Standing Up for Standing Rock and Understanding the Shadow of Our History

Artist Mary-Ann Myers and Lawrence Laughing

Last night, people gathered in Grass Valley to raise awareness and supplies for the water protectors at Standing Rock. It was a time to share stories, song, support, prayer and food. 

I was drawn to the breath-taking Standing Rock poster (shown at left and described below) and had a delightful conversation with the artist and flute-player Mary-Ann Myers. There were also first-hand stories from people who recently returned from Standing Rock.

I had few expectations, but definitely did not expect a mental seismic event.

The first tremor came when Lawrence Laughing, a tall, gentle man with a soft, resonant voice said that we were standing on our own Standing Rock, right here in these beautiful foothills. 

He reminded us that the Maidu tribe had been decimated during the gold rush when almost 150,000 people were killed by gold and greed (according to Gold, Greed and Genocide by Pratap Chatterjee, now Executive Director at CorpWatch.)

With a mixture of delightful storytelling and a shocking reminder of our past, Johnny Moses, told us a mystical story about caribou and related a bit of his experience at an Indian residential school. For some reason I don't quite understand, the novel I've been working on this year has led me deeper and deeper into our dark past, especially as it relates to our dealings with the people who lived here when we arrived.

Perhaps the image that most brought home the horrors of the residential Indian schools was this picture of tiny handcuffs ... handcuffs for a child ... handcuffs made by someone, probably in large quantities ... handcuffs used by adults to control children. It's an artifact that carries a thousand stories, each of them horrific.

Lawrence Laughing added to my mental tumult later when he talked about technology as something other than a sign of progress. 

That thought connected with an ongoing conversation with another friend who had recently returned from Europe where time took on a different perspective when she toured a cathedral with a glass floor that revealed older structures. It struck her that the European mindset judged progress on structures … roads, cathedrals, waterworks, bridges and so on.

Therefore, when they (we) came to the Americas, all we saw was empty space, a void to be filled, a people without civilization, since civilization was judged by things made by man.

I don’t know where this thinking is going, but my mind feels like a river that has been knocked out of its channel. 

In the meantime, here is a beautiful piece of music by Lawrence Laughing

Click here to listen to Lawrence Laughing "I Wish You Peace"

 And a full view of Mary-Ann Myers' Standing Rock poster as described by the artist:

• Background represents water...or even water with oil in it...which is exactly what we don't want to happen.
• The background is a college Lakota student embracing his ancestors.
• The woman bending down as if crying is a photo of a Lakota pow wow dancer and she was involved in the 1975 Longest walk that Dennis Banks and others organized after the second seige of Wounded Knee.
• Then there is Sitting Bull, who once said we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.  If we must die...we die defending our right.
• Sitting Bull was the last of the "wild" chiefs but in reality, he is the first American Indian protester.  
• So, this college student embraces his past but is sad because his people were oppressed for 500 years and it is still happening.  
•  We must stop this...it will take prayer.

I Stand Up for All Pieces of Peace

Like 62 million Americans, I woke up on November 9th stunned, flooded with fear for our country, fear for our future, fear for the millions of young people and children who were unable to vote for their own futures.

I also woke up chastened that I did not understand the depth of fear, anger and frustration that ran so deep that good people were willing to vote for change regardless of the shape that carried it into the voting booth. Michael Moore says we weren’t paying attention and I have to agree and accept my share of this disaster.

Like most of us, I want to know what to do now. Like most of us, I feel like I’m barreling through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It would be so easy to get stuck in any of the first four.

Recently, I heard someone talking about the bubble those of us called “baby boomers" grew up in and mistakenly thought was “normal.” We called it the “American Dream” and thought it was a contract with the future: we would work hard and the world would give us education, a comfortable home, a life-time job with health care benefits, and two-point-three wonderful kids.

It was a seductive bubble that made us blind to the people and events outside the golden dream. It made us fiercely protective of the bubble. And, as the bubble began to shrink and there wasn’t enough room for everyone, fear grew.

Years ago, under different circumstances, but similar pressures, the poet Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” His haunting poem, Harlem, ends with:

     Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

November 9th, 2017, the world woke up to an explosion. 

 

   Things are different now. The pieces will never fit back together the way they were. As a matter of fact, they are still exploding. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports receiving over 200 hate-based complaints in the three days after the election. Anti-black, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim incidents have spiked even more than after 9-11 reports an official from SPLC.

So, we come back to the question of what do we do? How do we continue the work to find peace in a world that seems hell-bent on exploding all semblance of peace.

Obviously, I have no big answer, but I have a small answer that will help me sleep at night. And, it comes from a program Pacifica Graduate Institute created called Pondering Peace in a World of Turmoil. In response to their call for submissions, I submitted a piece of art titled: Pieces of Peace that incorporated three levels of words.

 

     Basic needs of all humans: food, shelter, safety, knowledge, work.

     Individual values supporting peace: gratitude, openness, hope, expression, courage.

     Interdependent values supporting peace: equality, justice, compassion, forgiveness, generosity.

My small answer is to stand up for all the Pieces of Peace.

One of the most basic of our needs - food - actually includes clean air, clean water and clean food.

There is a group of people standing up for those needs at a place called Standing Rock. They are standing up for all of us, trying to protect our water and our air as well as their sacred lands. Yet, they are being treated like criminals.

Tomorrow I will stand up for them as part of a nationwide demonstration of support. Thereafter, I will do the following:

-- I will strengthen my own peace values of gratitude, openness, hope, expression, courage.
-- I will stand up with my words and deeds for the basic needs of all people: food, shelter, safety, knowledge, work.
-- I will promote with my words and deeds all values that create a sustainable, peaceful society: equality, justice, compassion, forgiveness, generosity.