Crystal Zevon who sent around the above video, and has been with indigenous people’s recently at Tar Sands protests as she tours the country, writes:

I believe the theme emerging from my travels is that our Native brothers and sisters have been in this fight for a very long time. They understand the absolute necessity of caring for the land, our environment, through our daily attention to our Mother Earth at the same time we are engaging in the fight against the Earth’s oppressors and destroyers. These actions are not mutually exclusive, they go together. They embody the importance of community and identification with our own communities.

On my journey, I’m finding that the Occupy movement awakened a lot of people, a LOT of people, mostly white people, many of them unlikely allies only a year and a half ago.  And, for those of us who have been activists for a long time, the Occupy movement gave us the support and forward momentum we had been lacking.  Now, Idle No More brings us back to the root causes and offers us a place to ‘begin’.  This country is raping and pillaging across the globe exactly as we did to the Red Nations (the term Deb White Plume of the Lakota Nation prefers be used), but I’m feeling strongly that we need to address the original harm done if we are ever to succeed in stopping the devastation our country creates on a global level.  It will require humility and a willingness to take a backseat more than we are accustomed to.  At least today, I believe it is what is necessary.