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Ending sacrilege, honoring the Earth Sacred lands of Mother Earth remain under assault, says today's writer, who as an American Indian asks for help in protecting what's left TODAY'S BYLINE Peters is a Pohlik-lah/Karuk Indian and executive director of the Seventh Generation Fund. He and the fund are dedicated to re-establishing the religious rights of native people, protection of sacred lands and traditional practices and saving aboriginal ecosystems from the devastating effects of clear-cut logging, mining, recreational development and other negative impacts. A graduate of University of California, Davis and Stanford University, he has more than 25 years of experience in working for holistic community development, revitalizing traditional economies and supporting cultural revitalization efforts within many American Indian communities. REPRINT This article was adapted from Peters' May 3 public lecture at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. It is the fourth and final lecture in the free, public lecture series this Spring, "Visions for the American West." The lectures were sponsored by the UNM Department of Geography and co-sponsored by nine other UNM schools, departments or offices. The series is to resume in the fall. By Christopher H. Peters Here's the way it is in Indian Country: If we harm someone, if we do something (wrong to them), it's up to us to take something forward and settle up. But as for the reconcilement for the destruction of the American West, for the destruction of native peoples in native cultures - there has been no "settling up," no offer from those who have offended us, from those who've killed us, from those who have taken lives. There's been no reconcilement made to our people, and I think that a lot of what's going on in the world may be subject to that unfulfilled reconcilement. I'm Yurok, and I'm Karuk Indian from Northern California. We're "fix the Earth" people. A significant part of our religious understanding is world renewal. We have ceremonies - 40-day periods every year - where we dedicate to fixing the Earth, to making the world new again. (It's) a responsibility that we have. We were put here for no other purpose than to make the world new - to renew it. To fix the Earth. That's our responsibility as indigenous peoples of Northern California. As we do the ceremonies in growing up, we hear a lot of people saying it's a symbolism of fixing the Earth. That we go through a symbolic gesture of fixing the world. But as we get further into the deep cultural understanding of that, we understand quite clearly that we are, in fact, fixing the Earth with our ceremony. We are renewing the Earth. We're making alive again so life can be brought forth another year. That's our responsibility. And I used to think that's a significant responsibility we've been entrusted with; but, in fact, it's a human responsibility - a responsibility that all people have. Humans were put here for no other purpose, other than to fix and heal the Earth, so that the Earth will continue on and on; life on Earth will last forever and ever and ever. Humans have that responsibility to live sustainably. To take from the Earth that which is required for basic survival, and to give back to the Earth so that the Earth, Mother Earth, will continue on and on and on. In our belief system there's no Armageddon, no final conflict. If we do our ceremonies, if we live sustainably, life here on Earth will continue forever - for everlasting life. We get that understanding from an Earth-based spirituality. From an understanding that the Earth is sacred. The future At the Seventh Generation Fund, we're in our 25th year of building native sustainable communities supporting native grass-roots community initiatives throughout the United States, and most recently in Central and South America. We're founded upon an Iroquois principle that in each of our thoughts, in each of our deliberations, we consider the impact on seven generations from now. (It's a) belief system that's held in many tribal nations, that we live this life in such a way that our grandkids, our great-grandkids, will still have clean air, clean water (and) still understand who they are as indigenous peoples and still understand their responsibility to the earth (and to) the seventh generation from now. We're rooted in grass-roots communities. Our focus is grass-roots. We look for hope, we look for optimism in native communities and we try to support that through financial assistance, through technical support, through advocacy, that these traditional communities will be able to continue. Despite our odds, that optimism still lives today. (It's) that hope, that understanding, that we as native peoples will survive. A broad balanced mission We have four major complements: sustainable communities, environment, environmental justice, indigenous peoples of the Americas - and we do a lot of work in the area of sacred lands protection. We're also touring the native arts as a special initiative, but right now that's still housed within our sustainable communities division. Sustainable communities have been the heart and soul of the organization. We organize around the concept of holistic community renewal. We understand that redevelopment of native communities doesn't happen in a vacuum, that we have to look at assisting communities with spiritual development, with ceremonies, with traditional educational processes, with traditional economics, with social development and with governance. And again, we look for that optimism. It's founded upon an ecologically centered consciousness that communities can evolve without destruction of their immediate environments. We won't support projects that are to the contrary. (As for) culture and spiritual support, we don't support ceremonies directly, we support a lot of things that advance those things. They're the heart and soul of our program as well - the bellybutton of who we are as native nations. The spirituality of a community has to be developed or redeveloped. It has to be sustained for a community to grow. We understand that the continuation of ritual and ceremony, deep cultural understanding and language, is a necessary part of this development as well. We also understand that native communities need to be aware of natural law in Indian law because Indian law is founded upon natural laws. Traditional education is not necessarily the education you receive in these institutions. Because we know that this type of education has to change and change drastically within our lifetime if the Earth is going to survive for any length of time. The stuff we learn and get in the schooling process needs to change. Traditional education based on the establishment of traditional knowledge creates the ethics and morality that forms the core of cultural identity. Traditional education has to be supported. We also look at traditional economics: bartering, trading, gathering, hunting, fishing. A lot of our communities are still doing it, and some communities in fact have about 45 to 60 percent of their sustenance still taken from their land. Certainly here in New Mexico, if you get outside of the metropolitan areas, a lot of communities are still living close to the earth, still connected to the food chain, still know what it's like to gather their foods. Also in terms of sustainable communities we recognize healing as a significant portion of it. Native peoples have endured significant pain and suffering over the past 500 years. Our communities have to go through a healing process yet. There is what we call post-historic grief. That's grief that continues and is played out into our communities on a daily basis. And that healing has to happen before we can move on and become sustainable communities. A different three Rs We also look at native rights or what we like to call native responsibilities. We hold treaty rights in many communities, but the idea of a right is so based in Euro-American cultures. In native traditions we have a responsibility to take care of things. We don't have a right to abuse things. We have a responsibility to care for things. Much of our work is also in the area of the environment. The advanced ecological Native American wisdom is to take from the earth that which is required for basic survival and to give back. We look at the three Rs - not reading, 1riting and 1rithmatic - but we look at the three R's as being respect, responsibility and reciprocity to the Earth. We have an understanding that we're related to all that is alive. That we're connected to a larger web of life. That everything is alive. Everything has a soul. And all maintains its unique relationship to the Earth and to the Earth's spirit. In the past 30-50 years there have been more species gone extinct in this world than since the Ice Age. More species gone extinct. At least a third of all species, a third of all life on Earth, are now threatened with extinction. A third of all birds, a third of all mammals, a third of all that is alive is going extinct, primarily because of human action. Our overharvesting, our killing, our habitat destruction is destroying the world. In native cultures we have messengers. A bird may fly a certain way and tell you something and bring you a message of a pending event, a pending doom. A fox may cry in the woods or some other animal or thing in the environment may bring a message to you. A wind or a sound - all of those things bring messages to you. But our messengers are dying. Our messengers are being killed. We as human beings are killing the messenger. The message that they're dying should bring some indications that the world is in major jeopardy, that our messengers are dying. In Iceland the indigenous peoples look at this huge, huge mountain of ice, a glacier, and for generations and generations that was their sacred place. They'd go there for prayer. And several years ago, they noticed the glacier starting to drip. And a few years later more water was coming out. And they say now a whole stream, a whole river gushes from that glacier. You know, the Earth is warming. Things are changing. We have in our communities heavy metals, PCBs - they're in the food chain, they're in our mothers' breast milk. We have persistent organic pollutants that circulate through the Earth that re-form in cold climates of the arctics and impact the food chain and cause sickness and cancer in our communities. Humans are creating more waste today than the Earth can process through her natural systems. The Earth is no longer in balance with natural law, and can no longer sustain the current level of abuse that human beings, our culture, our people are impacting upon her. There's a need for a social transformation, and that social transformation should happen within our lifetime. We need a migration of thought, a migration of our system of values. What we value most as human beings today has to radically change. And that change has to occur at a very systemic level through our education process, through our economics, through our social structures, through everything we know. Everything we hold of value now has to change radically if human beings are to protect and save the Earth - if we are to save the sacred. It has to be our responsibility to do that. Many of us still sit idle and do not take any action and continue the abuse of the Earth. This systemic change has to happen. If it doesn't the Earth is in jeopardy. The sacred Earth (Among our at-risk) sacred landscapes: Mount Graham, Red Butte, Zuni Salt Lake, Rainbow Bridge, San Francisco Peaks, the Petroglyphs (National) Monument. The list continues on: Rock Creek, Snoqualmie Falls, Mt. Hood, Medicine Lake, Mt. Shasta, Alaska (National) Wildlife Refuge, Valley of the Chiefs, Badge Two Medicine Area, Indian Path, Medicine Wheel, and the list continues on and on and on. These are sacred places that are immediately threatened with destruction. Many have already been destroyed. Certainly Spirit Mountain in the Little Rockies, sacred place for the people. Little Rockies Spirit Mountain is our trade tower. Because of mining, heat and leach process, the mountain has been leveled to the ground. The impact on the people that look to the place for spiritual guidance will continue for many generations to come. They'll never be able to be the same. Indigenous peoples' cosmology comes from the Earth, from here. There's no bridge - we evolved here. That's our understanding; that's our belief. We emerged from here, we emerged from the Grand Canyon, we came about through many different ways, but we came from here - from Turtle Island. Based on astute observation or original instructions, we understand that the Earth is sacred, all of life is sacred, the Earth has a tempo, an energy. It has a spirit. The Earth is alive. We understand that to be true. We understand that there are sacred places, sacred landscapes - very special places in our understanding, in our awareness of the Earth. In traditional native worldviews we understand that a sacred place is not only sacrosanct to humanity - it's not only sacred to humans - it's also sacred to all life and integral to the web of life. A sacred place is critical to the well-being of everything that relies on it for physical survival and spiritual sustenance. It's precious and revered by the bear, by the deer, by the forest, by the water - a sacred place is sacred to an entire ecosystem. It's not sacred because native peoples look at it. The Petroglyphs (across the Rio Grande) are not sacred because native peoples consider them sacred. They're sacred in and of themselves and they have special value, special spiritual value to all of life that's around them, to all peoples that are around them. It's not because Indians consider them sacred. The destruction that a road (like the extension of Paseo del Norte through the Petroglyphs) might produce, that an oil well might produce, that a timber harvest plan might produce - the destruction of a sacred place that a coal mine might do like in the case of Zuni Salt Lake - these destructions of a place reverberate throughout the landscape. The spiritual significance of all life would be jeopardized. All life has value Traditional native paradigm understands that all life has equal standing with their spirit, that we have equal standing, that all life has equal standing. Throughout our Earth-based spirituality, we understand natural law and natural systems - and the vital importance of maintaining a spiritual balance within the Earth for all of life. (For) native peoples, who just recently migrated from the mythical or spiritual realm of the universe, much of our worldview, much of our paradigms are still rooted in the mythical side of consciousness. We can go back and forth. We understand that process of going back and forth to that spiritual side. We understand the significance of those spiritual places and the energy they provide and our ability, in a metaphysical sense, to transgress consciousness, to transgress to a spiritual side of the universe. And through this process we have evolved an ecological-centered consciousness. An awareness that the Earth is alive and has a spirit. We also understand the importance of ceremony, the importance of ritual. We also understand the importance of giving thanks. We understand the importance of prayer. We understand the need, as native peoples, to minister to the Earth itself. That's our responsibility. Not to go looking to the Earth for something for our own gratification, but going to the Earth and ministering to the Earth itself. We have ceremonies, all of us. Indigenous peoples have ceremonies specifically designed to administer to the Earth. To pray to the Earth. To give thanks to the Earth. And through astute observations or original instructions, we understand that some places have special powers, special energy. And these places are sacred. Very sacred places. And (they are) the subject of much discussion today in the political arena. These sacred places are central and indispensable to native people's spiritual understanding of the Earth. To do away with those spiritual places is to do away with the understanding, the access to knowledge and understanding, for the preservation of a tribal identity. To do away with a sacred place is a sentence of a tribal people to a very certain and everlasting death. The significance of these places is paramount. At these places, within these sacred landscapes, through age-old process and formulas, through tribally specific esoteric knowledge, this sometimes involves ancient rituals of fasting, purifying ourselves, our mind, purifying our body and soul. Humanity, native people, have continued to make pilgrimages to such places, to such landscapes, to administer to the Earth, and we are blessed by the Earth, and the Earth Spirit knows who we are. Through meditation, through prayer, through sacrifice - sometimes through singing, through dancing, through jumping, through crying, through hollering, at these places while we're fasting, American Indian peoples have revelation. We have revelation. (It is) not so dissimilar than revelation that came to Christianity some 2000 years ago. But we have revelation on an ongoing basis. We can learn what hasn't been learned before. That revelation is done at these sacred places. We can articulate with the spiritual side, the metaphysical side of creation. We know those pathways, we know those formulas, we know how to do it. And we have been doing it. And we'll continue to be doing it. Some call it vision questing, some call it medicine making, but it's the metaphysics of spiritual renewal: that when we go to these places, when we leave, we understand more about the spiritual relationship we have with the Earth. What does such revelation bring? It offers an Earth-based enlightenment that reveals the moral and ethical foundation of the people, our tribal people. The moral and ethical foundation of who we are as tribal people. That's what that revelation brings. It also reveals a relationship and a responsibility to all of creation. It guides the efficacy of our ceremonial life, of our tribal existence. It builds a foundation for a unique paradigm that recognizes the Earth as a dynamic, living spirit. From such revelation we know that the Earth is our mother, that she has a soul, and she cannot be commodified. If we are blessed, if the Earth Spirit gives us that blessing, that wisdom, we often gain some insight, possibly some healing powers that we can take back and work with our communities. Clashing spirit cultures In understanding how to conduct, how to improve our ceremonies, we as native peoples understand that if we continue to live sustainably, and we continue to understand and abide by natural law and continue with our rituals and ceremonies, life here on Earth will continue forever and ever. For everlasting life. It teaches us to look beyond the ethnocentric. To look beyond human selfishness, human greed, looking beyond human-centered consciousness. (In our) spirituality, humans do not have a privileged or esteemed relationship with our god. We're no better, no worse than all that's alive on Earth. Humans have no unique and privileged relationship with the gods. An anthropocentric view denies the tree its soul. It denies the deer her spirit. Some humans look at the Earth and see the sacred. A mother with a spirit and a soul. Others look at the same Earth and see commodities. When the Euro-Americans first arrived here on Turtle Island, they didn't see the sacred. Many of them still don't see the sacred. They don't feel the sacred. They don't understand the sacred here. Because the sacred to them is someplace in Europe (or the Middle East), someplace being bombed the hell out of now! But certainly when they came to this continent, they didn't see the sacred. To them evil lived in the wilderness, the land was wild, the land was not sacred. They came with a religious zeal. A god-given right to conquer, to dominate the earth; to conquer and dominate the people. A group of people that came from the Crusades, a group of people that looked at non-Christians as enemies of the faith: Conquest to them meant the domination of the land and the people by force to extend the boundaries and domination of the Christian kings at the expense of infidels and at the expense of pagans. Indian people are pagans. And, most of us are damned proud of it. All people who did not believe in the Christian god were considered pagans. The dictate was simple: (In) 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued a series of papal rules that gave the authority to invade, to search out, to capture, to subdue all pagans and other enemies of the faith, to put them in perpetual slavery and take their possessions and their property. (It) certainly was played out here in dramatic, dramatic force. (It) certainly played out throughout the Americas, played out in Africa, played out in Australia, the Pacific Isles. Every place where people didn't believe in a Christian god, they were pagans, they were infidels. And they could be killed, they could be enslaved, and everything they owned could be repossessed. Everything they held of value could be taken from them, because of a god-given right for Christians to do that. And that was the history that we experienced. That was discovery. Similarly in 1493, Pope Alexander VI gave Spain any lands that Christopher Columbus had discovered or might discover that was not previously in the possession of any Christian owner. All barbarous nations should be overthrown and brought into the faith - by force brought into the faith. Enforced by the courts In 1823, premised upon the principles of Christian domination over native peoples, Chief Justice Marshall brings the mandate of the papal bull into federal Indian policy, where it rests today. The fact that Christian people had paramount rights over native people is the only reason we have no land, and non-native people have all the land. Because we were not Christian. Justice Marshall said if we don't bring forth the Doctrine of Discovery, then all of the lands in the eastern seaboard would fall out of non-Indian ownership immediately and revert to Indian ownership. He had no choice but to bring forth the Doctrine of Discovery. That's the paramount right of Christian people, and the subordinate rights of heathens or native people set the stage for centuries of religious intolerance. Euro-Americans believed they had a divine right, a god-given right, a manifest destiny to subdue the wilderness, the wild lands where evil lived, and put them in productive use and kill the Indians if they got in the way. That's manifest destiny; that's our history; that's how we end up in the situation we're in today. Non-Christians - Indians - we were exterminated, we were missionized, we were forcibly acculturated into the dominant society. In the name of God we were acculturated. "Kill the savage and save the man," was the philosophy of federal Indian policy. We watched the taking of Indian land, significant amounts of Indian land, the repeated reduction of Indian lands throughout history: First move them West of the Mississippi; move them onto reservations; cut the reservations in two. We watched the dwindling of our land base to merely nothing as we see today. Certainly the petroglyphs leave a clear understanding that the true owners of the petroglyphs are not the national parks, are not the non-native people, but the native people here. I mean, what more documentation (is needed) other than the petroglyphs (themselves)? That's certainly a footprint that can't be denied. Indian peoples were put through a government-funded process of systematic and sustained forcible acculturation that has never been witnessed in the history of the world. A social engineering process that was designed to eliminate our paradigm, our worldview, our understanding of the world, our Earth-based understanding, our belief system that the Earth is sacred. That was socially engineered through government policy. Sustained over at least a 200-year period, including boarding schools, including missionizing, including a whole wide range of things that we were put through. It's incredible that native Indian people still think and understand Native. Yet, the process was effective. The process has impacted our communities, and the process can be seen in each of our communities. Our ceremonies were suspended. Our leaders were arrested by government policies for practicing an Earth-based spiritual understanding. For exercising their belief system that the Earth is sacred. For believing that we have a responsibility to administer to the Earth in ceremony. And the government says: "That's illegal; you can't do it. And if you do, we'll arrest you. We'll put you in jail." And they did. Our belief systems had to go underground for a long period of time. Aliens invade sacred lands People, keep in mind that here on Turtle Island, here in the Americas, the Christian god, Jesus Christ himself, is a pilgrim. He is an illegal alien. He doesn't belong here. He's an immigrant. But now the Christian god is being forced upon our people. Repeatedly. If we have no access to sacred lands, if they continue to destroy us, we have no religious foundations. The only thing we have is a Christian god to look to. If we pagans want to take up residence in that gated community of golden streets, we have to denounce our Earth-based spiritual understanding. We have to denounce our belief that the Earth is alive. That the Earth has a spirit. That as indigenous people our responsibility is to administer to the Earth. We have to deny that if we want access to that gated community. We have to stop our ceremonies, we have to stop visiting sacred lands, and we have to stop our revelation, our ability to seek that spiritual connection to the other side. We have to stop that if we want access into the Christian heaven. Religious intolerance has continued as federal Indian policy today. The religious intolerance in the situations that play out in sacred lands pits the Earth-based spirituality, the ecologically-centered paradigm against the paramount right of Christians, the paramount right of a government to destroy what we hold most sacred. I apologize if I offended folks for my comments about a Christian morality. But I take that position not to piss you guys off, but I take that position because people need to be awakened to these issues. If I'd have brought pretty slides and showed you pretty slides of sacred places, and everyone left happy and went on your merry way, there probably would be no other thought given to my presentation. But hopefully if you get past the resentment, if there is resentment . . ., and give some thought to what I had to say tonight and to look at native sacred lands from a different perspective, then hopefully you take some words I said to you with you tonight. And hopefully (that would) inspire discussion, inspire interaction with your family and friends. And hopefully, you will be moved when the time comes to make that call to your congressman and say, "hey the destruction of Zuni Salt Lake just can't happen, that we have to stop it, that we have a moral obligation as human beings to stop that type of destruction. -- Andr� Cramblit: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art gallery featuring the art of California tribes (http://www.americanindianonline.com) Visit and show your support for the Grass Roots Oyate http://members.tripod.com/GrassRootsOyate Clemency for Leonard Peltier. 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