“Mní Wičhóni: Water is Life” — a 2018 Bioneers Indigenous Forum Presentation
The Lakota phrase “Mní wičhóni” (“Water is life”) was the anthem from Standing Rock heard around the world, but it also has a spiritual meaning rooted in many Indigenous world views. For Native Americans, water does not only sustain life, it is sacred. How can Native Americans create cross-cultural understanding for a river’s rights to protection? How do we help guarantee such “rights of nature” in mainstream jurisprudence? As we take leadership roles in restoring our rivers, how do we blend our Traditional Ecological Knowledge with contemporary science? Tribal leaders working to restore riparian ecosystems explore cutting-edge Indigenous approaches to watershed management and restoration.
This recent Bioneers Conference Indigenous Forum conversation addressed these questions and others. It was moderated by Clayton Thomas-Muller(Pukatawagan), author and campaigner with 350.org; and featured Caleen Sisk (Wintu), Carletta Tilousi (Havasupai), and Carrie “CC” Curley (San Carlos Apache). Following is an excerpt from the forum.
Carrie “CC” Curley: For us, mní wičhóni – water is life. I tell people, young people, older people – if you don’t understand that basic concept, I don’t know what to tell you. Every day we use water. Give thanks for it, for every drop.
Mní wičhóni and part of the Apache stronghold, we went up to Standing Rock as well with our leader, Wendsler Nosie, former chairman and councilman in San Carlos. We went up there with gifts. When you’re on this right path of sacrificing yourself, and feeding your spirit, and you’re away from home in your own community, because Oak Flat is 44 miles off our reservation, it’s hard... The battle to wake up your own community, to tell people water is life, is hard.
When you fight for the water, and you find that you’re on the right path, the water will always bring you back to that circle, it will always make an impact on you. So with the mní wičhóni, it was an awful thing to see what was happening to brothers and sisters out there. It was awful to see what was going on in the media. It could break your heart. And I know the sacrifice of it, too, in my own community.
The greatest thing that I know from the Oak Flat spiritual fight is I can pray, because right now our springs, our aquifers, they are at risk from a copper mine. They want to get that little amount of copper, but when water is so valuable, you can never repair that damage. Just like my sister was saying here, it’s your veins. You have to look at it like that, what you put in your own bodies and what we’re doing to the Earth. You put something in your body that’s not meant to be, it will destroy that vein, and it’s the same for the rivers and the streams and the oceans and the lakes here. If you understand that, you’ll see the damage that we’re doing to the Mother Earth.
When you find that in yourself, to step out of being selfish, you’ll realize that there’s just so much to pray for and so much to be grateful for, and to continue to pray.
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