Water-Protectors Deserve Nobel Peace Prize and the White People Need To Tame The Fire

The Nobel Peace Prize has been a mixed-bag; contrast the Dalai Lama with Kissinger and Obama.

Who truly deserves a Nobel Peace Prize are the peaceful-warrior water-protectors at Standing Rock. People have been arrested for praying. It sounds outlandish, and it is, but it shows what the-powers-that-do-do (tptdd) are really afraid of: true peace, true prayer, true power, a power that is beyond their scare tactics, attack dogs, strip-searches, puffed-up chest weapons, tanks, and other expensively worthless hardware. There’s a saying, check your ego at the door, well, the tptdd need to check their egos and their hardware, so-called firepower. Yet there’s a truth within that word, “firepower”.

Years ago I read a transcript then watched a talk, by Lee Brown (Cherokee), in which each of the four main elements are associated with a race of people. Native Peoples with Earth (they are always reminding us of our Mother), Black Peoples/African with Water (think Nile), Asian Peoples with Air (meditation and yoga), and White Peoples with Fire.

“To the North He [Great Spirit] gave the white race of people the Guardianship of the Fire. If you look at the center of many of the things they do, you will find the fire. They say a light bulb is the white man's fire. If you look at the center of a car you will find a spark. If you look at the center of the airplane and the train you will find the fire. The fire consumes, and also moves. This is why it was the white sisters and brothers who began to move upon the face of the earth and reunite us as a human family.” [1]

The White Peoples have misused Fire, what with the atom bomb, automobile pollution and dependence on fossil fuels – how many wars for oil? –, the MainStreamMedia/Hollywood along with the gadget-fixated society is addicted to electrical juice, another form of White People’s Fire, and recently there have been more drastic rail fires while oil was being transported by trains.

I’m no scientist but a look at Wikipedia reveals that nuclear power has to do with mining heat: “The heat is removed from the reactor core by a cooling system that uses the heat to generate steam...” [2]

White People need to tame this kind of firepower.

All the elements blend, yet it seems the White People have a responsibility to better manage the man-made Fire.

With autos and airplanes, human beings more readily “began to move upon the face of the earth”. While this has been detrimental in many ways, it also has the potential to help “reunite us as a human family.” Recently I saw videos, of Aztecs dancing after de-boarding a plane (en route to visit the Standing Rock Sioux), and Ecuadorians visiting as well, both showing their solidarity with helping to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline aka black snake, with helping to protect the sacred waters – thus helping to fulfill the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor and the Quetzal, the Indigenous of the North, South, and Central uniting again. The White People’s Fire helped make this happen. This is also a time where we are seeing more non-Native settler-allies helping to protect the water and stop DAPL's black snake.

In a 1980 speech, Russel Means (Lakota) said:

“White is one of the sacred colors of the Lakota people--red, yellow, white and black. The four directions. The four seasons. The four periods of life and aging. The four races of humanity. Mix red, yellow, white and black together and you get brown, the color of the fifth race. This is a natural ordering of things. It therefore seems natural to me to work with all races, each with its own special meaning, identity and message.” [3]

The water-protectors (yes, caring for the elements is not restricted to the categories mentioned) are continuing to be peaceful and prayerful, even after having been maced, hit with batons, attacked with dogs, and physically assaulted. They deserve a prize.

The following poem has been posted here twice before, in 2008 and 2009; I wish I didn’t have to drag it out again, but the water-protectors deserve it.

The Nobel Peace Prize Goes To. . .

a child in Iraq a sparrow in Detroit 
a polar bear a wildflower the one cell 
in Rove's brain that is peaceful  
a chunk of ice floating away from the top  
of the world   

the soldiers who have held their gunfire 
the soldiers who have left the war
 the soldiers who refused to become soldiers
 a sparrow in Afghanistan 

 the Myanmar monks the Australian abos 
a Darfur grandmother a Hopi grandfather 
a Taoist a true Christian the funniest Jew  
you've ever heard 

 the Shakers the Quakers the Pacifists 
the half-baked weed smokers 
the devotees of Walden Pond 
the whirling Dervishes
 the drunk in the alley who has only damaged his own knuckles
 against the cold brick wall in the heart of winter  

 a fool in a field in the middle of anywhere 
who is feeding a sparrow with one hand 
and waving a white flag with the other

NOTES:
1. Excerpts from a talk at the 1986 Continental Indigenous Council  transcript and video, 19 minutes
2. “Nuclear power” 
3. "For America to Live, Europe Must Die"

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet on Axis of Logic. In addition to his work as a writer, he is a small press publisher and Turtle Islander. His new book of genre-bending poetic-nonfiction is “Musings With The Golden Sparrow.” You can contact him via his literary website.

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