I had a nightmare last night. I woke up and tried to shake it back into the darkness, but this morning it was still as vivid as the other dreams I’ve been having, those that have already proven their significance in this world.
It started out innocently enough, I was in colonization as I was about to land a gig for my children’s band, and then all of a sudden it turned dark. I was about to be taken advantage of, in a sexual way, in a violent against my will kinda way, and I was scared. I fought back, I felt that I was going to be unable to stop the advance, and then I woke up.
As a man, it’s difficult to imagine yourself being sexually exploited, we live in a society that has conditioned us to be on the prowl for any action we can get. Consensual or otherwise. We’ve been taught that women are not sacred, that they are material belongings like everything else in this world, and that has led us to a reality where situations like my dream, are simply a commonplace occurrence in the lives of those whose forgotten roles on this planet, should be held the most sacred of all.
*******
So I gave up sex. For now at least. Though it’s easier than going vegetarian when I’m alone in my tipi. I actually began a celibacy thing many months ago, which had been pretty confusing to the couple of women that I was openly dividing my time between. All of the things that had come up at Sun Dance were fading away as I spent time in colonization, just needed a couple nightcaps and stems to remind me of the work ahead. I had prayed on it a bunch, but prayers aren’t meant to be a standalone cure, you have to follow the rest of the doctor’s orders as well.
I knew then, that I had to write about my burdens of hurting the women in my past, regardless of what that meant for my reputation. And now I understand it all on a deeper level, I now can see how our mistreatment of women has been a direct attack on the well-being of our planet. Of our mother. How any continuation of this patriarchal oppression that I have personally perpetuated, has only intensified the energetic wounds that are killing her.
I am so incredibly saddened by all of the pain I have caused, which makes it difficult to live a life without regret. I can see the hurt I’ve spread into the paths of others, although I’m sure I’m still overlooking a few, and I can see the vibrational trauma that I have poured into the wounds of the divine feminine energies of the world. I cried before, for the women I’ve hurt, but now I share my tears with the Earth, as I pray that they can begin her healing from the broken promises of my past. Unci Maka, please help me to repair the damage I’ve done.
*******
I’ve been back at the farm for nearly two months now, it was just what I needed on so many levels, handfuls of prayers answered in one homecoming. A focus on clean, local, plastic-free food. A sober community who spend that energy learning new songs around the big drum. And most importantly, is what they hold the most important - the prayer.
As John and I pulled up to the Apple barn, we were quickly met by Ben and another close water protector who had taken my place after Sun Dance. “Hoka brother, it’s time to go pray.” We arrived just in time to catch the train to the big tree, where we pray twice a day. The lodge was no longer a daily ritual, the winter had cut it back to every quarter moon cycle, roughly once a week, but no concern of conforming to a colonized work schedule. And on the off-days in-between, we still offer our songs to the four directions, as we wrap our prayers around the energy flow between heaven and Earth.
This is the Grandmother/Grandfather Tree, a several hundred year old Oak standing alone in the field, and the face of each ancestor can be seen in the bark of east and west. You can feel their energy as you open your heart in their presence, but you can also feel the pain. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, and all of her closest relatives were murdered long ago, her fate only spared because of her trunkated duality, which made for undesirable timber frames. Grow gnarly early.
This field used to be a forest full of trees just like this one, only bigger and straighter, but the settlers saw only the duality of a surplus of building materials, right where they envisioned the deconstruction of a cattle pasture. We all feel the pain she does, that of watching helplessly as your family is assaulted by colonization, and just as our grandmothers on the frontline did, she stands unmoved by the threats of mankind. We trust that she hears our prayers, feels our hearts, that she understands how we feel only remorse for the sins of our fathers, that we would never have allowed such evils to take place on our watch. Though, we do seem to be carrying on their legacy, as Cows are contained in order to continue the constant deforestation of her daily attempt at regrowth.
*******
And right now, as we speak to this conduit of connection, there are members of her family facing grave danger just across the mountain. And members of our own two-legged nation are throwing their bodies in-between Mother Nature and the encroaching of civilization. Those who are unwilling to succumb to the fear of making a stand, have really gone out on a limb for the protection of the planet, they have taken to the trees.
They are surrounded by the law enforcement mafia who are working for the benefit of a private corporation, who are surrounded by supporters of the treesitters, as they offer cheers of solidarity in the face of government corruption. This is not a protest of clearcut logging, nor for the water of some foreign native land, this is the frontline for the battle against my home.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a conduit of fracked natural gas, which releases more methane than dirty king coal, as it devastates every ecosystem it encounters. They plotted a course through the most fertile farmland, and then they waved a few dollars in the faces of those whose mama didn’t raise no sell-out. So they plotted another plan, same route, but this time they would just seize control with eminent domain.
Sounds super official, and I’m sure nobody is ever happy to have their domain eminented, but it’s done all the time for roads and other ‘necessary’ utilities of public use. And of course this natural gas is super necessary, and natural, and I’d even bet that some of those who wouldn’t sell, still voted for the fracking party, they just don’t want it in their backyard. Of course none of it would make it there anyway, because it’s all being shipped to china. This super necessary public utility worthy of enacting eminent domain, is purely for the profit of a multinational corporation, and the governor.
So now several people have setup residence in the trees along the route, trees on their own ‘private property’, where they’ve been held up for over a month. The police have cut off incoming supplies, like food, and certain feminine products that one might need after a month or so. Starve ‘em out and bleed ‘em dry, I guess. They recently denied this action, the day after they arrested three people for attempting to carry up food. The governor did finally receive enough pressure to step in and require that the police feed them, and I’ve heard that they’re sending up only the finest bologna sandwiches available. Every day that they remain in the trees, they receive massive fines that will soon require selling the land in order to cover, but luckily they have a piece of paper claiming that they own it, whatever that seems to be worth these days.
I don’t guess I have to mention the way it makes me feel to hear the tout of ‘private property’ as our defensive line, but at least it’s getting the white people involved this time, though all I can think about is “which tribe was here first?” But there’s not as strong of a tribal presence here as there was back in the dakotas, and the pipe hardly has the attention of anyone in the nearby cities, so the fight is left up to the isolated country folk who are quietly being silenced one by one. There are some small grassroots organizations, but with no larger plan, they’ll just crack them one tree at a time as they unzip Mother Earth. If only they had a local chapter of the water protectoring club at their disposal.
Well, I’m just writing a book, I could just as easily be doing this from up a tree. Actually sounds rather pleasant, and I could and sing and pray out loud when I wasn’t writing, the cops on duty could hum along as I worked my way into their hearts, and at the very least it’d be a good ending for the book. Though I guess they might not just let me walk away with my manuscript.
Ooh, I just figured that bit out. We’d already come up with the idea for drones to sneak in food rations, if amazon can do it, why can’t we? So I could just shoot out my pages on a drone, as long as they don’t shoot it down. I have a hard time believing that my synchronized flight home just ‘coincidentally’ crossed my path with the pipe, I’m starting to feel a call to duty, so we make a plan to go visit one of the treesits over the weekend.
The weekend comes, and we’ve only recently heard back from one of the camps with driving directions, but my brother Charlie’s been praying on it, and he thinks we should just stay put and pray some more. No one’s gonna argue with advice from the great spirit, so we sweat on it, and a couple of days later we find out that the sitters we were headed to see, had come down over the weekend.
They were having a nearby press conference, so we headed into town to begin networking our way into camp, but I’d overestimated my ability to function in a crowd of people downtown. They were all on our side, though less campy and more voter registration, but all I could really do was just stand quietly in the back with my family. A younger shirt-and-tie guy gave a pretty good speech, even a threat of another Standing Rock, though the point of his whole spiel was to pressure politicians to support us, or we’ll vote you out. A little different approach than I’d have been able to offer up, but I guess the fight is happening across many different arenas.
They are fighting colonization with colonization, attempting to beat them at their own game, in a system that has been rigged against the world since its very inception. There is no way to outpower the power structure, or to outgun the militarized police, there is no key to unlock the chains of our governed body, the only way to free the planet is to destroy the cage altogether.
The pyramid of oppression is designed so that it can never be flipped, and as long as each layer of oppressor clings to the shard of power that they believe themselves to carry, then the weight of the machine holds the entire thing down. It funnels the power from the lowest peasants to the single point at the top, and as it begins to consume itself, the middle-class is eaten away and reduced to communing with the bottom feeders.
The settler-descended holders of entitlement are beginning to feel that their human rights are being violated, but this is simply the way that the system has worked all along, and it is only now that those who benefited from their place in the colonizing contraption, are experiencing the short end of the nightstick already known intimately by the marginalized. A vote won’t fix it, every leader we’ve ever had was in on it, and they were never really in charge anyway. The machine is consuming our planet, us included, we must stand up and face the evil head on.
Then an old school radical somehow singled me and Charlie out, maybe it was the obviously camp-worn facades that we permanently don, and he asks, “Let me ask you boys something, why are you fellas out here at this event?” Without really thinking, I rattled off, “Because I have dedicated my life to protecting our planet, our home, our sacred Unci Maka.” A look of flabbergasted approval, and a glance towards Charlie elicited a response of, “same.”
*******
This dude had also been to Standing Rock with his veterans group. He went on and off about infiltrators for a minute, which always makes me assume infiltration, but Charlie cleared him for take-off. And he was down with some action, though he was gearing up for the fight against the ACP, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, yet another fracked natural gas pipeline carving through our mountains, and this one’s been rerouted to cross through north carolina. Opponents of it will claim that this one is just for profit too, but with it crossing thousands of headwaters of several states’ water supply, I obviously know that there’s a far more dastardly motive at play here.
The path of total destruction is aptly named the "incineration zone", a 2,000-foot-wide swath of explosive clearcut, continuously poisoned to prevent the regrowth that might actually prevent a landslide election, and of course it all culminates at the compressor station in a low-income black neighborhood. It's crossing tons of mountaintops and flowing down ridiculously steep slopes, so much so, that every pipeline corporation refused the contract, except for the firm with a firm history of failure. Good thing we don't really need the fuel anyway.
The proposed pipe is part of the blueprint of Dominion Power, a nomenclature that properly describes their attempted takeover of Earthly energy, and they've enlisted the equally lawless backup of Global Security. It seems that they’re attempting to order a new world of ‘global domination’, as they install the infrastructure of planetary oppression. The privatized police of the world, which means that no local jobs were created, as does the import of treecutters from several states away. No one locally would sign up for this work, even those who prioritize economy over ecology can see no need to brutally force this pipe into place, and especially since it's all being exported.
Dominion already exports fuel, so obviously our domestic usage is covered, and now they're in a mad dash to get the rest into the ocean before the globally secured market dries up. Somehow our trumped up international policies have pissed some folks off, and now we're being cut out of the deal altogether, like how china signed a twelve year contract to buy natural gas from russia. The fracked gas is too low of quality to use in even the lowest-of-income american neighborhoods, those that we pressurize into explosive situations, and now we can't even send it to the commies, so what are we even going to do with it?
And as far as the 'man camps' are concerned, the holding facilities for an imported workforce with no local connection, those who are left to blow off steam by infiltrating the community with meth and sexual misconduct, a known place of indigenous disappearance at violent extraction points across the country, so much so, that the FBI now automatically installs a task force at each new camp just to investigate sex crimes among pipeline workers, well, they get paid either way, so who cares. The installation company is guaranteed a thirteen percent profit upon completion, regardless of whether fuel flows or not, and regardless of the rising cost incurred to secure the globe from the defenders of the sacred, as our protests only pump up their bottom line.
And the bottom line is, that putting this empty pipe dream into place will bring devastation to the land. The clearcutting of these steep grades will cause massive disruption, the waterways already affected have shown intense degradation, and the increasing amount of hurricanes have uplifted fifty foot sections of pipe as they flow into the river. Though, they only see this as proof that we have to hurry up and complete the project before it all falls apart.
And it’s crossing the Appalachian Trail. It’s gonna be an unprecedented depth of drilling through the core of a rock-hard granite mountain, and this portion of the project will require twenty-four hour drilling for over a year, as it trashes millions of gallons of water in the process. The AT is not a hike, it’s a lifestyle, and many have styled their entire lives around this scenic overlook. Freakin hippies. So we need to get this hiking community involved, but we need to get them informed first, we need people on the trail spreading the word, and we need a camp for people to gravitate towards.
And the treesits, we need to keep them up, but we need a concerted effort. We need a basecamp that communicates between all sitting locations, and as the trees up front are compromised, we simply move the frontline back a few paces. Or I say build some treetop communities across the whole woodline. It’s not just Swiss Family Robinson though, they’ll be coming up to drag you down. They’ve hired special tree climbing arbor patrols to remove sitters, and a few private contractors have even broken protocol as treesitters rode down with the call of timber. I like the idea of going up, I’d be singing and praying for all to hear, swinging around doing resist-stunts and stuff, and of course I’d be evolving the menu of treetop cuisine as the smell of fresh frybread overpowered the teargas.
My path may very well include setting up camp, or cheffing it up at one, but I have a minimum list of amenities that I require, and they may not be for everyone. No propane or styrofoam, or at least an awareness and a genuine goal of cleaning up. Should be easy enough, though I’m still concerned that the fight is over private property, and not freeing Mother Earth. But they’ll all come around as they experience camp life, though to me, that includes a healthy dose of prayer. Indian prayer.
I need a lodge, and a drum, and hey’s and ha’s and ho’s, and that’s probably not gonna work for a lot of the small town locals. No worries, it’ll all work out, and I’ll cross paths with the right people when the time is right. There are still tribes around here too, though I’d also want to import a few of my strong Lakota warriors, but don’t let me stop you guys from doing your Jesus camp. We need all of the bases covered if we’re gonna stop them from stealing home, but just remember that not only was your dude down on private property, his book also described a fifty year jubilee of giving the land back to itself.
Or we could just start with a simple swath of rewilding, a single strip of wilderness corridor that allows nature to chart its own course. A migratory highway, free of the toll taken by interstate boundaries, and a logical first step in the deconstruction of our civilized chaos. Maybe something like 2,000 feet wide, it could run all the way from the mountains to the sea, and it would serve as humanity’s sign of good faith to have faith in the good of humanity. It would only be the slightest fraction of land to set free, though the entitlement of the privileged may still offer up some resistance, but we have a pretty good case of the imminent nature of returning this domain to nature.
Ah, I see where you’re going with this freeway to the future, why can’t we just convert the proposed path of the pipe into a land before time? It serves the good of the public interest far more efficiently than a three-and-a-half foot pipebomb built to supply a demandless market. Plenty of plots have already been threatened into signing easements, and those who are unwilling to cave to the pressures of systematic deforestation, well, wouldn’t they much rather have a spring of new life flowing through their precious property values? Hard to imagine anyone choosing fracked gas over freedom, though I guess that’s the precise predicament we happen to be in these days, but maybe a signing over of privilege could be the catalyst required to begin the uncaging of oppression.
It’s an idea at least, and considering the vast expanse of land going with the flow of fuel, a nationwide plan of inaction could facilitate a far reaching network of interspecies travel. And maybe we could camp there too. Nature is not naturally something apart from us, we are built to be fully immersed in her glory, we are a keystone species that is meant to contribute to the propagation of the garden. It is time to reintroduce humans to the wild.
But for now, I’ve caught wind of a camp full of younger protectors, and they’re at a pretty good strategic location, thinking I might take a trip to check them out soon. But, I can’t really post you beyond that, we’ve caught up to current day, and currently I’m planning on doing some radical shit, so you’ll just have to check out the next book for an update. It’s an action thriller.
*******
All this and more went skyward as we prayed at the tree, and then we’d see the Wanbli Oyate carry them beyond. More often than not, there was a Bald Eagle in the tallest tree to the north, and many times he would hang out until just after the second round, the prayer round, and then he would dip out, to his next collection point I assume. We’d see them at the lodge too, today it was only Deer, though an Eagle-sized bird poop confirmed his presence.
Sweats have been hotter since I returned, could have something to do with upping it to thirteen stones, but I think it’s more about me working through some deeper seated issues this time around. Even as I write all this stuff about escaping our egos, mine is strong, and it keeps grabbing ahold of me. I write with conviction, but that leads me down a Rabbit hole of believing that I know what’s best. I don’t even know what’s best for me yet, how could I possibly decide another’s path? So I pray a lot, try to walk with humility, and sweat is melting it back one quarter moon at a time.
But if it’s this difficult for me out here, surrounded with good food and prayerful family, then how could I expect anyone to break free when they’re trapped out there in that underworld of colonization? It’s a tough road to walk wherever you are, attempting to remain centered between the gutters of duality, but the system is so severely biased to one extreme, that it’s a wonder that everyone doesn’t just fall off completely. And many do. There are so many that are barely hanging onto the edge, that it now seems like that’s where they were meant to be the entire time.
We are not meant to struggle to survive as we are forced to pay for existence. We are not meant to live with anxiety, addiction, and alcoholism. We are not meant to go hungry, and we are not meant to feel pushed into slavery as we try to feed our families. We are not meant to pay to sleep on our biological home, and we are not meant to be paid for destroying it. We are not meant to lead a life of disconnection as we mindlessly fall for the illusion of progressive connection. We are not meant to breathe, drink, eat, see, or hear poisons around all those corners, and we are not meant to dislocate the symbiotic vibrations of the circle.
We are not meant to feel lost in this world, this is our home, our family, we are meant to feel empowered to follow our dreams and to find our true selves, as we discover the infinite meanings of life. There is an endless sea of consciousness waiting to be tapped into, but through the imprisonment of our minds, we have become convinced that this material world is the only one of any matter. From a heightened perspective of awareness, it seems foolish to self-impose the sanctions of working until your wheels fall off, only to celebrate a lifetime of wasted energy, as they ‘re-tire’ you for your final drive into obsolescence.
The conventions of convenience are not designed to make life easier, they are built to breed dependence, through which they herd the happy volunteers towards the guillotine, as they milk every drop of life along the way. We are not meant to be cattle, even the Cows aren’t meant to be cattle, but this top-down system of control has convinced us that the only way to survive, is to assume our roles as the middlemen of oppression.
The species of our planet are not meant to be caged. We are meant to have the freedom to follow our hearts, as Unci Maka leads us along the path of least resistance. We are not meant to hit an impassable wall as we are left to wonder what it’s like out in the real world, sentenced to struggle in confinement, while we instinctively know that there are greener pastures beyond the razor wire. We are not meant to hit a dead end of evolution as we encounter the invisible fence of the border patrol, and as long as we cling to the phallic fallacy of fractionated power, we all remain in the prison hierarchy of his-story. Only once we empower the escape of those further down the chain, will the grip of our entangled incarceration release us from the mechanisms that bind our united spirit.
We must dissolve any concept of superiority from the face of the planet, as we remember that she is in charge of us, not the other way around. We must exercise our muscles of humility, as they overpower our indoctrinations of ego. We must once again find the understanding that ‘us’ and ‘them’, is just another separated state of mind, and that ‘we’ can only attain ‘our’ highest power, through the reconnection of every single vibration of life.
Those who hold the shreds of power along the way to the top, hold the key to unlocking the cells of those below them. We cannot hide behind the belief that there is nothing to be done, as we continue to believe that their struggle is not our own. We cannot deny the responsibility of our privilege, and claim that it is up to the oppressed to fight for their own freedom. The descendants of settler colonialism, must use their inherited advantage to dismantle settler colonialism. Only through the opened hearts of the oppressors, will we begin the unzipping of our incarceration, and we must realize that we are all oppressors.
The men must empower the women, the whites must empower the other ninety percent of humanity, and humanity must evolve to stand on two feet and rise up as protectors of all life on Earth. We cannot protect the freedom of the planet by fencing-in all of its living tissue, or fencing-out those who are merely trying to feed their families. We have not inherited the right to control the livelihood of a single soul on Earth, we have only been passed down this broken belief of burden, and the fantasy of our fractured fate as it fulfills its own prophecy of a broken dream.
The patriarchal demand for compartmentalization, has bagged and tagged every cell of life across the open plains of existence. The system works great for inventory control, but it is no way to live, as we watch the vitality of life dry up around us. But we are not in charge, our mother is far mightier than we could ever pretend to be, and she will be just fine. She fights back with unstoppable force, like the brambles and ivies that grow to protect overworked lands, while the doctrines of agriculture convince us of a vengeful curse. Or the carriers of plagues and disease, not a punishment from some jealous smiter of spite, but invitations of our mother as she reacts to our misappropriation of life. And she will be there to flood the fields with her conduit of rebirth, as our unwillingness to unlock the cages will only ensure our own inescapable demise.
*******
And were this field of forgotten trees to flood today, it would wash away any evidence that Cows had once been contained here. It would wash it directly into the headwaters of one of the few waterways uncrossed by the pipe. The farm is provided clear water from the gravity-fed spring at the lodge, it then flows through a myriad of fields, as it warms up and runs off into the rest of the world. The Cow pies are no Dandelion pastry, but these are strictly organic, and provide fertilization and food as they decompose.
Poop is natural, it is a building block of life, which explains the municipal foundations of sewer systems. But what is not natural, is a herd of Cows concentrating their bowels onto one patch of grass. In nature, they would be as loose as their milking stools, and their fertile crescents would be far spread and diluted into the soil. But here, we have caged their excrement, and this unnatural consistency has enabled another to thrive in the flow of the fecal fountain. The Flies.
Flies exist in nature, they are our brothers and as much a part of mitakuye oiyasin as we are, and they follow the cycles therein. But only once we constipated the bowel movements of migration, were they provided the adequate food supply to take up residence and begin their overpopulation of the planet. This can be seen most apparently in the close quarters of a Horse’s stalled life cycle, where a few different species of flying pests are provided a constant stream of nutrition, and as the summer evolves, so do their populations. In the wild, their food would be spread over vast distances, and their short life cycles would ensure that every Fly didn’t survive long enough to lay another five hundred eggs.