Help American Indian peoples to rebuild and improve their lives

Many people who were non-Indian came to support the Indian peoples

In case you were not aware, the American Indian peoples need your support to just survive. It is not the case that they all have casino wealth on their reservations.

Many Lakota people have to live in trailers that are ill equipped for the cold of the winter

The Lakota Sioux nation people who live at Pine Ridge Reservation endure a life that is difficult. They have low incomes, few have jobs, economically they are poor and problems of drugs, alcohol, depression and suicide are high incidence possibilities that impact on their lives.

Homeless people are also an issue that must be resolved

along with drugs, alcohol, suicide and depression problems

Work is being done but financial aid is required along with outside expertise. The situation is that the Lakota people are wishing to preserve their heritage and culture but they also have a modern world outside of the reservation to contend with.

Donations of basics are always welcome

It is a question of how to reconcile these differing situations, it is essential that the Sioux people do not lose their rich heritage but on the other side of the coin, they should also not lose the opportunity to learn of modernity and to use that as part of their future too.

A new house being built by hand from ecologically sound materials

in line with the beliefs of the Lakota to use resources wisely

So how did the Lakota people end up like this? The situation is largely due to the loss of their lands when America was colonised. The Lakota like the other tribes before that moved around pieces of the country and there were defined areas for each tribe to inhabit.

A modern day Lakota man surveys the Buffalo - The Lakota people have a strong

heritage with the Buffalo and are known as 'Tatanka Oyate' - The Buffalo people.

With the colonisation of their nation from other countries, the Indian peoples were pushed into accepting areas of lands to live on called reservations. These pockets of land were far smaller than the territories that they previously enjoyed.

Whilst outside the reservations people prospered, inside the people largely did not. The Indian people lived a different lifestyle than the incomers, they did not need consumerism and new technology, their way of life and aims were different.

The Lakota people must not lose their cultural heritage or access to their history

The Lakota and the other tribal peoples were likely the first ecologists, they regarded the planet as something to be protected and to only take what resources were required. They did not share the same outlook as the incomers who were fired up by the new industrial revolution for progress and advancement.

Peter Catches offering Prayers and Sacred tobacco at the Oceti Wakan site

But there is hope amongst the bad news stories, one of the Medicine Men of the Lakota people at Pine Ridge, Peter V Catches is part of a project to help his fellow Lakota people by building a communal centre called 'Oceti Wakan' or Secret Fireplace in Lakota language.

Visit the site at:-

http://www.ocetiwakan.org/

Peter Catches the Lakota Medicine Man of the Spotted Eagle - 

Peter is a direct descendant of the famous Lakota Chief Crazy Horse

The centre looks to provide teaching of the Lakota culture and language, it also looks to provide places where Lakota people can engage and learn about their culture and to participate in events. Currently the centre is seeking donations to help this become a reality.

A large Ray Jack made Navajo Silver ring,

Ray is one of the great silversmiths of the Navajo people

It is not all bad news, the American Indians are resourceful people and some have managed to develop craft skills  into jobs that help them to prosper. Notable are the Navajo jewellers, other tribes such as the Zuni and Hopi also have silversmiths too and people from other tribes have also made some amazing pieces learning and being inspired by the original tribal designs, drawn from their heritage.

However, much still needs to be done to help these people and there are many non-Indian people who are coming to aid the Indians, I donate free economic and business advice to help create economic growth and jobs.

I think this is long overdue!

I came across the Lakota culture in depth a couple of years ago during research for a book project on humans and robotics and I am glad that I found out more about the Lakota heritage subject.

I have learned a lot in the last two years and it has changed my life and helped to make a lot of sense of some things. The wisdom of these people which is often many hundreds of years old is as relevant as it ever was.

We must not lose this important cultural part of America's heritage.

View of Pine Ridge from the air

A simple meaning of life? You could be a star seed and you haven't found it yet.

Earth - abandoned project or did it just evolve?

Planet Earth - what is the point of it? Its an anomaly, perhaps. Why have this inhabitable oasis in the galaxy and nothing else nearby?

Which surely begs the question, why are we here and what is our purpose?

To go back to the beginning, Earth exists for want of a deeper explanation. We are told that there are inhabitable planets 'out there' in the greater galaxy, yet they are so far away, they are almost as unobtainable to us as powered flight was to the cave man.

So, where is our missing link in all this? Was there ever one?

Interestingly enough, consider that most 'life' on this planet seems to have not evolved past its original brief. For instance, Dolphins, Horses, Dogs for example, intelligent in the animal world, yet have not evolved out to take over the planet. Not physically and not intellectually. 

Which kind of leaves the human species as an anomaly. We left the caves perhaps and developed to where we are now, so why in context did the animals not progress? Perhaps it has to do with our brain structure and the fact that we use language, which means we must have a brain that allows us to 'exist' in three separate states past, present and future.

That's how we plan our speech and indeed our actions, we are subliminally modelling all the time, outcomes and plans.

Humans are an intervention species, we have been modified by external means

So, what about this missing link? Is there one? The answer is we are the missing link. We were the product of an existing primate biped and the genetic material from visitors from off our planet.

Even Francis Crick who did much important work on human genetics believed that we were a species that had genetic material modified, that can only mean it was done by external visitors.

We need two things to give us purpose - productiveness and love

Is there a simple meaning of life? Yes. What drives humans and ensures survival are productiveness and love. By Productiveness, we do things of value, whether as necessity for providing food or shelter, for improving our lives through design, or for improving our spiritual enlightenment, things such as music or art.

Besides doing things that add value to our lives, we also need love, to reproduce ourselves and to allow ourselves to be who we are.

These may sound simple but without these we just die, of boredom or through lack of future generational continuity.

So, are you unfulfilled, have you no meaning or feel lost? There could be a reason.

Are you a Star Seed? You could well be, it could explain your situation

You would think these days, that human advancement has brought us to a place where we should be enjoying the position where we are the most technologically advanced we have ever been, we have so much more than previous generations, yet we are also 'lost' and unfulfilled, how can that be?

You might be a Star Seed.

Over 20 years ago, I came across a Star Seed quiz, a set of questions that asked things about what you liked or were attracted to amongst others. I hit 26 out of 30 100%, so I took that to be a sign that I could be different.

If you feel unfulfilled, alone, it could be that you have yet to understand why you are here. This goes back to the top of the page, why are we here? I was about 12 when I came to the conclusion that the Earth seems to have been started as a project and just abandoned.

When we are told about 'evolution,' then in some respects why has humanity not evolved further than at present?

As a star seed, you are on the planet to do something, yet it take many years for you to understand your function here. It may come to you by a series of situations pointing you to a place or situation that you feel makes sense.

This journey may take the form of unforeseen encounters or accidents of discovery.

The Indian tribes have a very rich culture and heritage -

far removed from the Hollywood movie portrayal

My own journey has been a puzzling one, to find out what I was here for. But it came, due to some research I was doing into human and robot history. Through that I came across the American Indian wisdom quotes and I started to look at their culture further.

It was through this that I could see that my purpose was as a conduit. My whole life has been about investigating, asking questions, learning and not for any professional purposes.

So, it became obvious that I could use my skills and experience to help the American Indian people in economic growth and job creation.

The reservation Indians have a tough life, they have a need to preserve their heritage and traditions but also to be able to exist in the world outside the reservations.

Perhaps my experience can help them to achieve this.

This will be a long job, perhaps I see that at my age, that I may never see this fulfilled, but perhaps I can supply the catalyst, the start, the way forward for them.

This brings us back to a meaning of life, a productive output and love, I think that my situation allows me to fulfil that.

Return to Vagenda - because you've gone too far - 40 years of equality

Well, I think this says it all...

Just that as a man I would be criticised for saying it

So 40 years after the Equality act came into being, how have we fared? There is some debate that women are still under represented in some situations, less well paid than men in the same jobs and discrimination seems to still exist, sometimes.

But, as Barbara Ehrenreich has stated above, some women have just gone 'too far' and have become like men. The late American Indian activist of the Lakota people Russell Means stated something along the same lines as Barbara Ehrenreich, that women had just 'become like men.'

In the American Indian society there was always a reverence for the female, the Earth was described as Mother Earth. The Indians had a greater understanding through their spiritual based belief of the role of things. I think they had it right.

Organised religion belief systems have done much damage by their dogma, take those that deny the use of contraception, they not only condemn women to years of childbirth and child care, they create in often poor areas of the world more poverty by extra mouths to feed where this is completely unnecessary.

The American Indians did use natural family planning and as such maintained more viable communities which did not suffer because of lack of resources.

The American Indians had an appreciation of the man and woman relationship

This was how their society was able to function so well for all, for centuries

It served them well enough

You don't have to be anything that you are not

A mere 3 years after the Equality act, Britain got its first female Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher. She was the right person at the right time to sort out a country that had just about become beyond repair thanks to strikes and the previous government.

Mrs Thatcher was the person who showed the rest of the world that Britain was open for business and with the success of the Falklands campaign, that Britain could not be messed with. This was one opportunity where a woman could behave robustly because it was the right thing for the right occasion.

Margaret Thatcher may have made some unpopular decisions

but then again, Medicine doesn't always taste nice

I had a lot of respect for her in her heyday

Snowflake generation upstarts do just this, sadly...

They should stop hitting easy targets like Western men

and direct their efforts to furthering women's rights in the Middle East

It is now time for a re evaluation, the balance seems to have swung too far the other way. Do you know I was pushed out of a job recently because a female Director wanted 'an all girl office.' Well she got that and her sales dived back downwards I have heard.

She announced she was taking over Sales and Marketing of which she had no experience and which was quickly apparent, I had 20 years experience. So she engaged a female friend of hers to advise them on this area.

Feminism at work? Well if that's how it is, you can keep it. I have worked with women for over 30 years and have never had any experience like this in any other job, thankfully. This included service in the Police where I worked with women at Senior rank with no issues.

We are approaching a time where things in our world will have to change for the future if we are to survive as a species. This means we are also going to have to revise our way of operating as a species and as men and women and to re-evaluate where we are going.

One thing I have noted in mostly female offices is sometimes a woman saying 'I'll have to get a man to do that.'

So I guess until someone invents a vibrator that can also put up shelves, men still have some relevancy.

Bitch fighting - why feminism is destroying itself and project snowflake is failing

The sometimes caustic and confrontational face of modern feminism

The American Indian people never had an issue with feminism because their society was built around a simple but utopian situation that worked, the women were the nurturing side of the coin with the say in many of the tribal matters, including the siting of the living sites.

The males were concerned with the hunting, protection and in some tribes farming and cultivation. The situation worked perfectly for thousands of years. Why was this successful?

A simple reason or reasons, being that the Indians operated as a community, young, old, weak, infirm, strong, it was help for all and help given to all would be repaid down the generations.

The Indians referred to the planet as the Mother Earth and were careful in their use of natural resources. The nuts and bolts of it is that the Indians said that a bow without an arrow is not much use, they regarded the man and woman as a unit as part of the combined people unit, which gave them success.

The late Russell Means an Indian activist talked about feminism and asked why women chose that path and why they seemed to want to be like men? From his Lakota Indian traditions, he had learned from grandparents and from their grandparents before how the family and social systems worked.

Too much attitude without reasoned argument to back it up

The feminists were an outrage movement from the start, they started with women who were challenging the status quo, from women in the 1800s dressing in knickerbockers to ride bicycles, a situation that had some reaching for the smelling salts and afraid that the spectacle might indeed frighten the horses, to the Suffragette movement which involved direct action to obtain the vote.

Any sane person would argue that women should be able to vote and the rise of the female as a power means came largely due to the two world wars. With men conscripted, there was a big requirement for factory labour for the war effort.

Women were recruited in vast numbers and were experiencing often for the first time freedom in a way, from being chained to a home and now had their own money, albeit likely not at the sale parity as if they were men.

Certainly the second world war a generation later paved the way for women to have a voice and be recognised. At the end of the war, many protested at having to relinquish jobs as the men returned from war service.

If we fast forward to 1976, the equality act was made law and discrimination was not allowable, equal pay and conditions was now set in law.

Whereas the 1960's Bra burners were seen as the hardcore face of feminism, things move on and in the 80's and 90's a new breed of underground left leaning feminists permeated the arena.

Rather than an equilibrium between men and women occurring, the reality was a thrust to make more ground up, as such a definite anti - male  agenda seemed to be coming to notice.

I have spoken to many women about this and they are uneasy about what is essentially a gender war and this angry mob for want of a better word is being seen as a petulant and childish movement.

The 'girl power' and 'girls first' sort of attitudes is borne out of a herd mentality and has its roots in basic tribal psychology, women as the nurturers tend to herd, whereas men are more of the hunter and may work alone. The male's instinct is to spread the gene pool as far and wide as possible to ensure success and a survival of the fittest scenario.

The 'ladette' culture of the 90s was responsible for a number of problems today, a too positive attitude had women seeking to emulate men in hard drinking and casual sex, the 'I can do this if I want' because it is empowering mantra was their justification. They had started to push too far, why? Because they wanted progress or as a control method.

If you look at the growth of single women in the UK, is this by choice or the result of a failed experiment? Some women may choose to be single but, the 'girl power' type of attitude in when females became aggressive (they say 'assertive') has essentially backfired.

The portrayal of men in adverts as numpties who are incompetent would never be tolerated these days if a woman was in the role portrayed, so the belittling of men has created a new dynamic. A positive dismissive attitude towards some men by some women is creating its own 'herd mentality' and is damaging to society.

This has led to two situations, a growth in men finding partners from abroad through dating sites or dating much younger women who have a different attitude and those that can't be arsed to get involved in relationships with uppity and spiky women and make do with a Pizza and a wank instead.

This situation has produced a split in the attitudes of younger women, some have rejected the hard line attitude driven feminism and have moved back to a more equilibrium based format where they are treated with a respect but have a give and take situation.

The face of Snowflake reactionism

The opposite side of the coin has become project snowflake, a situation that includes men and women but has its feminist adherents. It goes beyond the normal battleground and now encompasses free speech and free space.

Rather than adopt an adult approach, it is rooted in the childish and petulant style of 'I want' and is redolent of the awful spoilt brat that your adult friends indulge but you secretly wish you could give a good kick in the pants to.

These are the people that rail against such feminist icons as Germaine Greer, I may not agree with everything she says, but she has the right to be able to make her point. But even she is seen as a threat it would seem.

To see Germaine Greer being turned away by feminists, if you'd said that to me ten years ago I would have questioned your sanity, now it appears that the sanity of others who seek to ban her from speaking is questionable.

Germaine Greer is a highly educated person, but maybe that's the thing, she has a wealth of experience and knowledge that the snowflakers who have to look everything up on Google don't. They must feel awfully threatened by someone who can make reasoned arguments, perhaps I have hit the nail on the head.  

Then there is this awful concept of 'free space' where these angst ridden tykes feel the need for some sort of comfort zone. To be honest, no one's interested, its just another 'look at me' excuse in self indulgence. Its probably the result of people grabbing them by the collar and saying grow up and get a life.

These snowflakers are operating a divisive agenda, they sort of remind you of student agitators who shout a lot, but have warped ideologies about why their arguments are right and yours are not.

They bring to mind the spectre of the 'Millie Tant' character in the Viz comic, a woman who thinks that every man is out to attack her and has a slanted view of reality. Essentially, this character is a self indulgent attention seeker. Life and art perhaps?

In our so-called civilised society, people have no issue with a point of view that is different to theirs but the destructive and devisive new feminist militancy is going too far in the wrong direction. In fact, it is doing damage to the credibility of feminism and creating a divided society.

Most women are probably happy with the level of equality that now exists on planet sensible, it may not be wholly perfect but is better than the situation of a hundred years ago.

However for some, there is still a reason to rant...

American Indian Spiritual and Pagan alternative belief systems - an answer to the consumer society

Reconnecting with nature recharges the spirit

So, if you are not into organised religion, you are not necessarily disenfranchised. Indeed, many are finding organised religion a turn off and are leaving it.

We often hear of dwindling church congregations of half a dozen stalwarts, the phrase 'when two or three are gathered together,' may be how organised religion eventually ends, when it is unviable to provide.

So where have all of these followers gone? why has organised religion declined? The stance by many schools to dispense with formal and religious based assemblies has been the biggest driver of a lack of following in recent times along with trendy left-leaning teachers. Communists despise religion.

A general malaise from the 1950's onwards has led people who were constrained by the strictures of wartime rationing and observance of regulations like the blackout, to rebel. Even after the war, rationing stayed in force, longer indeed than the war itself lasted.

When that was repealed, they found a new freedom, then came rock n roll and the swinging sixties. The grip of organised religion became ever more tenuous with the goings on of the Haight-Ashbory set and the New Age generation setting new standards and pushing the boundaries of acceptability.

The Green Man

a spiritual symbol thought to originate from the Greek God of Nature, Dionysis

Life became busier from the 1960's and the people became richer, but not spiritually.

A spin off of the New Agers of late 60's America was the resurgence of the Pagan and Spiritualist belief systems. In fact these have many shared traits with the American Indian people who have a spiritualist type of existence. I have come to see I have more in common with the American Indian beliefs than than the organised religion I was spoon fed.

People have become cynical, they have been lied to too many times by politicians supposedly acting in their best interests, when they are often clearly not.

The prevalence of UFO sightings has no doubt come to mind and the pat and frankly childish denials of the subject and convenient explanations fools no one. The people can see through the illusions.

The recent Brexit campaign was one example that the game is up, protestations of forthcoming Biblical-dimension doom and gloom if we voted to leave the EU were laughable.

The politicians severely underestimated the people's ability to see through the veiled threats, the desperate pleas to remain were ignored. The political arena changed, with people supporting in the past the major parties only, crossing the floor to vote with people from other parties for what they all thought was right for the majority and country, not just themsleves.

Even church leaders frantically and desperately tried to shore up the remain vote, a symptom of the present is that people made up their own minds.

An over 300 foot wide Mayan / Hopi Indian symbol appeared in crops at Silbury Wiltshire

This sort of instance has driven people to ask questions, questions about where we are going, where we are being led and who is leading us, do they actually know what they are doing?

A way of thought is developing and people are less accepting of dogma and rhetoric, they can see through the bullshit. The game has changed and so have people's need to find something else to follow, a true path and a true way of their own.

People are finding they need to re-evaluate their lives. They are often very busy running around with very busy lives that they are becoming ill with all the pressures that face them. 'New age' retreats allow people to find themselves, where they find people that help them redefine what is actually important in their lives.

Some then connect to nature, they find as the American Indians have, that going back to the forests reconnects them to a better place in their own minds. I have found that the countryside is always best for me to be in, just to stand in a forest, take in the air and enjoy the calmness does amazing things for you. It is like a warm rippling energy permeates you.

And this is why the Pagan and Spiritual beliefs have come back as a rejection of the modern consumer society by some people who have seen the light.

Go and read some American Indian wisdom, you will find for yourself that they have a great wealth of wisdom and knowledge. You will spiritually enrich yourself if you do so and go out into the forests and soak up the natural vibe. Then look for a way out, off the treadmill.

The American Indian's survival could be at the vanguard of all of our survival

Check out American Indian wisdom

I have been working with the American Indian people to advise them on business and economic growth, how they could bring prosperity to the reservations and create jobs whilst adopting their policy of doing the least damage and only using the least resources. I give this advice free and see it as a very worthwhile thing to do. I hope this will be successful for them.

The reservation residents have a conundrum, there is a modern world outside but they also have to find a way to balance that with their traditional past. They are working to educate the young in the traditions of the past, but they also need an eye to the future.

The current economic model in the outside world is a tenuous one. It is one of artificial demand creation through marketing and product development of ever more higher performing and functional products. At odds with the traditional way of the Indian.

I recently saw a US military project approved, worth billions of Dollars for a war that would likely never come. Perhaps like the boy scout, they need to  'be prepared.' Mightily it would seem.

If our population is to grow and live longer, contingencies need to be made to limit the future population growth to levels which the planet can manage. The Indians practiced a responsible family planning method which ensured that they never overpopulated for their available resources. And that was over millennia.

Things need to change, the American Indians were given a list of prophecies a long way back, these were called the Seven Ages, we have heard of the 7 ages of man, well they have this list of prophecies and all of them have come true so far. We now face the final one and we need to change our way of life otherwise we not progress past that last milestone.

In my work with the reservation residents, I have said that I see the future way forward is to say 'the future is the past is the future.' They can produce a program, a way forward that would ensure our survival.

But it would require a massive re-evaluation of who we are and where we need to go. It would not be an easy ride, it would mean material sacrifices, but life is worth that. It has to be, you can't take money etc. with you when you die.

The wisdom and knowledge that has sustained these people up to the time of colonisation worked. It should now be adaptable for all our futures.

The so-called 'new age' was effectively 'borrowed' from facets of the American Indian lifestyle, without the 'free love' sex, drugs and alcohol additions.

The reverence for care of resources, respect for people, society including all and helping all, may seem like a utopian dream that is far from our lives today but the Indians had this as everyday life.

Consider that the Indians did not covet possessions as we do, they never built any prisons, there was no crime, there was no addictions. They just lived a simple lifestyle. That's why attempts to break up the 'new age' of the late 60's were so aggressive, because they were a threat to the white picked fence consumer heavy American lifestyle. 

In the Joni Mitchell song 'Woodstock,' there is a line 'we've got to get ourselves back to the garden,' which essentially means a simpler lifestyle. The Garden of Eden, but you get the picture.

With automation to take over much of the human work element in just a few years, we need to re-evaluate where we are going. We should look to the American Indian people for the wisdom and knowledge. They will be the salvation.

The Lakota people have a phrase 'Mitakuye Oyasin' 'we are all related.' We should start to think that and fast!

Why the American Indian people are an example to us all

So, you want to live in a perfect society with no drug or alcohol problems, no crime, no prisons or convicts, with natural medication, where generations help each other, where the women are treated with respect and decide many things in the structure of the society?

The type of society that safeguards and uses only the resources it needs and has a respect for nature and wildlife?

You might call that a utopian society and just a pipe dream, but until the 1800's the American Indian peoples regarded these situations as 'normal'.

The colonisation of America was tolerated by the Indian peoples because at the start of it, the incomers were no threat. Sadly, government got involved and the treaties that were made were disregarded and the Indians persecuted.

That influx and the consequences was told to the American Indians well before there were settlers from across the seas arriving.

They were told of a procession of occurrences which were all recorded and recounted and no surprise, the majority that were predicted, have come true, one stage is still to pass and the indication is that this will happen. Then, the Indian peoples have to show us the way forward it is prophesised.

If you think that Hitler exterminating 6 million Jews was bad, think about the 8 million American Indians who were killed in their own country.

This is why the American Indians should be accorded a status and regard as one of the most important groups of people on this planet. How can you help redress this problem? Like me, I offer them advice on how to responsibly build prosperity and jobs in their reservations.

If you look up Native American wisdom, you will find many examples that show that these people are extremely advanced in their knowledge and thinking.

They are far from the Hollywood depiction of Savages.

They are the people we should be listening to, if we are to save our society from destruction, they have the answers.