We belong to the Earth. We belong to Earth. This is the fundamental point of departure of all indigenous cultures. We arise from the Earth would Return to the Earth, this Earth.
The Earth belongs to them. Earth belongs to them. This is the fundamental point of departure of the imperial cultures whose lineage, practices, and the purposes derive from Rome. They subsume the Earth and will not Return to their mothers, their Mother.
The first recorded revolution in what we call human history occurred in Sumeria in the name of Re-turning to the Mother.
What we call civilization, this betrayal, this epiphenomenon, this transitory excursion into domination and submission, this sado-state, this aberration, this denial of all limit, this frenzy of Destroyers, this predation, this transitory and restless nightmare of humanity twisting on its bed, - this asylum for the insane, for the pretenders to grandeur and world domination, this “progress," this grain of windblown sand in the Great Canyon of geologic time, must end.
The unseen law of Earth, the unwritten word of our souls, the language of the animals, the patient agony of our ancestors and the immediate potential for mass extinction in which we are immersed all speak to us with a single and unmistakable voice.
We must Return. Our lives, our world, are out of Balance.
We belong to Earth. The Earth does not belong to us.
Who we are
The Xicana/o people are native to this land. From Guatemala to Hopiland the Kachinas and deities, the spirit of the land, are one. Our peoples, largely the Uto-Aztecan peoples-the Hopi, Comanche, Shoshone, Tongva, Ute, Tohona O'odham, Ra-Ram-Uri (Tarahumara), Huichol, Paiute, and Azteca (Mexica) --arose from this land.
We are their descendants, the uprooted ones, the end product of five centuries of genocide, the greatest Holocaust in human history. In the first century of it, over 120 million of our ancestors - at a minimum 90% of all living native human beings – perished.
Many of our cultures shattered - their living memory extinguished, their libraries burned, languages and traditions obliterated. Whole peoples became extinct, their bones piled around the mouths of the mines as far as the eye could see, like the killing fields of Cambodia. We are the scorned and ragged children of the survivors.
The destroyers have yet to finish with us, or with our Mother, the Earth. Even now, as the indigenous spirit, the spirit of our homeland, Aztlan, is reborn in our hearts, even now, as we Return to the ways of our ancestors, the Destroyer’s road toward death is culminating in a final dementia, a final tragic conclusion. The “logic” of the Betrayal of the Mother, the logic of Rome, the logic of Conquest, of “civilization” itself may very well culminate in the Death of Life on Earth.
Their scientists warn us now of what the elders of the First Nations have always known – the path the Conquerors have walked ends in death. But now we are faced, not with mere death – rather we are faced with another Great Dying, a mass extinction like the mass extinction of 250 million years, when 95% of all species died.
The Great Dying was due, the scientists now tell us, to runaway global warming, the same kind of crisis we face today – unless, by the grace of the Spirits of the Earth, we are able to avert it, to turn back from the point of No Return.
But now it is not only one civilization, one spirit; now it is all beings whose very existence is at stake. They have brought us to the end. The next few years will decide, our Elders – and now the scientists - tell us, the fate of the Earth.
It is the purpose of this website to mobilize us, to conscientize us, for survival. It is unclear whether or not survival is possible, or what it will require of us to see to it that as many of our people, and as many of or plant and animal relatives as possible might survive. For those who are willing, it will certainly require prayer, ceremony and purification. It will require knowledge, and action. It will require land, and, as the Hopi Elders tell is, blending with the land; and it may well require direct intervention in the affairs of our species on a scale most difficult to imagine.
But we are not here to preach. Those who are awake now, those who are able, will see – and act. For those who are not, it may already be too late.
The Current Situation and Indigenous Knowledge
Today, throughout the entire length of Ixachilan, from the Amazon to the Four Corners, from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, the relations between the Earth and traditional cultures are being tried and tested under a weight of oppression so profound that it eludes our powers of expression.
But it is under these very conditions that the elders of a number of First Nations have called on all Native peoples to walk the path of Return, to reintegrate ourselves with our Mother, the Earth, and to rekindle the spark of our ceremonies, cultures and traditions. They have called on us to Return, to walk the path of Balance and Beauty. We cannot ignore the call. It is the call of Earth, our Mother, to all her lost children of every nation.
Moreover, it is clear to us that Earth and Life hang in the balance, and depend upon our actions today. The threats of an Ecological Holocaust or a Nuclear Holocaust are real. Moreover, they are imminent. This website is devoted, in large measure, to conveying how profound the crisis we face really is.
Cultures that ignore or deny that the Earth and all living beings are sacred, and have a right to exist on their own terms, cannot survive. The current crisis shows that they are bound to play the role of Destroyer, and are bound, ultimately, to destroy even themselves.
It is not our intention in posting communiqués, reports and reflections from First Nations to feed the fetishism of destroyers. It is not our intent to feed the misdirected fetishism of well intentioned New Agers whose fascination with Native peoples reduces, all too often, to a romanticized cultural imperialism.
For anyone who is moved by the considerations put forth by the First Nations, one’s primary obligation is to assimilate the material, and then to concretize it in terms of the values one lives by. One has an obligation not to play Indian, and not to aggrandize oneself as a spiritual “leader.”
One has the obligation not to idle away one’s time in speculation or idle “research,” or in the endless hall of mirrors that derives from projecting oneself into a foreign culture and trying to define one’s own, individual role in it. If you are white, you were probably not an “Indian” in your past life, and you are probably not the centerpiece of a plan from the Pleiades to enlighten the people of planet Earth.
If one chooses to explore the messages of the First Nations one has the obligation to integrate such knowledge – knowledge which comes to us a gift from others, and as a cry for – let’s say it plainly – repentance.
We have learned this much. First and foremost one must integrate such knowledge into one’s morality and politics. At the heart of Native morality is respect. Respect for Earth, Her creatures, and other humans. It is for this reason, as we understand it, that in their Message to the Western World, the Hau De No Sau Nee, or Six Nations Confederation, says that spirituality is the highest from of political consciousness.
For members of the colonizing, destroyer culture, respect comes only with great difficulty. All sectors of the white nation have learned to take “power” and privilege for granted, and to take for granted the impact of their power and privilege on those Europe oppresses.
Europeans, and white men in particular, are taught to ignore the question that is at the practical heart of respect, and of our relationship to the Earth, the animals and other peoples. That question – the core moral, political and cultural question is this: “Whose needs get met by whom, and on what basis?” This question includes the plants and animals, the stones, streams and mountains. It includes the very air we breathe. It includes the children, parents and grandchildren of the Third and Fourth Worlds.
To explore or follow indigenous knowledge, then, is to endeavor to understand the Lakota phrase “All my relations.” It is to understand who we are in relation to others. To all beings. It is to accept responsibility for all life and our relationship to it.
It is because we attempt, in our own lives, to accept responsibility, that we publish communiqués, reports and reflections on these matters from First Nations and their elders.
We understand that it will take generations to restore the Xicana/o people to a healthy, Earth-based culture, and that we are not, ourselves, the end result of that process. But we have accepted the responsibility of setting a direction for the generations to come.
We give thanks, at the end of this cycle, that we are so honored as to play even this small role, and to regain some small measure of human dignity and health. We pray that our great-grandchildren harvest the fruits of our efforts, and that, together with all nations, we might help to protect both land and life, and hold the world in balance.
Those who have shared these messages with the world have fulfilled a sacred duty, often a great personal cost. We honor them, and thank them.
1 comment:
Very good and informational blog. I have added a link to here on my site.
The Synthesizer - links
Gary W.
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