http://celticrover.blogspot.com/201
- Location:United States, Nebraska, Omaha
There were tragic conditions last winter when $$ ran out, and our friends and church leadership on Pine Ridge consider it urgent to be better prepared, and able to maximize donations value by buying propane early at low prices.
If anyone has interest in helping from afar, even a few dollars please feel free to drop me a comment here or via email (kconroy42 @ gmail.com). It will be distributed through our trusted contacts with a Lakota church and their Priest, Cordelia Red Owl. These two churches have been working together for many years, and I'll hopefully be meeting some of these folks on a supply run in November.
For people closer/able to send other supplies, St. Andrews is also
collecting warm clothing, essp for children 0-12 years of age, and lastly some craft supplies for their children's programs.
Our fr
iends' church involved distributing our aid, Church of the Redeemer near Kyle, SD. Their prayers and mass are entirely in the Lakota language. St. Andrews youth and adults are honored to work with them in annual youth visits and service projects each year .http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1222-hanc
I posted about this when it started last summer, but Avatar fans should actually look at where its REALLY happening in what scientists have described as the "lungs" of our planet. A few thousand indigenous people decided putting their lives on the line to protect all of us from US-Peruvian free trade agreements devastating what scientists see as one of the most critical buffers against global warming, not to mention the source of our planets oxygen balance.
Unfortunately, their dramatic, temporary victory is facing ongoing threats from a racist president and the US' own trade agreements.
"We will fight together with our parents and children to take care of the forest, to save the life of the equator and the entire world." -Leaders of pan-indigenous uprising last summer*
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*Quoted from http://www.realclearworld.com/2009/06/2
Blessings.
http://celticrover.blogspot.com/200
I just got back from a Powwow at Black Creek in New Jersey. It takes place on a 10,000 year old Native American site preserved by grassroots efforts by local Historians and the Nanticoke-Leni Lenape tribe of New Jersey, and celebrates their victory in preserving this historic and spiritually significant site of New Jersey's first peoples.
I've been hoping to get to know some of the local tribes of my region better, especially after discovering in my time here just how many non-Federally recognized tribes are out there and active in preserving their ways of life and community. Many of these groups have a hard time because they lack the leverage and programs of Federally recognized groups- and in many cases suffer more because they refused to the "deals" offered to be driven from their homelands.
The Leni Lenape people were made up of many distinct communities spread throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Southern New York, including the people who probably inhabited the beautiful mountains I call home. The people from my area, likelyMunsee Lenapi, were driven west long ago, but my family and I have been doing some historical research and were excited to learn of this Powwow, as we've been hoping to get to know some regional communties and better represent the history of our own town and the beautiful land that has always been so significant to us as a family.
It was a beautiful day, smaller because of a rain-date but still a wonderful event. We were able to tour the trails and learn about the lives of the peoples here since the last Ice Age- rolling grassy hills, forests and the hauntingly beautiful Black Creek with its cattails, wild-birds, turtles and unique trade route with many of the Hudson tribes to the North. It was beautiful to get a sense of the home of one of several people's responsible one of the first, true names for this continent "Turtle Island." In addition to a research and educational site, Black Creek is increasingly place of pilgrimage and prayer for Native people around the continent. We were also able to meet a local archaeologist doing some work just next door to my friend (Historic District Comissioner Christopher Lotito), and learn of some more incredible pictographic sites in our own area.
Many dancers, drummers and members of the Nanticoke-Lenape Tribe were made a four hour trek to support the event. I was able to speak to the Red Blanket drum group, and learn a little more of their fascinating history- actually the union of two peoples, Lenape and Nanticoke, a people further to the South with ties to the tribes in Virginia and Maryland, who survived by coming together after many of their people were driven west. Their drum group has great energy and their first CD, and is unique for working hard to continue composing music in their language as a means of preserving it. They even honored us with a traditional story and dance not ussually shared at Powwows, which honors the "Three Sisters" (Corn, Beans and Squash) who have fed their people for millenia.
Their a great group of young people and doing good work for their people and traditions well worth supporting. You can find them on Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/redblanketsingers
http://www.myspace.com/nllipowwow
Some other Links:
More about the Black Creek Site:
http://vernonhistoricalsociety.com/Site/B
Nanticoke-Lenape Tribe- they are now state recognized, which is thankfully helping them gain more programs for their people, including a Diabetes Program which tabled the Powwow.
http://www.nanticoke-lenape.org/
The nearest nation to us, the Ramapough Lenape. They are NJ State recognized, and seeking it in New York. Turns out they were involved in some watershed protection work my mom was involved in as well, as one of the streams in our town reaches their community. Amazing how small our world can be.
http://www.ramapoughlenapenation.org/
Their present struggle to seek recognition in New York
Oh yeah
I'll also be posting a sermon in for friends in a bit.
Some friends over at my Salem church's Pagan and Christian interfaith dialog list really like this, so I thought I would repost it here. It was my response to the questions of "why should we celebrate St. Patrick, who oppressed the indigenous Irish?"
( Musings on the Celtic Soul )
For reference, "Christendom" refers to the idea of the "Christian world," basically what Europe and, to some degree America considered themselves for most of recent history, what happened after the union of Church and State with Constantine, and which is only breaking apart with the rise of secularism, the Enlightenment critique, and the realization that there are more Christians outside the global West/North than in it now!
I share the feeling of many that the union of the message and community of Jesus with state power was a terrible idea, and at least in some part responsible for all the terrible things done in Jesus' name. My post reflects on this, and what "mission" means in a world that seems more in need of healing than being told it needs to convert. Wrestling with what this means is a big concern of mine right now.
Justice and Mission and the Wounds of Christendom
These are some thoughts I had this last week of Lent, some of which I felt moved to share with my church last night. I thought I would share them here as well, in this "In Between" of Christ's day in the Tomb:
( Into the Tomb )
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goatoverlord42- Kirin
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