Ideas For Supporting Our Nation

Ideas for improving our Nation
            By: Leo Cordier

Support Our Spirits!

         Preserving our spirituality is one of my main concerns. Look at how our people are acting and behaving. With the perseverance of our spirituality, we can mend a lot of damage that our government and early and modern settlers have done. Many of our youths are involved in gang activity, which influences adolescent violence and crime. If we greatly influence our natural native spirituality then we can pave the road for our future generations, teaching heavy morals of respect, generosity, courage, and chivalry.
         What makes us truly Lakota is our spirituality. Denying our natural spirituality is basically denying who we are. We are people of the Earth, skies, and stars. We are a people who are meant to give respect to all that surrounds us: neighbors, all forms of life, the spirits, and the morality of our very own lives. If we pray to the spirits, not just every once in awhile or occasionally, but just give a “wopila” or “Mitakuye Oyasin” everyday (just a thank you for the day! It’s that easy!) Then many great things can be accomplished. Karma is real.

Last Cig

         When we support and accept our Natural Native Spirituality We will learn to share what we have, which will go a long way for the gradual rate of our success. We will have important values of understanding that will give us extremely valuable insight to how everyone else feels. We will not have even the slightest urge to show disrespect towards anybody because our conscience will tell us not to.
We will begin to view life a new way, not just physically but spiritually as well. These neighbors are my kin, if not by blood then by spirit. They are my family, I will do whatever I can to protect our family because I love them and my ancestors love them as well. We will not endanger our family in fights, domestic abuse, or neglect. When a member of our family falls, we pick them up because for so long now our family has suffered.
Our family has suffered countless accounts of loss, depression, sickness, starvation, mutilation, neglect, racism, revenge, fear, and reform. WHY SHOULD WE PUT OUR FAMILY UNDER ANY MORE PAIN!?! We must learn to control ourselves and restrain the stress that has been building up for hundreds of years because right now we are only hurting ourselves! When we drink, whom do we hurt? Who do we kill? Who do we violate and offend? Who do we push down and call names? OURSELVES!!!
Our adolescents and even our adults are becoming witnesses, defendants, and offenders. It’s NOT all of, us, it’s NOT even most of us, but it is SOME of us. Our brothers are falling and we are not putting forth any effort to help them up! What will happen when we find ourselves in that position? We are all good people. When others smile, we smile back. When others lend us something, we will give it back. When someone helps us, we will always remember.


We Are NOT going to Hell

         Christianize, baptize, sermonize…demoralize. What action was taken against our “heathen” asses when Europeans came? To initiate us into their cult of fear, dominance, and reform. When they saw us many saw us as people, not as the animals we think they saw us as BUT we were seen as different and “uncivilized savages” and according to them, we are going to hell for it.
         Doing the “right” thing has always been an ailment of Christians. Is their duty to “save people?” OR!!! to create others into his or her image? Assimilation is a Natural process that has been practiced since the dawn of our evolution. Native Americans assimilate prisoners of war. The Lakota accept prisoners into their family and most of the time the prisoners never want to go back.
         The assimilative process of Christian missionaries is morally acceptable. Missionaries and Christians/other religious people ARE GOOD PEOPLE who teach good lessons, but does that mean it is truly essential for us to follow their religion as well? We don’t have to! ***We should say thanks, but no thanks. *** And IT IS NOT a factor of “just because…” IT IS because our own spirituality teaches us to hold stronger bonds that are around us. We have been following these bonds and keeping them sacred for thousands of years; following the spirits, our family, love, understanding, etc.
         I believe that if we greatly influence spirituality on an immense scale, and then gang activity and violence will gradually go down. Violence will go down because of our respect for what we hold sacred. We need to teach ourselves to hold everything sacred once again except with this new day and age we need to integrate stronger bonds than that which we have had before. Everything around us is changing, and we need to step up.


Education

         Without education we will go nowhere, nowhere at all. Without education how will we be able to keep up with the prosperity of the rest of our country? We need to INSIST upon ourselves to better educate our youth. If we cannot find good here on the reservations or in South Dakota then let us find it elsewhere! For the good of our people! How many other people have the zeal to improve our Native American nation? Don’t we have Native professors? White professors? Hispanic, African, Indian, or Asian professors? Anybody!?!
         We need to do what we can to persuade them to teach our youth, preferably at the elementary level because that is when we absorb most of everything we know in our lives, our thought process will increase dramatically.
         The income of education is low (south Dakota is the lowest in the country) , but we will know the true cause of the people who sacrifice their better homes to live our poverty-stricken life. When it comes to the cause of our people, money should not be a problem. We don’t need to pay to grow naturally flowing intelligence. We don’t need to pay to learn. We definitely DO NOT need to pay to live!


R.I.F.

         WE NEED TO READ!!! We need to teach our children to make a habit of reading because reading expands the mind to imaginative possibilities that could help us in the future. Think of it as planting a sapling that will grow into a multi-fruited tree of success feeding us with achievement while providing shade from the fear, and powerlessness that the shadows of deprivation give us.
         There are SO MANY possibilities that can outcome from teaching our youth to read! SO MANY!!! Knowledge only makes us stronger, way stronger! Knowledge is power. We can learn so many valuable lessons and examples, especially patience! Patience can go a long way in our everyday lives, even down to socialization. Reading can teach us to react more cautiously, we will be able to have the skills to evaluate situations more clearly. We will learn to be more observant of everything around us, we will then begin to be more understanding about everything. Our attention spans will get longer. WE WILL HAVE DRAMATIC LEVELS OF CREATIVE THINKING!!!
We will come to that stage in live where we will philosophize about deeps things, we will drift days on end with only one question about the world around us, that question is “why.”  A question with endless answers. Many of us will be aspiring inventors and philosophers. All this can happen! For the future of our people! We must act now!!!

Pictures Making Sounds…Currently On MUTE

         In order to achieve recognition with the “outside society” we must influence the written language GREATLY. In this world of “national committee” where points of view are expressed with advanced detailed explanations there is one chair that is empty. That chair is ours.
         There are very few of us who have the motivation to use literary skills for debate against our oppressors. On our reservation’s writing skills are not commonly used…its not essential for our everyday life. We aren’t required to write papers or articles, even at school we don’t do it very much. We must exercise ourselves to get strong and agile.
          We are intentionally kept oppressed so we cannot speak out for support against all that holds us back. As an outcome of our historic depression we still have the hands of the government holding our mouths closed. We need to write! We must express ourselves or else it will be too late! Teach our children words, meanings, and literary skills!
         The main thing that we must have concern for is a purpose. As we rot bickering among ourselves over simple things we are losing the meaning to being strong. We need to make ourselves aware of a purpose. OUR PURPOSE IS TO PUT OURSELVES ON THE “MAP” AND SPEAK OUT AGAINST OUR VIOLENCE! OUR DEPRIVATION AS A PEOPLE! WE NEED TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST ALL THAT FADES US AS A LAKOTA PEOPLE AWAY!!!
         WE NEED TO WRITE! We must speak out! With writing and vocabulary skills we will learn to express ourselves among each other. We will be able to talk to each other peacefully about our indifferences with honest understanding. We must have patience and we must make an effort!
         And let us not JUST give books out. When you help someone who is hungry, you not only give them your meal, you teach them how to hunt and fish.