Saturday, August 21, 2010

Native American Wisdom

Native American womanImage by LatinaPower2009 via FlickrBy Robin D Miller

The American Indian has long been known for their earth based wisdom, natural life style, and their belief in the connections all things have, that make us brothers before Creator.

In a very special way, Native Americans maintain that our connections to the earth and to all things that are involved in its present form... stretches well beyond a simple determination of which things are animate and which things are not. Their reference, while in many different languages and tongues, comes down to the simple concept of what they phrase as "all my relations". The western world sees "relations" as blood relatives; like brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins... Native Americana sees "relations" as any member of what they call the Sacred Hoop. Literally speaking... they mean that if it exists on this planet, in any form, it is endowed with a distinct but hidden relationship to every other thing that exists here too. There is no special distinction between things that breathe and things that do not... nor is there any special treatment for things that are animate verses things that are not.. All are equal in the eyes of the Master of Life.

Take away our atmosphere, those layers of protection between us and the sun, and forget about the problem of not being able to breathe... we would either freeze or burn up almost instantly from our own sun. The oceans would quickly boil away... and the earth would become a burnt cinder like Venus. Yes, we really are that close to the sun.

Where did our air come from? It came from sea creatures like plankton that use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and expel breathable oxygen. Sea plankton were later joined by land based plants that also live by photosynthesis and expelled oxygen. So our atmosphere filled with air... and then along came the creatures that breathe. They use the oxygen and expelled carbon dioxide. It is a direct trade and a natural balance that benefits both. If there were only plankton the air would become explosive and burn off; if there were only creatures that breath the air would soon become poisoned by carbon dioxide and nothing with lungs would survive. It is an over simplification but basically true. The balance between those two elements of life... allows them to co-exist... and of course, much, much more.

In currents events, there has been an immense oil leak spewing up from beneath the Gulf of Mexico. If you were to investigate the huge oil spill we suffered up in Alaska, you would find that the clean-up efforts were superficial at best. The environment up there has not yet recovered and it has been over twenty years. Make no mistake; this oil leak in the Gulf is, and has been, a disaster of epic proportions. Clean-up will probably only be superficial there, too... and things will not return to normal anytime in our lifetime or even within the lifetime of our children.

To polish their own public images big corporations like to use the media to talk about all the good work they are doing. We have heard them talk about how many birds and turtles they have cleaned by hand and returned to the wild... and that is a good thing. But, who is going to hand wash the plankton that have such a huge part in producing the air that we breathe? Who and how will they clean those areas that are remote... like the lowland swamps or the sea floor?

If you were privy to the inner workings of the corporate mind, I think you would find they are much more concerned with their public image... as it applies to what they call "economic viability". Just imagine how our civilization might look to a an extraterrestrial visitor who witnessed our careless pollution... who watched us foul our own nests for the sake of profits.

This scenario is exactly what Native Americans warned us about... so long ago. What we do to Nature we do to ourselves.

See http://www.redmoonhombre.com/

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