Alicia Littletree with Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney at Oakland courthouse rally, Nov. 1996.

Alicia Littletree with Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney at Oakland courthouse rally, Nov. 1996.

Margaret Lou-Vike, Solomon Islands activist, The Nature Conservancy

Margaret Lou-Vike, Solomon Islands activist, The Nature Conservancy

Protesters who helped stop the Vietnam War - in Washington, D.C., 1967

Filling Gunbarrels with Flowers -> Protesters who helped stop the Vietnam War – in Washington, D.C., 1967

Pauline Whitesinger, defender of traditional Dineh (Navajo) lands and culture at Big Mountain against the Peabody Coal Company

Pauline Whitesinger, defender of traditional Dineh (Navajo) lands and culture at Big Mountain against the Peabody Coal Company

The Mountains Were Painted.
— Pauline Whitesinger

 

I used to go up there, to the mine area, when the pinions would come in. I went to gather them.

 

Navajos lived there. At that time there was no mine, no word of it. It was a beautiful place. Those people were living beautifully too.
There were incredible mountains. They stood along each other like a picture. Some seemed to wear hats.

 

Probably the very way that they were set when the mother earth was designed and decorated. Now when I go there that area merely resembles the surroundings right here at my present home. Those mountains are gone.

 

There’s just these holes there. Way way down, who knows how far down, to the bottom of the earth perhaps. Its not a pretty picture. And rises up some god awful thing that looks like smoke. In pillars. Its disturbing.

 

This is the thing here, those picturesque mountains are gone. In Window rock the same situation exists, there were a group of remarkable rocks, again with hats. Those rocks have been scratched out. They were replaced with a dull grey hill.

 

When you observe this process, the erasure of the careful designs on the land, the artwork of the Holy People, it disturbs you.
The moral is that the mother earth has been manipulated at our expense.

 

There’s springs there. And they come up with some heat to them. It never snows there. No snow, and then there are green grasses that rise up. Special places.

 

There’s some spots like that over here, by “Coalmine”, well, it was like that, now it is all being dug out.
So my grandmother would say, this that we are sitting on, it is a woman mountain laying up here. She said the coal is the liver of this woman.
Over towards Window Rock there is a man laying there. Further on he holds his head up.
The northern mountain is her head. She is a woman lying across.
That’s why you don’t burn coal. If you have to do something with it, there’s a certain sacrificial offering that you do. You offer hard goods, jewels, and you just take so much up out. That’s how it was done, as far as the coal.

 

So that’s whats causing the womens’ hearts to hurt, the men even. That’s it. That’s what’s doing it to us I think. This liver. This is the price we pay for people to have work.

 

In Tuba city, they sell it in sacks this big. Ten bucks. I just look at it. I think to my self, people didn’t used to carry this stuff around for free, without having made a proper offering for it. There they go, hauling it along. Over this way it’s the same story, over toward window rock, they stash it in with loads of firewood and sell it for cash.

 

So the male mountain lays this way. Over here, there is a woman. They have grandchildren. The place called ‘white rocks stretch down’ is the girl grandchild. This way too a place called ‘white rock’ is a boy grandchild. He sleeps there with his grandpa, they say. That’s the way the old women used to talk about it.

 

That’s why you do the offerings, white corn and yellow corn, in the light of dawn, in prayer.
In the evening too, offerings.
That’s how its been done.

 

Just two or three days ago, I started to incorporate these concerns into my prayers and daily corn pollen offering:
“This is a matter of great importance.”
“Whatever happens, let these illustrious mountains not be overturned.”

 

They are causing a hard time on this mother of ours, this mountain woman. That’s what I think. She is lying there sacred. What else?
Bodies, surgeries. People are off to the hospital to be cut up and here the mountain separates from itself.
Over this way, a stretch across of land separated where it once was joined.
And now it has grown back together.

 

I never have been there, just my mother saw it. She was coming up this way and it unveiled itself to her.
My grandchildren have been to this place and they tell me it has recently grown back together. It has obviously grown back together and even appears to have a scar of sorts where the incision was made.

 

That must be why it happened in the first place, so that what has happened now could be.

 

(Translated by Owen Johnson)

 

Here is a January 2013 Statement from Big Mountain Elder Matriarch Resister, Pauline Whitesinger. If you are a Dineh reader and would like the Dineh version, please email us and we will gladly send it to you:
from http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bb9ecfdb5d711f67f04ee3551&id=b692b744e3&e=7d53a4aff4
and http://supportblackmesa.org/

 

 

 

 

Kristi Wrigley says “no” to use of logging road

Activism by a long-time watershed defender — on the job every day
Kristi Wrigley saying NO to HRC Forester Tom Schultz, Don’t use this old logging road across her property. With 18% slopes, clay soils, the road will contribute sediment in addition to the timber harvest it will lead to. NO, in fact, to the entire McCloud-Shaw THP, nearly 600 acres, in 3 parts: one directly adjacent to Headwaters Reserve, one directly above a dozen or so South Fork residences, and this one that will drain into the main stem just above Elk River Court. It’s got something for everyone!
Photo: Kristi Wrigley saying NO to HRC Forester Tom Schultz, Don't use this old logging road across her property. With 18% slopes, clay soils, the road will contribute sediment in addition to the timber harvest it will lead to. NO, in fact, to the entire McCloud-Shaw THP, nearly 600 acres, in 3 parts: one directly adjacent to Headwaters Reserve, one directly above a dozen or so South Fork residences, and this one that will drain into the main stem just above Elk River Court. It's got something for everyone!
  • Diana Hartel, Maryska Azzena, and Myriam Ledent Thierry like this.

Inspirations for Activists

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.
Did you think you were put here for anything less?
Chief Arvol Lookinghorse, Lakota Sioux

When the Earth seems to raise its own voice to the pitch of a gale, have we the ears to listen?
— Barbara Kingsolver

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
– Ann Frank

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted, and behold, service was joy.
— Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize for Literature, India, 1861-1941

We are living is such amazing times, we get to watch as the whole world transitions back to a healthy, connected relationship with our Mother Earth, as well as each other. Let’s keep this snowball going, and continue working together, because together we will continue to create this change that we have been waiting for. If there is ever a time where you feel like giving up, just remember that there are many, many more people who are finally opening their eyes! Don’t give up, because this global shift is happening, right now, right before your eyes! We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
— Alanna Ketler

~ Hearts Afire

This is a call for all who care, 
a call for all who’s beauty and love of life has been enraged. 
Come, hold close together, the ground beneath us is shifting 
And the great mother burns at her core.

A word to the one whose heart is somehow not yet afire: We can stay silent no longer, complacent and still. There is no room left for apathy or greed.
Wake up. Rise up. Cry out!
Deganawidah, Great Peace Maker we call you. You who shown the way to our founding fathers. You who must never fade away.

Peia Jessyka Luzzi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“

Activism is the antidote to despair – Joan Baez

Don’t mourn, organize! — Mother Jones

Washing ones hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
— Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Brazil, 1921-1997

I think it would be good if we all became cheerleaders for our species. We need the encouragement. There is no survival value in being cynical as to our ability to change for the better.
— Will Bason

Do not lose hope …. we were made for these times. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
— Clara Pinkola Estes

People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.
— Dorothy Day

“Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.” because Mother Earth will prevail !
-Philip Deer, a Muscogee Creek Elder
The wilderness is gonna give me strength to stand up and face whatever they throw at me.
— Dave Foreman, Earth First! co-founder, 1989 Jemez Rendezous, Andy Caffrey video

You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.
— Vandana Shiva

In the world there is a new collective force of people mobilising around the issue of peace but linking it to the need to protect the environment.
– Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kenya

Hope is a verb with it’s sleeves rolled up – David Orr

Optimism is a political act – Howard Zinn