CANTO
LAKOTA
(TRIBUTE TO THE HEROES OF FUKUSHIMA)
"Let me tell you how we lost the land. It was not our land, as if we belonged. It was the land where hunted or where our ancestors were buried. It was the land the Creator gave us. It was the land where our sacred stories were happening. There were places sacred in it. Our ceremonies were held here. We knew the animals. They knew us. witness the changing seasons on this earth. I was living like our grandparents. We were part of it. The land was part of us. We did not even know what being landowners. It's like saying you own your grandmother. For us, the earth was alive. Change meant moving a stone. Killing an animal was take something to her. There had to be respected.
We saw no respect in these people. They cut the trees and the animals left where they were shot. They made loud noises. They looked wild. His step was heavy and made so much noise. And then that people began to ask new land. They wanted to give us money for land. Our people did not accept that. So these people said it not belong here. That was a chief in Washington, a city far away, and that the land was his, and he had said that people could live here and we do not.
thought they were insane. These people rode through the land and planting a flag, and then say that everything from where they had started to where they put the flag, belonged to them. That's like someone shot an arrow into the sky and say that the whole sky as far as the arrow belonged. We think that these people were crazy. They spoke of property. We talked about the land.
Your people came from Europe because they wanted to own property. They had worked for other people who had taken his property and the things they grew. Never had anything because they had no properties. That was what they wanted to have.
They thought he had a piece of paper saying who owned land could control everything that happens in it. People came here to get properties. We did not know this. Did not even know what it meant. We simply belonged to the land. They wanted to own it.
Su religión no vino de la tierra. Podían llevarla a todos lados con ustedes. Su religión estaba en una copa y un pedazo de pan que podían llevarse en una caja. Sus sacerdotes podían hacer sagrado cualquier lugar. Y no podían entender que lo que era sagrado para nosotros era el lugar donde estábamos, porque ahí era donde sucedían las cosas sagradas y donde los espíritus nos hablaban.
Tu gente no sabía nada acerca de lo sagrado de la tierra. Ustedes estaban matando a todos los animales. El búfalo había desaparecido. Las aves habían desaparecido. Ustedes no nos permitían hunt. They gave us blankets and whiskey to our people crazy. We were put in small pens of land that were like small islands in the great sea.
worst thing is that you never even heard us. You came to our land and we took it away, or even listen to us when we try to explain. They made promises and broke every one of them. We killed indiscriminately and killed them. We make our land killed on pieces of paper and bags of flour and blankets, saying it was enough. You took away the places where the spirits spoke to us and gave us bags of flour.
For us, the earth was alive. She spoke to us. We called her our mother. If she was angry with us, gave us food. If we did not share with others, she sent us hard winters or insect pests. We had to do good things for her and live as she considered appropriate. She was the mother of all that dwelt in her, so were all our brothers. Bears, trees, plants, the buffalo. They were all our brothers and sisters. If not tried it, my mother got angry. If we treated with respect and honor, she was proud.
to your people land was not alive. It was like a stage where they could build things and make things happen. They saw the mud and trees and water as important things, but not as brothers and sisters. These things existed only to help humans live.
You took the land and turned it into property. Now our mother is silent. But we still try to listen to his voice. "
Lakota Song
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