Well, MKP-US has been attacked again. Mostly with the artillery of lies and falsehoods under the guise of peaceful speech. It’s like reading Russian press releases.
I thought to write about them all, all the falsehoods, enumerating them, and eventually I just stopped writing. I know, you might say, “But that’s what they want you to do.”
No, I don’t think so. I think “they” want me to behave like them, dance to their marionette strings. No thanks. I have told the Truth. LKS has told the Truth. That’s enough. As I said earlier, repeating a lie over and over again doesn’t make it the Truth. However, human nature being what it is, all one has to do is repeat the lie over and over again, and then more people will believe the lie.
I suspect this strategy is at the root of the most recent attack on MKP. Classical, perhaps even Jesuit-like, rhetoric…
The most egregious violation of Truth by Falsehood, besides the conciliatory tone of the letter, is about Lonnie Hamilton, incoming Chair of MKP-US.
The attackers wrote that he is one of the: “primary architects and leaders of the LKS.”
True, he was a Headman for 6 years starting in 2010, and this was 15 years after the LKS was founded. Not any kind of architect. This is an example of the attacker’s rhetorical use of hyperbole.
What he is, is an enrolled citizen of the Muskogee-Creek Nation, a status that no one from those who attack us has similarly demonstrated, which omission I find amazing given their repeated claims to speak for the “Sioux Nation”. He is transparent about this—at least we know his true background. I will not tell his story for him, that is for him to do. But it should be apparent that this man, in his genuine indigeneity, was not offended by what LKS does.
Another falsehood: He did not promise he would fight to reinstate the LKS. I never heard him say any such thing at the LKSI meeting, and I was there the whole time. Whoever their “sources” are, they cannot be trusted. And, given what I know of him, he would never say such a stupid thing. And, in fact. what he did say made me distrust him.
The people who attack MKP-US should reveal their so-called sources or at least consider that their sources are just as willing to make things up as they are.
Predictable. The Board of MKP-US was warned, more “demands” were coming. They have. Now they want to run the corporation. Not all the way…just as much as they want.
They claim transparency with one side of their mouth, then refuse to be transparent with the other side. Never any names, just hiding behind anonymity, with anonymous “leaders” of the “Sioux Nation”. Yuck.
Then they spend the rest of the letter appearing to be jesuitly nice. It’s just more colonialist rhetoric from people pretending to speak for genuine Indigenous people, near as I can tell.
The writer of the post, Truth Be Told : Response to Spirit Protection letter to MKPUS 07/2023, speaks the Truth, and is the same Truth that this man has.
Having also been at LKSI for the duration, and hearing many discussions, there and other where, on the decisions & actions of MKPUS around their recent re-actions to a dis-organization that continue to speak untruths about the LKSI members, this man never heard words even closely resembling, “(a) promise he (we) would fight to reinstate the LKS.
What was heard by this man, and agreed to, was that prayers be offered, and an appeal be made to simply invite dialogue, to tell the truth, to create space for consideration of possibilities.
This has been done in a good way.
Yeah. I read the part about needing permission from the appropriate people, and claiming to speak for the Lakota Nation. I rolled my eyes and unsubscribed.
They really need to realize what they are doing and look into the hearts of the men involved. But they won’t, they just want to be right and righteous.
Matt Schweitzer I hope they call me.
I have not followed the dispute about LKS because it has just been an annoying wringing of hands. Cultural appropriation has been occurring since the first primates appeared on Earth. Even the great apes do it. It is hardly offensive to admire the culture of others so much that we want to imitate it.
The only objection I have ever personally had was with the details of language use. To appropriate appropriately, we adapt what we take from others. I speak English, French and German, so it left my heart empty to be told to use Lakota during a sweat lodge, but that is hardly sufficient to terminate a practice altogether
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In England, MKP has been thinking of adapting LKS practices to local cultures, but that can be done without rancor and regret.
The S.P.I.R.I.T orgs, claims that they have onter al documentation, and are refusing to share it, speaks to a fear that they may be found ignorant, culpible, and wrong. If transparency, and truth, and recognition is their end game, then let the record speak for itself.
Instead, their threats (not a function of recocilation) to realease documentation, speaks only to a level of ethical and moral culpabily at best, and internally amoral at least.
The platitudes at the end read like school yard lies after you’ve been chastised by the principal. What hubris! What pandering! What spineless rhetorical nonsense!
This one prays for them that suffer such moral ambiguity, and the suffering that has caused them to go so far afield from the original instructions.
If you do not know the truth of the matter it is better to be silent so that you may learn that which you do not know, and see what you may not be able to yet envision, and to hear what Mitakuye Oyasin has for you to help you.
In the words, of Chief Lonehill:
Thank you Tunkashila for the things I hear, the things I see, and the things I feel.