Category: Uncategorized

Resist

Resistance is a powerful concept.

As I pray and learn about atrocities and injustices, the courage of resisters in all struggles, through all time, inspire me.

My own first experience with resistance came when I was 18 years old and faced the decision regarding registering for the draft (Selective Service System). The stories of, the example of many Quaker men I knew, helped me immensely to decided to resist the draft. My friend and Quaker mentor, Don Laughlin, collected stories of Quaker resistance: Young Quaker Men Face War and Conscription

It was an act of resistance when we walked and camped along the route of the Dakota Access pipeline, from Des Moines to Fort Dodge, Iowa, for a week in 2018. You can read the many stories, and see the photos of this sacred journey here.
First Nation-Farmer Unity – First Nation peoples and farmers working together (firstnationfarmer.com)

I spent many years resisting other fossil fuel pipelines, including the Keystone XL pipeline. And was peripherally involved with the Wet’suwet’en peoples’ resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Now I am involved with those who are resisting colonial capitalism and white supremacy. As we build Mutual Aid communities. As we work for LANDBACK.

I don’t know what I will write each morning, as I wait in quiet and pray. The following poem triggered this today.

Resist

Brandy Nālani McDougall

Qawem ya sha’abi, qawemhum. Resist my people, resist them.
—Dareen Tatour

Hawaiians are still here. We are still creating, still resisting.
—Haunani-Kay Trask



Stand in rage as wind and current clash
                                       rile lightning and thunder
fire surge and boulder crash

         Let the ocean eat and scrape away these walls
Let the sand swallow their fences whole
                       Let the air between us split the atmosphere

We have no land             No country
             But we have these bodies              these stories
this language of rage                    left 

                 This resistance is bitter
and tastes like medicine                 Our lands 
               replanted in the dark and warm             there

We unfurl our tangled roots                stretch
                             to blow salt across
             blurred borders of memory  

             They made themselves
fences and bullets             checkpoints 
gates and guardposts                           martial law

They made themselves
            hotels and mansions         adverse 
possession             eminent domain and deeds

                   They made themselves 
                                                       shine 
                                           through the plunder

They say we can never— They say 
                           we will never—because
            because they— 

            and the hills and mountains have been 
mined for rock walls                    the reefs 
            pillaged for coral floors

They say we can never—
                           and the deserts and dunes have been
shoveled and taken for their houses and highways—

                because we can never— because 
the forests have been raided                      razed 
and scorched and we                                 we the wards

refugees          houseless          present-
absentees       recognition refusers        exiled
uncivilized       disposable        natives

protester-activist-terrorist-resisters—
               our springs and streams have been
dammed—so they say we can never return

                       let it go accept this 
progress         stop living
            in the past—

but we make ourselves
         strong enough to carry all of our dead
                engrave their names in the clouds

We gather to sing whole villages awake 
        We crouch down to eat rocks like fruit
                 to hold the dirt the sand in our hands 

to fling words 
           the way fat drops of rain 
                   splatter off tarp or corrugated roofs

We remember the sweetness                We rise from the plunder
           They say there is no return                             
                   they never could really make us leave

Copyright © 2021 by Brandy Nālani McDougall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 23, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

“‘Resist’ was inspired by Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour’s courage to stand against the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and ethnic cleansing of her people. In 2015, for the poetic line ‘Qawem ya sha’abi, qawemhum’ (Resist, my people, resist them), she was imprisoned on charges of ‘incitement to violence’ and sentenced to five months in jail and years under house arrest. This poem ‘Resist’ reflects on both the militarized violence and creative decolonial connections between Palestine and Hawaiʻi, which was an independent country prior to the U.S. military-backed overthrow in 1893 and the subsequent illegal annexation to the U.S. in 1898. Our own continued struggle as Kānaka ʻŌiwi includes protecting our lands and waters from U.S. military bases and testing, bombing, dumping, housing, and recreational sites, and protecting our people from related health hazards, poverty, and hopelessness. We will forever resist the destruction of our homelands and how they are being used to test weapons that bring horrific violence to others. I intend ‘Resist’ to be a poem of solidarity for the Palestinian people.”

Brandy Nālani McDougall

From Apology to Action

Truth and Reconciliation Commission – From Apology to Action
CFSC (Quakers) Indigenous Rights Icon Small

In 2007 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established as part of the legal settlement of the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history. The TRC’s mandate was:

to learn the truth about what happened in the residential schools and to inform all Canadians about what happened in the schools. The Commission will document the truth of what happened by relying on records held by those who operated and funded the schools, testimony from officials of the institutions that operated the schools, and experiences reported by survivors, their families, communities and anyone personally affected by the residential school experience and its subsequent impacts.

In 2015 the TRC released its report including 94 Calls to Action which we urge all Canadians to read and strive towards in the ongoing process of reconciliation.

At Canadian Yearly Meeting in 2011 Canadian Friends approved this minute:

We are being invited by the Indigenous peoples of Canada as represented by the Indian Residential School Survivors, through the Indian Residential School Survivors Settlement Agreement, to enter a journey of truth finding and reconciliation. We encourage all Friends, in their Meetings for Worship and Monthly and Regional Meetings, boldly to accept this invitation and to engage locally, regionally and nationally, actively seeking ways to open ourselves to this process.

CFSC was honoured to witness and participate in the closing events of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Watch a clip from this powerful and important closing below:

We welcomed the report and Calls to Action of the TRC as deeply important for genuine reconciliation. Together with our partners we’ve also called on the Government of Canada to follow the lead of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

CFSC has produced a resource for Quakers and others who wish to engage with the TRC Calls to Action.

https://quakerservice.ca/TRCGuide
Truth and Reconciliation: Quakers in Action. (PDF)

We encourage you to make use of this resource and are happy to help, so feel free to contact us!

Prayers offered in Sioux City as remains of Native children return to their native lands

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for residential school survivors and others affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Prayers were offered at the War Eagle Park in Sioux City this morning as the nine children of the Sicangu Oyate continue on their journey home from the Carlisle Boarding School in the land called Pennsylvania. They arrived around 1:30 am.

My friend Sikowis (Christine Nobiss) thanked those who helped and those who were bringing the children home.

Then Manape LaMere spoke. He mentioned how triggering the findings of the remains of many Native children at residential/boarding schools have been and continue to be. He mentioned having a family member who was a survivor one of those schools. Someone in the crowd was a family member of one of the nine children. Manape thanked his young nephew who sang the flag song yesterday. He traces many behaviors today back to the traumas of the residential schools. At the end he asked the cameras to be stilled as he sang the four directions song.

https://twitter.com/quakers_seekers/status/1416130485596606467?s=20

SIOUX CITY — After more than 140 years, the remains of nine Rosebud Sioux children are nearly home.

A caravan carrying the remains of the children, who died at Pennsylvania boarding school, left Sioux City Friday morning after a ceremony at the Tyson Events Center parking lot. The caravan was scheduled to arrive later Friday at the Rosebud Sioux reservation in western South Dakota.

“This is a very emotional time,” Trisha Etringer, of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, said Friday at the Tyson parking lot. “We are sad that it took so long for our Native children to return. But we are happy that their journey is nearly over.”

All together, ten Native children — nine from the Rosebud Sioux tribe and one from the Alaskan Aleut Tribe — were recently disinterred from a cemetery on the grounds of the Carlisle Barracks, which was also home to the U.S. Army War college. 

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, also known as Sicangu Lakota, had spent the past six years negotiating the reparation of the children’s remains.

Prayers offered in Sioux City as remains of Native children return to their native lands by Earl Horlyk, Sioux City Journal, Jul 16, 2021

Meskwaki Nation

In 1879 many children from the Rosebud Sioux Nation and many others were taken from their families and forced to attend the Carlisle Boarding School in what is known as the state of Pennsylvania today. For over 140 years all efforts on behalf of the Tribe to reclaim the remains of 9 of their children have been denied. This week these children are finally being brought home to rest following recent efforts led by 11 Rosebud Sioux youth council members supported by their Tribe.

On July 15th, 2021 the Meskwaki Nation welcomed these youth and members from the Rosebud Sioux Nation with a meal, song, and prayers to take with them on their journey home. Our Great Plains Action Society collective is extremely grateful for the actions of these youth and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe that have led to the widespread recognition of the atrocities committed at boarding schools across the United States. While repatriations have been taking place across Canada, many investigations have yet to take place here in the United States. Now, Deb Halaand (Secretary of the Interior) is launching a Federal Boarding School Initiative here in the US.

The strength and actions of the Rosebud Sioux Nation and their youth today will allow for numerous other Tribal Nations around the country to soon reunited with their loved ones who were lost at these assimilation schools. “…when one rises, we all rise” – Christopher Eagle Bear, Rosebud Sioux youth

9 Children of the Sicangu Oyate traveling home to Lakota Makoce

SIOUX CITY — A caravan bringing home the remains of nine Rosebud Sioux children, who died at a Pennsylvania boarding school more than a century ago, will stop in Sioux City Thursday.

Ten Native American children — nine from the South Dakota tribe and one from the Alaskan Aleut Tribe — were recently disinterred from a cemetery on the grounds of the Carlisle Barracks, which also houses the U.S. Army War College. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, which is also known as Sicangu Lakota, spent several years negotiating the repatriation of the children’s remains. 

The cemetery contains more than 180 graves of students who attended the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School — a government-run boarding school for Native American children. This is the Army’s fourth disinterment project at the school in as many years.

“With the recent unearthing of our Native children’s bodies at boarding schools, this has been hard and emotional for all First Nations in the U.S. and Canada,” said Trisha Etringer, a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.

Etringer is involved in organizing a community meal/prayer service at 8 p.m. Thursday at War Eagle Park in Sioux City. She said a fire will be lit at the park for anyone who wants to pay their respects before 8 p.m.

Caravan bringing home remains of Rosebud Sioux children to stop in Sioux City by Dolly Butz, Sioux City Journal, July 14, 2021

I have been learning a great deal from my friends at the Great Plains Action Society, including Sikowis (Christine Nobiss), Alton and Foxy Onefeather, Trisha Cax-Sep-Gu-Wiga Etringer and Ronnie James. Trisha is quoted in the story above, and both she and Sikowis appear in these videos.

Great Plains Action Society is an indigenous collective working to resist and indigenize colonial institutions, ideologies, and behaviors.

Great Plains Action Society (formerly Indigenous Iowa) was formed out of concern for the current state of our land, the climate and all living things–including Mother Earth. Using our sovereignty and ancestral teachings, we strive to resist colonial-capitalism and Indigenize the world.

Great Plains Action Society

https://twitter.com/quakers_seekers/status/1415878219094429704?s=20
https://twitter.com/quakers_seekers/status/1415878617339473921?s=20
https://twitter.com/quakers_seekers/status/1415881205384364035?s=20

Due to the recent Delta variant and other increased cases of COVID-19 in and around the area, this event will now be virtual.

Join us at 7:30PM MST, Friday – July 16, 2021 on Facebook Live @THEOGLALANATION for a Virtual Candlelight Vigil in truth and solidarity with our Sicangu relatives as they bring their ancestors home to their oyate in Rosebud.

Thank you for your understanding. Please stay safe and continue to practice COVID-19 prevention measures including wearing a mask, social distancing, hand hygiene, and get vaccinated.

Alicia Mousseau, Vice President, Oglala Sioux Tribe

Repatriation of Rosebud Sioux Tribe Children at Carlisle Indian Industrial School

No photo description available.

CARLISLE, Pa. — Twenty-three-year-old Christopher Eagle Bear from the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota has been growing out his hair since he visited the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School six years ago. 

The trip, made by the Rosebud Sioux youth council in 2015, sparked a group of young tribal members to initiate a tribe-backed resolution to bring home their nine ancestors who died at the school as children some 140 years ago. 

Six years after his initial visit, Eagle Bear’s hair falls down below the waist of his traditional regalia. He is back in Carlisle this week to bring his relatives home. 

It’s a Circle

Five of the deceased children set to return home were among the first group of 84 Lakota children from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Agencies that rolled into the Carlisle train station on Oct. 6, 1879, according to Pratt’s archived documents.

Their names were: Rose Long Face (Little Hawk), Dennis Strikes First (Blue Tomahawk), Maud Little Girl (Swift Bear), Alvan (Kills Seven Horses) and Dora Her Pipe (Brave Bull). Within the next four years, Friend Hollow Horn Bear, Warren Painter (Bear Paints Dirt), Lucy Take the Tail (Pretty Eagle), and Ernest Knocks Off (White Thunder) also arrived.

Russell Eagle Bear, tribal council member, addresses the youth after the press conference. “We’re really proud of you,” he said. “I’m really glad you’re speaking from your heart.”

After learning of their children’s deaths, Chiefs White Thunder and Swift Bear— the respective parents of Ernest and Maud— wrote to Pratt on Dec. 29, 1880. In their letter, they requested the bodies of their children be returned for burial, according to the original document archived by the Carlisle Indian School Digital Research Center. It is not known if Pratt ever responded, but the children were never returned.

“The letter should have been answered,” said Robert Becker, 67, Maud’s closest descendant who traveled with the tribe to Carlisle to bring his great grandmother back home. Becker said that although he felt disheartened by the apparent mistreatment of his ancestors at Carlisle, he would leave feeling “fully content” with the youth council’s work to bring their children home.

“It’s a circle,” he said. “It began with them, it’s going to end with them.”

The journey home from Carlisle, the tribe said, will symbolize the beginning of the healing ahead of them.

“Healing for me is uncovering trauma, whether you experience it or your parents or your grandparents experienced it,” Rachel Janis, 22, said on Tuesday. “When I was younger, I didn’t understand what I was going through. When we first came to Carlisle, although I never experienced boarding schools, I think that was another stem of where that might have come from. We got a lot of, ‘Oh this happened long ago. You weren’t even born when this happened.’

“But why can’t I sit with my grandma (and) have a conversation with her in Lakota? It’s a fear where they don’t want you to talk in Lakota or wear your traditional attire … They’re afraid because of what they went through at boarding schools.”

Rosebud Sioux Youth Council Returns to Carlisle Indian School to Bring Their Relatives Home BY JENNA KUNZE, Native News Online, JULY 14, 2021
https://twitter.com/quakers_seekers/status/1415654381333229569?s=20

From the video above:

We all must put down our ignorance and accidental racism of not addressing the truth that this country had with Indigenous people. We are not asking for pity. We are asking for understanding.

See also: The return of children from Carlisle boarding school – LANDBACK Friends

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'Community Meal & Prayer for the Sičangu Relatives July 15th- 8pm War Eagle Park 4000 War Eagle Dr. Sioux City, IA Morning Morning Prayer/Departure July 16th- 7:30am Tyson Events Center Parking Lot Departure at 8am Bhid Them Home Matters'

The return of children from Carlisle boarding school

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'Community Meal & Prayer for the Sičangu Relatives July 15th- 8pm War Eagle Park 4000 War Eagle Dr. Sioux City, IA Morning Morning Prayer/Departure July 16th- 7:30am Tyson Events Center Parking Lot Departure at 8am Bhid Them Home Matters'
SIOUX CITY, IA

July 15th

A fire will be lit on July 15th in honor and remembrance of the nine Sicangu children who will be traveling back home to finally lay to rest. A community meal/prayer service will be at 8pm, but everyone is welcomed to come earlier to pray and pay their respects at War Eagle Park in Sioux City, Iowa. This fire will stay lit until the departure of the nine children the next morning. We encourage anyone to come by and help with the fire and offer up prayers.

War Eagle Park
4000 War Eagle Dr.
Sioux City, IA.

July 16th – Morning Prayer/Departure

UPDATE:
Thank you to the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska for providing morning refreshments. Come to the Tyson Events Center parking lot where the front entrance is at 7am if you’d like.

If anyone would like to come for the morning prayer/departure of the nine children, please come to the Tyson Events Center Parking Lot at 7:30am. Departure will be at 8am. We will follow our Lakota relatives in cars (however far you would like to travel with them is your choice).

Funeral caravan will proceed to travel to Old Whetstone Agency, SD.

May be an image of map and text that says 'Pkwy Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City 5674) Dロ 3rd Fuel American Grill Takeout Great Southern Bank t Prrre SS 3rdSt Milwaukee Wiener House, Famous Since.. Takeout 3rd St 7 Tri View Ave 149 Stoney Creek Hotel Sioux City Rustic lodging with a... Sioux City Farmers Market 11 29 Tri View Ave Eastside urgent care North Plains Transportation Ashley Hon Tyson Events Center 10 drive- home Pearl ← Visit Sioux City Larsen Park Rd BUS 20 Rd Prime Bank Box Office Gordon Dr 148 Larsen Gordon Dr'

PLEASE WEAR A MASK IF YOU ARE NOT VACCINATED!

Overall contact person(s) for the funeral caravan is Vikki Eagle Bear, Russell Eagle Bear (Tribal Councilman), and Jessica Two Eagle

#everychildmatters
#bringthemhome

***PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN WATECHA: PLATES, BOWLS, CUPS, ETC. AND BLANKETS/CHAIRS IF YOU ARE ABE TO***

from my friend Trisha CaxSep GuWiga Etringer

Indigenous children stolen to open the West

I’ve been praying and writing a great deal about the atrocities of forced assimilation of Indigenous children. Studied the history of these atrocities. Heard my Native friends’ stories.

All of this is just horrendous. I didn’t think it could be any worse. Thought this was an extremely misguided attempt to help Native children, wrong as that was. I don’t know how I could not have seen that made no sense.

Several months ago I began to find reports that this was a policy of intentional cruelty. A way to force Native peoples who were resisting, to give up their lands.

The following quotes are from the article cited below which I highly recommend. It goes into great detail about this travesty. Information about forced assimilation and other subjects related to Land Back can be found on my website LANDBACK Friends

Nearly 200 Native children lie buried at the entrance of the Carlisle Barracks in the “Indian Cemetery” — the first thing you see when entering one of the United States’ oldest military installations. It is a grisly monument to the country’s most infamous boarding school, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and closed in 1918. Chiseled onto the white granite headstones, arranged in the uniform rows typical of veterans’ cemeteries in the U.S., are the names and tribal affiliations of children who came to Carlisle but never left. Thirteen gravestones list neither name nor tribe; they simply read “UNKNOWN.”

Carlisle, and boarding schools like it, are remembered as a dark chapter in the history of the ill-conceived assimilation policies designed to strip Native people of their cultures and languages by indoctrinating them with U.S. patriotism. But child removal is a longstanding practice, ultimately created to take away Native land. Although Carlisle is located in the East, it played a key role in pressuring the West’s most intransigent tribes to cede and sell land by taking their children hostage. 

A century after its closing, however, unanswered questions surround the Carlisle Indian School’s brutal legacy. Secrets once thought buried — why did so many children die there? — are coming to light. And the descendants of those interred are demanding more than just the return of their stolen ancestors.

“The past of Carlisle is really about justice,” says Ben Rhodd, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s tribal historic preservation officer. Since April 2016, his office has been pursuing the return of 11 children buried at the Carlisle Indian Cemetery. Even in death, Rhodd explains, Rosebud’s children remain “prisoners of war,” held at a military base and unable to return to their home on the Rosebud Reservation, children who were “hostages taken to pacify the leadership of tribes that would dare stand against U.S. expansion and Manifest Destiny.”

The U.S. stole generations of Indigenous children to open the West (Severed Ties). Indian boarding schools held Native American youth hostage in exchange for land cessions by Nick Estes, High Country News, Oct. 14, 2019

BY 1889, A DECADE INTO THE CARLISLE EXPERIMENT, Lakota parents were heartbroken. Up until then, the Lakota leadership had put up a united front opposing the 1887 Dawes Act, which proposed to allot reservation lands by parceling out individual plots to individual Lakota families and selling off “surplus” lands to white settlers. Given the forced starvation already occurring on reservations and the loss of the Black Hills, the horror of the unexplained deaths of boarding-school children was just too much to bear.

During a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., in December 1889, Lakota and Dakota leadership discussed the loss of their children in regard to their decision to finally accept allotment. Coupled with the slashing of food rations, the taking of their children was “like cutting our heads off,” American Horse from Pine Ridge told the commission. White Swan from Cheyenne River explained, “It seems as though (our children) learned how to die instead of reading and writing.” The delegation had been lured to the East not only to sign over their lands but to also see their children. “Pine Ridge and Rosebud have their children at Carlisle mostly, so wherever their children are, they would like to go that way on their road home and see their children, and then go right home. That’s all,” Chief John Grass from Standing Rock pleaded before the delegation departed.

The U.S. stole generations of Indigenous children to open the West (Severed Ties). Indian boarding schools held Native American youth hostage in exchange for land cessions by Nick Estes, High Country News, Oct. 14, 2019

Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) is an assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico and the author of Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019).

Intertwined threads

Writing is a spiritual practice for me. Sitting at the computer, I try to quiet my mind to hear what I should write. In times past a writer would sit in front of a blank page. This morning there are intertwined threads.

There are many reasons news of the remains of Native children profoundly affects me.

My career began with five years in neonatal intensive care. The rest doing research at that children’s hospital. I was blessed to be immersed with children everyday. I attempt to retain childlike qualities. Children are my heroes. I love the idea of children as sacred beings.

In almost every indigenous language of what is now known as the Americas there is a word for children that translates to English as sacred beings. Acknowledging in thoughts, words and actions that our children are sacred beings provides not only the necessary healthy intention and consciousness that will benefit our children; this acknowledgement reminds us as parents to once again be open with our own hearts.

Knowing children as sacred beings brings forth a healthy and healing strength of humility from within us as parents and adults. The youth are our teachers with a profound message for this world. When we as parents and adults acknowledge the Sacredness within ourselves it becomes difficult to not acknowledge this within others – especially our children. We have all been manifested as sacred beings, and although we are able to forget, we are unable to change the truth of what we have been created as, and always will be.

For parents who struggle to see themselves as sacred beings, simply allow your children to remind you of what you’ve forgotten. At birth through their newborn cries the children sing a song to their parents and the world. At this very moment hundreds of sacred beings, answered prayers, messengers of light are manifesting in all cultures and languages. They’re all entering this world singing a song of a sacred contract that can never be broken, only temporarily forgotten. The children’s song is reminding us. Listen…

Raising Sacred Beings,  by Anthony Goulet, The Good Men Project. August 29, 2014

One of this morning’s threads relates to brutal honesty. I’ve often thought of the following quote. I haven’t always been but will try to be brutally honest in what follows.

Being brutally honest does not necessarily mean you are correct.

Well, I have to tell you something, and you may not like to hear it. But if you struggle with the art of being frank, you need to hear this. It will make you a better person, a better communicator and a better blogger.
So here it is …
You’re a coward.
If you can’t be brutally honest with people, especially when you know it’s in their best interest, you’re a coward.
You’re not doing anyone a favor by withholding a truth from them, even if it’s difficult for them to hear.
The only person you’re protecting is yourself. Because you’re afraid of the consequences to you.
But it’s not about you.
Being honest is about making sure your audience has the information they need to make good decisions. That includes information they may not like.

THE BRUTALLY HONEST GUIDE TO BEING BRUTALLY HONEST by Josh Tucker, SmartBlogger,Jan 30, 2019

I’ve stepped away from the Quaker community that has supported my spiritual life, my whole life. I’m not certain this is not just an emotional response to the atrocities of forced assimilation. I continue to pray to see if this is a true spiritual leading.

I wonder if I can remain a Quaker.

For the past several years I have been led to opportunities to become friends with a number of Native people. It takes much more than attending conferences or powwows or serving on committees to accomplish this. One opportunity was walking and camping for 94 miles along the path of the Dakota Access pipeline with a small group of native and non-native people. Through experiences like that, I’ve been blessed to come to some understandings through a gentle process of integration. But I am just at the beginning of this journey.

The word En’owkin in the Okanagan language elicits the metaphorical image of liquid being absorbed drop by single drop through the head (mind). It refers to coming to understanding through a gentle process of integration.

Jeanette Armstrong

What follows are generalities. But my understanding, expressed as brutally honestly as I can. When I refer to Quakers I mean white Quakers in the lands called the United States and Canada. That distinction is necessary because much relates to white supremacy.

  • Indigenous peoples have always lived in balance with nature.
  • Quakers are not and should immediately do everything possible to stop using fossil fuels.
  • We should immediately ramp up installation of local renewable energy sources.
  • Environmental chaos will only worsen. Extremely rapidly.
  • Indigenous ways are the only way to slow down the impending chaos.
  • I have grown spiritually from my experiences with Indigenous peoples. In ways I hadn’t as a Quaker.
  • White Quakers are too integrated into the culture of white supremacy and capitalism.
  • Friends need to understand how white culture continues to oppress and interfere with our relationships with black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC).
  • Friends should be physically present in BIPOC communities so healing and reconciliation can occur.  To understanding through a gentle process of integration.
  • Friends should literally be on the front lines of BIPOC actions for justice.
  • Quakers should reject vertical hierarchies of power. Vertical hierarchies are the only way White supremacy can exist.
  • An alternative is Mutual Aid which is based upon a flat hierarchy. Quakers should participate in, and create Mutual Aid communities.
  • Quakers should learn about and participate in Land Back. The model for returning to Indigenous practices for community and stewardship of the land.
  • Hundreds of thousands of Native children were forcibly taken from their families to institutions of assimilation.
  • Thousands of children died in those schools, or during their escape.
  • Quakers were involved in various ways in forced assimilation.
  • Quakers should discern a response and act on it now. This is urgent. Rapidly increasing numbers of children found is devastating Indigenous communities. Should be devastating to Quakers.

In our way we are always told not to ask for anything. We are always told in our community, as a practice, that when we have to start asking for something, that’s when we’re agreeing that people be irresponsible. Irresponsible in not understanding what we’re needing, irresponsible in not seeing what’s needed, and irresponsible in not having moved our resources and our actions to make sure that need isn’t there, because this is the responsibility that we, and the people that surround us, mutually bear. So in our community we cannot go to a person and say, “I want you to do this for me.” All we can do is clarify for them what is happening and what the consequences are for our family, or for our community, or for the land. We must clarify for them what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, and then it is up to them and if they fall short of that responsibility, at some point they will face the same need themselves.

Indigenous Knowledge and Gift Giving by Jeanette Armstrong, syndicated from gift-economy.com, Jul 13, 2021

The website LANDBack Friends has many resources to help Quakers learn more about, and how to do these things. https://landbackfriends.com/

I have tried to clarify for Quakers what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, and then it is up to them and if they fall short of that responsibility, at some point they will face the same need themselves.

I thought of this photo I took yesterday when I read coming to understanding through a gentle process of integration in the quote above. The image was basically black, but by the gentle process of editing, the shapes and rainbows of colors emerged.

Gentile process of integration. Jeff Kisling

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings 2

Yesterday I wrote of my conflicts with Quakers, which stem from lack of response to atrocities of institutions of forced assimilation. Which Quakers had been involved with.

Native organizations are not asking us to judge our Quaker ancestors. They are asking, “Who are Friends today? Knowing what we know now, will Quakers join us in honest dialogue? Will they acknowledge the harm that was done? Will they seek ways to contribute toward healing processes that are desperately needed in Native communities?”

Paula Palmer

Will Quakers join us in honest dialogue?

Yesterday’s post included conflict resolution ground rules from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo. Following she discusses skills to enhance mutual trust and respect.

2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

  • If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters “as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run.”
  • The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.
  • A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.
  • If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.
  • At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.
  • There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. “It feels like wartime,” said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.
  • If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.
  • We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.
  • If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange “as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run.”
  • Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.
  • We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.
  • White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice. We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
  • These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.

Harjo, Joy. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems. W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

That is the opposite of mutual trust and respect. Particularly related to the remains of thousands of Native children on the grounds of institutions of forced assimilation.

Quakers should support Indigenous leadership. Show up. Follow Native social media sites. Attend events posted there.

I follow the Great Plains Action Society. And am part of Des Moines Mutual Aid, which is supported by Great Plains Action Society, including involvement of my friend Ronnie James, an Indigenous organizer.

The website LANDBack Friends has information about these things, including An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK

Friends should not add to the burden of Indigenous peoples. Instead find events such as the above, and show up for support. But do NOT try to offer suggestions, etc.

A focus of Great Plains Action Society is stop whitewashing the truth.

Conflict Resolution 1

How can I work through conflict with my Quaker community? What is the conflict? How resolved?

Fundamentally, what is the relationship between spirituality and how we live our lives?

I agree with my friends Alton and Foxy Onefeather, “Earth is my church”.

Alton and Foxy Onefeather

That is why I’ve had lifelong tensions with Quakers about burning fossil fuels. I was able to live without a car in Indianapolis because of a city bus system, bicycling and running. With no mass transit in rural Iowa, Friends do what they can. It is humbling to now live in a small city with no public transit, to need to use a car sometimes.

Unresolved conflicts have an immediacy by definition. Something is being done now that causes conflict. Our spirituality guides us through our own conflicts. But what do we do when we see others acting in ways we disagree with? How do we deal with what our ancestors might have done?

How we live our lives should be an example. We hope this might encourage others to change. But need to consider we might be wrong. We can discuss our differences but should not try to force change. I’ve done that.

Several weeks ago I felt a strong leading to stop attending my Quaker meeting. It has been difficult. I didn’t want to.

I’ve been praying about why, and when I can return. Historically Friends who had strong leadings, for example about enslavement, worked within Quaker communities.

My current conflict is an overwhelming grief at news of the discovery of the remains of hundreds, soon to be thousands, of Native children on the grounds of residential institutions of forced assimilation. I feel this in ways I would not have several years ago, before I was blessed to begin to know and work with my Native friends. I have spoken to each of them about Quaker involvement in forced assimilation early in our relationships. We could not have moved into deeper relationship if this truth was not spoken.

One of my good friends told me he is trying to not let rage get in the way of his mourning. I have met his son and cannot imagine their discussions about this.

As I was praying about conflict, I remembered Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo. I’m surprised how the following gets to the root of the conflicts I feel now.

1 . SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

  • Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
  • Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
  • Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
  • The land is a being who remembers everything.
  • You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
  • The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
  • As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
  • By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
  • Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
  • You must speak in the language of justice.

Harjo, Joy. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems. W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

To this day we have not come to grips with fundamental injustices our country was built on, the cultural genocide and theft of land from Native Americans, the enslavement of African Americans and the legal justifications of bestowing rights and privileges on white land-owning men. The consequences of these injustices continue to plague our society today. And will continue to impact us until we do what is necessary to bring these injustices to light and find ways to heal these wounds.

Several Friends recently assisted Boulder Meeting Friend, Paula Palmer, to lead workshops and discussions as part of her ministry “toward right relationships with Native people.” Part of the tragedy of the theft of Native land is that some Native people don’t have the concept of land as property, belonging to a landowner. Rather they have a spiritual connection to Mother Earth, that the land is sacred and not something that can be claimed as property by anyone. Being forced to leave their land broke their spiritual bonds with the land.

Native people have asked us to begin work toward reconciliation and healing. The first step needed is truth telling, recognizing that injury or harm has taken place. One of the important parts of holding “right relationship” workshops is to determine which Native nations were on the land before white settlers arrived.

Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) 2019