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[source: NativeNews; Tue, 22 Feb 2000 19:03:00]
FROM UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
FOR RELEASE: WEEK OF FEBRUARY 18, 2000
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS by
Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez
LIVING IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE GREAT NATURAL LAW
Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga
Nation stood before an audience at a recent leadership summit in the nation's
capital and spoke of the spiritual law.
"Spirituality, you say,
do you know what it is? What is your vision and the vision of your leaders?
What are the laws that we make and abide by?" he asked.
Lyons crystallized why some
explorations of spirituality are often not grounded in real life. Some
is of the navel-gazing variety; some is merely an abstract intellectual
foray. Yet these explorations are separated from everyday living where
we make choices that raze rain forests, demean human beings and leave people
with water they can no longer drink.
Presidential hopeful Al
Gore can write about an Earth in balance and still owe his wealth to stock
in Occidental Petroleum, while the U'wa native population of South America
is threatened daily by the Colombian military, resulting in clashes that
have reportedly already cost several U'wa lives.
The U'wa have threatened
mass suicide if Occidental pursues oil exploration under their lands, which
are sacred to them. Their spiritual laws say no one should suck the blood
dry of their mother.
In many ways, spirituality
is a form of leadership. Spirituality, by its very nature, should carry
accountability -- to ourselves, our families and our communities. Our actions
should be congruent with the values that feed our spirit.
While the country is on
watch for the next politician who will lead us (as some presidential candidates,
in trying to show their spirituality, invoke the name of Jesus), Chief
Lyons points to laws of nature that are greater than those made inside
the Beltway -- and they are great instructions in how we should lead and
live our lives.
"Never make a law against
the spiritual law because you cannot prevail," Lyons said. "Never make
a law against nature. Remember that you cannot and will not prevail. You
will be defeated every time. It may not be your generation that sees it,
but you will be defeated."
Many spiritual elders have
taught about living in accordance with the great natural laws. Today's
world often acts as if it can change the "jurisdiction of spiritual law,"
Lyons said. Do not make laws outside of our authority, he cautions. "There
is a higher law."
Some of those laws include
not taking more than you need, not taking without giving back, and living
in balance with all beings because we are all connected. Many great teachings
recognize that we harvest what we sow.
That is recognized as a
Judeo-Christian ethos, yet all major religions have similar beliefs. Buddhists
speak of a great natural law that pulsates through the universe and organizes
all life, the strict law of cause and effect. Buddhism also adheres to
the principle of "dependent
origination."
Nothing is created in isolation,
and all life, whether it be humanity, the cosmos or the natural world,
evolves in relationship to all living beings.
Native-American scholar
L.A. Napier, of the University of Colorado at Denver, says the heart of
indigenous leadership is naturalistic leadership.
"The natural order," Napier
says, "the natural law is the source to them of what it means to lead in
a good way. The way that indigenous people view leadership evolved from
knowing that nature is interconnected for a reason, and that reason is
survival. If it's important for nature to maintain these relationships,
it's important for human beings to maintain our relationship with each
other, but also with the natural order."
Winona LaDuke provides riveting
accounts of native leadership to protect the environment in "All Our Relations:
Native Struggles for Land and Life" ($16, South End Press). She documents
how Mohawk women have organized to save their community from PCBs and other
toxins, which have passed up the food chain and into a mother's milk; how
the Innu in Canada continue to stand on runways where aerial war games
are launched (by the military of several countries) and fly perilously
low over their homelands; and how the numerous campaigns against nuclear
storage continue in Indian country.
On her own White Earth Reservation
in Minnesota, the Anishinaabeg have challenged logging and illegal land
claims, and they are restoring their forest culture. As LaDuke acknowledges,
change is certain, but who determines the changes to come?
"The challenge at the cusp
of the millennium is to transform human laws to match natural laws, not
vice versa," she writes. "And to correspondingly transform wasteful production
and voracious consumption.
American and industrial society must move from a society based on conquest
to one steeped in the practice of survival."
The same could be said of
the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, where the residents are united in opposition
to continued bombings of their homeland.
"Mitakuye Oyasin": We are
all related. This Lakota prayer signifies that we are related to all life.
We are not above animals or plant life, but instead we become complete
in relation to every living being around us; we all are co-creators of
life. We send prayers to all of creation -- all is sacred. For if we, as
human beings, are part of creation and the natural world, how can we not
affect it?
As is often invoked in prayers:
to all our relations.
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