Elders
From 4-years old I walked with my head down looking for arrow heads, swaying my hands through moss lined mountain streams, and walking on deer trails to understand sloping hills. Living in the woods, Mom, Ky and I spent our time collecting herbs to cleanse our livers from our heavy self-caught/killed/foraged meat, fish and wild mushroom diet. I helped fill 8 freezers to overflowing with wild foods using supermarkets for un-makeable treats like All-beef-ball-park-franks and Hostess Cupcakes.
As an only child in the woods I grew close to nature. The closer I became the more I went to it for protection. Deep spring fed mountain pools cleaned me, plates full of spring Ramps, Rainbow Trout, Oyster Mushrooms nourished me, the smell of the earth after a rain comforted me. Like you I heard the Lakota “think of the consequences of your action for 7 generations,” illuminating an infinite cycle of nature with no time limit.
But it was kneeling on the side of the Bee Brook in upstate New York holding a pair of blue handled pliers speaking to a Brown Trout grasped firmly in my hand and a flat rock for her life when Ky asked me to thank the fish before I took its life for supper.
Or, asked by Lakota Indian, Sitting Bear, outside a sweat lodge to ask forgiveness of the bees after being stung. “I am weed whacking so we can have a ceremony today and so Bill and I can easily check and clean your hive.” I have always caught fish and have not been stung since. I explore the intricate infinite cycles of natural world which indigenous communities across the world. I support their holistic systems thinking. “when the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realise that you cannot eat money.”
The short-term goal is to provide indigenous peoples the tools to co-operatively own and manage their one infrastructure, run education programmes for school children, paid training programmes for youths, mentoring programmes for adults and support for the fuel and food poor vulnerable residents, the medium term is to build stand alone, transparent egalitarian, cooperatives with their heritage embedded through their own alternative currency, gaining revenue from their lands with low carbon renewable energy resource like wind solar and tidal. The long-term goal is to help facilitate a dialogue between these empowered tribes and the occupiers of their land.
