This week for the first time in 15 years tribal leaders of America's first nations met in Washington. They even got their own embassy. The story was pushed to back pages by the shooting at Ft. Hood. At least i hope the media was just running with the more sensational story, i hope they weren't deliberately being dismissive of what is an important event.

My friend Okhela has mentioned that we must confront our history as nation if we are to fulfill the American 'dream'. i tend to agree, i think Nations have karma just as individuals do. We were born in a bloody revolution...if we hope to avoid perishing the same way we have to figure out how to EVOLVE from here. The mistakes and atrocities of the past cannot be undone, but we can work to prevent them from happening any more.
And if we can't perhaps we should not survive as a nation. Before you scream 'treason' understand that i feel this way about the whole human species: If we can not create better ways to BE on the earth and with each other, perhaps the planet would be better off without us.

The first step in changing anything, from a personal bad habit to an insidious national attitude of superiority, is to take a long hard look at it. We must recognize that the dream of our founders was a nightmare for many thousands of people: From those that were here before us to those who were brought over to as slaves.

Let me be clear: No human culture is ideal, they all have flaws--they're human. There were tribal conflicts, and even some 'slavery', tho captives were sometimes assimilated into the captors and there was enough similarity in their belief systems that it wasn't the same as the 'Indian Schools' that systematicly tried to eradicate tribal tradition, culture.

i think we do individuals and cultures as much a disservice with positive stereotypes as negative ones. But sometimes a pendulum has to swing wildly to extremes before it settles into a nice balanced rhythm.

i smile ruefully everytime some fellow white person starts complaining about 'immigrants'. We are the ultimate ungrateful immigrants. We try to claim a moral high ground in the world when we are built on the devastation of the peoples who preceded us. The imagery in the following video is a little romanticized, but try to listen to the words. It's taken the United States over two centuries to recognise what the first peoples here knew: Our future is tied to how we behave toward the earth and toward each other.