A Tewa Woman’s Reflection on Urgency
“We were never meant to dominate life, but to take care of all our relatives with gratitude and good will. This includes our plant relatives, our waters, the animals, the insects, the soil microbes, and even stone, which hold great energy. Native perspective sees rock and minerals as alive and also having a spirit, and I remember having to clarify with my children when learning in their science textbooks that rocks are classified as “not alive,” that we have another perspective that is just as valid as any scientists. I have a line in one of my poems, “Have you ever looked into the shining eyes of coal?” I can’t help but think of this when I see what harm is being released through the burning of coal, the mining of uranium, metals, and other minerals.
The spirit of these elements is not being honored or respected in a way that is in line with “taking only what we need.” Minerals and fossil fuels are being unearthed at such an accelerated rate that the prehistoric time held within them is being released too rapidly, and as a result we can all feel the reality of this fast paced society we have created. It is a model that cannot sustain human life in the epochs of time that is held within stones and mountains. True time is held in cycles of cosmic spirals rather than the linear, binary existence that came with the colonizers mindset.”
By Beata Tsosie-Peña found A Tewa Woman’s Reflection on Urgency
Read more about The Tewa Women’s Collective at this (LINK)
Invitation: “ …“taking only what we need.””
TWU Environmental Health and Justice Program Coordinator Beata Tsosie-Peña- read the whole article at this (LINK)
In my ancestral homelands of northern New Mexico there resides knowledge that is held within Tewa deserts and forested landscapes, where mountains are elders, and our rivers are alive with a spirit that has sustained us since time immemorial with traditional knowledge that continues to guide us to be caretakers of this place. Countless prayers of First Nations are recorded here within shared memory of all that exists, and so is an act of violence so great that it will forever be recorded in sacred time. For in the western region of our Tewa world, in our beloved Jemez Plateau, site of a dormant supervolcano, and home to numerous ancestral, cultural sites, is where man first birthed the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL).
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