Full Moon Edition June 2024
The great Lakota leader and humanitarian Crazy Horse saw the future. He saw the world raining Blue Coats, that their invasion was unstoppable, and that it was a good day to die. But he saw too a time seven generations in the future when his people would reclaim their former glory. That time is near.
We may never see the return of 60 million buffalo roaming the plains, nor the thousands of Indigenous tribes living freely on their lands, but the native peoples of North America are making significant strides in reclaiming their culture. We should make concerted effort to support them.
The legacy of their conquest and what we did to them is shameful. Reparations are beyond reach. But there are things we can do that would make a big difference in their lives. We can begin by recognizing all they have accomplished in managing their affairs despite the circumstances we inflicted on them. And we can think creatively about what we as a society might do to make greater opportunities available to them.
A few issues previously in this newsletter, we suggested that we should gradually cede stewardship of Federal Public Lands to Native American tribes. Perhaps it seems farfetched that our federal bureaucracy would ever yield oversight of public lands. We can think of every good reason they should.
Egregious mismanagement has resulted in devastation of our grasslands, combustion of our forests, and pollution of our waterways, which suggests new strategies – and new managers – should be considered. Native American guidance of our public lands could serve as a pathway to repatriation and a modest form of reparation.
Native tribes as sovereign nations have developed expertise in resource management under particularly difficult circumstances. Their historic relationship with the natural world is well known. The unique vision they could bring to utilizing these lands on behalf of the public well-being would reflect the wisdom of their cultural heritage.
From the work to recapture their native language (HERE) and (HERE), to restoring the foodstuff of their people (HERE), to reestablishing water rights (HERE) and fishing resources (HERE), to small acquisitions of their ancestral lands (HERE) and (HERE), the Native people of North America are making significant strides to reclaim their culture and judiciously manage their resources.
An incremental transfer of oversight responsibilities for public lands to Native tribes would create opportunities to compare and contrast current uses of those lands with an entirely different approach to living in harmony with what’s left of the natural world. It would be a well deserved, long overdue gesture of respect and a very modest form of apology to people who have survived and are transcending the vast devastation we visited on them. Can you think of one good reason not to try it?