Behold the magnificence of naato ksááhko – the sacred earth. It sustains us. Unlike the gods we create, naato ksááhko freely gives us life without fee or expectation of sacrifice. Our very lives are dependent upon its health.
The trees and all things green give us air to breathe, but we cut the trees and scrape the earth bare for our comforts and pleasures. We fill the air with waste and deadly chemicals.
There is food a plenty but as Henry David Thoreau pointed out almost 175 years ago, we are greedy and never content. We sacrifice to Plutus, the god of wealth, and ignore the true source of our existence.
We are omnivores like the mighty Kiááyo (Bear), but Kiááyo does not kill for fun. The great hunter, Omahkatayo (Mtn Lion), kills only what it needs, and other species will feast on any remains so that nothing goes to waste. This is so unlike human hunters who kill for “sport” and the mountains of human garbage that are monuments to our coercion and wastefulness. How many species are totally gone because of us?
Naato ksááhko gives us pure, refreshing water. The water I am privileged to drink each day comes out of the side of the mountain fed by glaciers, ice fields and rain. It is pure and sweet. But we pollute naato ksááhko’s water, making it unsafe for any animal, killing everything that lives in or near it. One of the saddest descriptions in Thoreau’s Waldon Pond is his description of the death of the beautiful and pristine Waldon Pond as a result of the apathy and greed of the nearby village.
"But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. . . . Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lied, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with! . . . That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks!" (Henry David Thoreau, circa 1854)
Naato ksááhko gives and gives. We do nothing but take and take more without ever giving back or showing appreciation. Naato ksááhko provides for all creatures; a delicate balance capable of sustaining all life. But we create gods to tell us that we’re the only important creature on earth to justify our rape and murder of naato ksááhko.
My head hangs in shame!
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