Endurance

Two books that address the sacred dimension are The Distorted Past by Josep Fontana, and The Primal Mind by Jamake Highwater. Taken together, these authors explore what it is that — as the ancient seed of all humanity — tribal peoples still possess that the diaspora has misplaced. The proposition being that it is a universal heritage lost by many as indigenous roots were severed, but recoverable to some extent through study and practice.

US CENTCOM Area of Responsibility is where most American soldiers will die in the 21st century. Oil and gas, baby, oil and gas.

While Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are a serious threat to humanity, White Man's Burden (WMB) drives much of the conventional weaponry and hostility unleashed on a daily basis.

Native American people have been faced with American schools since the 1870's or so as a federal policy. The policy was to break or sever ties to culture, family, and tribe, to change indigenous people into Americans. It was a severe and traumatic form of brainwashing, literally to destroy the heritage and identity of native people, ostensibly to assimilate them into an American way of life.

--Woven Stone by Simon J. Ortiz

The assumption of lineal progress limits our conceptual appreciation of what is the most dynamic aspect of human evolution in the world today. While tribal governing entities have relied on conservation, cooperation, and reciprocity to maintain internal stability for millenia, they have now extended these values into network society. Pan-tribal global solidarity in confronting the anti-indigenous axis of state institutions, markets, and transnational criminal enterprise has emerged with support from civil society. The new alliances and organizing strategy of the indigenous peoples' movement may turn much social theory on its head.

Obama Human Rights Scorecard:

Indigenous Peoples -- F
LGBT Peoples -- F
Unions -- F
War and Peace -- F
Health Care -- F
Education -- F
Govt Corruption -- F

Communal values entail more than localized assimilation of capitalist functions. In fact, the only successful communal political entities -- tribes -- survived due to values diametrically opposed to those of capitalism. From an indigenous point of view, ownership, as understood by industrial states, is socially suicidal.