My thoughts are in South Dakota

Here I am in Holland. This time of year is always a chilly, cosy, sitting-by-the-fireplace time of year. The weather is mostly stormy,rainy and sometimes, even some snow comes falling down. It might even freeze up a bit overnight, so we can slide instead of walk to work the next morning...

But when was the last time we really had a weather catastrophy over here? I'm 45 years now and I haven't experienced a major climate distaster yet where I live. So, for me, so far, this time of year is a time of cosiness and cuddling up by the fire.

Not so in South Dakota. Especially the Pine Ridge Reservation. Shannon County, the poorest county in the United States of America.
Every year, people there are freezing to death. Roads are blocked with heaps of snow and far out homes can't often be reached on time when they need urgent supplies of fire wood, fuel, food, water and medical supplies. This happens every year. Only this year, it has been put under the noses of a much wider audience, because the Lakotah finally have a voice that carries very far. It's not that they have never shouted it out before, but no one really cared to listen. Now that the USA is in dire straits financially and economically and, finally, people like the ROL Chief Facilitator Russell Means, take the voice of the Lakotah people to a different level.

It's a shame that this is happening to the Native Americans and that this has been happening to them for the last couple of centuries on an increasing scale. In a country that calls itself the best country on the face of the earth...

In this time, the ROL gets a chance to show that they can do it better, just by living and organising things the way their ancestors did. Even if Russell wasn't elected tribal president, he and his fellow ROL people are doing what they can to make life on the rez a better place and to make the Lakotah more and more aware of their inner and outer strength!

And I support this. The Tibetans have the Dalai Lama to speak for them and to make other people speak for them. Many peoples who are suppressed and in need have their spokespeople. And the Lakotah have Russell Means and other chiefs and spiritual leaders.

Let me be a supporter of their cause through this blog. I pray for all people to be free one day. I hope to help those who seek freedom to attain it before I leave this world....

May this time of year bring the Lakotah strength, hope, peace and inner freedom, so that food, water, fuel, medicine and freedom at last may come to them soon!

Leventissa