About Neighbors

Hanh mitakuyapi / Hello my relatives.

Recently I heard a local 'big' farmer snarl about environmentalists & what a pain they are, especially in his bank book.  Since we ITI are the People Tunkashila put in charge of taking care of our Holy Mother the Earth & I am the woman who Dances The Four Winds, I could not resist getting into the discussion.  Not to mention, it just strikes me as unreconcilable to poison our Holy Mother the Earth & otherwise desecrate her, & then ask (to say nothing of 'insist') her to produce good things for us.  Nothing in there can be reconciled in the Traditional Way's view.

Before I could say more than that, this 'big' farmer made some remark about the ten commandments that supposedly govern everything people in the majority culture do - & our Traditional Ways.  And the spirits gifted me with the observation that I should ask him just who-all his neighbors are.  After all, in the Traditional Way, everything belongs to one Nation or another & therefore is a neighbor, by definition.

So I remarked on this & asked him if he could reconcile that.  Of course he could not.  So it occurs to me that when we argue the washichu in the future over environmental concerns when some of them make efforts to desecrate Unci Maka Ina Wakan, we might make good use of this fact - that one's neighbors are not only the 2-leggeds, or people of one's own race, & so on.  Rather that our neighbors are every member of every Nation that shares life on our Holy Mother the Earth.  Mitakuye oiasin - All, my relatives.