Wahchitchu: One who takes the best meat for himself

Aaron Huey's effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people -- appalling, and largely ignored -- compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson in this bold, courageous talk from TEDxDU.



Here is American History that exposes the genocide against the Lakota, and by extension all indigenous peoples in this country. This is a powerful 15 minute talk about the events that have led to present day reality for the Lakota.

Follow the link for this TED talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html

Native American Images (Library of Congress)

Follow the link at the bottom (or click on the title) to the complete collection (more than 700 images) of Edward S. Curtis's photographs of the Native American. These images have for me a special significance since they embody in many ways a different relationship with the natural world, a fundamental connection that we seem to have lost in the modern world. Perhaps these images can help to rekindle some respect for living closer to nature. Click on volume than gallery view when the list of plates comes up. You can move from group to group as you navigate the collection. You can enlarge if you want and save images to your own files as I have done for this blog. I like to listen to the chants while looking at the images.

For 2 powerful native chants follow the links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17JyYno8eP4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQnxls4ZB8&feature=related

For a related site about Native Americans follow the link:

http://www.franksrealm.com/sivu-indians.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html

N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa Elder) on the sacred

Here the Pulitzer prize winner N. Scott. Momaday speaks about the importance of the sacred, especially the concept of place as sacred, a fundamental tenant of native American indigenous philosophy. Echoing the words of Marcia Elliad (Romanian writer) he says...The sacred in all times is the revelation of the real; an encounter with that which saves us by giving meaning to our existence. In otherwords, in order for our existence to have meaning we must reconnect with and protect that which is sacred. This is a hard concept to understand in a society that relegates sacredness to the church and essentially removes God from the natural world by making him solely the creator and not the inhabitor of all creation. If we hold to that idea, we would have to treat the planet in a sacred (or at least respectful) way, something akin to the way some (if not all) native americans did before having their culture largely obliterated through contact with the european; every particle of the natural world embued with the sacred. Follow the link for an audio file of this talk

http://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/program01.html