Global Native Affairs Council

This is not an organization with one leader.  We are many.  Your voice can impact tasks, agenda items, and help us accomplish evolving agendas set for and by the people on the Global Native Affairs Council. 

to get involved send us an email at: bandsthatrock@gmail.com

Background and Vision

When I was a kid growing up in the hood, we all knew the system was rigged.  A few of us engineered fun ways to game it without getting caught.  Some of us adapted better than others as we turned 18.  This story will begin there, the other part can be shared later. 

I wanted to go to college to make the world a better place.  A vision I settled on after many angry years and having made a lot of bad choices.  Antioch seemed like a good choice because it was one of the most liberal colleges in the U.S. However, soon after arriving, my activism got me into trouble with the rich kids. A theme that seems to hold true my entire life.  The incident that ultimately led to my expulsion was a dispute over a Food Not Bombs sign I hung up on campus. 

During this period of my life, I was doing street theatre in town and freaking a lot of people out I guess (maybe my alien character was a bit much or maybe pointing up at space was just scary to folks.  I was arrested once and cited the constitution and they released me.  Soon after someone took my MO and robbed the local bank.  The paper read “masked man in fatigues robs bank.” Since I was using a mask and fatigues everyday as my costume I found it a bit too convenient as a frame job.  I knew that day I needed to skip town, so I hitchhiked out. 

About half a year before all of this I met Native Americans from the Ohio Miami Valley Council and they welcomed me in.  I had just returned from visiting my dying grandmother and was in trouble at school for getting a coke addicted administrator mad (not hard to do with someone suffering a problem like that).  The mad lady, Kristen Hill, god bless her soul, cut off my Bonner Scholarship so I was poor and needed to do the street theatre to survive.  I also built Magazines and distributed radical literature as I begged. 

When I told the Natives that my cousins named me Bigfoot, they educated me on the name and who it originally belonged to.  They sat me down to watch Robert Redford’s documentary Incident of Oglala (1992).  As I was not adapting well to college life and they sensed my struggle with the western world, they decided to invite me to a sweat ceremony.  I met Grandfather Aca Primo, Ehuntahwah Dakota Sioux there. 

He asked me to tell him about myself and I gave him the basics, but he quickly shifted the conversation to topics about how I was getting along, what I thought of the world, and he quickly tuned into my struggles.  He also asked questions about my encounters with other native groups. Some of the first lessons I learned from him were about Love, about how I was gifted with vision to see the world as being in a mess based on the lack of harmony caused largely by destructive lifestyles tied to the illusion of ownership.  Love he said can’t be held- like butterflies it comes and goes, let it land and take off don’t try to catch it, and don’t try to hold it by its wings, he said.  If it goes, let it, love will come again.  About ownership, he said it was the cause of all the disease. Once when he found me distraught over an Eagle feather being taken by my Arapaho brother, he reminded me I was not using it and therefore it was not stolen but being used to make medicine and to let it go.  He told me a story about a mad person that was told to go dig a ditch and at the end of the day this mad person could not remember why he was mad.  This was his way of showing that redirecting our minds was helpful to think first to reach a better understanding about our experience.  The obsession to control and own is what makes the world imbalanced.

The blessing I got earlier in life from Sister Marisa De Los Andes and Dorinda Moreno  of 500 Years of Resistance, to work with a team at Stanford to help convince the Zapatista’s to adopt a nonviolent position and put down the guns was a very great opportunity.  We saved lives together, but that is not enough.  Since the time I sent out an illegal email to all the generals I had knowledge of, the Amazon has shrunk a tremendous amount as I predicted it would.  The last free tribes are as I also predicted are under increasing threats and nearly entirely dislocated.

Starting Points:

It is not acceptable women and girls are the target of kidnapping by serial killers on the loose.  It is not acceptable oil pipelines contaminate native lands.  It is not acceptable false leaders assume posts on tribal councils.  It is not acceptable poverty and many problems continue as a part of reservation life.  It is not acceptable prisons are disproportionately filled with black and brown people. It is not acceptable lands continue to be invaded all over the earth intruding on last surviving Natives that have not been assimilated.  The continued onslaught against nature and wildlife is not acceptable.  The result of industrialism are on many accounts not proving to have advanced human civilization and in many instances technology/ pollution has contributed to damaging DNA the human genome leading to corruption of genetic material and scientifically this has been linked to increased environmentally related illnesses and diseases.  Governments are increasingly becoming obsolete and controlled by a global elites that are even less in tune with stewardship than what remains of the failing governments( see Peter Phillips new book Giants).  Many scientist forecast rapid climate change and increases in catastrophic events globally due to how our present human activity is impacting the planet.  Therefore, the need to survive compels society to work to influence the Global Elites to end the centuries old war against wisdom, and embrace investing in the human capital and preservation or traditional culture which will help us re-establish harmony to the extend the earth may be repaired from these human inflicted damages.

Mission:

I once interviewed Russell Means.  He said “you don’t bite the breast of the mother that feeds you, we have to repair the damages with our minds, our hands, and love the earth that sustains us.  She is bleeding and we must act!” 

The One Horse Alliance

Supporters can be a part of the alliance.  This alliance will be known as One Horse.  We must feed it, share it, and protect it as it is the only horse we have.  It is wild and no one can ride it.  You might see it visit your village.  The feather it wears was given from a chief from long ago…and he spoke in a language no one could understand, his gesture was to accept the gift of this friendship and to trust one another that the fight will be a long one, but we cannot do it alone.  The preservation of harmony is the greatest aim, without harmony there can be no inter-reliance, no sustenance.  

All my relations

Bigfoot

Honoring Elders

“We don’t want riches we can’t take them to the other world”. Red Cloud

“All belong to the same family, whatever happens to the beast soon happen to man. All things are connected.  To harm the earth is to heap contempt towards its creator”. Chief Seattle

“Thought comes before speech”. Luther Standing Bear

Partnering Agencies :

Equilibrium Institute of the Americas www.ripstar.cfsites.org 

Native Owned Businesses