Note from Kate
Happy Labor Day Weekend,
I hope you had a happy and healthy summer. I originally started this post for Earth Day, but since then a lot of great things have been happening, and I am just getting back to it now.
This month’s Badass Determined Woman is Water Protector Tokata Iron Eyes, and before I dive into her amazing story, I wanted to catch you up on what’s been going on here:
Lyons Community Farm Project/Food Forest
In April I joined a really amazing group of people known as The Lyons Community Farm Project. Our plans include starting a food forest in Lyons, Colorado, so we’re all taking a local permaculture design course through Drylands Agroecology and Research. These teachings are based on Bill Mollison’s work with David Holmgren, and offer so much hope for the future of water and farming.
Since this Spring, our group has leased 2 adjacent flood buyout properties in Lyons to become the site of our future Lyons Food Forest. With 501c3 status and insurance, and our water getting set up, the project is definitely underway, even though we won’t plant until next Spring.
Our fundraisers range from Dinner Concerts(check out our upcoming Benefit Picnic Concert on Sept 19) to Educational Workshops, such as Sheet Mulching parties, and as our design is complete we will begin the earthworks for next spring’s plantings.
poster by Saiorse Watters
Weeds as helpers
Many of you already know this, I’m sure, but one important thing I’ve learned in our permaculture design course, is that our land is often going through an ecological succession, a process of change on its way to becoming more complex.
When “weeds” are growing on bare land, instead of just pulling them and leaving the soil bare again, we can appreciate that this pioneer species is helping us help keep moisture in the soil, kickstarting the biology of that soil and making it more beneficial for whatever comes next.
I am excited to be creating a video series around what we are learning. You can check out our new Lyons Community Farm Project video series to find out more.
Indigenous Wisdom
Since the time this land known as the United States was “discovered” or, more accurately, stolen, we’ve focused so narrowly on white men’s wants and needs, the masculine.
Author Arkan Lushwala shares(downloadable link) his offering of indigenous wisdom. He says of the time we are in now,
“Elders and visionaries of more than one tribe are asking that their voices be heard, as well as the voices of Pachamama that speak through them.
This is a calling to acknowledge the original wisdom that all humans have, as it is expressed by people of Indigenous cultures and of all ancient lineages still alive on Earth. Wisdom, generosity and
compassion should be the main driving forces
behind the worldās economy, not the business plans
of investors who canāt see yet that it is impossible to
make themselves truly happy without making
everybody else happy.”1
Balance
Balance is long overdue.
Now is the time for powerful, nurturing, creative, flowing, wise, sacred indigenous feminine energy, where strength is found in creating life, not in destruction.
This feminine energy is meant to be felt by all, and is not limited by gender. We can all slow down and take time to reflect on what Mother Earth is telling us. We can see more clearly how to heal ourselves and each other, and our planet.
Link for video of Carole Lindstrom’s children’s book, We Are Water Protectors.
Water and Living in the West
Simply said: Without clean water we cannot survive.
Living in the West has made me aware of how important our water is, the Earth’s lifeblood, how scarce and much more valuable than gold it really is. I’m afraid that by the time we all realize how precious it is, it will be too late.
Water supplies life to everything on this planet. We must realize that we all need each other here to make it all work, that all creatures living together are what create a healthy ecosystem where we can all thrive.
Our climate on this planet is so rare and special, we must consider how we have already begun to change the earth’s temperatures enough to slow ocean currents that would forever alter the future…
Photo above: Sea creatures, such as the mussels and other marine life seen in this tidepool on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, perished in droves from a major heat wave. Credit: Rolf Hicker Alamy
Badass Determined Woman
I am really excited about this amazing young woman. I would love to meet her in person and become more involved in her work as a water protector. I admire her strength and commitment to fight for what she believes in. Tokata is right, and what she is saying is very important.
Tokata Iron Eyes: Water Protector
Born in North Dakota, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Tokata Iron Eyes started her journey as a public speaker at the young age of nine, where she spoke against a uranium mine in the Black Hills. A well-known fighter for Indigenous rights and environmental protections, Tokata was only 12 when she was part of the very first video that started the campaign at Standing Rock, RezpectOurWater.com.
She says, “At any age, we can see that these things (risking our water safety for fossil fuels) are wrong and we have the right to protect those things.”
Young Hero
In January 2020 Iron Eyes was featured as “The Thrilling Tokata, Teller of the Truest Tales,” in Marvel’s Hero Project on Disney + and in May was named one of the Ms. Foundationās 2020 Women of Vision, receiving the Peggy C. Charren Free to Be You and Me Award.3
In a land where a great river flows, powerful youth are fighting to protect our water, earth, and air. Heroes created from the cosmic legends of the universe, their mission: to fight for our future, to balance what is unbalanced, respecting creature, land, water, sky and spirit. Meet the Thrilling Tokata, teller of the truest tales!
Speaking Out
In 2019, Iron Eyes spoke at the Climate Change Forum in Standing Rock, and in 2020 at the Young World Leaders Summit, and also speaks out about the Indigenous women around her that have gone missing or were murdered. She says the pipeline creates an opportunity for violence when “the men who are brought here oftentimes end up hurting our women.”4
A self-described feminist, Iron Eyes currently attends Bard’s College at Simon’s Rock and is patiently waiting for the rest of us to realize that Indigenous voices are still not being fully recognized or respected. Her name, Tokata, means “Future”.
Family
She says her parents taught her to look at everything; the water, the bees, the earth-as our relatives. “They always made sure I was aware that everything had a lifeforce within it, everything had it’s own autonomy, and its own free will, and so to be able to humanize the things around me as my relatives rather than something I could own or take advantage of was really something that was monumental in becoming the activist that I am now.”4
Tokata’s hope is that people begin to work on healing their abusive relationship with the earth.
Dakota Access Pipeline
In 2016, thousands of people indigenous to this land camped out in North Dakota to protest against the building of a pipeline that was meant to cross sacred burial grounds and the Missouri river ā the main water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.2
Many people who live on reservations do not even have the infrastructure to access electricity themselves, but that hasn’t stopped Energy Transfer LP and Continental Resources Inc. from raping sacred Indigenous lands to provide fossil fuel for other people.
The Dakota Access Pipeline can carry up to 570,000 barrels of oil per day and is designed to transport fossil fuel fast. In fact, Energy Transfer’s Pipeline operator hopes to double their pipeline’s daily capacity.
If they wanted to build one in your yard, destroy your home and not give you compensation what would you think? No biggie, right? And, if you said no, don’t mind the pepper spray or tasers, it’s just what we do in the united states.
Back in 2016 police brought armored vehicles and riot gear to clear the Standing Rock protest camp, using sound cannons, pepper spray, taser guns, and shotguns said to contain beanbags against the protesters. Unfortunately, the pipeline was built in 2017.
Oil has been traveling south since the summer of 2017, from the Bakkan oil fields in North Dakota, crossing the Missouri River twice, endangering the drinking water supply on Indigenous lands. The pipeline trespasses on more sacred Indigenous lands on its way to Illinois.
Construction on the pipeline was supposed to be halted until we saw the findings on extensive environmental impact studies being done, but President Biden decided to keep the pipeline open.
The federal government totally has the power to shut this pipeline down, and this was Biden’s big chance to show us he wasn’t going to bow down to big oil. He shut down the Keystone XL pipeline but has decided to let the Dakota Access Pipeline continue operating. What kind of message does this send to our Indigenous peoples? That oil is more important than water? That he doesn’t care about them?
Enbridge pipeline
In Northern Minnesota, the appeals court just denied an appeal aimed at halting construction of the Enbridge Pipeline. All summer people have been chaining themselves to the heavy equipment in order to halt the progress and more than 700 people arrested since June. (More to come on this).
Planning for our Future
In June, Tokata participated in a zoom meeting with Sage Development Authority, a Women of The Movement conversation, part of a monthly talk series titled For Generations to Come: Anpetu Wi Dialogues from Standing Rock. The talks in the series are devoted to raising awareness for Native American issues and their efforts to develop Anpetu Wi ā a utility-scale wind farm – on their ancestral land at Standing Rock.
When will President Biden and others respect our Indigenous People’s wishes about their land?
Interconnectedness
ABOUT THE LAKOTA PHRASE “MITAKUYE OYASIN”
āWhen we say Mitakuye Oyasin, āAll Our Relations,ā many people don’t understand the meaning of those words. The phrase Mitakuye Oyasin has a bigger meaning than just our blood relatives. Yes, itās true; we are all one human race. But the word Mitakuye means relations and Oyasin means more than family, more than a Nation, more than all of humankind, everything that has a spirit. The Earth herself, Maka Unci, is our relation, and so is the sky, Grandfather Sky, and so is the Buffalo and so are each of the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, those that swim, those that fly, the root nation and the crawling beings who share the world with us. Mitakuye Oyasin refers to the interconnectedness of all beings and all things. We are all interconnected. We are all One.ā
āChief Arvol Looking Horse
from his book White Buffalo Teachings (Dreamkeepers Press, 2001)
Arvol Looking Horse is the 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe and a spiritual leader of the Sioux Nation.
On the subject of being interconnected, here is a link for All My Relations, a writing by John Perkins where he discusses the core or ādivineā self we all have within us, what keeps us from fully connecting with this core self, and what becomes possible when we shed the layers keeping us from remembering who we really are.
Thanks for reading!
Kate
- Pachamama.org/the-wisdom-within-Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine, The Time of the Black Jaguar, book by Arkan Lushwala
- Al Jazeera, “Standing Rock tribe protests over North Dakota pipeline,” by Jason Patankin, Oct 29, 2016
- Rapid City Journal, “Ms. Foundation Honors Tokata Iron Eyes” by Tanya Manus, May 19, 2020
- “My Name Means Future_2020” a film by Andrea Bowers, Vimeo