Grieve in Water

IS LUMBEE LOVE DEAD? 

When she is sick and dying, who last shall, vigil keep beside her lonely, lovely waters if not we, those indigenous to the waters of the ole Lumbee fail to protect her in the present? Will we stand up and safeguard her beauty as only we see it or do we discard her as a mere swamp, remiss of our duties owed to her bounty? 

by jojo brooks shifflet, Lumbee nation 




The grief in water doesn't leave us, not in this culture we live living, as if we are distant from cause and effect. The average person does not pay attention, or heed the warnings of scientists, or the obvious evidence on a walk along a stream in a forest, or a park's pool. Women are not respected at the significant levels their creation orders the world's original structures. American, or more specifically, European historic practices have not respected this state of being. This continued practice embedded in thought life and practice does not care for water in a sacred way.

Protesting companies fouling up our waters is different from care for water as a sacred responsibility with prayers, the words and songs of power delivered from the womb daily! This passes as social responsibility, but the custom of separating Life into parts indifferent from each other cannot see the whole when profit is the gauge measuring 'progress'. Measuring is destined to devalue one to gain the other, so water like Earth are in danger of irreversible poisoning. A population dismissive of sacred things, and sacred responsibilities is incapable of exercising compromise, or changing self to save a planet, or grasp how the elements live within our "who we are"!

In layman's terms, we are in a 'clusterfuck'! In respectable verbiage we are in a pickle! In reality, we are killing our grandchildren to feed our children! This is the spirit of a mentality resistant to change, reform and being human.


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
Feb. 9, 2018

Water Carrier.

Sacred Art Work by Le Ah Tiamat titled, Sky Qwake