You are not going to like what comes after America . . . ” ——Leonard Cohen
“We were told that we would see America come and go. In a sense, America is dying, from within, because they forgot the instructions of how to live on earth. It’s the Hopi belief, it’s our belief, that if you are not spiritually connected to the earth, and understand the spiritual reality of how to live on earth, it’s likely that you will not make it.
Everything is spiritual, everything has a spirit, everything was brought here by the creator, the one creator. Some people call him God, some people call him Buddha, some people call him Allah, some people call him other names. We call him Tunkaschila… Grandfather.
We are here on earth only a few winters, then we go to the spirit world. The spirit world is more real than most of us believe.
The spirit world is everything. Over 95% of our body is water. In order to stay healthy, you’ve got to drink good water. … Water is sacred, the air is sacred.
Our DNA is made out of the same DNA as the tree, the tree breaths what we exhale, we need what the tree exhales. So we have a common destiny with the tree.
We are all from the earth, and when the earth, the water, the atmosphere is corrupted, then it will create its own reaction. The mother is reacting.
In the Hopi prophecy, they say the storms and floods will become greater. To me, it’s not a negative thing to know that there will be great changes. It’s not negative, it’s evolution. When you look at it as evolution, it’s time, nothing stays the same. You should learn how to plant something. That is the first connection.
You should treat all things as spirit, realize that we are one family. It’s never something like the end. It’s like life, there is no end to life.”
~Floyd Red Crow Westerman
Borrowed from All Natives United
“We are all connected; we all belong.”
My grandmother, Beatrice Simpkins Henry, who died in 1995 was a descendent of the Yamhill-Carlton Indian tribe of the Willamette Valley, in Oregon. My grandmother was so ashamed of her heritage that she vehemently denied her heritage all through school, and through much of her adult life. When my Uncle Wayne needed some extra health insurance, he tried to enroll the family name in the Grand Ronde Tribe, which was based near Silverton, Oregon. Unfortunately, the family was about six years late in enrolling, as the tribe had a time limit for applying, and we were all denied membership, even though we had more “Indian blood” than many of its membership.
My grandmother came to live with us during her dying days in 1995. She was discharged from the hospital to go home to die, and my wife and I invited her into our home to bring love and care to her during her final three months of life. During one of her less conscious moments, she “saw” a dozen Indians in full dress regalia dancing around her death bed, singing, chanting, and making prayers to Grandfather Great Spirit. I was in the room with her, but could not see the Indians, but I could certainly see the impact that their presence had upon my grandmother. She was upset, and then accepting of their presence.
In 1964 I had a profound dream. I was eight years old, and had no knowledge of my Indian heritage at the time. I was a shaman in a tribal village high in a mountainous region, and I had received a vision. In the dream I instructed all of the villagers to throw away all symbols to God, Great Spirit, and to face themselves without any protection from any supernatural force. The punch line of the story is that all Gods were created not only to enhance our opportunities in the world as far as hunting, gathering, and community protection goes, but to also protect us from ourselves, at least the parts that were unconscious, and still behaving as demons to us.
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