Native Circle
Issues
Indian Influence & Contributions
to America and the world
The Concept of Freedom
I heard a Lakota
Elder once say, "Freedom means you are never
in a hurry."
You may be surpised to discover that American Indian
people provided
early immigrants to this Turtle continent with their
first view of real
freedom. In most of the countries these european
immigrants came
from, society was governed by a King or Queen.
There was no republic,
no democracy, no freedom of religion or
freedom of speech.
When these newcomers came to this land of
ours, they saw
in Indigenous cultures the true freedom they had
secretly longed
for. Our Indigenous societies never had Kings or
Queens. There
were no Princes or Princesses. There was not
one Chief who governed
the whole community, there were many
Chiefs who worked
together with the community to meet the needs
of all. Can
you imagine waking up in the morning without an alarm?
Picture getting
on your horse and taking a nice morning ride as the
sun rises and paints
the sky with an orange and yellow glow. No
job to rush off
to.... no bills to pay.... no traffic jams.... This,
my
friends, is real
freedom. This way of life is what the early european
settlers caught
a glimpse of, and wanted badly for themselves.
So, in this way,
the Indigenous people of this continent gave the
United States of
America its original concept of freedom..........
Are
we truly free today? Thinking back to the old ways, the times
of
real freedom, I would have to say that what America has today
is
only a distant shadow of the freedom my ancestors enjoyed.
Still,
a great many of the noble ideals of the USA were practiced
by
the communities of the nearly 1,000 Indian Nations of this land
for
countless centuries. Our Nations are ancient, and we remain
here
after suffering through the American holocaust only because
we
are people of integrity, strength, resolve, and freedom........
(By John Two-Hawks)
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