–by John Trudell (Sep 14, 2018)
We, as the indigenous people of the western hemisphere have been resisting this violence and this oppression for five hundred years. We know that the black people have been resisting it for at least that long and we know that the white people had to endure it thousands of years, and now it’s come full swing to this generation that we live in. The nuclearization of the World.
You see, we cannot allow this to continue to go on. […]
We have to reestablish our identity. We have to understand who we are and where we fit in the natural order of the world because our oppressor deals in illusions: matter of dollars and their illusionary concepts of power.
They tell us that it is power, but it is not power. They may have all the guns and they may have all the racist laws and judges and they may control all the money. But that is not power, these are imitations of power and they are only power because in our minds we allow it to be power.
But it’s all an imitation. Racism and violence, racism and guns, economics, the brutality of the American corporate state way of life is nothing more than violence and repression and it has nothing to do with power, it is brutality. It is a lack of a sane balance.
The people who have created this system and who perpetuate this system, they are out of balance. They have made us out of balance. They have come into our minds and come into our hearts and they have programmed us because we live in this society they have put us out of balance. Because we are out of balance, we no longer have the power to deal with them.
They have conquered us as a natural power, see, we are power, they deal in violence and repression. We are power. We are part of the natural world, all the things that the natural world are a natural part of the creation and feed off the energy of our sacred Mother Earth.
We are power.
But they have separated us from our spiritual connection to the Earth so people feel powerless. We look at the oppressor and we look at the enemy because they have the most guns and the most lies in the most money and people start to feel powerless.
We are power.
We are a natural part in the creation we were put here on the sacred Mother Earth to serve a purpose and somewhere in the history of people we are forgetting what the purpose is.
- The purpose is to honor the Earth.
- The purpose is to protect the Earth.
- The purpose is to live in balance with the Earth.
The Earth is our mother and we will never free ourselves as human people. We will never free ourselves as sexual people, we will never free ourselves until we address the issue of how we live in balance with the Earth.
Because all of our resistance and all of our struggle is hollow it’s false its another one of those oppressors hypocrisies. If we do not look out for the welfare of the Earth first because I do not care who it is — ‘Any child that turns on their mother is living in a terrible terrible confusion‘. The Earth is our mother, we must take care of the Earth.
They Pollute. This oppressor, this machine, this machine that has gone mad, and run amok, it is berserk. They keep telling us you know ‘progress’. They keep telling us face ‘reality’. Ok well let’s deal with reality.
Reality is the Earth can no longer take this attack. We cannot, we can no longer allow this thing to continue where it is polluting the air. It is polluting the water, polluting our food. They pollute the air, they pollute the water, they pollute our food, they pollute our minds. They have put us out of balance. They have made us be insecure with ourselves. […]
We are a natural part of the Earth. As a natural part of the Earth we have the energy and the power that is the Earth. The Earth will take care of us if we will remember the Earth in more than just our words: If we will remember the Earth in our way of life, we are all here to play a role in all of the animals in all the life on the Earth is playing its proper role except the human people.
Somehow we are betraying, we are betraying our purpose here and that is why we live in the confusion that we live in. They tell us, they want us to believe that we are powerless.
We are a natural part of the Earth, we are an extension of that natural energy. That natural energy which is spirit and which is power. A blizzard is power, an earthquake is power, a tornado is power. These are all things of power that no oppressor and no machine age can put these things of power in a prison.
No machine age can make these things submit to the machine age, that is natural power. Just as it takes millions and billions elements to make a blizzard to happen or to make the earthquake to make the earth to move then it is going to take millions and billions of us. Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent, they then become the power of the storm.
We are power, we have that power. We have the potential for that power. […]
For five hundred-years my people have resisted, for five hundred years we will resist again if it becomes necessary. We want to be able to relate to communicate with all of the people that are living on this land, but we want to be able to relate and communicate from a position of truth.
You all got to face the truth, we have had to face it through five hundred years of genocide, we have had to face the truth, we have had to live the truth, we have had to die the truth.
Before we gonna ever see our evolutionary liberation, the people that call themselves Americans are going to have to face the truth also.
They tell us to be realistic that progress means all these things have to happen.
They tell us that we can’t go back to the old way. They tell us be realistic.
But there is no old way, no new way, there is a way of life. We must live in balance with the Earth. We must do it, we have no choice, if we allow ourselves to be apathetic or we allow ourselves to be lied to, or tolerate their lies about what they are doing to the Earth then we are betraying our intention. We are betraying our purpose here! We cannot protect that seventh generation if we do not protect the Earth. We cannot protect ourselves if we do not protect the Earth.
The Earth gives us life not the American government. The Earth gives us life not the multinational corporate government.
–John Trudell, excerpt from the (audio)talk We Are Power, here’s the full transcript. [Photo by Daniela Esponda Rodriguez]
Earthling Opinion 