During the early years of North America’s “new” ecological consciousness, in the late 1960s, my grandfather spoke with an old friend at his home on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.
His old friend asked my grandfather to explain to him what ecology was all about. “Well,” my grandfather said, “you know, Tahansi, my beloved cousin, we have these places of the white man's education where you can go and learn to read and study books. Then they learn how to write about what they have read about. Finally, they learn to talk about what they have learned to read and write about!
This is how the young people of today learn about life. Some people learn 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 says 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 invented machines that can look at things that are very small and make them look big. Other machines they have invented 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 learn more about Mother Earth's truth. Tahanshi, they have spent a lot of time and money and studied Mother Earth for 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 in which all living things breathe and pollute the water that all living things drink, you pollute all living things.
What do you think about that, Tahansi?”
My Grandfather’s old friend smiled knowingly and shook his head. “I wondered when they would get around to this understanding of Life! 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, put things inside of her, and blow her bones up.”
This wise elder then looked deeply into my grandfather's eyes, shook his finger, and said, “And what would happen if you did that to your mother? She would die! And this is exactly what will happen to all of us if we do not learn to respect and understand the Spirit and Sacred Teachings of our Mother.”
