As the Idle No More movement has gained strength, like many, I have pondered its meaning. For me, it is our voices, singing out from the place inside of us where our identities as “the people” live, it is the rhythm of our shared heartbeat and the movements of our bodies as we dance a shared dance – a social dance of hope and friendship and affirmation, in a circle, around the drums and the voices that are singing out who we are.

Each tribal people have a unique identity given us by our Creator and our understanding of Creation. Our identity emerges out of our knowledge of how we came to be as a people. Our oral knowledge is intact and the stories of our creation remain essentially untainted by western influences. Often we are viewed by mainstream America in the context of what educators call the three F’s – food, fun, and fashion. We are the celebration of Thanksgiving, the Indians in popular movies, feathered headdresses, geometric designed pottery, and lilting flute music. A deeper understanding of who we are, philosophically, spiritually, and socially is elusive to most of mainstream America. I often think this elusiveness is exacerbated by the fact that it would require a painful acknowledgement that we, as the First Peoples of this hemisphere, are really human beings subjected to devastating military and political policies of the very governments that still lead our countries.