“Seasoned Travelers” on the Heroic Journey

Vine Deloria, Jr./photo credit: WikipediaThe Native American resistance to the Dakota Pipeline Access has received attention nationally and internationally in recent days. The bulldozing of burial sites and sacred sites stirred immediate and immense opposition among peoples of all skin colors. As reported in Indian Country Today Media Network, three agencies of the Obama administration (Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Justice, and Army Corp of Engineers) have stepped in to temporarily halt all construction of the pipeline 20 miles east and west of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. As I write this, Congressman Raul Grijalva, AZ, a ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee in Congress, is heading for the Reservation to review the complex processes involved.

In light of these events, I include next an excerpt from my upcoming book, From Egos to Eden (available 2/6/17), that includes reference to Vine Deloria, Jr.(1933-2005), a Standing Rock Sioux, lawyer and professor, who so helpfully interpreted Indian activism in the last part of the 20th century.

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The Dakota Access Pipeline—Follow It on "Indian Country Today Media Network"

What many who are caught up in MultiEarth living do not realize is how many First Peoples resist the MultiEarth way. The rude, crude treatment by the Army Corps of Engineers, acting at the behest of oil corporations, to build the Dakota Access Pipeline right through burial grounds and sacred sites of First Peoples is a case in point. It reveals the underlying genocidal thinking toward First Peoples in MultiEarth consciousness. It’s genocidal to think that “Indians are people of the past, not of the here and now, so they and their traditional sites need not be treated respectfully. After all, modern times march on.”

But First Peoples are “here and now,” leading active lives. They have not gone away. A great source to follow the “here and now” participation of First Peoples in the world today is Indian Country Today Media Network.

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