First Nations International
And Climate Change
September 2025
Ronald P. Leith
From Florida to North Carolina, the southeast of America has been flooded with water and blown apart by wind. Many communities have been destroyed, many for the first time. People whose families have been living there for generations have lost everything.
These disasters are worsening as climate events become more destructive and widespread.
This is also the area where the removal of Indigenous Nations has been the most destructive, and widespread, and where total eradication has proved to be the most effective.
There are very few original inhabitants still living in these areas.
The original colonialists waged a complete and deliberate war of annihilation and removal from the middle of the 16th century right up until the late 1800s.
As a result of the eastern seaboard being settled first the original inhabitants were eventually seen as a hindrance to their progress. So the American war of attrition was congressionally and privately seen as a just war. So the forced removal was waged to make room for the millions of “New World” inhabitants who would build homes and businesses from Maine to Florida provided the land could be stolen and made available for settlement.
Now all of those multi-generational homes are being systematically destroyed by the weather.
God is at work here somewhere. Maybe the Christian version of God has gotten fed up with the Christian hypocrisy. Maybe American Christianity has lost touch with its own Creator.
I do not wish pain, difficulty, and hardship on any other human being. But natural disasters cannot be thwarted as easily as flipping a switch.
At the same time, there’s another movement that’s taking place a little to the west along the United States-Mexico border. That is the million family migration of Indigenous people into the United States. The majority of these families are here in search of a life, a better life than what is available in their home countries. The death and destruction that abounds in those countries many times are not understood or even acknowledged by the common American. As in America, we have become complacent and comfortable in all that we enjoy.
But there is a surge of resistance to this movement. These families are being seen as invaders, usurpers, criminals, and thieves with no right to infringe on the American way of life. This is a rich sentiment coming from a people who destroyed the original lifestyles of the eastern seaboard communities that have lived here for thousands of years.
So now there are two groups of people whose lives have been uprooted. The Americans living through a natural disaster in the southeast and the South and Central Americans fleeing an unbearable and unsustainable lifestyle of poverty, death, and despair.
But rather than come together in their time of need some have chosen divisiveness, blame, and anger. Each looks to the other as the prime cause of their human desperation. This is a lose-lose formula for progress.
In the current election year, many Americans have focused on a flimsy blame game whose playbook is taken from the 1930s Nazi Germany. Rather than accept responsibility for their downfalls in economic, and social affairs they have chosen to create a series of foreign demons who as targets are easier to blame. Thus we have a resurgence of the same policies that have been regurgitated from the 1500s and the 1930s. Their solutions are to not create solutions but only to project a nemesis which in reality is their shortcoming.
The real solution to any of these tribulations is unity, forgiveness, and mutual support. But so much time has passed where these attributes have not been utilized they have grown a dust where they’re no longer easily visible or even accessible. So many have chosen to place blame rather than look to the most reasonable avenues to rebuilding a country where equality and freedom are true keys to success.
Everything happens for a reason. As natural human beings, many of us in Indigenous communities all across the Northern Hemisphere are not surprised by these events. Our elders and spiritual leaders have been warning of a coming natural imbalance for many years. We have tried to warn those who would not heed any warnings. We have tried to offer humane solutions to a disruption that may or may not have been avoided. We cried for logistical preparation and spiritual caution in human behavior.
But not only have we not been heard we have been dismissed as militants, enemies of the state, imprisoned, and murdered without remorse or repercussion. But it’s not too late. There is always hope. The only impairment we suffer is in our invisibility. But perhaps we will be seen before it’s too late for anyone to change.
Ronald P. Leith
10/01/2024
