A Language Older Than Words

When Dams Were Erected On The Columbia, Salmon Battered Themselves Against The Concrete, Trying To Return Home. I Expect No Less From Us. We Too Must Hurl Ourselves Against And Through The Literal And Metaphorical Concrete That Contains And Constrains Us, That Keeps Us From Talking About What Is Most Important To Us, That Keeps Us From Living The Way Our Bones Know We Can, That Bars Us From Our Home. It Only Takes One Person To Bring Down A Dam.

The Big Dividing Line Is Not And Has Never Been Between Those Who Advocate More Or Less Militant Forms Of Resistance, Or Between Mainstream And Grassroots Activists. The Dividing Line Is Between Those Who Do Something And Those Who Do Nothing.

Stand With Me. Stand And Fight. I Am One, And We Would Be Two. Two More Might Join And We Would Be Four. When Four More Join We Will Be Eight. We Will Be Eight People Fighting Whom Others Will Join. And Then More People. And More. Stand And Fight.

Many Indians Have Told Me That The Most Basic Difference Between Western And Indigenous Ways Of Being Is That Westerners View The World As Dead, And Not As Filled With Speaking, Thinking, Feeling Subjects As Worthy And Valuable As Themselves.

If We Hope To Stem The Mass Destruction That Inevitably Attends Our Economic System (and To Alter The Sense Of Entitlement - The Sense Of Contempt, The Hatred - On Which It Is Based), Fundamental Historical, Social, Economic, And Technological Forces Need To Be Pondered, Understood, And Redirected. Behavior Won't Change Much Without A Fundamental Change In Consciousness. The Question Becomes: How Do We Change Consciousness?