12/23/09

Dear Ms. Baker-Pilgrim,

I am writing you because I have been inspired by your words and I believe we share a vision for healing and because you have met my sister Elizabeth and she says that you have a great and loving spirit.

What I have to say will sound a little odd, but I cannot say what is in my heart using mainstream, dominant culture phrases.

I believe that the spirit of the Great Peacemaker has spoken to me. He has giving me a vision for healing the people by calling all the "warring tribes" together to form a new great confederacy to nurture us as, and teach us to be, human beings again -- E Plurabus Unum (out of many, one).

This confederacy is to take a very specific form. It is a marriage of the old and the new. I am a mutt. My ancestors are the Kings of England back to William the Conqueror and Charlemagne, but I am also lost Aniyunwiya who walked our trail of tears to Oklahoma, then during the time of the dust bowl migrated to Los Angeles when an "Indian Oky" was the lowest wrung on societies' ladder and proceeded to pass for white. I have many ancestors, but I consider myself 100% Native American. And the time has come for us all to become Indigenous again. But to do that, we need to form the lost ones into the Next Nations and strengthen and empower the First Nations and then join together as equal, respected partners, for only in the context of ourselves as a "people" can we be Human Beings.

The core of this new vision is "Sacred Capital". The marriage of the First Nations belief in the sacred regarding the earth and all that she provides to care for us, and the economic structures of the modern economy. 2007 was the tipping point in human history. It marked the rise of the corporate state. It was the first time that of the 100 largest economies of the world, more than 51% are now corporations, not nation states. It is primarily "unsacred" capital which is consuming the beauty of the earth, poisoning two leggeds, and four, and eights, and so on. It is "unsacred" capital which is imprisoning the people, dividing us from ourselves as interdependent beings, taking away and defiling our sacred lands that have nurtured us as human beings, and removing us to environmental barren "reservations" and where we cannot get what we need truly survive and where we are forced to work on the economic plantations of a ruling class.

Aggie (if I may be so bold), the Kings have returned, and all people and animals and rivers are in peril, but together we can heal our economic structures by looking to the wisdom of indigenous people who have not yet forgotten how to be human beings.

My vision tells me that the first step is to offer my vision to a coalition of First Nations people on my land this Summer. To ask them to embrace the idea of Sacred Capital and then to suggest that they call out to the lost people and ask them to join them in building a new sacred economy. The "moral authority" of this act would be a powerful catalyst to start this much needed shift. To encourage all of us to stop empowering the "unsacred" economy with our purchases and creativity. To ask people to come together and form a sacred Bank so that we can take our power back. That Bank will take our sacred capital and lend it to build new businesses, or buy old ones, that are based on sacred principals including the Great Law of Peace. From there the creation of an insurance company that will operate on the principal of taking care of it customers as efficiently as possible. From there I see the building of radically resource efficient communities that are built around people and eliminate the need for automobiles and fossil fuels as much as possible and leave as much land we can for the four leggeds and winged animals and for the creation of pure water and air.

The good news is that these economic concepts can actually be more powerful than the current dominate economic structures. See the work of Nobel Prize winning Economist Elinor Olstrom (http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1229 this link takes you to an interview where she talks about the efficiency of "community pooled resources" and how they lead to less "over harvesting of resources and more equitable distribution of benefits).

I know this is a lot, and I hope I have not over whelmed you. I would love to come to Oregon to met with you in person and discuss these matters, or offer you a cabin in the Tahoe National Forest to enjoy (www.shinneyboocreek.com) if you are ever passing thru the land I call home.

Please give me the benefit of your wisdom and advice. I wait in excited expectation for your reply.

With Hope and Determination,

Alisgia Awohali