IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DREAM

WAKAN TANKAN NICI UN (MAY THE GREAT SPIRIT WALK WITH YOU) Sioux and Lakota language

‘I did not know then how much had ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.’ Black Elk

‘A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream… Black Elk

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Peace of mind is to be found both in silence and in our hearts. When we live all the time in our minds, we set up an impediment to our connection with all of life and to genuine connection with others. Every wisdom tradition believes in the power of silence and that silence is usually found in nature. That seems to be the ideal place for the heart to be at rest. However, it appears that humankind has separated itself from nature as well as the healing power of silence.

‘Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it, because without it we become faint and weak. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world.

Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves. You and I need the strength that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice ourselves for others.’ Chief Dan George Salish Nations B.C. Canada

‘The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people. When they realize their relationship; their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka (Great Spirit) and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.’ Black Elk

The problem of the ‘busy mind’ seems to be a product of our Western culture. Not all people everywhere, live so much in their heads. The following exchange is from Gail Godwin’s book, Heart which chronicles the renowned Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung’s encounter with the Native American Chief ‘Mountain Lake’ of the Taos Pueblos in New Mexico in 1932.

Jung: ‘I was able to talk with him as I have rarely been able to talk with Europeans’. Chief Ochiway Biano (Chief Mountain Lake) must have sensed a kindred spirit in the Swiss doctor, because he was so candid with him:

Chief Mountain Lake: ‘See how cruel the whites look; their lips are thin, their noses are sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We do not understand them. We think they are all mad.’

JUNG: ‘ Why do you think they are mad?’ MOUNTAIN LAKE : ‘They say they think with their heads.’ JUNG: ‘Why, of course’, says Jung, ‘What do you think with?’

MOUNTAIN LAKE: ‘We think here, indicating his heart.’

.After this exchange, Jung fell into a deep meditation. The Pueblo Chief had touched a vulnerable spot. Jung saw image after image of cruelties wreaked by his forebears: The Roman eagle on the North Sea and the White Nile, the keenly incised features of Julius Caesar...Charlemagne’s most glorious forced conversion of the heathen, the people of the South Pacific decimated by firewater, syphilis, and scarlet fever carried in the clothes that the missionaries had forced on them. Mountain Lake had shown Jung the other face of his civilization.

It was the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for its distant quarry. What makes this dialogue reported by Jung so relevant is that it describes an encounter between a representative of the unconscious ‘heart thinking’ of the ancients and a modern man of science and a pioneer of consciousness who understood that the wisdom of the heart must catch up with our overdeveloped ‘thinking heads.’

If we are to survive, we have to preserve the gold in the age-old knowledge of the heart and keep making it ever more conscious if we are to protect our growing human possibilities from the keen-featured bird-of-prey mentality that circles above.

‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’ Albert Einstein

We must develop a new consciousness of the heart. In our contemporary bottom-line society, heart knowledge, based on things like values in our relationships and personal courage, tends to be mistrusted as impractical, profitless, or non-existent. ‘Where is the heart anyway?’ scoffs the bird-of-prey executive trudging joylessly on his treadmill, except under the breastbone. No longer do we literally cut out the heart of our enemies to feed them to an out-of-date sun god: we do it in a bloodless, sophisticated way, without a flint knife, and we feed them to the contemporary god, ‘market-value function.’

A schedule defends from chaos and whims. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gear that spins the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in mid-air. How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives. Take the afternoon off. You can’t take it with you.

What can we gain by sailing to Mars if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and, without it, all the rest is not only useless, but disastrous. Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity of the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

We have lost our way. We have to find a way to foster awareness of the imminent and wanton destruction of our home, Mother Earth. We have got to find our way back to the Garden. We have what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. Your heart will lead the way to fulfillment. Transformation is a journey without a final destination.

WE KEEP BUSY: We keep so busy that we believe that the truth of our lives won’t catch up with us. We are always running after things, a vain and ever-elusive pursuit of happiness. But the more material goods or ‘success’ you accumulate only creates desire for more, more and more.

‘We sabotage our creative possibilities because the world revealed by our imagination may not fit well with the life we have taken so much trouble to construct over the years. Faced with the pain of that distance, the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment, and quickly busy ourselves.’ David Whyte

“As for me, I have a choice between honoring that dark life I’ve seen so many years ago moving in the junipers, or of walking away and going on with my human busyness. There is always a choice for humans.” Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

MINDFULNESS OF CONSUMPTION: In order to forget that we have pain: sorrow, fear, despair, loneliness, etc., we lose ourselves in the practice of consumption. We binge-watch Netflix series, we eat a lot of fat and sugar, drink, take drugs and we chase after material goods that have no intrinsic value. We suppress these feelings by consuming. So we distract ourselves in a myriad of ways- we do everything we can to avoid confronting our true selves. This kind of consumption is running away and the items we consume continue to bring the toxins of violence, fear, and anger in ourselves.

GREED AND CONSUMPTION: ‘It’s true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism , has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism; where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money.

We live in a society where the whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and passions as possible, in order to cater to their need for consumption.’ T. Merton

‘It did what all ads are supposed to do: Create an anxiety, relievable only by purchase.’ David Foster Wallace

It is difficult to navigate the world when we come from an attitude of scarcity instead of one of gratitude for what we already have; an attitude of abundance. Unfortunately, our capitalistic society, which now is the global economic model, teaches that we are always lacking and therefore need more, more, more. And we, as consumers, consume our hearts away-’sick with desire’, to quote Yeats. All the while we, in prosperous nations, continue to consume and discard, while abject poverty, disease and starvation exist in our own countries as well as in our own country. The Big Beautiful Bill is taking food from 12.5 million children who go to bed hungry every night in America! And I have the stats to prove it.

‘The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.’ Albert Camus

Our culture encourages us to get ahead at any cost and grab what we can while we can without any concern for fundamental values. And yet we consume, we use our credit cards, our house mortgages to consume. Seriously, we don’t know that we want something until someone makes it, shows it to us, and then convinces us that we need it.

And once something is out there on the market, there is no better determinant than who will buy it, than algorithms. A computer is much better than a human at triggering Pavlov’s dog syndrome; far exceeding the wildest dreams of ad executives and marketing departments. In fact, the whole economic model is not to find out what people need and/or want, but to create something totally new and then convince them that they have to have it.

NATIVE AMERICAN PROVERB

Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was not loaned to you by your ancestors. It was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth, we borrow it from our children.

When all the trees are cut down

When all the animals have been hunted-

When all the waters are polluted

When all the air is unsafe to breathe

Only then will you discover that You cannot eat money. Cree Prophecy

‘This we know. The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth. All things are connected, like the blood that unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the Earth. Mankind does not weave the web of life; we are only a strand of it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.’ Chief Seattle Suquamish Tribe Washington State 1786- 1866

‘If this earth should ever be destroyed, it will be by desire, by the lust of pleasure and self-gratification, by greed of the green frog skin, by people who are only mindful of their own self, forgetting the wants of others.’ John Lame Deer

‘All creatures exist for a purpose. Even an ant knows what that purpose is- not with its brain, but somehow it knows. Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.’ John Lame Deer

‘The time will soon be here when my grandchildren will long for the cry of the loon, the flash of a salmon, the whisper of spruce needles, or the screech of an eagle. But he will not make friends with any of these creatures and when his heart aches with longing, he will curse me. Have I done all to keep the air fresh? Have I cared enough for the water? Have I left the eagle to soar in freedom? Have I done everything I could to earn my grandchild’s fondness?’ Chief Dan George

‘ Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of the little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show them many things which older people miss.’ Black Elk

‘A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us; that clear-eyed vision; that true instinct for what is awe- inspiring is diminished and even lost before we reach childhood.’ Rachel Carson

‘To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most people do not see the sun. At least, they have a superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

‘No witchcraft, no enemy action has silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people have done it themselves. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware and intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits.’ Rachel Carson

‘Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or vision to demand that which is good? The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called ‘civilized’. The human race is challenged more than ever to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature, but of ourselves.’ Rachel Carson

‘Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them. It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.’ Seneca

‘Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. We may have found a cure for most evils, but we have not found a remedy for the worst of them all; the apathy of human beings.’ Helen Keller

The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy!

‘We urgently need an end to these fake assurances, to the sugar- coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when it is in full possession of the facts.’ Rachel Carson

‘Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn’t make a corporation a terrorist.’ Winona LaDuke Ojibwe

‘We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off.’ John Trudell Santee Dakota

‘The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called ‘civilized’. The human race is challenged more than ever to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature, but of ourselves.’ Marine Biologist and Environmental Activist Rachel Carson

‘In nature, nothing exists alone. Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of friends who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just quite not fatal. We stand now where two roads diverged ‘ Rachel Carson from ‘Silent Spring’

‘But, unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s poems, they are not equally fair. The road we have been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth, superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at the end lies disaster. The other fork in the road- the one less traveled by- offers our last, only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.’ Environmental Activist and Marine Biologist Rachel Carson

ONE WORLD ONE PLANET ONE HUMAN RACE : ‘And if we dare to look into those eyes, then we shall feel their suffering in our hearts. More and more people have seen that appeal and felt it in their hearts. All around the world there needs to be an awakening of understanding and compassion, that reaches out to help the suffering in their vanishing homelands. We must embrace hungry, sick, and desperate human beings, people who are starving while the fortunate among us have so much more than we need.; Jane Goodall from ‘Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

‘And if, one by one, we help them, the hurting animals and the desperate humans, then together we shall alleviate so much of the hunger, fear, and pain in the world. Together we can bring change to the world, gradually replacing fear and hatred with compassion and love. Love for all living beings.’ Jane Goodall

‘Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings. Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice. While poverty persists there is no true freedom.’ We need to exert ourselves that much more and break out of the vicious cycle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful: those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own vision’ Nelson Mandela

Cultural speciation has been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It has hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we have been born… These cultural mind prisons… Cultural speciation is clearly a barrier to world peace. So long as we continue to attach more importance to our narrow group membership than to the ‘global village’ we will propagate prejudice and ignorance. Jane Goodall

‘Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry; is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous war.’ Erich Fromm

IDOLATROUS WAR: In 2022, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI ) estimated global military expenditure at $2.24 trillion, the highest level ever recorded by SIPRI. Global spending grew by 19% over the decade 2013-22 and has risen every year since 2015. According to the Institute, the five largest arms exporters in 2018-22 were the United States, Russia, China, and Germany. The United States manufactures and sells 50 % of all weapons of mass destruction.

When I began to study the First Nations of North America, I was well aware that once the Europeans arrived, they would descend on native culture like a plague of locusts, destroying their way of life, and stealing their land. My hope is to encapsulate their way of life: spirituality, manners, philosophy, and wisdom. The Natives first experience with the Europeans showed them that their world was going to be hurled into the black pit. As a starting point, if interested, I recommend Dee Brown: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

THE FIRST EUROPEAN SETTLERS Most North American settlers believed they needed to subdue the wilderness. They had no notion of ecology. They didn’t view the trees as a species that interacted with animals, plants, and people. Inherited cultural assumptions influenced their approach to nature.

An unholy alliance of science and religion (Christianity) strengthened their justification for human dominance. If humans exploited nature and sold and traded its resources, they could end scarcity and make a profit. Settlers believed they had a God-given right to exploit the environment and new technologies and scientific methods provided the means to use it..

DOMINIONISM Genesis 1, Verse 26: [26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

And so men had the God- given right to make a profit from the bounty of nature, eventually making our home, our planet unsustainable for us to live in. Overwhelmed by tall stands of virgin forests, settlers viewed trees as something to be conquered. They felt it necessary- forests sheltered unwanted wildlife and pests and attracted lightning. To pioneers, the forests were frightening places with wild animals such as bears and wolves and wild men they viewed as savages.

From European folklore and literature: from German Black Forest fairy tales and bedtime stories of The Big Bad Wolf waiting for Little Red Riding Hood to come skipping along and the Wicked Old Witch trying to cook Hansel and Gretel to the hag-ridden woods of Celtic antiquity with its stories of covens of witches cavorting and copulating with demons in wild abandon.. They viewed the forests as eerie, awful places where the sound of the wind, the frightening silence, and the shadows cast by trees played tricks with their imaginations. The idea of getting lost in them terrified them.

FIRST NATIONS: SACROSANCT: FIRST NATIONS WISDOM

Sacrosanct is defined as ‘Something too valuable or important to be interfered with.’

As the fields of earth are divided,

Man makes a division of Life, and thereby creates sorrow.

‘The Earth is our Mother. She should not be disturbed by a hoe or plough. We want only to subsist on what she freely gives us. Our fathers gave us many laws which they have learned from their fathers. These laws were good. I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I realized then that we could not hold our own with the white men. We were like deer.’

‘They were like grizzly bears. We had a small country. Their country was large. We were content to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them.’ Chief Joseph Band of Nez Perce

‘Caretaking is the utmost spiritual and physical responsibility of our time and perhaps that stewardship is finally our place in the web of life; our work, the solution to the mystery of what we are. There are already so many holes in the universe that will never again be filled, and each of them forces us to question why we permitted such loss, such tearing away at the fabric of life, and how we will live with our planet in the future.’ L. Hogan Dwellings:

Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to the white man is an 'unbroken wilderness.' Luther Standing Bear

‘It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land. They claim this Mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.’ Sitting Bull Lakota Nations

‘Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions. Every little thing is sent for something, and in that thing there should be happiness and the power to make happy. Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus we should go, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World. Crazy Horse Oglala Sioux

THE CLASH OF CULTURES: ‘Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor they could not afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.’ John Lame Deer

"We didn’t know any kind of money, and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers and politicians. Therefore, we were not able to cheat and swindle each other. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.’ John Lame Deer Lakota Nation

‘Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to the white man is an 'unbroken wilderness.'‘ Sitting Bull Lakota

NATIVE GRATITUDE: ‘Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend or even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise one to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and the joy of living.

If you see no reason for giving thanks, then the fault lies in yourself. So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart: trouble no one about their religion. Respect others in their views, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. When it is your turn to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when the time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.’ Chief Tecumseh Shawnee First Nations

NATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON POSSESSIONS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY : ‘It was our belief that love of possessions is a weakness to overcome. Children must learn early the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give away what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving… The Indians, in their simplicity, literally give away all that they have- to relatives, to guests of other tribes or clans, but above all, to the poor and aged, from whom they can hope for no return.’ Dr. C.A. Eastman or Osiye S, Sioux South Dakota (1858- 1939)

‘I did not see anything {New York} to help my people. I could see that the Wasichus {white man} did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation’s hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.’ Black Elk Oglala Sioux Medicine Man

SPEAKING HONESTLY AND DEEP LISTENING :‘Praise, flattery, exaggerated manners and fine, high- sounding words, were not part of Lakota politeness. Excessive manners were put down as insincere, and the constant talker was considered rude and thoughtless. Conversation was never begun at once, or in a hurried manner. No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause, giving time for thought, was the truly courteous way of beginning and ending a conversation.’ Luther Standing Bear Lakota Sioux

“Respect means listening until everyone has been heard and understood, only then is there a possibility of balance and harmony, the goal of Native spirituality.’ Dave Chief- Grandfather of Red Dog. Shawnee Nation Ohio (1768- 1813)

Oh Great Spirit, help me always to speak the truth quietly, to listen with an open mind when others speak, and to remember the peace that may be found in silence. Cherokee Prayer

TWO WOLVES: There is an ancient story that derives from Native North American tradition where a grandfather is talking to his granddaughter. In it, the grandfather says to his granddaughter, ‘I have two wolves in my heart that are fighting each other. One wolf is vengeful, angry, and afraid, while the other wolf is kind, forgiving, and loving.’ After some time the little girl asks, ‘Grandfather, which wolf will win?’ He replies, ‘The one I feed the most.’

Never has it been more urgent for all of us to feed the wolf that is kind, forgiving and loving!

THE BEAUTY MAKES YOU ACHE TO BE WORTHY OF IT

‘He who finds himself in it may talk of bliss, not with an imperfect, poor, relative happiness such as people find in the pleasures of life; but with a happiness full, perfect, and sufficing, that leaves no void in the soul- no conscious unfilled void. Such a state was many a day mine in my solitary musings in the Isle of St. Peter. What is it that one enjoys in a situation like this? Nothing outside of oneself and one’s own existence…’ Jean- Jacques Rousseau

I don’t know how nature can restore us and bring us back to life. It had been decades since I had felt that way, and it was such a distant memory with so many wounds in my heart and my soul, but there were the silent stirrings of some primordial instinct of freedom and life and beauty that had defined much of my childhood. I didn’t know that it could be kept.

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen!

It answers: ‘I have made this place for you;

If you leave it, you may come back, staying here.’ W. Stafford

The more clearly we focus on the wonders and reality of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for its destruction. It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties, to know a sense of wonder and humility.

‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could learn what it had to teach me or not, so that when I came to die, I would discover that I had not lived. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.’ Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau went into the woods for two years and two months relying only on his own abilities- growing food, hunting, and building a cabin near Walden Pond. He chronicled his experience in the classic book Walden.

‘In the woods, a man casts off his years and what period whatsoever his life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth within these Plantations of God; a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith. Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all and the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. ‘ Emerson

‘I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness I find something more dear and tranquil than in streets or cities. As I have come to accept the state of my own mortality, I only find joy and solace in the great outdoors. Somehow, the peace, beauty, and stillness of nature obliterates all traces of my bewildered self and my soul, alive in the mystery, is at peace.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘All the time I was getting closer to animals and nature, and as a result, closer to myself and more and more in tune with the spiritual power that I felt all around. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can even describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected.’ Jane Goodall from Reason To Hope: A Spiritual Journey

NATIVE AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY ‘Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have already been there.’ Vine Deloria Jr.

An Algonquin native guide was walking with a priest through the forest on the way to visit a village of the Chippewa First Nations, where the priest was anxious to spread the ‘Good News’ of the Gospel. Suddenly, the guide stopped dead in his tracks, turned, and asked the priest:

‘Would I still go to hell if I never knew about God and sin and hell?’

The priest replied, ‘No, not if you never knew.’

Quietly, the native guide whispered. ‘Then why did you tell me?’

‘ And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shape of things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.’ Black Elk Lakota Sioux

‘One Thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you. But if you don’t they won’t talk back to you, then you won’t understand, and when you don’t understand you will fear, and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself. ‘ Chief Dan George Salish Nation

‘Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.’ Mourning Dove Salish

‘A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.’ Crazy Horse

‘The Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world; a world full of broken promises, selfishness and separations; a world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.’ Crazy Horse

‘In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.’ Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux

‘We Indians do not teach that there is only one god. We know that everything has power, including the most inanimate, inconsequential things. Stones have power, A blade of grass has power. Trees and clouds and all our relatives in the insect and animal world have power. We believe we must respect that power by acknowledging its presence. By honoring the power of the spirits in that way, it becomes our power as well. It protects us.’ Russell Means

TRUE SEEING: When the veils of our opinions and ideas are thin enough so we can see and know things as they are, rather than staying stuck in how we wish them to be or not, our vision becomes generous, healing, and peaceful. And it is felt by others instantly. It is felt, it is known, and it brings us peace of mind. And not just by humans.

Many Ancient Traditions believe that the world feels our seeing and sees us right back, even the trees and the rocks. To be seen by nature and to be seen as we truly are, we become an intimate part of the sensuous world.

‘The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It is the blood of our ancestors.’ Chief Plenty Coups, Crow Nation

‘I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.’ Luther Standing Bear

‘All life is a circle. The atom is a circle, orbits are circles, the earth, moon, and sun are circles. The seasons are circles. The cycle of life is a circle: baby, youth, adult, elder. The sun gives life to the earth who feeds life to the trees whose seeds fall to the earth to grow new trees. We need to practice seeing the cycles that the Great Spirit gave us because this will help us more in our understanding of how things operate. We need to respect these cycles and live in harmony with them.’ Rolling Thunder Cree Nation

Life moves as effortlessly as water: frolicking, sleeping, weeping, but never truly still. Never solid or finished. Always like water flowing from one place to the next: seed and fruit, rain and drought, everything travels in a gigantic circle, an eternal process of becoming something new. But we rarely see it. Humans tend to see only frozen moments, not the flow of things.

‘Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature- the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after winter.’ Rachel Carson

‘Hold on to what is good, even if it’s a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, even if it’s a tree that stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, even if it’s a long way from here. Hold on to your life, even if it’s easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, even if someday I’ll be gone away from you.’ Chief Crowfoot. Blackfoot Nation

‘Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as fact, then you are in trouble. God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.’ Joseph Campbell

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the world; to match your nature with Nature. The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.

And do not forget, every dawn, as it comes, is a holy event; and you must also remember the two leggeds and all other people who stand upon this Earth are sacred and should be treated as such.’ Black Elk, Arapaho Nation‘

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man’s heart away from nature becomes hard. You should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is true peace, which is within the souls of men.’ Luther Standing Bear

‘Even animals of the same kind- two deer, two owls- will behave differently from each other. I have studied many plants. The leaves of one plant, on the same stem- none are exactly alike. On all the earth there is not one leaf exactly alike. The Great Spirit likes it that way. He only sketches out the path of life roughly for all the creatures on earth, shows them where to go, where to arrive, but leaves them to find their own way to get there. He wants them to act independently according to their nature to the urge in each of them.’ John Lame Deer

‘I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency and no sense in honoring one thing or a few things and then closing the list. The pine trees, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves- we are at risk together or we are on our way to an unsustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.’ Mary Oliver

This body is a form destined to the world; it ensures that my body is an open circuit that completes itself only in things, in others, in the encompassing earth. Immersed in the natural world we only know it through the senses, and we are known through the senses of other beings, and not only humans.

We are part of this landscape, evolved in it, grew up in it, and still the possessor of all its gifts, although compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, ours may have atrophied from lack of use. But the sensation of being wholly connected with what Rachel Carson refers to as the ‘Repeated Refrains of Nature’ is no further than the sound of rain, the feel of the wind on my face, the warmth of the sun or sensing the sacrosanct relationship between me and a belted kingfisher.

Unfortunately, modern man has become so focused on harnessing Nature’s resources that he has forgotten how to learn from them. If you let them, however, the elements of nature will teach you as they have taught me. To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields.

‘Behold my brothers, the spring has come: the Earth has received the embraces and we shall soon see the results of that love. Every seed has awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being; and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land. Sitting Bull, Lakota Sioux South Dakota (1831-1890)

At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, to the world, ‘Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.’ You empty yourself, and wait, listening. After a time, you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, holding or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing or spread. You feel the world as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same.

This is it: this hum is the silence. The silence is all there is! It is the alpha and the omega. It is God’s brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things; the whine of wings. You take a step to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to ‘World’. Distinctions blur. I become the World. I become one with Mother Earth

Gratitude is an appreciation of all that sustains us; an acknowledgement of blessings great and small. It is confidence in life itself and confidence in ourselves and our ability to manage our own lives. The same force that causes all things to grow on this planet are within us. We exist because every single one of our ancestors from the beginning of the first man was a survivor and cared and nurtured their young and passed down to us valuable knowledge that would sustain us in life.

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. ‘Be still’ they say, ‘Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.’ There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough to pay attention to the story. There is no real aloneness. There is solitude and the nurturing silence that is the relationship with ourselves , but even then we are part of something larger. Mystery is part of each life and maybe it is healthier to uphold it than to spend a lifetime in search of half-baked answers.

‘Listen to the air. You can hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it- the holy air -which renews by its breath. - we sit together, don’t touch, but something is there; we feel it between us as a presence. A good way to start thinking about nature, talk about it. Rather talk to it; talk to the rivers, to the lakes, to the winds, and to our relatives.’ John Lame Deer

‘Sometimes I hear it talking. The light of the sunflower is one language, but then there are others more audible. Once in the redwood forest, I heard a beat; something like a drum or a heartbeat coming from the ground and trees and wind. That underground current stirred a kind of knowing inside me, a kinship and longing, a dream barely remembered that disappeared back into the body.

There are occasions when you can hear the Mysterious language of the Earth; in water, or coming through the trees, emanating from the mosses, seeping through the undercurrents of the soil, but you have to be willing to wait and receive.’ Naturalist John Hay from ‘The Immortal Witness’

"We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel with God, as the Catholic and Protestants do. We do not want to learn that.’ Chief Joseph Nez Perce Nation

The elders believed that it was possible to wind a way backwards to the start of things, and in so doing, find a form of sacred reason, different from ordinary reason that is linked to the forces of Nature. In this kind of mind, like the feather, is the power of sky and thunder and sun, and many have had alliances and partnerships with it; a way of thought older than measured time, less primitive than the rational present. Others have tried to understand the world by science and intellect but have not yet done so: not yet understood animals, finite earth, or even their own minds and behavior.

Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all living things. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. That is why the elder still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Luther Standing Bear

'Whether we walk among our people or alone among the hills, happiness in life’s walking depends on how we feel about others in our hearts. The native Americans regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. Sioux First Nations

With your feet I walk.

I walk with your limbs.

I carry forth your body.

Beauty is behind me.

Above and below me Hovers the Beautiful.

I am surrounded by it.

I am immersed in it.

In my youth I am aware of it,

And in my old age I shall walk quietly

The Beautiful Trail. Navajo Prayer

‘I did not know then how much had ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.’ Black Elk

May the stars carry your sadness away.

May the flowers fill your heart with beauty.

May hope forever wipe away your tears.

And above all, may silence make you strong. Chief Dan George Salish

A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream… Black Elk

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

‘THE BATTLE OF THE BIGHORN Crazy Horse was an Oglala Sioux Indian chief who fought against a removal to a reservation in the Black Hills. In 1876, he joined with Cheyenne forces in a surprise attack against Gen. George Crook then united with Chief Sitting Bull for the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered and was killed in a scuffle with soldiers.

Crazy Horse's birth had come during a great time for the Lakota people. A division of the Sioux, the Lakota represented the largest band of the tribe. Their domain included a giant swath of land that ran from the Missouri River to the Bighorn Mountains in the west. Their contact with whites was minimal and by the 1840s the Lakota were at the peak of their power.

Following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, and the U.S. government’s backing of white explorers in the territory, the War Department ordered all Lakota onto reservations. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull refused. On June 17, 1876, Crazy Horse led a force of 1,299 Oglala and Cheyenne warriors against General George Crook and his brigade, successfully turning back the soldiers as they attempted to advance toward Sitting Bull’s encampment on the Little Bighorn River. For the conclusion of the Battle of Bighorn and its aftermath is contained in my epilogue.

“The non-compliant Native Americans were now deemed “hostile," and the military had to force the Native American warriors to comply. General Phillip Sheridan, commander of the Military Division of Missouri, created a strategy to send one column of soldiers with General George Crook from Ft. Fetterman northwest, one column with General Alfred Terry from Ft. Abraham Lincoln southwest, and the third column with General Gibbon from Ft. Ellis east.

Crook's force of 1,049 officers and men left Ft. Fetterman on May 29th and fought with Crazy Horse on June 17th in the battle of the Rosebud, which the warriors won.

Generals Terry and Gibbon met up at the mouth of the Rosebud River on June 21st. These two forces comprised 1,450 cavalry, infantry, and scouts. Terry sent Custer to scout up the Rosebud while taking steamers to ferry across Gibbon's force, which was to go up the Bighorn and meet with Custer.” Heather Cox Richardson

On the morning of June 22nd, Custer set out with 850 men, Indian scouts, and guides up the Rosebud. Scouts reported seeing the Sioux camp, and the following day Custer himself was looking down on the encampment. By late morning Custer's troops moved down the western slope of the Wolf Mountains. He received a scouting report detailing the size and position of the Sioux encampment and moved his command down the valley.

Here Major Marcus Reno and Custer separated into two forces. Reno advanced down the left side of the valley. Custer's command moved down the right side and out on a rising plain. Reno's troops were still in full view of Custer. As Custer emerged from the valley, he lost sight of Reno for a few minutes and then came close to the crest of the hill overlooking the valley. Here he halted and sent scouts ahead. Receiving a signal from the scouts, Custer and his staff rode to the top of the summit. He traveled along the ridge for a time and then turned left down a dry creek called Medicine Tail Coulee. He rode out close to the river but did not cross. Custer now led his command back up the valley a short distance and turned left.

“By now, the warriors knew where Custer's troops were and began crossing the river. Reno had by this time already fought with the warriors and retreated with his men onto the bluffs. The Sioux could give their full attention to Custer and his men. The Sioux attacked. Custer shot at the attackers, who were reckless enough to come within range, but the whole movement was a retreat.

Whether or not Custer was planning to withdraw far enough from the river to make a stand or had started a retreat to the mountains is unknown. The Sioux thought he was trying to reach the mountains and headed him off. On June 25th, Custer's entire command was killed.” Heather Cox Richardson

‘Two days later, General Terry arrived with Gibbon's men and met with the remains of Reno's troops. They buried Custer's two hundred dead, gathered Reno's wounded and withdrew to the mouth of the Little Bighorn. Terry applied for reinforcements, but the groups of warriors had scattered, each following their leaders, some back to the reservations. The policy was now to disarm and dismount all of the Native Americans at the agencies.

Sitting Bull and Gall escaped into Canada. Crazy Horse remained with his followers in the Bighorn Mountains until the spring of 1877, when he surrendered. Crazy Horse remained at Fort Robinson under military watch. He died at the end of a soldier's bayonet there in September.’ Heather Cox Richardson

‘Gall crossed the border back into the United States in 1881 and met with General Miles. After stubborn resistance, he surrendered. He lived peaceably on the Standing Rock agency until his death in 1894. Sitting Bull surrendered in 1881. In 1883 he was taken to the Standing Rock agency. During the Ghost Dance incident in 1890, when he was arrested, the great Sioux chief resisted and was killed.

The battle was a momentary victory for the Northern Plains tribes. Custer's Last Stand became a rallying point for the United States to increase its efforts to force native peoples onto reservation lands. Most of the declared “hostiles" had surrendered within one year of the fight, and the U.S. government took the Black Hills without compensation.

Decades later, on June 30, 1980, the Supreme Court ordered the U.S. to pay the Lakota over $105 million for the government's illegal seizure of the Black Hills a century earlier. The court ruled that the “nations" given to the Sioux when the government took the land were not “just compensation" for the 7.3 million gold-laden acres sacred to the Sioux. The land legally belonged to the Sioux under the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, which Congress approved before the discovery of gold in the area.” Heather Cox Richardson

The $103 million in trust continues to grow in value, but the Lakota have refused the money saying, “The Black Hills are not for sale.. One does not sell their holy land." Heather Cox Richardson