"Stupid is as stupid does."
Only the rare American, who grew up under a rock, was able
to escape that brilliant Forrest Gump one-liner
in 1994.
Well, I've been thinking lately. "Sacred is as sacred does."
A March 2002 Pew
Research Center
study found that fully 82 percent of Americans identify themselves as
Christian. In other words, religious
belief and practice thrives in this country.
Why, then, have America's indigenous nations had to
fight to protect their "sacred" lands and practices from a new round of threats
by American interests? The main charge
coming from Native America is that Americans don't understand the concept of
"sacredness." I beg to differ. Americans understand the concept, but they
apply it to different things. And their
priorities are wrong.
I believe sacred is as sacred does. You can tell what a people hold sacred by
examining the things they're willing to fight for. While America's indigenous nations are
willing to fight for their sacred lands and practices that date back 13,000
years by some estimates, Americans, 82 percent of whom claim to be Christian,
are fighting for two other things: money and power. Therein lies the clash.
November 5, 2005: the South Dakota Intertribal Coalition to
Defend Bear Butte formed to defend one of the most sacred mountains of the
Plains Indians from encroaching commercial businesses developed to service an
annual motorcycle rally -- only yards from the spot where Chief Crazy Horse told
his people never to sell the land.
March 18, 2006: the
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in northeastern Washington rejected a bid for commercial molybdenum
mining on their sacred mountain, Mount
Tolman, by a vote of
1,254 to 847.
March 23, 2006: Robert Soto (Lipan Apache hoop dancer and pastor)
gathered with four honored Apache elders and 20 other mourners in ceremonial
regalia to pray outside a lawyer's office in McAllen, TX. They wept and prayed over sacred eagle
feathers wrapped in traditional burial cloth, before releasing them into the
custody of a federal agent who has made it his personal mission to seize eagle
feathers from federally unrecognized indigenous people in Texas.
"The drummers started singing our traditional farewell song
in our Apache language," Soto recounted in an email sent to friends and
supporters, "There was not a dry eye in the room. Our people were crying as we
had just lost a loved one. In many ways, we had."
The people were crying because their sacred ways and lands
were being lost...again. They have never
been respected by Americans and there's not much hope that things will change
in the 21st century.
In the 1800's, Americans took the land for gold and oil. Now we encroach on the land for commercial
interests. From the 1800's through the
1980's Americans tried to subjugate Native peoples through forced assimilation
by way of Indian schools where the peoples' languages and cultural practices
were outlawed. Now sacred eagle feathers
are given forced burials.
"One lady who was with us is from Switzerland,"
Soto remembered, "looked at the lawyer with tears in her eyes and said, ‘I have
always read about the bad things we did to the Indian people. In Europe we think things have changed. But now I know that
things have not changed at all.'"
America
has proven what it considers "sacred" by its constant prioritizing of
commercial interests over Native Americans' human right to land, religious
freedom and practice. If money and power
are what we hold sacred, then I think we should face it. Perhaps we should change the monogram on our
coins that say "In God We Trust" to reflect the truth: "In this money we
trust."
After all, sacred is as sacred does.
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