More than 45 years ago during the early years of North American’s “new” ecological consciousness, my grandfather, Vine Deloria Sr. had a conversation with one of his elder cousins on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. As his cousin loved to learn new words in English, he asked my grandfather to explain to him what the word “ecology” meant. “Well”, my grandfather said, “you know, we have places where you can go and learn to read and study books. Then you learn how to write about what you have read about. Finally, you learn to talk about what you have learned to read and write about!
This is how our young people of today learn about life. Some people have learned this way for many, many years. After they have read enough books, written about what they have read about and talked about what they have written about, they are given a piece of paper that say’s they are a Doctor or a Wise Person of Life. These Doctors and Wise People of Life then get jobs where they earn a lot of money, so they can read, write, and talk some more. They have even have invented machines that can look at things that are very small and make them look big. There are other machines they have invented that can look at things far away and make them look close.
They even put different parts of Mother Earth in containers and pour them back and forth so they can find out more about the truth of Mother Earth. Anyway, they have spent a lot of time and money and studied Mother Earth for many, many years. From all this work they have made a new discovery. They found out that everything is interrelated. They found out that when you pollute the air which all living things breathe and pollute the water which all living things drink, you pollute all living things. What do you think about that?”
My Grandfather’s elder cousin smiled knowingly and shook his head. “I was wondering when they would get around to this understanding! Just look at what we do to our beloved Mother Earth. We cut her hair where it should not be cut and rip up her skin where it should not be ripped up, and then we drill holes inside her and suck all of her blood out and put things inside of her and blow her bones up.”
Then he looked deeply into the eyes of my grandfather, shook his finger and said, “And what would happen if you did that to your mother? She would die! And this is exactly what is going to happen to all of us if we do not learn to respect and understand the Spirit and Sacredness of our Mother Earth.”
Brother Phil Lane Jr.