Dollars and pennies, and nickels and dimes,
The days of our lives, the price of our time,
Machines turning profit, with every bomb,
How much will it cost, to rebuild our mom?
*******
The Black Hills are not for sell. The most sacred energy center of the Lakota nation cannot be bought. So we just stole it. Yeah, sure, we stole the whole country, but I ain’t got time for all that. I don’t even have enough paper to cover the debt to the planet we incurred as we extracted every bit of life we could, and what an abundant source of life’s greatest mysteries it was. The Mountains of Eden. Vitality abounded. Food sprang from every curve of the Earth, and springs fed her flowing cycles of growth. Her beauty radiated towards the heavens, and Father Sun poured his loving energy into her womb, which kinda resembles a private cave network of emergent properties. The essence of life was reborn here again and again. I don’t know if the Lakota were literally birthed in these mountains, but I understand that their non-literary existence was transformed every time they stepped foot into this energetic vortex at the center of their world.
They didn’t live there though, it was far too sacred for that, the stronghold of Earthly power was reserved for prayer and ceremony. They knew that their own footprint could drown out the fountain of life, they also knew that the energy emanating from the heart of creation, was pushing them along the path of most existence. Their commitment to the ritual honoring of Unci Maka and Tunkasila, grandmother and grandfather of all that we know, kept them coming back for more, as they became the conductors of an electric circuitry that recharged the liquid ground beneath their feet. Their pure heart vibrations made the land stronger, and the land returned the favor. The ceremonies held here, prepared the people to carry prayer in their heart as they journeyed beyond the hillside, it kept them connected to the cosmic understanding of Wakan Tanka, but it also updated their operating system. The souls of their essence, their heart of creation, the code of existence that ensured their survival in an always changing world of fluid motion - it evolved their DNA.
*******
Unci Maka is in a constant state of flux. Ever-changing. Not a thing is permanent in this entire universe. We live in a liquid lucid dream, and while we have the capacity to manifest the pathways of existence, it seems pretty egotistical to imagine a world where we are the final step of creation. And boring. What beauty is there in damming the flow of life on our planet? Of building a home whose technologies will become obsolete, as you sentence your descendants to the backwards belief of your own degeneration? Of removing the mountains of maternal instinct that she was still pushing to new peaks? No, there is nothing permanent in this world, including us, which for some reason terrifies us to the point of solidifying our place in herstory. We’re so convinced that we’re the star of the show, that we insist on canceling the remaining seasons of the longest running soap opera ever.
I’m talking about the future of the planet. I’m talking about the future of humankind. We are one and the same. We poison them both at the same rate, for an attack on one is an attack on the other. We toxify her water, which infiltrates our own intake. We are polluted by the progress of profit, which enables us to pump destruction into the world of tomorrow. We spread manmade miracles throughout the course of her evolution, and this manufractured disconnection from reality, inbreeds the disillusion of human superiority. The more we insist on slowing the tides of change on our own planet, the less room we have for the growth of our own species.
The concrete domestication of life on Earth, is drastically reducing the amount of pure solar energy that she is able to translate into a language that we may be able to understand. The literal vibrations emanating from the planet, both through the naturally occurring foods of genuine evolutionary superiority, and through physical contact between our bodies and hers, are the driving forces behind the advancement of our genetic coding. The spirals of the sun propel the spirals of the Earth, whose spirals push out through the constantly developing DNA spirals of the plant nation, who we consume in order to update our own microscopic spirals at the core of each cell that defines us.
She is reprogramming us to become the fittest to survive, which might have to mean gaining the ability to drink oily water, but whatever the next step will be, only those connected to her love song will receive the upgrade. Those living in the concrete cubicles of high-rising electric bills, consumed by the convenience of fake food and a fast-paced lifestyle, those that answer the call of capitalism while sending the pull of their heartstrings to voicemail, they’re simply not going to survive the coming times. Just as our fasting bodies purge the cancerous colonies from our colons, our planet is preparing to rid herself of the obsolete models of corrupted viral outbreaks, so you should probably update your operating system.
If you are caught up in the machine right now, feeling that something big is coming but unable to break away, instead thinking that you’ll have time to escape the devastation when it begins to rain down upon us - you won’t. It is already happening. Once it becomes obvious to the mainstream, it will be too late to jump ship. If your heart is beckoning you, you need to follow it, today, you need to get as far down your path of personal evolution as you possibly can. Do not put it off until tomorrow, do not wager your survival against the fallacy that financial wealth will be able to protect you from the future. When the time comes, no amount of money will be able to fund your exodus to Eden. The streets will be clogged with the lost souls of those that preferred to remain asleep, as their heart was screaming for them to wake up. It will be difficult to navigate an exit strategy over the communal chaos of fear, a physical attunement with the loving energy of our vibrating planet is your only chance of survival. Period.
Nothing is permanent in this world. Those that cling onto the illusion that they can construct a reality that will hold up until the end of life as we know it, will have succeeded. The rest of us will be crossing a threshold into an entirely new dawn of life on Earth. If this sounds scary to you, it is because you do not have a strong enough connection with Unci Maka to listen to her guidance, you should work on that.
I am reassured every single day that I am in the exact right place upon the surface of the planet. I have manifested miraculous journeys that have brought me to an even closer vibrational connection to the consciousness of our mother. She will be there for me when the time comes, because I have learned how to listen to her. I have no fear of the coming days, she will call me into action just as she did fifteen thousand to Standing Rock, or how she brought us back there for an unknown gathering of those who have followed their hearts ever since. I’m not worried for me, I’ll be getting a heads-up, but you should probably get on the emergency contact list before it’s too late.
*******
And none of this is new news. Ancient civilizations were built around the understanding that cosmic connection was the only real progress that occurred on Earth. Mayan calendars, egyptian pyramid schemes, giant circular stone structures that were mysteriously un-henged by someone who didn’t like the flow of celestial light, the high-energy temples that routed water through the prayer before it poured into the garden, and even the uneducated savages who dance around in the Sun as they claim that their sacred hillside of scientifical energy abundance, is somehow the source of life as we know it.
The sacred sites of indigenous cultures worldwide, house exceptionally strong energetic componentry. Elements of high frequencies that provided them with the strongest connection to universal understanding available. This is not some archaic belief of dirt worshiping heathens, even the christian colonizers knew it, which is why they built their places of worship directly on top of the stolen energy centers, often encasing them in concrete rooms with no doors, attempting to discontinue the connection of the locals, as they converted them to a monetary belief system of subservience that separated man from God.
Then the heavenly forefathers outlawed prayer as they began removing the scientifical energy sources from the defeated lands, which continues into today. Civilization civilizes the indigenous by destroying their vibrational connection to the planet, while violently removing energy from below the Earth’s surface on these seemingly strategic mineral reserve-nations. And to any civilians who question the authority of colonization, they are simply directed to the reminder of white supremacy etched into the most sacred stone atop the birthplace of the Lakota nation.
And they rush more and more to deplete the connection between humanity and the energy field around the globe, because those atop the patriarchal power structure, don’t want us to evolve outside of the cages they have locked us in for so long. They will lose their authoritarian control over humankind, as we raise our frequency beyond their grasp, and advance past the stagnation of permanence that they have used to drain the lifeforce of our planet. The darkness will no longer reign supreme over the Earth, as she resumes her role as the Goddess of light, and fills every cell of her being with the heightened vibrations of tomorrow. And that, dear friend, is why the Black Hills are not for sell.
*******
Sure didn’t stop them from making an offer though. And then a counter offer. At first we just took them at gunpoint over the dead bodies of their defenders, whose dying language offered little room for negotiation. The gold rush more or less solidified the deal, and fueled the road crews that paved the way for a new national agriculture forest, that way white folks have a place to park their RVs when they come to celebrate that time the cowboys beat the redskins.
We actually did at some point, realize that the unfairness of our skin tone might have overstepped the bounds of our God-given privilege, so we decided to offer a consolation prize to replace the only thing that ever mattered in the eyes of those silly dirt worshiping indians. In 1980, the supreme court ruled that we had in fact illegally stolen the land as we broke our treaty obligations, which we claim to be the “supreme law of the land,” but we only meant for that to count when it was some foreign land of the pesky foreigners. We were now on the hook to make it up to the Lakota for the land we took, so we probably just gave it back, right?
Well, that’s certainly not the way the America Corporation does business, we have a strict no-return policy, but we can refund you the value of the ‘property.’ Here’s some paper scraps that we printed up with the pictures of the guys who took it from you, that should replace the most sacred thing in your entire culture, worked pretty well for us. Of course, we’re only going to give you what it was worth way back then, back when a pig cost $5 and an acre of unallotted indian land cost $1. Yeah, inflation sucks, for you, but we can offer you some compounded interest, though now we’re gonna have to print some more paper scraps to make up for it.
So we opened a fractional bank account and loaded it up with millions in exchange for destroying their uncivilization, split up among nine bands of the Sioux Nation, but for some reason they weren’t interested in cashing the check. The money still sits to this day, untouched, no amount of foreign currency can replace their precious Unci Maka, at least until the glitter of capitalism has completely disconnected the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’, and the tribal council considers cashing-in at the expense of the tribe.
And that was the word on the street, or at least on the facebook, that the Oglala band of the Lakota Nation was considering accepting their portion of the settlement. As you could imagine, we weren’t too happy about it, nor were many of the internet chat rooms, wait, are those still a thing?
The rumor was that they weren’t accepting it as payment for the purchase of the hills, but as restitution for the energy extracted from beneath them, though it all sounded pretty shady to us. And no else one in the tribe wanted it, 90% are publicly against it at least, they know that it only validates america’s assumed ownership of a living being that cannot be owned. But tribal councils aren’t exactly known for acting in the best interests of the people, hmm, kinda sounds like our government.
Speaking of our government, it's worth a mention as to our insistence of the interference into theirs. Like the minimum requirement of full blood membership to reserve their place at the table, and our publicly held strategy of simply letting the natives dilute themselves out of existence. Or how about in this current 2018 election cycle, where red states are marginalizing the red man, by requiring physical addresses in order to vote, which simply don't exist in the tipi-o boxes of their prison camp. Or how we stipulated that three quarters of the men in the tribe had to agree in order to sign treaties, or to take the Black Hills money. We kept poking our nose into the affairs of the indians and pushing our patriarchal gender roles onto a previously matriarchal society. We knew that if we were to sway the tribes with the allure of dollars, then we needed to take the decisions out of the hands of the elders and women of the community. Plus, the alcohol and meth wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t hurt us anyway.
It’s old news about the way we used the alcohol to break their spirits, but it’s also fairly common knowledge that our government uses the most heinous of drugs, to break the will of those who would otherwise be able to stand up to the oppression that we impose. The Iran-Contra scandal made public that the CIA spread crack cocaine into the povertous populous, while their former head was vice-principal of america. And I’ve personally talked to vets who confirmed that we guard opium fields in afghanistan, until it’s ready to bring home faster than the troops.
And then we get to lock up our victims, where we can further break their spirit, take away their voting rights, indoctrinate them into a life of habitual offense and fracture functional families. We leave their kids to grow up alone in a world rigged against them, where the only way to survive is to follow in their parent’s footsteps, and all the while citing the overcrowded jailhouse as not only a reason to retain prejudice, but as the motivation to build more privatized businesses, I mean prisons. We profit from every angle of injustice we serve. And those who can only see the incarcerated as criminals that have earned every mistreatment we can think of, instead of the victims of a broken system designed for their defeat, well, that is a testament to just how successful the brainwashing of privilege has been.
“Well, I’m white, and I’ve never smoked crack, and none of my white friends have either, so obviously it is a trait of the blacks, maybe we should just lock them all up. Or they should just work hard like me, and they’ll be able to live a life of privilege too. I’ve earned my spot above the poverty line. I’ve worked all of my life. Walked right up to my white neighbor’s house and got a job mowing his lawn, not a call to the police. I helped my parents with chores and got an allowance, not a reminder that food stamps were running low this month. I spent free time joining afterschool clubs and selling snacks door-to-door, not pressured into a gang in order to feel safe walking to school. I walked right into my first job and the white manager hired me on the spot, and his finger wasn’t even on the alarm button. I spent enough time studying to make the grade for college, not raising my brothers and sisters while my mom served tables and my dad served sentences. I even worked hard enough that I was accepted on my own merit, so of course dad cosigned on my student loan. See, I worked for every bit of privilege I’ve received, and you bet I’m gonna enjoy it. It’s not my fault that the blacks and the indians are lazy bums, or that they’d rather smoke drugs than live an easy life of pleasure and happiness. We all have problems, and we all have the same chance to overcome them, I guess white people are just better than the rest.”
Um, I think you forgot the part about being able to ask a cop for directions without being shot in the back. You’d think at least the indians who still live on the rez would be free of the unjustified injustices of the justice system, and in so many ways they are, but it is still a broken system. The BIA cops on the rez are at least native, and I’ve had good interactions with them, guess my privilege even works on the rez. I don’t hear about police shootings or anything like that, they are still a part of the community with an understanding of their family’s problems, but they are also part of the problem. And they also have their own problems of oppression to face, like in Rosebud, where half of the BIA cops were fired for pissing dirty on their mandatory meth tests.
The BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the agency that has the jurisdiction over a sovereign land that we have no control over, except that the BIA was established by the US war department and is now controlled by the interior. We are still in charge of far more than polluting the food and water of the POW camps. That’s not even an obscene metaphor relating reservations to the industrial incarceration of indians, the reservations are literally recognized by our government as POW camps, prisoners of war, that’s our official stance on those that we were kind enough not to massacre like the rest.
*******
At Camp Justice, we had a few elders who stopped by regularly to sweat, and sometimes just for a visit to share understandings and stories of the good old days. It’s almost entrancing to hear the slow cadence of their experience, and I’m grateful to have developed the ability to sit down and shut up, to listen intently, even when there’s a minute long silence as they gather their thoughts. It’s a good skill to have, and now it’s nerve-wracking to hear someone interrupt the flow of another with their own need to speak, even if they’ve already heard this story before.
One elder was definitely stuck on repeat, but that also enabled me to retain more than just a broad sentiment of his message. He had a few talking points, including his POW status, complete with his POW number, U33442134. Issued both a social security number through which to pay taxes, and a POW number through which to serve his time. The ‘U’ stood for unallotted, which meant that he received his identification after all of the gridded cages of land had been divvied up through the general allotment act, so no land left to steward since we already sold the other ninety million acres to the racist white people of the dakotas.
Pine Ridge is POW Camp #334 and Rosebud is #335, they used to connect, but that gave the natives too much capacity to work together, so we took even more land and separated the two reservations with an impassable blockade of privileged private prejudice. And then we just started slowly closing in the walls around them.
Nebraska decided to redraw their state line, and move it a mile into the south dakota reservation of Pine Ridge. What did south dakota care, go for it boys, don’t drink the water though. Our elder would point to a hill across the way, on the other side of white clay’s liquor town, a ridge covered with Pine Trees. “That’s Pine Ridge, there’s no Pines or ridges over here, that’s the real reservation boundary, there’s even a stone marker over there to prove it.”
Now ain’t that some Bull runoff? So let me get this straight, the white town of liquor and missionaries isn’t a tenth of a mile outside of the rez, it’s point nine miles inside of it? Geez. And how would one even go about correcting this obviously unintentional clerical error? It’s too late to move this run-down town I’d imagine, simply not fair to relocate twelve white people, I mean white clay people, just because of some silly land dispute. Why, they might even cry as they hit the trail. Oh, and there’s the inordinate amount of alcohol taxes that nebraska’s been collecting for years, as they funneled in the poison and funneled out whatever money did manage to circulate on the rez. But that’s over now, so why can’t we just give them back a single mile of the millions that we took?
I know it sounds ridiculous, the thought of us treating the indians like humans, and even the thought of asking US citizens to give up their property rights for anything other than the eminent domain of corporate greed, so what if we don’t? What if we move the imaginary line back to where it actually sits on the paper printed by the colonizers, the one that has all of the imaginary lines of boundaries to cross, but nobody has to move? It’s just a pretend line anyway, and now the twelve folks of white clay would just have a simple change of address form to fill out, it happens all the time with republican voting districts. Nothing would change in their daily life, still no alcohol, and still neighbors to the indians, the only difference would be that they could pay the exact same amount of taxes to the tribe, instead of nebraska.
“What!? No way, we ain’t living in no POW camp, and we dang sure ain’t paying them heathens a dime.” I bet if the line had inadvertently been moved the other way, there wouldn’t even be a hesitation of retribution. It’s only fair really, but it would set a precedent of undoing privilege, and that can’t happen. What if some liberal indian lover decided that all of the dakotas really belonged to the descendants of the indians that we gave all of the dakotas too? We’d all be up Cow crap creek and governor feather face would be in charge of out tax dollars, no effing way.
Or what about the Black Hills? Why can’t we let them be the park rangers of their most sacred mountains? They certainly know more of the stories within the land and would make most excellent tour guides, then we could just let them collect the eleven bucks that it cost to visit our sacred mt rushmore. Oh, but I bet they might have a different take on the history of the rock hard formation of our country. Obviously we can’t have them spreading the slander of the actual events that led up to the seizure of the hills, or the earthquake machine in the caves, or the gold standard of custer’s demise, plus we’d have to pay them for all of the uranium we want to blow out of the Earth. Or what if they didn’t let us take it at all?
It just doesn’t work for us to give up what we rightfully stole in the first place, it’s not like we went to Sitting Bull’s house to murder him and then massacred his people for nothing. We earned every privilege we got, it’s not our fault they were lazy bums and just wanted to sit around praying all day. We’d love to just relax at home with our families, and maybe even give you back your home as well, but we gotta make a living somehow, and money’s money, gotta have more fuel to fuel the fuel extraction units, or else what would we do with ourselves, sit around and pray about loving each other all day? Get real, you might as well cash the check, cause you ain’t never gonna be king of these hills.
And when you put it that way, it seems like maybe they should. How likely is it that america is gonna have a change of heart and give them back a literal gold mine. How honorable is it to refuse the little bit of money that could never replace the hills, but could help bring firewood to the frozen indians on the rez? Is it better to do the right thing and stand up for Unci Maka, even if it means dying in the process? Well, what better day to die than this one? The Black Hills are not for sell.
*******
The tribal council announced that they were not considering the acceptance of the money, that it had only been briefly mentioned in a meeting, of course that was only after a public outcry against the deal. Plus, we had just been protesting their corruption in front of the tribal building yesterday, and we are fresh off of a win, so they might not want to square up against Camp Justice.
The protest wasn’t of our design, we were standing in solidarity with another movement that was spreading awareness of the misdealings of the council. Funny to have some white carolinian out front protesting the tribal corruption, but I quit questioning the places my heart takes me after the incredible journey I’ve been on thus far. And the even more interesting caveat, was that the council had just helped to fund the fight against white clay. They’d given us a grand or so to put on the Horse race, and to start gearing up for winter, but we are one and the same with Unci Maka - we cannot be bought. A few dollars will not bribe the defenders of the sacred to look the other way, as you plunder from the people that we’re both sworn to protect
So what’s the bit of dirty dealing of the day? Lol, this one’s rich, like the council, and wrong on a couple of different levels. So the other night, at four in the morning, the treasurer’s wife got pulled over for a DUI, not good, but it happens, especially to a race of humans who have such a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. And she was in his tribal vehicle, oooh, still not good, but... and she had meth and heroin on her. Hold the phone, as she called him to bail her out with a five-thousand dollar tribal check, which the council was trying to pretend never happened, because the treasurer was the lynchpin to the rest of the tribal misappropriation.
If he goes down, they all go down. And in the middle of the protest, a worker rolls past us with three bags of shredded documents on the way to the dumpster. Mm hmm, probably just coincidence and meaningless memos, but certainly gave us something to talk about. Or we could talk about the chances that the treasurer didn’t know about his wife’s drug problem. Or the odds that he also partook in the most vile criminal behavior of suffering from addiction to escape oppression. If even the treasurer of the tribal council can be afflicted by the poverty of nothingness, just imagine the hopelessness of the have-nots on the rez, and what possible escape they could fathom outside of alcohol, meth, or suicide.
*******
That last one wasn’t quite rhetorical, I actually do have an answer. I’m just some honky from a life of privilege that doesn’t have any real trauma to heal from, but I have seen these ways work for my brothers in anguish. You gotta come in the sweat lodge and pray with us.
We held ceremony every few days, and had some regulars that showed up more often than that. We had time for brotherhood and splitting wood beforehand, it just so happened that most of our visitors were dudes, but all were most certainly welcome. There was one brother that I got fairly close to, a younger guy, and I was the youngest in camp at the time, so we’d crack jokes and cut wood, that’s a pretty good start to letting some frustrations out, and then we’d sweat. Pray. Cry. Get broken down by the steam so that we could open up without ego, be honest with ourselves about the things that weighed on our hearts, that’s the only way to begin the process of working through them.
It’s easy to compartmentalize the pain, the pain you’ve caused, the guilt, to pretend that it’s all good, you’re a tough guy, men don’t cry, men don’t feel, you did nothing wrong because your ego is always right. But in the lodge, he’s not there to protect you. The spirits are though, the grandfathers are, you are in the womb of Unci Maka, connected to her understanding that we are all walking our own paths through life, there’s no need to be ashamed, no need to hide, hiding from your spirit only disconnects you from the magic of the great mystery.
We pray up to Tunkasila, combining our vibrations and sending our energy into the universe. We pray down to Unci Maka, sending our love into her core as we bring her healing for the traumas we’ve caused. And we pray inward, to the piece of the universe that is inside us all, and with the purification of the lodge, we are able to transcend the blockages that keep us separated from the light that flows within. And it physically detoxifies us, which is important for those who have a hard time setting the bottle down.
Then we all sit around the fire with a little medicine, and talk about the affect alcohol and other addictions have had on our lives. It’s essentially an AA meeting, but instead of twelve steps, we have four doors. I think there’s an official method of Red Road recovery, but ours was an informal gathering of community, a safe sober space for family to be open and honest with each other. My brother really just wanted s