I am sure that a lot of people wonder why I focus so much on Native American health issues and perhaps it is a good time to explain that I am in the medical profession, a registered nurse.
There is a great need to teach, and to share, but being a nurse does not affect me as deeply in needing to teach and to share as the fact that we, as a people and of Native blood, are eliminating ourselves from the pages of history by accepting the ways of the outside world.
I believe that our flesh is a temple of the Creator and that we are a being made like the Creator......... and that one day we will will return to the sky to walk in freedom with our ancestors.
The "white man," per se, no longer kills off our people or destroys our ways, for WE are allowing death to walk freely among our people by the choices we make and the paths we now walk...... paths and choices made by our own hands now.
Yes, we none chose to live on another man's land set aside and called a reservation. Yes, we none chose to be in poverty or be pushed down and aside by the government.
But we as a people have always had the freedom to choose how we will live and act and react to the world around us. We have always been free within our flesh. Free to live and to choose how our inner spirit man will rejoice or grieve.
There are schools and colleges and ways to learn and become more than what we other's think we are.
We, as human animals choose what food we will put into our mouths.
We choose what we will drink.
We choose how we will live.
We choose to keep our souls and minds and flesh healthy and active and full.
No man can take the potential of what we can be away from us.
Poverty, alcoholism, addictions, renal disease, liver disease, illiteracy, spiritual death and emptiness and blatant neglect of our own physical bodies will be what kills off the Native American way if we so allow it.
Mother earth has provided all that we have need of. Fresh water to hydrate our body. The wisdom of the ancestor's and the animals and the ways of Mother Earth and all of creation to feed our soul..... to replenish and nourish the inner man.
The foods that we can eat to stay healthy our Mother Earth still provides. ((Eating no more than that which is needful is still a way of wisdom.))
Walking and running were once a way of survival, to chase animals that were fast and moved like the wind. Our bodies stayed strong and healthy because we exercised our flesh and our minds to catch game and prey.
Now we eat poor quality foods and sit and do not move or chase. Our bodies have become weak like the old days when it was the white man's horses that could not run as fast as ours or his stamina compete with our young warriors.
Now the enemy is no longer the government or the white man, but it is our own laziness and weakness that we permit to rise up and become strong while the path of our ancestors become faded memories.
As a creation, as an animal, as a people, as a tribe, as a clan, as a Native, as a woman. I choose how I will live.
I want to share what I have learned,
................ and what I am still learning.
That is why I focus more on health issues.
