Philámayaye, Niawen'kó:wa, Thank you—I always find myself singing that to the tune of Cabaret's "Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome"—I greatly appreciate all the likes, shares, subscriptions, and comments.
If you're traveling in the United States this year, you can support Indigenous peoples and get a great cultural experience through the NativeAmerica.Travel cooperative of Indigenous American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian organizations.
Thank you for this. I have not seen such a succinct and thorough article detailing the issues and the solutions, and I was not aware of all of these efforts.
Amelia, the more I read about Indigenous culture-beliefs- the more I see my view of the world is far more suited to them than the Christianity I was brought up with. The more our culture goes native, the more we will go away from the unnatural straight line of endless linear monolithic growth killing diversity and destroying our world. The more we turn to Indigenous ways of more inclusive, holistic, circular, regenerative stewardship of ecologically sound economics with social policies of fair sharing the more we will become a nation of human beings connected to nature and indeed to our better nature. Reading your articles and the likes of Tomson Highways Laughing with the Trickster it becomes so clear that Christian-Western Civilization's straight lines are straight lines to hell on earth. There are no straight lines in nature. The ancient wisdoms of our indigenous peoples are of a higher consciousness that we arrogantly-stupidly dismissed as primitive leaving us an unconscious civilization given to blind growth, the disease of more of never having enough, even when you have more than enough. The good news is that we have to "go native" to save the planet and the most progressive Western thinkers are drawing upon ancient native wisdoms to get us out of the anti-social-environmental mess were are in. The more we include Indigenous peoples in our reshaping the more likely we will survive and the greater the potential for us to thrive.
Well said. A good fictional book suggestion: “Poisonwood Bible.” It is about missionary family moving to the Congo & trying to push their religion upon the tribes there & the turn-about that results.
While, if I'm honest, I'd love for all of these uninhabited stolen lands to be returned, but it's not like we can restore Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe (Six Grandfathers) to what it was before it became Mount Rushmore.
But it would be nice if the sacred Paha Sapa (the Black Hills) wasn't in freaking CUSTER State Park. Thanks, South Dakota. 🤨
Some things have slim to no chance of happening. But I like the NPS programs promoting Indigenous learning programs and tribal tourism. I put a link in the article. I know here in Maine, Acadia National Park has the Cultural Connections in the Park series and a number of other mutually beneficial programs with the Wabanaki Confederated tribal nations.
Thank you for talking about the importance of Native Americans to our conservation. I was so delighted when Biden appointed Deb Haaland to be Secretary of the Interior and appreciate the wisdom she is bringing to the job. My colleague and I have been teaching about Native Americans as leaders in conservation through their knowledge that has been handed down for centuries to our 3rd and 4th grade students. That is to understand that we need Native stewards because as Indigenous people they have the inherited wisdom of the ages. We learned that the Great Dust Bowl took place because people ignorant to the land they had taken from the Indigenous people and ignoring Indigenous ways, killed the Bison and put cattle on instead who ate up the grass cover, and they also mowed up the grass cover to plant wheat. Bison eat the grass in a way that does not pull it up as deeply as cattle do, so they support a groundcover that holds the dirt in place. My friend at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago introduced me to his Native friend and colleague who is an expert in indigenous plants of our region. He learned from his mother and aunts and they from their mother and aunts and that is how the plant knowledge was passed down. He came and taught our students about native plants ecosystems. He looked at what was growing at our school and discussed the ecosystems that the plants were a part of such as where you might have a plant that is a toxin along with the plant that provides the antidote in the same ecosystem. He also talked about what plants in our area are used for medicinally. With the Great Lake Michigan in our neighborhood, we learned about The Great Lake Commons, a group of Indigenous and other local people who want to conserve the lakes together. It seems that slowly there is understanding of the important role that Indigenous people play in stewarding the lands and waters. https://www.greatlakescommons.org/
We endorse this model over the Great Lakes Charter, which gives governors of the Great Lakes states and provinces in Canada stewardship over the lake without Tribal voices whose legal rights for fishing in waters that are healthy are not being enforced by the governors. At least I do not see this happening. Instead governors have allowed money making businesses to endanger the environment. Enron's pipeline in Lake Michigan is a big point of contention. Under the governors it may be too late to save the largest source of freshwater in North America if not the world. So my colleague and I taught about the importance of Indigenous stewardship, and we looked at some projects in our area, like the Gun Lake Pottawatomi tribe who are redeveloping native wild rices, conserving black ash trees traditionally used to make baskets, and lake sturgeon, as well as practicing environmental stewardship of the lake and lands in general.
Our students looked at water struggles in many parts of the country and in Mexico too. Here is a Native water conservation protest song that my students like. https://youtu.be/Onyk7guvHK8?si=3B7tv0Opj1PwA5dE
We need native teachers stewards teaching us how to live in harmony with our planet. Mni Wiconi! Water is life!
As an Australian - yeah, our track record with our First Nations people (up to and including today - witness the Voice referendum 6 months ago) is atrocious, but we are veeeery slowly learning to accept their wisdom when it comes to land management in a giant country that burns regularly. As someone who was finishing primary school when Terra Nullius was overturned, I was just old enough to understand how wrong that whole thing had been, and that the colonials had set up a horrendous system - which we're still working our way out of today. Here's hoping we can...
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi) for sharing your experiences.
I've not been to your beautiful country, but it's a bucket list item for me. My heart ached for you all when bushfires ravaged your people, lands, flora and fauna in 2019-2020.
Burning's supposed to be a feature, not a bug, in terms of some of our weird and wonderful flora - but Western arrival messed with the environment and mistreatment of locals means a lot of lost knowledge. We get minor (relatively) bushfires pretty regularly - near my area about 3 months ago and round Perth on the other coast at the same time, and there's one burning south of Perth at the moment. The major ones tend to hit a little further apart, but they're often dire. There's a few programs running around the country specifically employing First Nations people to use their methods of land and fire management. I think there might even be a few being set up to deal with water management and flood prevention in other areas... Baby steps, but it's a start.
And if you do ever get the chance, please come and visit - I humbly posit we're worth that long trip halfway around the world :)
It just makes sense that native peoples have much to contribute to our understanding of the environment and to our view of planet earth as a whole. That is one of the great benefits of living in a country with a strong aboriginal presence. And that to me is their primary contribution to the country and to our world – or at least it could be. And the move to having native peoples be more involved in the stewardship of our lands, especially those of national parks, makes a whole lot of sense. But that is not happening to the degree it could. And it seems that there is a huge opportunity being missed here – for us all.
For the most part what I see from native environmental activism, is thinly veiled requests to get more land back – which is just not going to happen. For native peoples to be granted a greater role in the stewardship of the planet, one of the things they need to do is show specific examples of what they would do in specific instances, in specific ways, to specific ecosystems. And I just don’t see that.
For example (though I don’t want to get into the details here) there is a lake near where I am from that is in terrible shape. But I see no specific activism on the part of natives in the area. What I see instead are casinos.
Why not use some of the money generated from those casinos, to start environmental study programs to educate young people in the area, and to give them a better and more native-centric view of the environment? Or how about creating specific initiatives about specific problems, like those of the nearby lake – which could come up with specific solutions?
That would be something that would create more support for native issues in general. And it would cause the voters to become more environmentally active in ways that might force governments to act to save the planet.
But that requires native groups to show the rest of us what they can do. That’s how things work in the real world. Vague prescriptions and wish lists are not going to get it done. In order to make something happen and get a project off the ground, you need to be able to articulate your plans in a way that makes others buy into them. And that is just not happening with native activism.
Instead the current methodology appears to be forcing others to support native issues because natives are one of the acceptably oppressed groups progressives love to pretend they care about (until it causes problems for them individually, like raising the cost of their electricity). For truly positive things to happen, native environmentalists need to get out and make their own case. And until they do, they and their issues will be suck in the ghettos of political culture.
In other words, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist.
Are you taking appointments for marginalized communities to visit you in your home or office to convince you of their worthiness to exist and have any say in their own lives?
I'm no expert when it comes to astronomy, but I do know neither one of us is the center of the Universe, even if one of us was told their entire life that they are.
"Indigenous peoples deserve no say because they've failed to prove their worthiness to me and I don't like how they spend their money!"
Philámayaye, wašiču. I could have never demonstrated why things are the way they are so well as your treatise has.
Oh c’mon! It’s just like when the white people had to do all those things he listed to prove that they were capable, responsible and invested enough to be trusted with the ownership and stewardship of tribal lands.
I do not reply to sarcasm, because it suggests that those who use it have nothing of value to add to the conversation. But I DO note that unlike the author of this piece, you did respond to some of the things I actually said, which seems noteworthy in this forum.
The "author of this piece" addressed exactly what you noted—until something has proven itself worthy to you, it has no merit.
What you failed to address is that marginalized communities don't have the mainstream forums to share any of the proof you require be served up under your nose for your approval.
So maybe you could JFGI instead of whinging on about casinos and how no one got your stamp of approval for how Indigenous tribes you think you know everything about spend their money.
Perhaps you could check your privilege, but I highly doubt it. And I'm not going to spoonfeed you resources or information because you're not really interested in coming out of your ivory tower. You just want to make certain everyone knows how superior you believe you are to "the author of this piece."
So all I have for you is this—I see you, I hear, you, I've dealt with men like you for 54 years, I no longer waste my time on wašiču.
Google what? Again you give me no idea what you are talking about. You may think you are, but you aren't.
"marginalized communities don't have the mainstream forums"
You have a forum, and a rather powerful one. Why not use that? And how many resources are needed to come up with a mission statement, some kind of indigenous philosophy of stewardship? A handful of scholars, and environmental and tribal leaders tossing emails back and forth over a couple of months would probably do it. And that could be the center of a global indigenous environmental network on the Internet. And a couple of college kids could throw that site together in a matter of weeks.
It would be a place for all environmentally minded individuals to come together around a single philosophy and approach that (even if it wasn’t totally native-created) would be native-centric and native-approved. And it would allow those there to take that idea further and come up with other initiatives, like creating a new kind of carbon tax exchange etc., all with the stamp of approval of global native activism.
That would force the governments of the world out of the way, and allow the people to take action. And if successful enough, the governments would eventually have to follow along and sign up.
Being on the inside, you may not realize how much credibility and sway natives have when it comes to environmental issues. Even for non-environmentalists, when it comes to those issues, you are viewed as the real earthlings, and the rest of us just visitors. The pushback generally comes when you propose actions that are seen as purely self-serving – meaning us spending money or losing profits to solve a problem you’re having. But this would be a case of you telling the world something that is clearly in its own best interest.
And it’s not as though you wouldn’t be able to capitalize on it in some ways, financially and otherwise. One of the benefits would be that the website could be a clearinghouse for local community initiatives, such as the kind I suggested earlier around environmental training and activism for the general public. And those casinos I also mentioned would be the perfect venue for those types of events – and would be profitable and otherwise beneficial to all, not to mention the environment.
One problem I DO see from my perspective, is that native peoples and their communities only seem to be concerned with their own piece of the planet. This is further complicated by the fact that native people do not appear to like to work with other natives from other communities. But I don’t claim to know whether there is any truth in that.
In any case, I suppose this is the kind of thing I had on my mind when I wrote my reply to your piece. It may not have been written in the best spirit. But this is the way I was thinking.
And it doesn’t seem to me that money or resources need to be an issue. The only real issue is “will.” And the kinds of environmental devastation happening to native communities around the planet should be enough encouragement to try something of this nature, size and scope. Otherwise there is no way we are ever going to do what needs to be done to save the planet, as anyone already knows who's been watching the self-congratulating elites that have been running things over the last few decades.
I realize this is all really far fetched. And I’m not saying anyone should or would, or even could do this. But as I thought about it in more depth, this IS the kind of thing I was getting at. And I suppose that’s because the search for meaning in the modern world is at the heart of much of my fiction, even my novel about Trump-era politics. I just don’t get to write about it much on Substack.
First Nations peoples should not have to buy back any land from the federal government! Lands that are available for sale to them should be returned to them with the authorization and funds to administer them.
Furthermore, there should be federal and state grants and funding given directly to the tribes to purchase ancestral lands and in-holdings that are in private ownership by non-indigenous folks. (Full disclosure: I am a non-indigenous folk.)
It is way , way past time that these Indigenous people be recognized positively and gratefully. So when does the U S plan to correct some of the most tragic circumstances many of these people have faced from our government. So many tribes still live in substandard situations without clean running water or heat .
Altho, opposition warfare has done their darn best to make a good man sound crazy, Rfk jr has fought for clean air, water, soil, health & indigenous people for many years.He has sued giants like Monsanto & won, on behalf of poisoned people.
He & several of his children joined the Water Protectors on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing tribal lands and threatening the Tribe’s primary water source. And he and his son were arrested in front of the White House for protesting the Keystone Pipeline's construction through native lands and protected wilderness.
This is not to sway votes, but to put out there, that one party (formerly mine & Rfk jr’s) has spent MULTI-MILLIONS to smear, censory & block ballots for 3rd party candidates including Jill Stein, Cornel West & Jill Stein.
Rfk jr after cleaning up the Hudson was on the front of magazines called “Hero of the Planet.” Because of smears, he’s known now by nothing that resembles the good man that he is.
Thank you for this article. I just wanted to add that I also enjoyed the carefully measure responses in the comment section here. This one, I especially enjoyed when responding to a somewhat arrogant poster:
"I'm no expert when it comes to astronomy, but I do know neither one of us is the center of the Universe, even if one of us was told their entire life that they are.”
Philámayaye, Niawen'kó:wa, Thank you—I always find myself singing that to the tune of Cabaret's "Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome"—I greatly appreciate all the likes, shares, subscriptions, and comments.
If you're traveling in the United States this year, you can support Indigenous peoples and get a great cultural experience through the NativeAmerica.Travel cooperative of Indigenous American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian organizations.
https://nativeamerica.travel/
Land! Back!
Thank you!
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi).
Thank you so much for keeping this free. I was able to post this important piece in other venues. Mahalo 🤙🏽shaka
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi) for reading and sharing it.
No Mystic Sense . .
Thus began the Myth of Manifest Destiny?
Pushing into Reservations primitive Indigenies . .
Sweeping, Owning, a Continent . .. Superiority
clearly Divinely meant . . leading to
Hiroshima and second drop!
Nagasaki Infamy . . .
of Stewardship . . .# Bonding with Nature . .
Hiroshima... at least it was better than Downfall.
Thank you for this. I have not seen such a succinct and thorough article detailing the issues and the solutions, and I was not aware of all of these efforts.
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi) for your kind words.
Patricia, I completely agree. This article was so very informative and exciting!
Philámayaye. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Thank you!
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi) for reading it.
Amelia, the more I read about Indigenous culture-beliefs- the more I see my view of the world is far more suited to them than the Christianity I was brought up with. The more our culture goes native, the more we will go away from the unnatural straight line of endless linear monolithic growth killing diversity and destroying our world. The more we turn to Indigenous ways of more inclusive, holistic, circular, regenerative stewardship of ecologically sound economics with social policies of fair sharing the more we will become a nation of human beings connected to nature and indeed to our better nature. Reading your articles and the likes of Tomson Highways Laughing with the Trickster it becomes so clear that Christian-Western Civilization's straight lines are straight lines to hell on earth. There are no straight lines in nature. The ancient wisdoms of our indigenous peoples are of a higher consciousness that we arrogantly-stupidly dismissed as primitive leaving us an unconscious civilization given to blind growth, the disease of more of never having enough, even when you have more than enough. The good news is that we have to "go native" to save the planet and the most progressive Western thinkers are drawing upon ancient native wisdoms to get us out of the anti-social-environmental mess were are in. The more we include Indigenous peoples in our reshaping the more likely we will survive and the greater the potential for us to thrive.
Well said. A good fictional book suggestion: “Poisonwood Bible.” It is about missionary family moving to the Congo & trying to push their religion upon the tribes there & the turn-about that results.
What about the idea of handing staffing and management of the NPS to the tribes? Done right, that I think that holds a lot of promise.
While, if I'm honest, I'd love for all of these uninhabited stolen lands to be returned, but it's not like we can restore Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe (Six Grandfathers) to what it was before it became Mount Rushmore.
But it would be nice if the sacred Paha Sapa (the Black Hills) wasn't in freaking CUSTER State Park. Thanks, South Dakota. 🤨
Some things have slim to no chance of happening. But I like the NPS programs promoting Indigenous learning programs and tribal tourism. I put a link in the article. I know here in Maine, Acadia National Park has the Cultural Connections in the Park series and a number of other mutually beneficial programs with the Wabanaki Confederated tribal nations.
Thank you for talking about the importance of Native Americans to our conservation. I was so delighted when Biden appointed Deb Haaland to be Secretary of the Interior and appreciate the wisdom she is bringing to the job. My colleague and I have been teaching about Native Americans as leaders in conservation through their knowledge that has been handed down for centuries to our 3rd and 4th grade students. That is to understand that we need Native stewards because as Indigenous people they have the inherited wisdom of the ages. We learned that the Great Dust Bowl took place because people ignorant to the land they had taken from the Indigenous people and ignoring Indigenous ways, killed the Bison and put cattle on instead who ate up the grass cover, and they also mowed up the grass cover to plant wheat. Bison eat the grass in a way that does not pull it up as deeply as cattle do, so they support a groundcover that holds the dirt in place. My friend at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago introduced me to his Native friend and colleague who is an expert in indigenous plants of our region. He learned from his mother and aunts and they from their mother and aunts and that is how the plant knowledge was passed down. He came and taught our students about native plants ecosystems. He looked at what was growing at our school and discussed the ecosystems that the plants were a part of such as where you might have a plant that is a toxin along with the plant that provides the antidote in the same ecosystem. He also talked about what plants in our area are used for medicinally. With the Great Lake Michigan in our neighborhood, we learned about The Great Lake Commons, a group of Indigenous and other local people who want to conserve the lakes together. It seems that slowly there is understanding of the important role that Indigenous people play in stewarding the lands and waters. https://www.greatlakescommons.org/
We endorse this model over the Great Lakes Charter, which gives governors of the Great Lakes states and provinces in Canada stewardship over the lake without Tribal voices whose legal rights for fishing in waters that are healthy are not being enforced by the governors. At least I do not see this happening. Instead governors have allowed money making businesses to endanger the environment. Enron's pipeline in Lake Michigan is a big point of contention. Under the governors it may be too late to save the largest source of freshwater in North America if not the world. So my colleague and I taught about the importance of Indigenous stewardship, and we looked at some projects in our area, like the Gun Lake Pottawatomi tribe who are redeveloping native wild rices, conserving black ash trees traditionally used to make baskets, and lake sturgeon, as well as practicing environmental stewardship of the lake and lands in general.
https://gunlaketribensn.gov/departments/administration/environmental/environmental-projects/
All of the Native tribes that I know of have extensive conservation departments. Chicago is home to the third largest urban indigenous populations in the USA. The American Indian Center has been involved in local conservation projects. https://www.nps.gov/articles/northwest-portage-walking-museum-connecting-visitors-to-illinois-natural-and-cultural-history.htm
Our students looked at water struggles in many parts of the country and in Mexico too. Here is a Native water conservation protest song that my students like. https://youtu.be/Onyk7guvHK8?si=3B7tv0Opj1PwA5dE
We need native teachers stewards teaching us how to live in harmony with our planet. Mni Wiconi! Water is life!
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi) thank you for educating the next generations and sharing these resources.
As an Australian - yeah, our track record with our First Nations people (up to and including today - witness the Voice referendum 6 months ago) is atrocious, but we are veeeery slowly learning to accept their wisdom when it comes to land management in a giant country that burns regularly. As someone who was finishing primary school when Terra Nullius was overturned, I was just old enough to understand how wrong that whole thing had been, and that the colonials had set up a horrendous system - which we're still working our way out of today. Here's hoping we can...
Philámayaye (thank you in Lakȟótiyapi) for sharing your experiences.
I've not been to your beautiful country, but it's a bucket list item for me. My heart ached for you all when bushfires ravaged your people, lands, flora and fauna in 2019-2020.
Burning's supposed to be a feature, not a bug, in terms of some of our weird and wonderful flora - but Western arrival messed with the environment and mistreatment of locals means a lot of lost knowledge. We get minor (relatively) bushfires pretty regularly - near my area about 3 months ago and round Perth on the other coast at the same time, and there's one burning south of Perth at the moment. The major ones tend to hit a little further apart, but they're often dire. There's a few programs running around the country specifically employing First Nations people to use their methods of land and fire management. I think there might even be a few being set up to deal with water management and flood prevention in other areas... Baby steps, but it's a start.
And if you do ever get the chance, please come and visit - I humbly posit we're worth that long trip halfway around the world :)
It just makes sense that native peoples have much to contribute to our understanding of the environment and to our view of planet earth as a whole. That is one of the great benefits of living in a country with a strong aboriginal presence. And that to me is their primary contribution to the country and to our world – or at least it could be. And the move to having native peoples be more involved in the stewardship of our lands, especially those of national parks, makes a whole lot of sense. But that is not happening to the degree it could. And it seems that there is a huge opportunity being missed here – for us all.
For the most part what I see from native environmental activism, is thinly veiled requests to get more land back – which is just not going to happen. For native peoples to be granted a greater role in the stewardship of the planet, one of the things they need to do is show specific examples of what they would do in specific instances, in specific ways, to specific ecosystems. And I just don’t see that.
For example (though I don’t want to get into the details here) there is a lake near where I am from that is in terrible shape. But I see no specific activism on the part of natives in the area. What I see instead are casinos.
Why not use some of the money generated from those casinos, to start environmental study programs to educate young people in the area, and to give them a better and more native-centric view of the environment? Or how about creating specific initiatives about specific problems, like those of the nearby lake – which could come up with specific solutions?
That would be something that would create more support for native issues in general. And it would cause the voters to become more environmentally active in ways that might force governments to act to save the planet.
But that requires native groups to show the rest of us what they can do. That’s how things work in the real world. Vague prescriptions and wish lists are not going to get it done. In order to make something happen and get a project off the ground, you need to be able to articulate your plans in a way that makes others buy into them. And that is just not happening with native activism.
Instead the current methodology appears to be forcing others to support native issues because natives are one of the acceptably oppressed groups progressives love to pretend they care about (until it causes problems for them individually, like raising the cost of their electricity). For truly positive things to happen, native environmentalists need to get out and make their own case. And until they do, they and their issues will be suck in the ghettos of political culture.
In other words, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist.
Are you taking appointments for marginalized communities to visit you in your home or office to convince you of their worthiness to exist and have any say in their own lives?
I'm no expert when it comes to astronomy, but I do know neither one of us is the center of the Universe, even if one of us was told their entire life that they are.
"Indigenous peoples deserve no say because they've failed to prove their worthiness to me and I don't like how they spend their money!"
Philámayaye, wašiču. I could have never demonstrated why things are the way they are so well as your treatise has.
Oh c’mon! It’s just like when the white people had to do all those things he listed to prove that they were capable, responsible and invested enough to be trusted with the ownership and stewardship of tribal lands.
Oh… wait.
I do not reply to sarcasm, because it suggests that those who use it have nothing of value to add to the conversation. But I DO note that unlike the author of this piece, you did respond to some of the things I actually said, which seems noteworthy in this forum.
What I’m “adding” is that maybe you should check your ethnocentricity.
The "author of this piece" addressed exactly what you noted—until something has proven itself worthy to you, it has no merit.
What you failed to address is that marginalized communities don't have the mainstream forums to share any of the proof you require be served up under your nose for your approval.
So maybe you could JFGI instead of whinging on about casinos and how no one got your stamp of approval for how Indigenous tribes you think you know everything about spend their money.
Perhaps you could check your privilege, but I highly doubt it. And I'm not going to spoonfeed you resources or information because you're not really interested in coming out of your ivory tower. You just want to make certain everyone knows how superior you believe you are to "the author of this piece."
So all I have for you is this—I see you, I hear, you, I've dealt with men like you for 54 years, I no longer waste my time on wašiču.
"So maybe you could JFGI instead"
Google what? Again you give me no idea what you are talking about. You may think you are, but you aren't.
"marginalized communities don't have the mainstream forums"
You have a forum, and a rather powerful one. Why not use that? And how many resources are needed to come up with a mission statement, some kind of indigenous philosophy of stewardship? A handful of scholars, and environmental and tribal leaders tossing emails back and forth over a couple of months would probably do it. And that could be the center of a global indigenous environmental network on the Internet. And a couple of college kids could throw that site together in a matter of weeks.
It would be a place for all environmentally minded individuals to come together around a single philosophy and approach that (even if it wasn’t totally native-created) would be native-centric and native-approved. And it would allow those there to take that idea further and come up with other initiatives, like creating a new kind of carbon tax exchange etc., all with the stamp of approval of global native activism.
That would force the governments of the world out of the way, and allow the people to take action. And if successful enough, the governments would eventually have to follow along and sign up.
Being on the inside, you may not realize how much credibility and sway natives have when it comes to environmental issues. Even for non-environmentalists, when it comes to those issues, you are viewed as the real earthlings, and the rest of us just visitors. The pushback generally comes when you propose actions that are seen as purely self-serving – meaning us spending money or losing profits to solve a problem you’re having. But this would be a case of you telling the world something that is clearly in its own best interest.
And it’s not as though you wouldn’t be able to capitalize on it in some ways, financially and otherwise. One of the benefits would be that the website could be a clearinghouse for local community initiatives, such as the kind I suggested earlier around environmental training and activism for the general public. And those casinos I also mentioned would be the perfect venue for those types of events – and would be profitable and otherwise beneficial to all, not to mention the environment.
One problem I DO see from my perspective, is that native peoples and their communities only seem to be concerned with their own piece of the planet. This is further complicated by the fact that native people do not appear to like to work with other natives from other communities. But I don’t claim to know whether there is any truth in that.
In any case, I suppose this is the kind of thing I had on my mind when I wrote my reply to your piece. It may not have been written in the best spirit. But this is the way I was thinking.
And it doesn’t seem to me that money or resources need to be an issue. The only real issue is “will.” And the kinds of environmental devastation happening to native communities around the planet should be enough encouragement to try something of this nature, size and scope. Otherwise there is no way we are ever going to do what needs to be done to save the planet, as anyone already knows who's been watching the self-congratulating elites that have been running things over the last few decades.
I realize this is all really far fetched. And I’m not saying anyone should or would, or even could do this. But as I thought about it in more depth, this IS the kind of thing I was getting at. And I suppose that’s because the search for meaning in the modern world is at the heart of much of my fiction, even my novel about Trump-era politics. I just don’t get to write about it much on Substack.
First Nations peoples should not have to buy back any land from the federal government! Lands that are available for sale to them should be returned to them with the authorization and funds to administer them.
Furthermore, there should be federal and state grants and funding given directly to the tribes to purchase ancestral lands and in-holdings that are in private ownership by non-indigenous folks. (Full disclosure: I am a non-indigenous folk.)
It is way , way past time that these Indigenous people be recognized positively and gratefully. So when does the U S plan to correct some of the most tragic circumstances many of these people have faced from our government. So many tribes still live in substandard situations without clean running water or heat .
We have an obligation to make this right.
Excellent article.
Altho, opposition warfare has done their darn best to make a good man sound crazy, Rfk jr has fought for clean air, water, soil, health & indigenous people for many years.He has sued giants like Monsanto & won, on behalf of poisoned people.
He & several of his children joined the Water Protectors on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing tribal lands and threatening the Tribe’s primary water source. And he and his son were arrested in front of the White House for protesting the Keystone Pipeline's construction through native lands and protected wilderness.
This is not to sway votes, but to put out there, that one party (formerly mine & Rfk jr’s) has spent MULTI-MILLIONS to smear, censory & block ballots for 3rd party candidates including Jill Stein, Cornel West & Jill Stein.
Rfk jr after cleaning up the Hudson was on the front of magazines called “Hero of the Planet.” Because of smears, he’s known now by nothing that resembles the good man that he is.
Here indigenous tribes speak re Rfk jr:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11sJUyzIiNQ
7 yrs ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgIbR4xrWhw
RFK Jr. Podcast: Native American Leadership
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rQtdizmw0
Thank you for this article. I just wanted to add that I also enjoyed the carefully measure responses in the comment section here. This one, I especially enjoyed when responding to a somewhat arrogant poster:
"I'm no expert when it comes to astronomy, but I do know neither one of us is the center of the Universe, even if one of us was told their entire life that they are.”