I am saddened and appalled at the violence that has escalated in North Dakota as my brothers and sisters stand up to protect the waters of the Missouri River. This water shed flows through seven different states and joins many other rivers and tributaries giving home to over 12 million people.
If the Dakota pipeline had an oil spill not only would these people and all other waters be affected, but also the wildlife, agricultural farms, livestock, plant life, and creatures who habitat these areas. However, it’s not just the proposed pipeline to fear, it’s the twisted minds and forked tongues we are to fear for they have no mercy. It’s the corporations who care only for economic growth; it’s the government who stands in solidarity to those corporations, not to the people whose lives depend on clean resources. They have no respect for life and no regard for us as people.
If this pipeline is laid, no doubt Mother Earth will react, because our resources, our family, will be depleted. When you deplete its life, you deplete your own. We not only destroy our life, but the lives of our children, our grandchildren, and their children. We dishonor them by leaving them without clean resources in which to live a healthy life. We are choosing to leave them with disease due to our pollution and ignorance. Don’t we owe them more than that?
It’s a privilege for us to be here. All other species of animals, plants, birds, trees, and minerals, could coexist in harmony without us. The human race is the only destructive force on the planet. We’re heading toward death and destruction. Mother Earth will survive just fine without us. She will regenerate when we’re gone. She will thrive! And every other species will reproduce and flourish. We will get sick and die.
We can no longer allow the corporations to keep driving us toward destruction. We have to make a STAND. We have to choose to do what’s right, what’s honorable, what’s respectful, and what is smart. We have to fight for our rights. The corporations do not care for our behalf. By doing nothing, we choose to allow them to destroy us.
This is not good Medicine. We need to use commonsense and be cognizant of what decisions we’re making for all life. We can make a difference if we STAND together in solidarity with the indigenous tribes fighting for all our lives and our ties to Mother Earth.
As Chief Seattle was reported to have said in a speech to Chief Washington:
“Remember the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother. The white man does not understand. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a wanderer who comes in the night and borrows from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has won the struggle, he moves on. He leaves his father’s graves behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children. And he does not care. The father’s graves and the children’s birthright are forgotten by the white man, who treats his mother the earth and his brother the sky as things to be bought, plundered, and sold, like sheep, bread, or bright beads. In this way, the dogs of appetite will devour the rich earth and leave only a desert. . . You must teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know. The earth does not belong to the white man, the white man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites our family. If we kill snakes, the field mice will multiply and destroy our corn. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. 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.”