“[Your spirit] goes all the way back to where you’re indigenous to. You have a responsibility. So that’s what our work has been, to go around the world and say: ‘You are indigenous.’ Being indigenous is having a responsibility to the earth and understanding that she’s alive, not something to conquer…she’s a source, not a resource.”

~ Paula Horn, Arvol Looking Horses’ partner (19th keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe and Bundle and Spiritual Leader of the Lakota Nation)

A Prayer for Standing Rock.

There are embers glowing inside of me
Cloaked beneath coals gathering velocity
Brimming and building a flame of such ferocity
That I fear I owe this world an apology;

I’ve sat too long, yielding to another’s chronology
Waiting and allowing government-made policy
Passively yielding—and inaction? Its own hypocrisy.
So now I stand here, and pledge most solemnly
With my voice, thorugh my heart, and every action done consciously:

Mother Earth, we stand as your progeny
Unci Maka, this is our Odyssey
Sacred waters, precious land
We honor your sovereignty
Sacred waters, precious land
We will protect your geography
Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ: all are my relatives,
We will treat all with equality

To the east, from the west,
From the north, to the south,
Hear this our prayer, promise, and prophecy:
Now is the time to declare truth’s luminosity
Join us and stand, Mother Earth’s
Stewards
Protectors
Guardians of her grandure.

~
~

Author: Maelyn Gandola 

Image: flickr/Lauren Treece, courtesy of the author c/o Jessica Allen

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock