By Frank John King III

Enrolled Rosebud Sioux Tribe

National Native Media

Our ancestors dealt with their circumstances out of necessity. They built their alliances over an oncoming threat. They worked out their strategies together through open communication. They were organic to their environment.

Times have changed over these many generations. Our people are less connected in the tattered and bleached out fabric of today as our ancestors once were back then. We have been divided, and so adopted a divided approach to threats or problems that affect all tribal membership. But we are just a microcosm of greater neglect.

We have lost some of what was once “US” as a native people. Our organic approach has been replaced with politics and Roberts Rules of Conformity. We are the generation that walks blindly to the reality of our past. Anyone can be taught the history of what happened. It is the lack of teaching the circumstances of actions… that all humanity has failed to pass on to the children of yesterday and today, which will seal our fate. The curtain of consciousness may have been pulled open for our species to see through and to exist with, but seeing and “thinking, therefore, I am” has no meaning if you don’t take heed to the true and absolute power of this world, nature itself.

We are this way, this feeble-minded way, because we deal with a threat with infighting and in-criticism, and as we self destroy, the threat gets greater and greater around us all. This is the will of nature. We voluntarily walk toward the edge of that cliff without a clue, but fully knowing that over its edge is our death, this is the power of this world we live on. We are in truth, nothing, no more powerful than a strand of silk. The omnipresence of nature is being felt today by us all. 

Religions are easy to create. Gods come and go. These are the superstitions that human beings create when nature equalizes us all. There is no skin color in the reality of nature; racism is our feces that we leave as we walk toward our fate. Jealously is the trash that we leave behind. No political party or philosophy that can change the course of biology. It’s funny that the greatest message happening right now is that we are all the same. We are all in this circumstance together. Even though this message is as clear as a sunrise, we still deny it and blame each other for our consequences. We, in essence, use our masks for blindfolds.

Today the world is telling us many things. It is teaching us many lessons right now as you read this. When we worship images of human beings or human beings themselves, we don’t commit blasphemy. We just simply ignore the flames that we set on fire ourselves. It will be remembered that we human beings destroyed our own species through ego by whatever consciousness awakes next in this organic soup we call home. The current upon which we all ride is the real god of us all. The wind upon which we fly is the religion that dictates our faith. The world upon which we float on through time and space is our true creator. People may protest, many will advocate for a cleaner world, but the world will exist long after we are the dirt and sand of this planet. The world cannot die; it is only us that makes it unlivable and uninhabitable for us.

A power has spoken, but are we listening? Are we learning from its scolding? Will we heed the warnings or just argue, spit, kick, smite each other until we individually reach the edge of this inevitable precipice? Pray though you may, the true redeemer is here. Why? Because we all overpopulated this world to the point of our own extinction. It is never to late to change how we accept the truth. If we cannot accept the truth and refuse to see this reality for what it is, we all will share in this fate, equally. Our blood is red; it runs through the veins of all humanity. It doesn’t make a difference what race of humans was in line first. The truth is that this was inevitable. Can we change it? Can we even understand the message? Can you? 

Nature is the most powerful of all equalizers. In its own way we are just part of nature’s ubiquity. When we burn our house down and lock ourselves inside of it on the top floor, we must choose to either jump and hope for the best or die in it. Either choice will lead us toward pain. If there is one teacher that nature blessed us with, it is pain. Once we experience pain, we learn from it. All human beings, all of us, lit this blaze. Prayer cannot douse the flames. There will be no God coming to save us. The world is full of stone casters. It is full of unbelievers. Not in a God, we are good at following words, but in the reality of nature and its power.

When the climate changes, we are only killing ourselves. When the last of a species dies, we are only ripping the fabric of life. When we behave unnaturally, unnatural events begin. When a bat has its habitat, destroyed, viruses happen. It was only a matter of time. 

Nature will weed us out. In this creation, we are divided into two categories the weak and the strong. The strong may love the weak, the weak may love the strong, but this is irrelevant to the fate that we all industrialized over many generations. If anything, the secret of life isn’t life itself but the creation of mass. We are made of the very elements that this world is made of, our bones are calcium, our blood iron, we aren’t disconnected from the root of this sacred plant from which we grew as we may have thought. If we neglect our reality, our human being beginning to our end, our only true fate, is a pandemic. 

Politicians will deny the truth for the sake of false. Leaders will ignore their mortality for the sake of sickness. We must decide now whether we are the virus or the children of nature, as are all species of this world. We must make changes to this behavior that is driving us mad with lust, power, glory, or violence, lest we become the echo of civilization.

This is the matriarchal message that this planet is sending us all. Whether we believe it or not, adaptation will happen. Heeding it is our biggest obstacle, our biggest state of emergency. Ironically ignoring its power over us, laughing it off, assuming it doesn’t apply to us individually is the unbelievable power of nature. The ignorance of human beings is part of natural selection. This ignorance will weed us out, whether we have good intentions or not. 

It is time for us to change or tumble off the edge of the primordial cliff, pointing fingers on the way down. Like crabs in a trap, lured with greed and megalomania.

As we walk through this together, our only salvation is our responsibility to this world and all its species. As my ancestors once said, we are merely a strand in this web. Break one strand and it affects the others. Our web of life is nearly destroyed. We have this chance to change it, or it will be changed for us. The change has started, and so the lesson begins.

Long Live The Fighters!