Rosalie Little Thunder: Activism for the New Year
Rosalie Little Thunder is a long-time Native community and environmental activist. Of the Sicangu band of the Lakota Nation in South Dakota, Rosalie has been on the frontlines to save the wild herd of bison that roams Yellowstone National Park.
"I would say natural leadership is very reluctant leadership. It’s usually some kind of injustice that has been there for a while and sometimes it will peak and come to a head. And when everybody steps back, you find yourself out front because you didn’t step back. Not always, but that’s been my experience." "As a Native American most challenges are about everyday things like your rights. One issue that is emerging and has been emerging over a number of years is the prison population. We are about 6 to 7 percent of the general population and our prison population is about 70 percent. That is huge. I personally, being Native American and being in a Native community, can’t buy the stereotype that most folks have that we are flawed. I’m not buying that."
Sometimes the prison populations are complicated by the poverty that Native people live in.
Local leadership, whether it be state legislatures or city councils or local school boards, whatever, have this attitude that poverty is a choice. People treat it like a choice. “Well, those people. Those people.”
Poverty to me is very deliberate. It’s imposed. It’s by design. Our reservations are the poorest counties in the nation. And right across the border in Nebraska is the wealthiest county in the nation. Something is very deliberate about that." "the bottom line for me is that the public lands around Yellowstone have very cheap grazing allotments.....for cattle grazing.
But if the buffalo cross the border between national public land and national public forest, they get shot. I was there when they were doing that. "They are a sacred species. Scientists will agree with that because they’re keystone species. They’re very key to the ecosystems in which they live. Most sacred species of the indigenous people are keystone species: the buffalo, the bear, the salmon. Different kinds of plant species, like the cedar or redwood trees. "I think all human beings have sacred species but some cultures are more removed from that, more industrialized.
We live in houses now and we’re oblivious to where the moon rises or the behavior of the birds. Humanity is becoming more oblivious. We’re trying to say pay attention to the sacred species because those will tell you what’s going on with the planet."http://feministing.com/archives/006306.html#more