Mni Wiconi

Here on the show we sometimes talk about uncomfortable and hard truths.  Well here is another one and I'm just going to throw it out there on Main St., America has  a really horrible record when it comes to it's relationship with it's indigenous peoples.  The record is long and tragic.  A few of the lowlights are: countless broken treaties, the consequences due to Manifest Destiny, Andrew Jackson's Trail Of Tears, brutal forced migrations to hellish reservations, the camp at Little Big Horn,  giving tribes smallpox infected blankets, Wounded Knee, the retaliations to the AIM movement in 1973, and the latest hit rising in the charts like a rocket, Standing Rock.

Standing Rock is fast turning into a national shame.  In the interests of corporate greed and the almighty Dollar,  the Dakota Access Pipeline threatens sacred tribal sites and tribal water resources ie. the Missouri River.  Instead of debate and dialog, Energy Transfer Partners, the company that is building the pipeline moved in private security firms to enforce their agenda and in the process manhandled and even in some cases used trained attack dogs.

As tensions have flared and we've seen an escalation in recent days, Morton County Sheriffs have pepper sprayed protesters while also using rubber bullets and water cannons in sub freezing temperatures.  So I ask myself and you a profound rhetorical question, "what are we going to do about it ??"  While we mull it over I would like to say a phrase that I would like for you to sear into, and permeate around in your brain box.

Mni Wiconi

Mni Wiconi in the Lakota language means "Water Is Life".  As essential as the air we breathe and the food we eat to sustain our human existence, water is just as fundamental. Heck, we are 65% made up of water, if we don't have water we die, as simple as that.  Factor also into the equation, that to create this pipeline means impeding upon and desecrating sacred tribal sites, sites that have been considered holy to Native Americans since before white Europeans first set foot onto the continent.

Let's go back to that question "what are we going to do about it ??".  It turns out that there is a lot we can do about it.  First of all we can pick up our phones and call our elected representatives, from the White House on down to our local representatives in congress, those fine people who we voted for to go about the people's business.  I believe in strength in numbers, I believe that if enough of us call and write letters, e-mail, sign petitions, we can bring enough pressure to bear to effect meaningful change.  If it is at all possible for you to travel to North Dakota to help protest then please do so.

But time is of the essence and I'm afraid that the timer runs out on January 20th.  You see, our President-Elect Donald J. Trump owns stock in the company "Energy Transfer Partners" which is building the Dakota Access Pipeline.  He has a vested interest that the pipeline gets built and the project gets completed.  If we are to have any success in stopping the desecration it will have to be done while President Obama is still in office.

When I was young and I read history books in school I would read about the past and say to myself, "well if I was living back then I wouldn't have done anything like that", or "if I was alive then I would have done things differently".  This is the moment and our time is now, history will judge us on if we took a stand or we simply turned our heads and ignored the cries of our brothers and sisters.

Mni Wiconi.