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World Indigenous Law Conference - Keynote
Introduction
Haku Haku Kičičantik k’e kikikič; Saqshwalaw he’l Kuhk’u ka kti hi Chumash k’e Wewla
Sanchi ka-k-ti Inles. Kap ͪaniš hu moloq hi Swaxil hi nakalamuw hi Limuw k’e kapʰaniš hi
Akimel, Tohono O’odham k’e Raramuri. Sutikim, kaqinawun he’ l kuhk’u’ hi iti’l šup Tongva
k’e Acjachemen. Kipi, kiyno’nowon hi he’ l kuhk’u’ hi sno’nowon xip Standing Rock.
Šiyičkučʰaš he’ l ‘o’ k’e šup. Pak’a kiyahaš. [Then English translation]
It’s humbling to be here with so many amazing people lawyers, scholars, activists, defenders and
protectors of our Mother, people who have accomplished so much for the world and indigenous
people. Warm greetings to all our guests from near and far, to all of you good people working to
make the world a better place. Kiysilieqwel hi cʰonuš.
Today I would like to speak to you about our survival, about conflicting world views, the
genocidal policies and laws that have affected so many. And I also want to talk about renewal, of
our traditions, and our people and our World.
End of the World
In 2007, the Seventh Generation Fund held a gathering of Indigenous people in Northern
California. Our Mayan guests talked about the Mayan calendar and prophesy. At that time, many
people were talking about the end of the calendar being the equivalent to the end of the world,
which many had misinterpreted would happen in December 2012. A movie was even made
showing the destruction of the Earth, with tsunamis, fires and the end of the human species.
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Our Mayan guests thought it was very strange how the American public had interpreted the
ending of the Mayan calendar to mean the end of the world. The Mayan traditional people told us
that the end of the Mayan calendar did not represent the end of the world, but the end of the
world as we had known it. They explained that the galaxy had turned, that the end of the calendar
marked the beginning of the Galactic Dawn, the paradigm was shifting. It takes 26,000 years for
the galaxy to make a full rotation, yet the Mayans knew this. Passing their traditional knowledge
from generation to generation. When NASA compared the Mayan calendar to the atomic clock,
they found the calendar to be accurate to the hundredths decimal point. This is indigenous
knowledge.
Our histories reveal we are keen observers of the natural world. Many of our perspectives as
human beings are simply that we are part of the natural world, recognizing the life energy in
everything around us, even when other cultures see parts of the natural world as inanimate. Thus,
this perspective, this way of life, was headed for a full on collision with people who believed that
nature was to be tamed that man is at the top of the food chain, and all of creation was to brought
under man’s control.
Dr. Jack Forbes, in his book Columbus and other Cannibals talks about the psychosis brought to
this land from across the sea. A psychosis that is described “relentlessly, insanely, genocidally,
ecocidally and suicidally destructive.” It is a greed that consumes the Earth, the elements of
land, water, air, and consumes people. These are not just bad choices says Forbes, but a genuine
epidemic sickness. Imperialists, rapists and exploiters are not just people who have strayed down
the wrong path. They are mentally ill and tragically, the form of soul-sickness they carry is
contagious. Our own people are not immune.
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iyalwi’wi
They are the ones who have lost their way.
A psychosis that Columbus brought to these shores as revealed in his reports after sailing to the
West Indies. He described the people, saying:
They are “generous with what they have, to such a degree that no one would believe but
him that had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do
rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would
give their hearts.”
Yet these loving people are the very people Columbus enslaved, taking them by force and
sending them across the ocean to the King and Queen of Spain, saying that he could provide as
many slaves as their highnesses would want.
In his book Dr, Forbes provides, example after example, describing ancient prayers, wisdom of
the Elders from all over the indigenous world, the philosophies of indigenous people, seeing the
world with a great appreciation for all things seen and unseen, and with grateful hearts when a
life is taken, even if for food or shelter, plant or animal, because everything has the right to live.
There was gratitude when a life was taken. It was a great responsibility when a living thing was
killed. A dilemma even in necessity. And in that responsibility was the practice of using every bit
of what had been taken, with gratitude and respect.
My grandmother was poor. When my great grandfather killed a mule deer. When he cut the
throat of the deer, he told his children to cup their hands as the blood was drained. He told them
to drink it. My grandmother was a little girl and she didn’t want to. Her father said she had to
because it showed respect and gratitude for the deer. He also said that the deer lived on in them.
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DOD
This conference includes presentations on the Doctrine of Discovery which will discuss the papal
bulls of the Catholic Church in the1400’s which “authorized” the Kings and Queens of Europe to
seize land and subjugate the people, as long as the land had not already been claimed by other
Christian Nations. While Portugal had claimed West Africa, Spain was laying claim to vast parts
of the Americas. The Papal bulls sanctioned the Kings and Queens of Western Europe to
vanquish, subdue, and take the possessions of the indigenous people. Those who accepted
Christianity would be spared and have the privilege of giving their land to the Pope. Those who
resisted would be subjected to being enslaved, maimed or killed. This belief used by the Western
European nations to divest indigenous people of their life, land, and way of living.
Requiermiento 1513
The Requiermiento of 1513 was drafted by the Spanish to be read when claiming lands inhabited
by the indigenous, even though nobody knew what they were talking about.
“ . . . if you do not comply, or maliciously delay obedience to my injunction, then, with
the help of God, I will enter your country by force, declare war on you with the utmost
violence, subject you to the yoke of obedience to the church and king, seize your wives
and children and make slaves of them, and will sell or dispose of them according to His
Majesty’s pleasure; I will seize everything you own and do everything within my power
to bring misery to you rebellious subjects who refuse to acknowledge or submit to their
lawful sovereign. I declare that all the resulting bloodshed and calamities shall be blamed
on you and not His Majesty, or to me, or the gentlemen who shall serve under me.”
What chance did we have against such brutality? This mindset continued all over the world.
Civilization brought death and destruction, heartache and despair.
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“Civilization’s” Effect on People
Each of us knows that colonization has wreaked havoc around the world. I have been to all four
countries, the nation-states that originally opposed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples - the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. And, of course,
the United States was the last country to endorse the Declaration in 2010. All of these countries
began as British colonies eradicating the indigenous populations to much smaller numbers. Each
country has a history of laws and policies which were meant to eliminate or assimilate. The
approximate estimated indigenous population of each country are:
US
< 2%
Australia
3%
Canada
4.3%
New Zealand 14.6% Maori
John Trudell
Well known activist and Lakota poet John Trudell also referred to this sickness, saying: “The
great lie is that it is civilization. It's not civilized. It has been literally the most blood-thirsty
brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That's the great lie . . .”
United States
The United States rose from 13 British colonies, gaining its independence from Great Britain.
Meanwhile, the Spanish were on the other side of the continent enslaving, killing and converting
the indigenous.
There have been numerous genocidal laws and policies, including forced removals of tribes from
their traditional homelands – from places where we had lived since time immemorial, from land
where our dead were buried, where our teachings had come from, where our spirits and bodies
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were nourished – land given to us by Creator, a places where we were given our original
instructions and had a sacred obligation to protect.
The People were moved to lands far away, to other lands very different from the lands they were
used to. The Long Walk of the Navajo in 1864, the US Military forced 8,000 Navajos to walk
300 miles at gunpoint to an internment camp in Bosque Redondo, a desolate track on the Pecos
River in Eastern New Mexico, a place where 9500 Navajos and 500 Mescalero Apaches were
imprisoned. Living in holes dug into the earth, with scarce rations and under armed guards/
nearly 3,500 Navajos and Apaches died.
Nazi Germany took notice. Hitler studied Bosque Redondo before designing the concentration
camps for the Jews. He was interested in the rapid decline of the Native population from
starvation and disease while on reservations. Hitler claimed he owed much to his study of
American and English history.
It should be noted that the term “final solution” was not coined by Nazi Germany, it was coined
in Canada by the Indian Affairs Superintendent in 1910. His communication was in response to a
concern about the high death rates in the coastal residential schools.1
He wrote:
It is readily acknowledged that Indian Children lose their natural resistance to illness by
habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their
1
Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust - The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church
and State in Canada, pg. 6 (2001)
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villages. But, this alone does not justify a change in policy of this Department, which is
geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem.
Boarding schools traumatized Indian families in the United States and elsewhere. The practice of
forcibly removing children left communities hollow without the next generation to carry on
tradition, language and culture. The physical, sexual and mental abuse has disrupted our families
and communities and the residual effect is still with us.
Even after the forcible removal of children had ended, children were still being removed from
the home by federal and state officials through social workers and child welfare agencies. In
1978 when the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was enacted, 25-30% of our children were
being removed from Indian homes and placed in non-Indian homes. Even today, in Southern
California, even with ICWA, there are not enough qualified homes to place our children.
In a United States Supreme Court case, commonly called Baby Veronica, the court was
determining whether or not ICWA applied. Through tortured and twisted reasoning, the Supreme
Court found that ICWA did not apply and Baby Veronica was sent off to live with her nonIndian adoptive parents. (Justice Sotomayor let the majority have it with her powerful dissent
highlighting the flaws in the Majority’s reasoning.) But the reason I am even mentioning this
case is because of the majority’s referral, in its opinion, to the Baby Veronica’s blood quantum.
Tribes determine their membership. They set the criteria. That’s part of self-determination. There
was no dispute that Baby Veronica was eligible for tribal membership with the Cherokee nation.
Yet, it was apparent that the majority didn’t think ICWA should apply due to Baby Veronica’s
blood quantum.
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So, after everything this country has put us through, after all the genocidal laws and practices,
the lip service that’s been given to self-determination, the Supreme Court is penalizing the
people because Baby Veronica “was not Indian enough?”
Canada
The attempt at Christianization of the Aboriginal people became more systematic with the Indian
Act in 1876, which would bring new sanctions for those who did not convert to Christianity. The
new laws prevented non-Christian Aboriginal people from testifying or having their cases heard
in court. When the Indian Act was amended in 1884, traditional religious and social practices,
such as the Potlatch, were banned, and in 1920 Indians were prevented from wearing traditional
dress or performing traditional dances in an attempt to stop all non-Christian practices.
The final government strategy of assimilation, made possible by the Indian Act was the Canadian
residential school system.
Beginning in 1847 and lasting until 1996, the Canadian government, in partnership with the
Catholic Church, ran 130 residential boarding schools across Canada for Aboriginal children,
who were forcibly taken from their homes.
There is also evidence that children were used as experiments. One of the testimonies taken in
2010 about an incident occurring in 1944:
I was just eight, and they’d shipped us down from the Anglican residential school in Alert
Bay to the Nanimo Indian Hospital, the one run by the United Church. They kept me
isolated in a tiny room there for more than three years, like I was a lab rat feeding me
these pills, giving me shots that made me sick. Two of my cousins made a big fuss,
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screaming and fighting back all the time, so the nurses gave them shots, and they both
dies right away. It was done to silence them.2
These boarding and residential schools have had generational effects. In 1988, some brave men
disclosed they had been sexual abused while attending St. George’s Residential School in
Canada. That same year, after the sexual abuse was disclosed, 22 men committed suicide.3 There
are estimates that 94% of residential school children were sexually abused.
There are numerous tales of suffering from the first contact. Whole nations have been wiped out,
languages have been lost or went dormant, world views corrupted, ceremonies and traditions
lost. Children were taken and placed in boarding schools, abused in every manner, even killed,
and not shown love or nurture. Many families never knew what had happened to their children
because they never came home. It’s estimated that 50% children died or were “missing” after
being sent to Canada’s Residential Schools. This trauma is historic and generational.
Australia
The Stolen Generations were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government
agencies and church missions. The removals often involved those referred to as "half-caste"
children which were children of mixed blood, from 1905 to 1969, in some places children were
still being taken into the 1970s.
2
Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust - The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church
and State in Canada, pg. 5 (2001)
3
A Century of Genocide: Indian Residential School Experience, a film by Rosemary Gibbons and Dax Thomas
(2002), through testimony.
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These genocidal laws began with the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 allowing child
removal from Aboriginal parents. In Western Australia, the Aborigines Act 1905 removed the
legal guardianship of Aboriginal parents entirely. It made all their children legal wards of the
state, and authorities did not need to get parental permission to relocate the mixed-race children.
The Aborigines Act 1911. Designated the Chief Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, as the
legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in South Australia whether mixed blood or not.
Appointed Aboriginal protectors in each state exercised wide-ranging guardianship over
Aborigines up to the age of 16 or 21. Police agents, often called Aboriginal Protection Officers
were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed blood from their
mothers or families and place them into institutions.
The exact number of children removed from their aboriginal communities is unknown. Although
estimates have been widely disputed, but The Bring Them Home Report estimates 100,000
children were taken. One first-hand account referring to events in 1935 stated:
I was at the post office with my Mum and Auntie [and cousin]. They put us in the police
ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But
when we'd gone [about ten miles] they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We
jumped on our mothers' backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policemen
pulled us off and threw us back in the car. They pushed the mothers away and drove off,
while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming
in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the
Broome lock-up. We were only ten years old. We were in the lock-up for two days
waiting for the boat to Perth.
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I was in Australia in 2014, for the World Indigenous Law Conference. While we were there we
visited an aboriginal township. The old boarding school was turned into a museum and two older
men were docents, they told us about the museum and their own experiences.
One man related his story - he pointed out – “my bed was over there.” He related that he was
taken from his family when he was 6 years old, and he was crying the first night. The school
master came in and asked: “Why you crying, boy?” “I want my Nanny,” he answered tearfully.
For that he was beaten.
After he said this, he looked at the other docent and stopped talking. Even though we had just
walked into the museum, he couldn’t say another word. We all stood in silence with our heads
bowed. Our peoples had so much in common with these shared experiences. The trauma was so
real - felt by all of us – but so was the love.
Sterilization
The psychosis knows no boundaries, Women in the United States were sterilized coercively or
without consent. I know this happened in other parts of the world.
In 1971, the Health Services Division issued a report to the Office of Economic Opportunity
regarding Indian people, stated:
“. . . the Indian population will double in 22 years, creating extensive pressures on the
limited resources of the reservation”
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Saying also that the situation was approaching a “population explosion.” However, our
population at the time was only 3% of the total US population. It wasn’t the population that was
at issue. It was the money the United States was spending to keep their treaty obligations. The
United States was constantly trying to get out of the Indian business because, among other
things, they had promised to provide health care, food, land to live on, and the necessities of life.
This was promised in exchange for all of the compromises Indian people were forced to endure.
In a report commissioned by the US government, Family Planning and the American Indian, it
highlighted the poverty factor also saying that:
Proportionally more Indians suffer from “excess fertility.”
In 1976 in response to Indian people calling for a stop to coerced and unauthorized sterilizations,
a study was done, The report showed an unusually high number of sterilizations among a small
populace, citing 3,406 sterilizations, in South Dakota, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The
US Department of Human Services was responsible for paying 90% of the low income
sterilizations.
And, they wonder why we were so resistant to Western health care and Western doctors. I have a
friend now in her 60’s who lived in a remote part of Arizona, off the reservation. She told me a
story that when she was a young girl – about 12 – she was very sick and had to be taken to the
hospital in town. Before she left, her parents made a decision about who would take her. Her
father was mixed blood and he looked less Indian, so he went. Her mother stayed home. She
found out later that they were trying to protect her from being unknowingly sterilized because
she was Indian. Today she laments not having her mother by her side at the hospital, and feels
for her mother because she could not be with her little girl.
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And what about the psychosis and Mother Earth - Dakota Access Pipeline
Today we are facing another assault on our mother - the Dakota Access Pipeline, a pipeline
embedded into the Earth, cutting through North Dakota stretching to Illinois. Over 1,000 miles of
pipeline being built to carry fracked oil from the Bakken oil fields through several states at an
estimated cost of 3.7 billion dollars.
The pipeline was scheduled to go under the Missouri River, next to the Standing Rock
reservation. Of course, this pipeline was moved to its current location after its original path,
which was slated to cut through a nearly all-white community, had been complained about. Their
complaints were heard. Then that leg of the pipeline was moved near the reservation.
I have heard lawyers talk about how the pipeline is now being done in sections to avoid the
ecological oversights and regulations. Smaller projects don’t need to the follow the regulations
that big projects do. These corporations are clever. Anything that stands in the way of the
almighty dollar is in danger. You have all seen pictures of snarling dogs and pepper spray being
used against the water protectors, and the militarized response to the protectors.
Water is important to us. Protection of the water is part of our sacred obligation to the Mother. It
is so important that our families our sending off our children to stand in solidarity, to protect the
water and we don’t try to stop them. Last month, my niece, nephew and cousin – all in their 20’s
- went to Standing Rock. They went with a delegation and were sent with prayers, good advice,
and a truckload of donations.
In the history of this country – Standing Rock is Everywhere.
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It is in Nebraska home of the world’s largest uranium mine.
It’s in California, on the traditional territory of the Chumash, where earlier this year 45,000
gallons of crude oil was leaked, affecting the land, water, and wildlife.
It’s in Hawaii, Montana, definitely Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, Illinois Michigan,
Wisconsin, North Carolina, Utah, Arkansas and Oklahoma – each of these states have had a
significant oil spill in the last four years.
I also want to mention the 120,000 gallons of oil that was spilled in the ocean off the traditional
territory of the Chumash.
For us, it’s personal. [Story – Summary: Our Creation story tells of our people migrating from
our Islands of Origin to the mainland. Creator builds a rainbow bridge and the people cross. They
are told not to look down because they might get dizzy and fall. On the day of the crossing, some
look down. They get dizzy and begin to fall. Mother Earth – Hutash asks Creator to save the
people and Creator turns them into dolphins.] Those sea creatures are our relatives, so it is very
personal for us.
In Black Mesa, Arizona, where Peabody Energy, sucked the groundwater out of the traditional
homelands of the Dine and Hopi People – bled for 1.2 billion gallons of water a year from an
aquifer that the land and the people relied on, until 2005. The wake of that destruction to the land
and the people lives on.
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First proposed in the 1940’s, Hopi traditional people opposed the assault on the Mother but
President Truman ignored the Hopi people. Hopi traditionalists wrote letters to Presidents
Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter asking that the operations be halted but the
destruction continued. And Peabody Energy still operates a different mine on the Navajo
Reservation.
Standing Rock is Everywhere – All over the indigenous world.
What about the Tar Sands Destruction in Canada?
Or the largest copper pebble mine in North America in Alaska?
The assault on water takes many forms
Water is big business. There are places in Africa it’s cheaper to buy a coca cola then a bottle of
water. Aquifers all over the world are being purchased by multi-national corporations, depriving
the people of clean water, building huge walls in fortress like fashion. Former President Bush
and his family bought 300,000 acres of land in Paraguay. Land that sits atop one of the largest
aquifers in the world.
I think he knows something.
It’s estimated that 2/3 of the world’s population will be water stressed by 2025. I think it’s
coming a lot sooner than that.
John Trudell said we must go beyond civil rights, go beyond human rights, and
“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.”
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I think the wisdom in his words is that if we can get to that place of natural rights, the rights of
Mother Earth, where every sacred element is respected. Then it would be understood that all of
life has the right to exist, to a place where human rights are already present and respected and
under the umbrella of natural rights.
Let’s talk about the Law
I want to tell you a little about myself. I was a teenage mom on welfare when it became clear to
me that I needed to get an education. After, a landlord had allowed the Los Angeles Police
Department into my small apartment without a warrant and they invaded my home on her false
accusations. She threatened to take my baby away from me. I called every organization in town
and many wanted to help but didn’t have the resources or education to do so. It was then I knew,
I had to get educated. Now, I didn’t think I could be a lawyer because I didn’t know any and it
seemed like something that was just too far away and I didn’t even know anybody who had
graduated from college.
I started at community college, on welfare, with no car. I walked back and forth to school. My
mom helped to watch my young son, while I was in class, even though she had also went back to
school and was attending college herself –after dropping out of high school.
I saw education as a tool. It was something my mom said that no one could take from me.
Initially, I didn’t go to college to save the world; I went to save my son. It was the only thing I
could think of that would bring us out of poverty. I wanted to give him a chance. This was my
survival time. Living through poverty, the welfare system, domestic violence. The days of
commodity cheese and commodity peanut butter – peanut butter with expiration dates that
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fascinated me because they were 20 years into the future. These were the days of Indian cars,
gallon jugs of water in the back seat, ready to cure a radiator leak, the days running out of gas on
the freeway and digging for change in seat cushions just so that I could get home. I left welfare
behind after college. And one year later, I was in law school.
My grandparents, very humble and authentic people who lived close to the Earth but also lived
hard lives. My grandmother, Akimel and Tohono O’odham, was born in Arizona in1917, a noncitizen, since citizenship was not implemented upon Indian people until 1924. My grandfather a
Chumash man was placed in a Catholic orphanage when he was 4 years old after his mother had
left the family and his father broke his arm and could not work. Yes, there were abuses in the
orphanages as in many of the Catholic residential and boarding schools.
My grandparents helped me pay for my law schoolbooks, my aunt got a church to donate a car to
me after I was assaulted one late night coming home from a late, mandatory class. I got through
law school with grants, loans and a loving supportive extended family.
During my first trial which involved real estate, the opposing lawyer lied to me and misdirected
me. He chatted with the judge about golf and some vacation spot while I was sat silent in that
pretrial conference, I could not engage in the conversation because I didn’t know about either
subject. I was 27 years old.
What shame I felt when my grandmother asked me how the law business was going and I said
“Grandma, I think I made a mistake. People lie to you.” I wasn’t used to being lied to. And after
so many in my family had helped me, and the sacrifices that were made to get through school, I
was worried. I realized that this arena was going to be very different than anything I was used to.
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That first trial showed me that the profession I had looked up became another hostile place. I
prayed for the truth. I fact checked and double checked whatever that attorney told me. In the
end, the woman I represented won her case and I stepped into the reality of what practicing law
was going to mean. My innocence about the law had been ruptured.
My legal training has been used in many different ways over the years. The transition from
survival to now has been eye-opening. The law has been used as a tool to protect sacred sites, in
defense of children under ICWA, and in assisting native people in their everyday life problems.
We have learned much from being involved in this system. The laws and being subjected to the
“courts of the conqueror” and the genocidal policies made legal in our court system. Harsh
lessons in the defense of our land, water, and sacred sites.
Make no mistake I know exactly where I am whenever I enter the courtroom. I pray that my
world view and my love can transform that hostile place just a little for the people that come
there.
In 2010, at Humboldt State University, I talked about using the Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples in court. I’ve heard too many lawyers practicing “Federal Indian Law” speak
about the Declaration as if it has no impact. I told the audience that we bring power to that
document and if the first court doesn’t hear you, try again. Knock on those courtroom doors until
you find someone who can hear you. It won’t matter to them if it doesn’t matter to us.
I think lawyers are going to have to step it up a notch. We need to get licensed in vulnerable
places like the Dakotas. To be prepared for the conflicts that will surely come. I have heard, there
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are plenty of lawyers to tackle the DAPL and the direct environmental, land and consultation
issues, but there was a severe shortage of lawyers to help with the criminal cases. The water
protectors and land defenders - need you. And you all have something to contribute.
Finally, I would like to leave you with these few words by John Trudell:
. . . They are going to become more brutal. They are going to become more repressive
because it’s a matter of dollars and their illusionary concepts of power. We have to
reestablish our identity. We have to understand who we are and where we fit into the
natural order of the world because our oppressor deals in illusions. They tell us that it is
power. But it is not power. They may have all the guns, and they may have all the racist
laws and judges and they may control all the money - but that is not power. These are
imitations of power and they are only power because in our minds we allow it to be
power.
. . . We are power. We are a natural part of the creation. We were put here on this sacred
Mother Earth to serve a purpose. And somewhere in the history of people we’re
forgetting what that purpose is. The purpose is to honor the Earth. The purpose is to
protect the Earth. The purpose is to live in balance with the Earth. The Earth is our
Mother.
Thank you.