"Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possession is adisease in them. These people have many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not. They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. (Emphasis added--RJG) They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also. My brothers, shall we submit? Or shall we say to them: 'First kill me, before you can take possession of our fatherland.'" (Sitting Bull, Tatanka Yotanka, "Behold My Friends, the Spring is Come;" Great Speeches by Native Americans; Robert Blaisdell, editor; New York, Courier Dover, 2000; p.166.)
I think that this describes many of us "whites" perfectly. We need to take a careful look at the mirror that Sitting Bull has provided us before it is too late. We must kneel with men like Colin Kaepernick and Brandon Marshall in solidarity with the Blacks and Hispanics who are so casually arrested, beaten, and killed around the country simply because they are different. We must kneel in solidarity, and yell from the rooftops that the sacred lands of the Lakota and Paiute and their resources are worth more as they are, than the profits of the energy and development corporations.
In the immortal words of Chief Crazy Horse, on his way to the Battle of Little Big Horn, "Hoka Hey! It is a good day to die." If the first confrontation of Bernie Sander's revolution starts on the sacred grounds of the Native Americans, I can think of no better place or cause for it to start.
Hoka Hey!
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