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Chanku Luta (Red Road)



Hau Mitakuyapi
Take a minute, read, review, comment, we of the Dakota Nation may be forgotten in time, but for now we will never be ignored...I will see you on the Red Road of Life...Wopida Tanka
Hokshida Maza (Iron Boy) Bdewakantowan Dakota Akichita










































Tuesday, October 1, 2024

 



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


Monday, April 4, 2022

Wolfchild vs US final decision from SCOTUS

Wolfchild versus United States

This week the United States Supreme Court denied the Wolfchild plaintiffs request for a hearing.  This ends the 10 year legal pursuit of the Mdewakanton Dakota plight for justice in the Wolfchild vs US case in the Court of Federal Claims.  The Mohrman & Kaardal law firm handled this case all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The loss of this case is of great disappointment to the Mdewakanton Dakota Nation in it's effort to claim recognition as the true Minnesota Mdewakanton Dakota Nation.
Many Dakota have been disenfranchised as a result of the Department of Interior's neglect and abuse in the handling of their federal trust.

In the interim the three "Dakota" communities of Lower Sioux, Prairie Island and Shakopee have usurped the federal recognition and dismantled the trust for their own benefit and purposes.  They now control multi-million dollar businesses while portraying themselves as "American Indian" communities with rights to establish gaming industries.
Of course during the entire litigation the "tribes" supported the Department of the Interior and the other government defendants.

The story of this suit and all of the people involved goes all the way back to the Dakota Conflict of 1862 and even earlier in some respects.  The entire history of the Minnesota Mdewakanton Dakota is entangled with the corrupt aspirations of the legal, business and governments interests of Minnesota.

In the 1860's during the civil war the state of Minnesota was as a territory, a wannabe state if you will.

Christianity's War on the Indigenous People of the Western Hemisphere (A Personal Dialogue)

Spiritual Life and Religious Death in Indian Country


The  war between Christianity and the Indigenous people of the western hemisphere has been one of the world's longest wars.  Beginning with the enslavement of the first Indigenous members of the western hemisphere to the imprisonment of the Indigenous children of Canada.

In the process of this proselytizing, the Church, any church, has destroyed the core value system of the American Indian.  Hoping to replicate that system with the word of God as envisioned by the church leaders.  But the church has bastardized the word of God and it's original purpose by imposing their own morals and values as the covenant.

Christopher Columbus's goal was not to advocate for religion, it was to find silk from China. He did not enable Christianity but rather induced the slave trade by abducting the Taino natives.

In John Hagee's book "Jerusalem Countdown," (A Prelude to War), (2006,2007), he interviews Bridgette Gabriel about the population explosion among the Muslims and "...terrorists breeding terrorists..." in the middle east and the world.  Citing the  Muslim's multiple wives protocol as the reason for the explosion and the problem it creates for Christian survival.

This same type of antagonistic Christian thinking in the western hemisphere was one impetus for a widespread pogrom of sterilization among Native women.  Where mass assimilation and cultural indoctrination did not work in the "civilizing" of the Native populations, genetic annihilation and female sterilization became the Christian duty.

As one of the largest corporations in the world during the 15th century the Church had to expand it's reign and thereby increase their resources, and silver and gold was always a power base for the church.

The exploitation of the New World afforded the church an opportunity to expand it's power base and increase it's influence over the monarchy in charge.  The monarchy in turn believed in the holy blessings of the church as they became the frontrunners for a new world order.  "With God on Our side" became the ulterior mantra of the day, while the administrators dribbled a saliva of greed and gluttony.

New World documents such as the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and the Magna Carta became the tools of legitimacy in the church's headlong foray into it's evangelical work with the heathen, savage races of sub-human's, who obviously were in dire need of Jesus Christ and God Almighty.

The existentialist spirituality of the Indigenous communities of the western hemisphere have always been innate.  They make up the longest and most enduring of spiritual realms of the world.  They still exist.  They are pre-Columbian and post-Wounded Knee.

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 reaffirmed this existence.

When the Jesuits and other evangelists made virgin contact with the Indigenous populace the assumption was that there was a sub-human race that had populated this wilderness and their way of life must be eradicated physically and spiritually. 

And eradicate they did, by fire, gun, cross, water, oil, disease, slavery, rape, pedophilia, forced labor and by eating the spirits of the true Indigenous people's of the western hemisphere.

And they are still eating.

But we are still here.


















Thursday, August 24, 2017

Peace Stands with Standing Rock



Peace Stands with Standing Rock
by
Ronald P. Leith (Ta-humpa Was'te, Good Moccasin)

The fire that was set in Standing Rock by the Oceti Sakowin, NoDAPL, and a multitude of national and international participants has now spread across the United States and all over the world.  The threat of total water pollution and clean water decimation has brought together people from all walks of life, all professions and a variety of grass roots movement who gather to serve one purpose.
 
The blockade of corporate operations transporting oil from Canada to the United
States and beyond has become a central objective for activists of all color, race and creed.  Many of these activists have not had a confrontational background from which to draw an integral conflict strategy.  Although the international history of non-violent action has left it's mark on many as a exemplary framework from which to create a new strategy for confrontation and conflict resolution.

Peace has become the primary and preferable tool to be faithfully followed and utilized in the face of overt militaristic action, especially in the case of Standing Rock vs the Dakota Access Pipeline and their enforcers from Morton County, North Dakota and beyond.

The international practice of non-violence has a demonstrated and lengthy history which include prominent players who are now an embedded part of world history.  The effective legacy they have left us with proclaims victories many at Standing Rock may not have heard of, sought or recognized.   Although they have proven to be highly effective nonetheless. So becoming peace activists in their own right they are creating a legacy of their own which includes non-violent strategies which have been stable and proven in history.

The antagonist police state has evolved into multi-national corporate oligarchy, demonized corporation CEO's, and private armies of militarily trained goons.  Not that much different from the Indian state police actors of Mahatma Ghandi's era or the southern city and state police of Martin Luther King's.  Even though the names, faces and uniforms have changed the mission has remained the same.  The protection and defense of imperialist colonialism and the development and the growth of the wealthy elite and their financial gain.

As effective as the peace movements new efforts have been to defend the world's natural resources we still find that corporatism has an edge we cannot seem to dull or erode.  This is the philosophical mindset empowered and emboldened by a select few who are careless, privileged and fearful of a future in which all are equal and the fiscal state is evenly distributed and balanced.

Herein lies the opportunity for brave new tactics to be developed around peaceful opposition to a corporate imperialistic power which is longing to drain the earth of all it's life sustaining gas, minerals and energy.  It's a preemptive strike which must be targeted at the corporate training modules current set in the primary and secondary educational milieus worldwide.  These programs have been set by multi-national corporations seeking to train new megatronic, and industrialist classes which promulgate their ruling class systems.

This demands a life changing educational model that is holistic driven around the inter-connectedness of all life and the vital understanding that when one part of the system is damaged we all suffer the consequences either in this life-time or our descendants suffer in their lifetime.  Life success for one should not mean the denigration and cancellation of life for all, including those who cannot defend themselves.

So while many of us are currently still in the field with our bandana's, long sleeves, provocative signs and dark glasses we need to send an army of educators out into the universe who will re-educate and implode the non-violent holistic approach to a proactive movement which will defend the earth against all corporate imperialistic machines.

The current US administration is adamantly focused on dismantling all protective legal barriers to the self-destructive path of corporate and governmental entities who have deemed them to be a hindrance to America's growth.  Clean water, unpolluted air, safe cars, stable housing are only a few of the targets chosen for disruption and elimination by the Trump administration.

The frightening fact is not that they are becoming a reality, but rather that there are individuals in the corporate, educational and government fields that are standing by not making any attempt to curtail or stop these processes.  And we know that those who do nothing are just as vulnerable as those who can do something.

When apathy reigns in the face of self destruction a new path must be cleared for those who recognize and loathe the ultimate motive and outcome.  While peaceful protests do bring worldwide attention and broadly educate it is also a reactionary method of disruption.  Typically we end up in the court system where we may be heard or in some cases we may be disqualified as legitimate parties to the issue.

The small pockets of re-training of what it means to be a community member has had effect but it is also taking the long way around.  The New Age movement, the post Kent State strategists, and the Anti Vietnam War coalitions are just a few of the effective models developed and ensconced in the American revolutionary resistance tradition.

But to have to reactivate these methods every ten years or so can be a diluting and nationally discouraging exercise making them ineffectual community exercises in futility.  So effective change has to come on every societal level simultaneously in order to be sustainable, trusted and self-renewable. 

It's a complete re-thinking of what we need as opposed to what we want.  That is a complete societal paradigm shift, a true reemergence of holistic philosophies which cross all international boundaries and cultural barriers.  The entire propagandist framework currently set in place has to be reconstructed or dismantled entirely.  Everything from advertising to taxes to congressional hearings and educational models.

But we can only do this as a peaceful conglomerate, using anti-divisive propaganda and the language of unity.  Some might say that this is anarchy, or modern day revisionism.  No, this is life.  The power to welcome and accept change on a global scale is a new direction, a fresh opportunity.  Our international survival depends on it, our future as a humanity free of colonialist contamination calls for it, our willingness and fortitude toward survival demands it.



Friday, March 24, 2017