For over 500 years native people in this hemisphere have endured the genocidal onslaught of European settlers and their governments. The indigenous have always been the people, as John Trudell points out. For those of us who are of European descent a choice is presented again in a long line of historical colonialism.
Our choice is the same as it was 500 years ago; become people or remain conquerors.
Protecting sacred spaces and water from oil pipelines is a familiar narrative. Desecration of cultures and the planet for power and monetary gain is the essence of what the Cree call Wetiko. Wetiko is a psychosis that takes control of people and turns them into cultural, social and environmental cannibals. In other words, these cannibals devour life in an attempt to satisfy their insatiable thirst for more. Collectively these cannibal communities are nation-states. They are conquerors and conquerors conquer.
We are citizens of these cannibalistic communities which destroy and devour life in the name of consumption, convenience and “progress.”
We have our goods and services imported to us by a long series of hidden relationships. In other words, we remain unaware and don’t have to see the lives that are exploited and sacrificed in the name of convenience. Things just appear and we purchase them. Collectively we are cutting our own throats as we kill the very habitat that supports us for the sake of development and economic growth. We are cannibalizing ourselves.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protest and other places throughout the country and the world is a call for warriors to rise up and meet the immense and immediate challenges the nation-state continually provides. We must dismantle the very thing we perceive as a life provider because in actuality its a life destroyer. The nation-state is not necessary. Humanoids have existed millions of years without such a resource hoarding, murderous living arrangement. That’s why we are still here. However, we won’t be for much longer unless we dismantle the machine that’s killing everything and everyone.
Those at Standing Rock are a gift.
They represent a last call for those of us still sitting to get off the fence. It’s the beginning of our collective end game. It’s up to you and I to decide how our game ends.
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