Just Looking For Some Peace
So live your life so the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their views, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a stranger if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself. Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise ones turn to fools and robs them of their visions. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
~ Tecumseh
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as wild. Only to the white man was nature a wilderness, and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the great mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and upon the families we loved was it wild for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the wild west began.
~ Chief Luther Standing Bear
Oglala band of Sioux
"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."
~ Black Elk
...You have stories to tell and that is what will keep the memory of a great people alive. Pass the stories to your children. Teach them who, where and what their people were. Take time to search your ancestry. Remember the past they took and have patience. Stay in tune with your feelings and be strong in your search.
Trace your walk, feel satisfaction in knowing the end of the rainbow you have looked for can be found at the toe of your moccasin after realizing who we are and what we have.
~ Chief John "Eagle Spirit" Campbell
Cherokee Elders Council, Houston, TX
Learn how to withhold judgment
Learn to listen
Get in touch with your own inner self
Look at life with joy
Don't ever cry over something that cannot cry over you.
~ Cheewa James
Modoc
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, —you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
~ Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk)
Medicine Man of the Oglala Sioux, 1931
You have noticed that everything an Indian does in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.
In the old days all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.
Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.
The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
~ Black Elk
Oglala Sioux 1863-1950
It’s A Good Day To Die
I lift my hands unto the Great Spirit and worship him who has by himself created all things visible and invisible, who has blessed me with long life, who has set me upon my Mother among the Human Beings that respect his name and worship him with an unsoiled spirit and heart.
Many moons have passed and my memory flickers as a candle on a windy day that is ready to die out forever more. I have seen unspeakable things that have been committed against the Human Beings, hard to be spoken, the cry of the young for their mothers, and mothers for their children that will never return unto to them ever again.
The wisdom of our Elders died with our old a helpless people that embraced those who traveled across the deep waters, they came with a split tongue killed our people and fed them to their dogs, covering our Mother with a heavy blanket, killing our buffalo for sport, our land is sacred! Our Mother has nourished our fathers and our children and the creatures have given their life for meat and their coat to keep us warm.
They didn’t understand nor do they still understand the way of life, they despise the day of small things and raped our mother for gain and pleasure we must keep the decree of life and respect the land. Our Mother has been provoked and she will shake the heaviness that has been placed on her.
The blood of our children cries unto the Great Spirit. They cannot feel the fire of the heavens that nourished their existence that gave them their beauty. Oh Great Spirit this is a good day to die, I’m weak but ye are strong keep me in the right path which my fathers have taken back to you, I humble myself to be accepted in your most sacred presences.
~ Shanawanikki Nations (Nippowa Tribe)
