When I was an Indian, one of the Lakota Sioux, descended from the original inhabitants of the land, the Government of the white settlers of the US tried to slowly eradicate the Indian nation through a slow infiltration of our lands by white settlers and bringing gold hunters into the Black Hills.
This served to reduce our food supply and the actions of the Government’s enforcement arm, the army was to kill us off.
I do not consider the term of us being original owners of the land to be appropriate for it was and is the land of the great spirit which we carefully and lovingly tended for ‘him’.
Following the battle of the Little Big Horn the government changed its plan to speeding up the eradication of the Indian by killing the buffalo roaming the plains and allowing the Black Hills to be infested by gold hunters.
They followed this by a deceitful offer to help our people by putting them on reservations and once there filling their bellies with food, food supplied as long as they followed the rules of the white man, which included learning a new religious belief.
It was a plan of creating control through dependence with the rules of dependence changing at the whim of the government.
It was driven through greed to take over our land and all that lay beneath the surface, plotted by a few and delivered by a government as if it was for the good of all.
Slowly my people succumbed through hunger and a belief that they could no longer fight the might of the white man’s government. One by one or in small groups they quietly made their way to the reservation so as to be fed. I recognised the signs of their submission but did not try to stop them for that was between them and their great spirit.
I knew what they didn’t and that was they were giving away the tradition of the Indian and our culture which was going to be eradicated through submission. Each one who left moved from being a warrior to a worrier.
I recognised in each one who I saw on the reservation, a person with a full belly and an empty heart. Too late, each knew what they had given up and their shame was great.
I was profoundly sad for I thought of the deeds of my ancestors, of my brother and my friends, all washed into history and now of little to no consequence. I did know that nothing the white man did could eradicate the energy of the Indian from the land.
The tactics of the government were clear, but only to those who could see; wipe out our food supply ( in the terms of the earth today close down your ability to earn money), lock us into a confined space, make us reliant on the government to survive, surround us with ever increasing rules and inject us with what would poison us (in my time it was alcohol) so as to make us weak.
In doing this they broke the spirit of the Indian nation, one by one.
For those who went to the reservation and were aware of the consequences of their surrender, the immediate need for food overrode any cultural responsibility.
Once again it is time for me to speak of these times for it is upon certain parts of the earth again. In succumbing to the suppression and control tactics of governments you are surrendering your history and your voice.
The outcome is that others must fill the chasm and lead, not through violence, but through a vision that each man has the ability to positively and lovingly impact the future of the earth and from this group the leaders will show.
Each man has the ability to defend the right on earth of freedom of choice and an equal ability to desert it for a full belly and an empty heart.
In making decisions know first what the long term cost of that decision is.
This is from my heart.
From my guide Crazy Horse through Ian Rogers Director Sphinx Spiritual
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