest Walk the summer of 1978. This time marked the end of a long walk
of a protest of indigenous peoples to the Capitol, to make our presence known,
to once again come to the face of colonized power to address them, one human
being to another.
Following is an excerpted version of Deere’s words to remind
and inspire us. They are prophetic and remain pertinent and living for us.
Mvto. Mvto.
We are part of nature. Our
pipes are red. Our faces, many times, we paint red. But we represent the
Creation. We hear about Red Power. There are many definitions to Red Power.
Sometimes we refer to Red
as the blood. But all colors of Man have the same color of blood. The fish
life, they have blood also. The animals, too, have red blood. Everyone has red
blood. But everyone was not made out of the red clay of America.
Only the Indian people are
the original people of America. Our roots are buried deep in the soils of
America. We are the only people who have continued with the oldest religion in
this country. We are the people who still yet speak the languages given to us
by the Creator. Our religion has survived; our languages have survived.
Long before this building
(the Capital) was built, my ancestors talked the language that I talk today…I
see, in the future, perhaps this civilization is coming near to the end. For
that reason, we have continued with the instructions of our ancestors. We are
the only people who know how to survive in this country. We have existed here for
thousands and thousands of years. The smartest man in America does not know and
cannot date the time that we originated.
This is our homeland. We
came from no other country. Regardless of how many millions and millions of
dollars are spent on an Indian, to make him someone else, all these millions
have failed to make a White Man out of the Indian. We are the evidence of the
Western Hemisphere!
…I feel sorry for the
non-Indian. I can see the confusion among them. This society is confused. I can
see that as a bystander…If I were with the society, I too would be confused. In
the beginning of time, when everything was created, our ancestors also came
about in this part of the world. There is no Indian here, on these grounds that
will say that we came across the Bering Straits. There is no Indian standing
among us who will say that we descended from apes and monkeys.
We have always looked at
ourselves as human beings…
We are the original people
here…We have forgotten in a short time what when the first people landed on our
shores, they could not survive. Even the pilgrims could not survive. The
Indians showed them the way of survival. We taught them how to live.
We taught them how to
plant corn. That corn was a Tree of Life for us. We showed them that this is
life here in America. And they survived.
Not too many years
afterwards, foreign agents came to our house and tried to tell us how to farm.
Not too many years afterwards, they began to tell us how to live. They began to
tell us that our religion was wrong; our way of life was no good. This is not
the agreement that we made. This is not the treaty that we made with the U.S.
government, or any other country….We had an unchanging government. The law of
love, peace, and respect, no man-made laws will ever take the place of it! And
this is the law that we have always lived by.
Because we understood this
law, every Indian door was open. Through these doors walked Christopher
Columbus. Through these doors walked the Pilgrims, because of that law of love
and respect that we had for all human beings.
But time changed. After
entering our door, they took advantage of the Native people here. Their greed
-- we have seen it. Many of our people have died. Many of our people were
massacred because they wanted more land. We gave them land through treaties. We
gave and we gave, and we have no more to give today!
Not only land was taken,
even the culture, even the religion, under man-made laws, were taken away from
the Native people. But we managed to survive. We continued with our way of
life.
The jailhouses, the
prisons in this country, are no more than four hundred years old. Prior to the
coming of Columbus, more than four hundred tribes, speaking different
languages, having different ways, having different religions, lived here. None
of these tribes had jailhouses. They had no prison walls. They had no insane
asylums. No country today can exist without them! Why did we not have any
prisons? Why did we not have jailhouses or insane asylums? Because we lived by
an understood law.
We understood what life is
all about. To this day, we are not confused. My elders, spiritual leaders,
medicine men, clan mothers, have no disagreements. We are not that confused. We
come to you with one mind. We do not disagree on our religion. I have never tried
to convert the Lakota people into Muskogee ways.
On every corner there is a
church, each of them trying to convert the other one. We did not come here with
that kind of confusion. We respect one another's religion. We respect one
another's visions. That is our only way of existing in this country here --
that is our survival. This is our strength. Even though we are greatly
outnumbered, our ideas will overcome those numbers!
People in this society
have been driven away, and have been taken away so far from reality that they
will not sit down under a tree and talk to us. They won't even sit down in
their office to listen to the Indian. We have experienced this all this time,
even in the local offices at home. Those who are holding positions through the
government refuse to listen to the grassroots Indians because they have been so
far away from that natural way of thinking. They have to look at a piece of
paper and get directions from the higher-ups. Even their minds are controlled.
They can't make decisions for themselves.
…Every tribe has a trail
of tears. We wonder when it is going to end. I would like to see the time come
when we can act like human beings and be able to sit around and iron our
problems out.
…Your life is at stake.
Your survival depends on this…
Phillip Deere 1929 to 1985
