A puzzled eleven–year–old boy sits by the fire with his old, old white–bearded friend…
They speak of their culture and the way things are now, oh so different from the
way things were back then... when it was all so... simple.
... Suddenly, the young one jumps up and looks at his old
friend with stars in his eyes and says:
‘What about copyright, sir? I am learning about this in school today
and I am not sure I understand it. Please, sir, tell me:
Does this mean that we can own the sky and pieces of the Earth as our very own?’
‘Back then, son, I trusted you, and this with my Life’, he said,
resting his powerful hand on the young boy’s shoulder.
‘I trusted you, because that was what we had that was all important:
Our Word, our own Sacred Word and our very own values, each and every one of us.
When one spoke, the other knodded and understood.
It was a promise, a binding relationship.
It was indeed… an Oral Tradition.'
‘That means that I can make a lot of MONEY and buy a big house and
fence myself all in and no one can bother me or come arrest me!’, he said
as he looked, suddenly surprised at the strict look he was getting from his older friend…
That is what has happened. Just as Wallace Black Elk said! We all ‘fence ourselves
in into little boxes and bits of Earth, all divided up into little pieces… and we all
become indifferent to eachother and live totally disconnected lives as a result.’
‘The forcible incoming government has a well, time–proven work of art in place:
To disunite us all and pit us one against the other, so that those of us he doesn’t kill,
we will all kill eachother for him and do him a favor!’
He paused as the youngen sat motionless, with a tear streaming down one cheek.
‘Don’t cry, my friend, he said, as he gently wiped the tears away.
‘You have to know this. It is important, I must take you through this
and make you a part of this before my time is up.’
He continued…
‘Our people never had this before… This disease of wealth and material things,
and of carving up our mother's breast and fighting eachother for it…
Not until you came…
... And now our fields lay fallow and dried up and cracked, no one works in the fields…
because things changed.’
Now they all hunt and sell to make the money...
Now there are no more animals in the woods for they have all killed them off.
Now there are no more birds in the air because they have all dissapeared.
And there are no more fish in the sea because all the water is polluted.
Now there is no green grass left anywhere for food for the two and the four–legged.
Instead, in it’s place, we see tall structures of steel and glass that fall over all the time,
and the grayness and sadness of the cold, then steaming hot tar on the streets.’
‘Everything changed… after you came’, he said pointing the youngster to
an armed non–Native encampment down the hill from them… ‘They have just moved in and
claimed my father’s burial ground as their home and they are determined to
fight me and my people to protect it.’
We watched you with hopeful eyes, as we taught you and you took from us…
How do we look upon you now, as a conquered people? I think not.
Now, nothing is the same.’
Before he could speak further, the young boy got up and left him,
wiping his eyes as he walked away.
- Luc Majno 2007