Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, September 30, 2013                      Dan Grigsby

Online resource: Indigenous Native American Prophecy video with Floyd Red Crow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7cylfQtkDg

This video opens with a short reference to the native belief and concept of the circle, the “full cycle” of nature and natural creation. Floyd Red Crow used the words “time evolves and comes to a place where it renews, again”. Many may not have picked up on that his use of the word “again” albeit natural and without emphasis, is a key word in that it declares the native belief of the circle of natural creation.  I just want to talk about that for a moment before I go on. The idea that creation is chaos is very native and is something that is not feared by native people. The universe is huge and we cannot control what happens in it any more than we would be able to control any series of seemingly accidental events. I know we all want to believe that there is a greater power or something logical and sensible about how the universe operates, but the native cycle concept for creation makes the most sense to me. The universe has its very own pulse and it breathes independently of all that exists within it, including human beings. I feel this is one of the reasons we hang on to spiritually and religion, to give us a feeling of security and a bases for our belief and faith. On the other hand there have been intellectuals and scholars who argue that organized religion and even the very existence of God maybe just another arrogant attempt by man to control everything, including the universe and our existence in it. Don’t get me wrong I am a spiritual person; I pray and do believe in God but I take my native spirituality and natural teachings very seriously.

Floyd Red Crow also mentions “there is first a purification time, then there is renewal time.” You can see this thought process or what I feel is more like a collective memory of past events, with many native cultures. The Hopi and the Aztec for example have creation stories that tell of a cycle of earth cleansing and rebirth often attached to some natural cataclysmic event or events. Brother Red Crow then warns “we are getting very close to this time now”. I couldn’t help but notice how he said those words. There was no drama or fear, no evangelistic fever of any kind; he just made a simple statement. This is it in a nutshell, recycling is a natural process and all things in one way or another go through this process. Any lesson worth learning can be found in nature as easily as anywhere else. The wisdom of native peoples is proof of that.  Many of my classmates have commented on the prophecies foretelling the arrival of white people to these native lands. In the video Floyd Red Crow states another well know native prophecy. “We were told we would see America come and go, and in a sense America is dying from within because they forgot the instructions of how to live on Earth.”

One very riveting statement for me was when Floyd Red Crow remarks on Native American genocide stating that when Columbus came to this hemisphere there were sixty million native people here but by the Second World War there were only eight hundred thousand. This Native American genocide continues today.

 Genocide, dictionary definition: “the systematic killing of all the people from a 

 national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this.”

 Genocide, legal definition: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

“The reason that some people use the word genocide in discussing the treatment of Indians is that every single part of the dictionary and legal definitions of the word can be used to describe the historical treatment of Indians.” [1]

I repeat, “this Native American genocide continues today.” You always hear people say in regards to what the Nazis did to the Jewish people in World War Two that we will continue to show these atrocities so we will never forget and so it will never happen again. Sixty million natives at the time of Columbus . . . eighty thousand by the time of the Second World War. I ask you, never happen again? To whom?

[1] Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, Anton Treuer, Borealis Books, pages 36,37.