NATIVE AMERICA
I follow you down the red road through the tall grass to the sweet water flowing, hoping to taste your mysteries as they unfold. In your hands I place my soul, treat it gently like precious gold, for it is old, tattered and torn, waiting for your magic touch that it might be reborn. SM(11/29/2019)
We rode hard across the plains; dust in our face; then came the rains. Thunder rolled over the mountains high, lightning flashed across the sky; then I saw you fall to the ground, hit by a soldier's bullet; and I never heard another sound. The silence is deafening. SM (11/5/2019)
Sweet water and tall grass, a soft gentle summer's rain; those were the days and life was good, before the soldiers with the long blades came. And the sweet water went bitter and the tall grass was dead; and the gentle summer rain turned a bloody red. SM (11/5/2019)
      MASSACRE AT WOUNDED  KNEE
NATIVE AMERICAN WISDOM
"All things are connected.  Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth."
                                  
                                 Chief Seattle
                                 Suqwamish and Duwamish
"It does not require many words to speak the truth"
                                                    Chief Joseph
                                                    Nez Perce
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee 
You can bury my body but my spirit is free 
Soaring like an eagle up in the sky 
You can bury my body but my spirit won’t die 
You can bury my body but my spirit won’t die  
 SM (JGO 1982) 
"Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library...."

                         Chief Luther Standing Bear
                         Oglala Sioux
NEVER FORGET
"No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation."

                            Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)
                           Mohawk
"My friends, how desperately to we need to be loved and to love."

                                              Chief Dan George
"Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth?"

                                                            Tecumseh
                                                            Shawnee
"Do not grieve. Misfortunes wil happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevened should not be grieved for. . . .Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives. . . . they grow everywhere."

                                                         Big Elk
                                                        Omaha Chief
"Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever."

                                Waheenee
                               Hidatsa (North Dakota)
"What do we know of the manner of the laws and customs of the white people?"

                                                      Black Hawk
                                                      Sauk