"Peace"

Personal Opinion

I have seen the path of my ancestors, and I follow dancing....

When I started this page, I intended to have a personnel page, A page about me.

It has turned out to be just that.

I am always Shawnee.

My Faith and Belief in the "Great Spirit" is true.

You may call him God or Yaweh or Buddah or any number of names,

but He is the same.

I believe that when we hurt or disrespect others that in truth

we are only hurting and disrespecting

ourselves.............

I believe that words are more powerful than physical strikes.

The sting of the strike fades but....... the sting of

the words...........

echo forever...........

When I read over the words of Tecumseh...I feel them.

They touch my heart, and I pray that when I leave this earth...

I leave it a kinder and gentler place.....

I was fortunate to know my Great-Grandmother.

She, too, was Shawnee.

She said the worst thing she ever did was to marry a white man.

Not because she did not love him, for she loved him dearly,

but because in doing so, she gave up her heritage.

She told of walking down the street and being called a dirty squaw.

(Squaw to the Indian was disrespectful--it meant the same as whore)

The young Indian girl was called a maiden - if she was unmarried

and a maid - if she was married.

When I think of the Indian as being called "savage",

I wonder how civilized we have become.

We judge people for their religion, for their fears,

for the color of their skin, for their sexual orientation and for their status in life.

We abuse Mother Earth.

We use her resources and leave her scarred.

We launch wars with mass destruction, we claim innocent victims as casualties,

we have lost the respect of the children--as they look for families within gangs.

We have forgotten how to GIVE thanks in prayer.

And in all this, we rationalize, it has to be this way in order to be civilized.

Somehow this all seems "savage" to me.

There are many cultures and languages,
but there is only one moon, one sun, one Mother Earth, one "Creator" and one tribe.
Let us live peacefully.

From the 1927 Grand Council of American Indians

"The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call "assimilated," bringing the Indian into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be contented like those whose concepts of happiness is materialistic and greedy, which is very different from our way.

We want freedom from the white man rather than to be intergrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace.

We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen or bankers......we want to be ourselves.......we want to have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and because we belong here.

The white man says, there is FREEDOM and JUSTICE for all. We have had "Freedom and Justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."

FOR YOU GRANDMOTHER.....I AM ALWAYS SHAWNEE

"Shawnee's Reservation"l "Homepage"

James D. Oyler

Principal Chief
United Tribe of Shawnee Indians
P.O. Box 637 (505)
Shawnee Reserve 206
De Soto, Kansas 66018
913 - 583 - 3236

E-Mail Hdqrs@oz.sunflower.org

Nellis Captain

Chief
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma
P.O. Box 350 Seneca, MO 64865
(918) 666-2435 fax 666-3325

Larry Nuckolls

Governor
Absentee Shawee Nation of Oklahoma
2025 S. Gordon Cooper Drive
Shawnee, OK 74801-9381
405 - 275 - 4030 fax 275-5637

Ron Sparkman

Historian
Loyal Band Shawnee Nation of Oklahoma
P.O. Box 149
Miami, Oklahoma
918 - 542 - 7006
Kenneth Blanchard

Governor
Absentee Shawnee Executive Committee
2025 S. Gordon Cooper Drive
Shawnee, OK 74801 - 9381
405 - 275 - 4030

Don Greenfeather
Chairman
Loyal Shawnee
P.O. Box 893
Tahlequah, Oklahoma 74465
(918) 456-0671 fax 456-6485

Absentee Shawnee Executive Committee
P.O. Box 1747
Shawnee, OK 74801

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page