"We did not ask you white men to come here....The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game....but you have come here; you are taking my land from me; youare killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work fi you want to....you say, why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them. Tashunka Witco,(Crazy Horse or Crazy Sacred Dog)Lakota

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time....But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together."unknown Native American Elder "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."Physicist Niels Bohr

Please consider these three quotes as you read this entry of Georgie Talk. People always ask me how did I become so interested in Native American culture and issues. The truth is it was an evolution that started when I was very young. My fancination with Indians began like lots of white folks;I loved watching old western movies on TV. I found myself routing for the Indians and I really don't know why. It was clear that the script was written to convince the audience that the Indians deserved to be wiped out. I never liked to read, as a kid, but my Grandmother always encouraged my brother and I to read. She gave my brother a book called CRAZY HORSE which I quickly claimed for myself. I loved the cover of that book. I was pretty young at the time and reading this book lead to me claiming to be a half-breed character everytime we played Cowboys and Indians. As far as I know there is no Indian blood in me.

As I got older and was required to do book reports in high school, I found BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE by Dee Brown. I couldn't put it down. This was about the time that the American Indian Movement was making the evening news and newspapers.I started making a scrapbook and collected everthing I found on Native American issues. I have the articals on the reclaiming of Alcatraz as Indian land and the take over of Wounded Knee. Actually my best friend,(who was,what else, Cherokee), and myself almost left high school to join the fight! The only thing that stopped me was that I couldn't imagine any Indians wanting two white people there and I never wanted to be a "wannabe". I admired the culture and the ways they lived spoke to me. My family enjoyed the great "American Way Of Life" and never unerstood why that wasn't becoming my goal in life too.

For me, the real lesson in the clash between euroamericans and Native Americans is the difference in the way they looked at life. Euroamericans have as their focus material growth while traditional people,(whether African,Aboriginal,or pre-Roman Christian Empire Germanic people), have as their focus spiritual growth. Somewhere along the line euroamericans choosed a way to live that was not with the earth but against the earth. Traditional people choose to live with the earth. I am sure it would anger the conservatives to realize, by dictionary deffinitions, this country was founded by liberals. The Indians were the conservatives. But their belief in the old ways and their unwillingness to give that up was a belief in true freedom. They had the vision to understand that anything not in harmony with all of creation was not "progress". Freedom has responsibility. Destroy the rest of creation's environment and that of our own children yet to come, is not being responsible.The truth is the founding fathers and the curent "responsible adults" of "western civilization" are little boys in the sand box who can't wait to bulldoze trees and mountains, make damns, and blow things up!

As I entered college and continued my musical journey, I was introduced to a book called LAME DEER SEEKER OF VISIONS by Richard Erdoes and the medicine man himself. Although I was still very concerned with land rights issues and following the further adventures of A.I.M.(American Indian Movement), this was the beginning of my quest for understanding on more of a spiritual level. This lead me to make a journey to Pine Ridge, South Dakota in 1983 where I was fortunate enough to meet Grandpa Frank Fools Crow,(ceremonial chief of the Oglala Lakota Nation). My meeting with Fools Crow had a major inpact on my life! Through him I had a deeper understanding of the winkte tradition. I also came to understand that when Creator gives you a burden then there is also a gift. The greater the burden the greated the gift! When I returned home my interest in Lakota and other similar cultures expanded and I read books such as Joseph Campbell's POWER OF MYTH and even located a scholarly book called THE WELL AND THE TREE about the germanic world tree, YGGDRASIL. I was able to understand when Fools Crow, (or Eagle Bear as he was know to his people), said the quote that pops up as you enter this site; we are all related. Aho, mitakutye oyasin.

One of the hardest concepts for the Roman/Christian empire,(and I say Christian in the political sense) to eradicate was the pagan,(and I use pagan as in the Webster definition meaning people of the country...ie living outside the Roman-Christian towns and villages and adhering to the old earth connected ways), understanding of time. The Roman-Christian concept of time was based on what people commondly believe time to be right now; Past, Present, and Future. All of these are finite spaces. The past has ended. The present will be the past. The future is in the kingdom of Heaven with God and Jesus or in Hell with the Devil forever. You may think forever is endless and therefore not finite but it is finite in the sense that it never goes anywhere else. Nothing changes. Hell or Heaven forever. This creates a lineal concept of time. The very essence of "gain/greed" material civilization depends on the people accepting this concept. If you see time as a straight line you are not connected to the rest of creation. What we have "progressed" to is people who have no regard for the rest of creation. The "Church" taught that man was the highest of all creation and therefore could do what he deemed correct to control

The germanic people viewed time as their sacred tree represents and taught. There is past and everything else is simply non-past. This creates a cricular motion not unlike that of the Native American Medicine Wheel. Existance is constanly moving back and forth between these two time concepts. When a people views life in this way you cannot abuse the rest of creation becasue you see the connection in the "sacred Hoop" that is established with a circular concept of time. The idea that we are all related as in the Lakota phrase, mitakuye oyasin, becomes very clear. This is why Native elders say any decision made must include the consideration of seven generations ahead. If you are related to all of creation, how then can you simply clear cut a forest, displace realtives from their homes, and leave them nowhere to go as if their existence doesn't matter? How can you pollute air and water for the sake of GREED and somehow justify it? You certainly can not to your future generations; those yet to be born! When 9/11/01 happen everyone was running around saying why did they do that. They are evil and on and on.... As if this countries history is any different. It was built on terrorism! Smallpox infested blankets were used to trade with many Native American Nations. That is germ warfare my friends. The buffalo, (the food, clothing, and shelter source for most plains Indians) were destroyed as a matter of US policy because we wanted the Indians on reservations so the Black Hills could be exploited for the Greedy wasicu,(Lakota for euroamericans meaning; fat takers). Most of the wealth in this country can be traced to this kind of crimmial terrorist actions. If you don't believe me read your history. I know the common folks have nothing to do with all this and Americans in general are human beings like everyone else. They were screwed too. We should not be focusing our energy on misguided knuckle heads. Believe me if the majority of people in this country supported causes like returing ancestral land to the indigenous people here. You'd see a different side of our "great leaders". America, or as I like to say Amerika, believes we are the example of freedom! Tell that to the Lakota, the Abenaki, the Lenapi, the Cheyenne, Apache, Hopi, or any of the Nations that no longer exist! Tell it to Leonard Peltier for an example of current history. Tell it to those people who viewed the Black Hills as a scared place. It is the "heart of everything that is". It is the center of the universe according to the elders! (It is the geological centert of the North American continent, by the way). On one of the mountains in the Black Hills their are four wasicu's faces carved into the side. They call it the "shrine of Democracy". The four presidents whose faces appear on this mountain all had some things to say or do to American Indians that was nothing short of genocide! One of those "great men" said; "I don't go so far as to say that the only good Indian is a dead one, but I believe that nine out of ten are and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."

Indians only crime was not being greedy capitalist and not making the way for them the greedy to move in and take over. If the leaders of this country stumbled onto a traditional people blocking their "progress" they would use any means to get them out of the way. They have and they would again! As I write this, gas prices just went up 26 cents in less than two weeks. Why are we not outraged by this! They try to blame the "foreign oil" for this price increase! There is nothing in the world the power structure here lets happen unless it wants it to happen. Lets all stand up to big business and the 3% of wealth in this country that controls it. Lets see how fast they use weapons on their own people. Or try moving to the country and setting up windmills or solar energy, and living in tipis and not paying taxes. If we all became self sufficient they be rolling the big guns into our communities and doing it in the name of freedom. To quote the Jack Nicholson character in EASY RIDER; "...first one wants freedom and then the whole damn world wants freedom..." Years ago I pledged my allegence to the Lakota nation under leaders like Frank Fools Crow. If they ever found a way to rise up I'd be fighting with the Lakota if they'd have this old winkte wasicu. In the sixties and seventies the conservative amerikans use to say, "America Love It Or Leave It", I use to say, America change it or lose it! They use to tell me to go somewhere else if I didn't like it here. I use to point out to them they destroyed the country I wanted to live in! I remain, fighting the good fight!