New Beginnings - A First Nations Perspective

As a new year begins, we look ahead and consider what it may bring.  What does that mean to First Nations people?  What do Indigenous, Native people hope for when considering the future?  Here are some things I feel most American Indian and Indigenous people would agree are the dreams of new beginnings....

A Voice
The other night, Leonardo DiCaprio won a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his role in ‘The Revenant’, a film which has a fair amount of First Nations actors.  At the end of his acceptance speech, he strongly asserted that it is time the world heard the voice of Indigenous people.  I applaud him for making that statement.  For centuries, the Native voice has been twisted and misunderstood, forcibly silenced or utterly ignored by mainstream America and the rest of the western world.  Humanity needed to hear that voice.  It still does.  The damage of the silent Indigenous voice can be seen globally, as the world now wrestles with human-inflicted climate change and an epidemic of dangerous religious extremism.  The wisdom in the old ways of First Nations peoples is needed now more than ever, and that only comes if the world will listen and hear that voice.  Also, if the voice of Native people is truly heard, mainstream society will no longer be able to ignore the continued use of tired, antiquated stereotypes and racially offensive terms and imagery which are in prominent every day use still today.  A new voice for Native people requires those outside of our communities to join their voices with ours to affect positive change of all kinds.

---

New Direction
There is a new day rising in Native communities across North America.  I see it in my own Lakota community.  There is a new generation of young, Indigenous people who are finding a deep strength in the traditions of their culture, and are passionate about ensuring a positive future for not only Native peoples, but for the planet and the world.  First Nations communities everywhere are turning back to the traditional foods that once nourished a strong and healthy people.  Native communities are looking at alternative energy sources like solar and wind to power the homes of their people.  We have always known the way.  We have just never had a voice.  Part of the reason for that is the perpetuation of false, fantasy type imagery of our people by the mainstream society.  How can you hear the voice of a people and take it seriously when all you know of them is a ridiculous stereotype?  You cannot.  So the new direction for Native people will require a new view of who and what we are (and were) by those outside of our communities.  
 
A New Day
We can, and we must change.  Humanity has no guarantee from the universe that we are to remain.  What Indigenous people around the world have always known is that we are part of the web of life.  We are not above it.  We have always known that what we do to the delicate balance of that web, we do to ourselves.  We must return to that balance.  We must seek the wisdom of old ways for a new day.  Native people have always known the way to a new beginning.  Perhaps the time has finally come for the world to listen....

---