Water Songs, Native American
The Water Song, by Chenoa Egawa & Alex Turtle
What's hard to find in the mainstream media
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
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/
~ This version you can pass on if you like for broadcast planting ~
It came to me that there was no song in the hymnal for Seeds & If Seeds aren’t divine , well what is ?
So this old school Praise and Worship song came to me . It can be sung in a lot of ways ~ This is how it sang the first day that our choir leaned into it :CAW Choir =~ Char =Acordian /JuliaM =Alto Cielo/ Madi Sado=Yarriba!/ JonGagan=Bass/CaW=Guitar&Words
So the goal for a Hymn is to get people to take it to heart and mind by singing it ~ This is a song searching for choirs ~ A song for this year of Earth ~ May Her Songs Free Her ~ CaW
For the New Year ~ a HYMN for the SEEDS by Cristobal Wells (CaW)
October 25, 2013, www.facebook.com | “A ballet dancer performing her own version of the famous “Dying Swan”, perishing in oil sludge. Companies like Gazprom and Shell are willing to destroy the Arctic to extract oil, regardless of the dangers for wildlife and the climate. The #Arctic30 were protesting peacefully at a Gazprom oil platform when they were detained over a month ago.”
►www.greenpeace.org/freethearctic30/?fbgcaoct25
A ballet dancer performing her own version of the famous “Dying Swan”, perishing in oil sludge.
Companies like Gazprom and Shell are willing to destroy the Arctic to extract oil, regardless of the dangers for wildlife and the climate. The #Arctic30 were protesting peacefully at a Gazprom oil platform when they were detained over a month ago.
ACT NOW to free them: www.greenpeace.org/freethearctic30/?fbcaoct25
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“
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
(to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic)
My eyes have seen the glory of the healing of the Earth,
the calming of the climate that protects our place of birth.
We’ll do it for our children and we’ll fight for all we’re worth,
Let’s heal the Earth today!
Chorus:
What do we say?!
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Joy of Earth is given to us!
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Let’s heal the Earth today!
Finale:
What do we say?!
(arm raised high, fingers spread like a tree’s branches)
GAIA!
(spoken)
May the Tree of Life be born from our hearts.
ADDITIONAL VERSES
My eyes have seen the glory of the healing of the Sea,
the stopping of the drilling, that makes our Mother bleed,
the cleaning of pollution so the fish can all swim free,
Let’s heal the Sea!
Chorus
My eyes have seen the glory of the healing of the Air.
Those coal-fired power plants are more than we can bear,
when kids have trouble breathing then we know it isn’t fair.
Let’s heal the Air!
Chorus
My eyes have seen the glory of the healing of the Land
No need to spray out poisons to put food into our hands.
Taking care of gardens, we all can understand
Let’s heal the Land!
Chorus
My eyes have seen the glory of the saving of the Wild
The balance our planet needs places not made to be mild
Where every animal can be Mother Nature’s child,
Let’s protect the wildlands today!
Chorus
My eyes have seen the glory of the healing of the Hurt,
where people and the landscape have been cut down to the dirt.
What we can do is plant a tree and heal a wounded heart.
Restore people and planet today!
What do we say?!
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Joy of Earth is given to us!
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Let’s heal the Earth today!
What do we say?!
(arm raised high, fingers spread like a tree’s branches)
GAIA!
(spoken)
May the Tree of Life be born from our hearts.
— Written by Robert “Bobcat” Brothers, March 1, 2010.
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