By Sharmini Jayawardena
There’s a dire need today, to protect the First Nation People of everywhere who are known by their different names. They are wide and varied. They are at the front line facing extinction where the whole of humanity are concerned. This is how important they are to our existence.
They are a repository of deep secrets in medicine, survival and mortality making it time for us to go to their singular knowledge for many of today’s problems. They know what sustainability means: to live without depleting the natural resources this planet holds. To maintain a balance between our needs and desires and that of the rest of Nature. 31 medicinal herbs.
Our problems need to be addressed as we enter this suicidal spiral of bad habits in the way we select our food, grow our food, in processing of this food, which have all been to our very detriment!
The indigenous people have a tried and tested set of tools for our existence which tap our very roots that are more than suitable for our livability.
This superior knowledge combined with today’s technology would go to make the perfect way of life for us to practice if we only saw them as such, nay, believed in this undeniable truth.
“The first people to live in a land are known as the indigenous peoples. This means they were the original settlers. The Native Americans are the indigenous peoples and cultures of the United States of America. Sometimes these people are referred to as Indians or American Indians.”
Native American History for Kids – Ducksters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-lCJp9v1E
It is heartening to know that the Native Americans came together in their numbers last year (2016), for the first time in modern history to protect their sacred sites and their pristine waters in North Dakota in what is now known as Standing with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe also known as #DAPL or Mini Wiconi “Water is Life”.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe – The Atlantic
These lands are demarcated by the Sioux as hunting grounds and fishing waters even of today! The attempt to literally walk allover their lands, amounts to robbing the Sioux of there livelihood or grabbing them off of their land!
David Archambault II, the Chairman of The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation has been voted out of office and according to the new chairman Mike Faith the agitation for their rights in courts is not ended yet!
Not much or none of the problems facing the Native American Peoples are really solved as yet. Leonard Peltier and others like him are still behind bars for years now with no solution in sight! He needs to be released from incarceration for a start to acknowledging the need to uphold Native American rights!
These Peoples, who are the custodians of what is precious in the world are oppressed suppressed and persecuted by the Americans and by the people of the rest of the planet forcing even those who are free to seek modernity out, instead of embracing their own lifestyles/cultures in order that they may survive! In other words no importance or pride of place is afforded to the indigenous peoples and their cultures as a whole.
It is we who are none the richer for these actions. A new moratorium safe guarding the First Nations need to be brought forth and instituted with immediate effect for the survival not only of the indigenous but that of all of the rest of us and that’s for sure. 
