06/21/2022
On this 21st of June, World Peace and Prayer Day and National Indigenous Peoples Day, we would like to commemorate the Indigenous People Rights, Traditions and Heritage and to encourage people of all faiths and all nations to pray for the planet, to learn more about Mother Earth and inspire youth to care for the environment.
Hopefully in the future, the uniqueness of the Native American and other Autochthone cultures around the world, will be seen as part of the solution for some of our modern climate and economic problems.
Forgive but never forget.
đđđ âWhen the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them. â â Chief Seattle [Seatlh], Suquamish Chief đđđ
â€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïž âI am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.â â Chief Red Cloud (Makhipiya-Luta) Sioux Chief â€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïž
âWhenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alikeâbrothers of one father and one another, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all.â â Chief Joseph, Nez Perce
âOur land is everything to us⊠I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it â with their lives.â â John Wooden Leg, Cheyenne
âYou ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my motherâs bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. â Wovoka, Paiute
âOne does not sell the land people walk on.â â Crazy Horse, September 23, 1875
âUpon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.â â Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux Chief (This statement was taken from Crazy Horse as he sat smoking the Sacred Pipe with Sitting Bull for the last time, four days before he was assassinated.)
âThe land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies.â â Mary Brave Bird, Lakota
âOnce I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest. We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank.â â Chief Maquinna, Nootka
âWe must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who canât speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees.â â Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation
âThe old Indian teaching was that is is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessitiesâŠâ â Wooden Leg (late 19th century) Cheyenne
âOut of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.â â Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux Chief
âI am a great chief among my people. If you kill me, it will be like a spark on the prairie. It will make a big fire â a terrible fire!â â Kiowa Chief Satanta.
âWhen a man does a piece of work which is admired by all we say that it is wonderful; but when we see the changes of day and night, the sun, the moon, and the stars in the sky, and the changing seasons upon the earth, with their ripening fruits, anyone must realize that it is the work of someone more powerful than man.â â Chased-by-Bears, Santee-Yanktonai Sioux
âTraditional people of Indian nations have interpreted the two roads that face the light-skinned race as the road to technology and the road to spirituality. We feel that the road to technologyâŠ. has led modern society to a damaged and seared earth. Could it be that the road to technology represents a rush to destruction, and that the road to spirituality represents the slower path that the traditional native people have traveled and are now seeking again? The earth is not scorched on this trail. The grass is still growing there.â â William Commanda, Mamiwinini, Canada, 1991
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-quotes/
