A TRIBUTE TO AMERICA

FIFTH WORLD (HOPI)

"When the Blue Star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World will emerge". This will be the Day of Purification. The Hopi name for the star Sirius is Blue Star Kachina. It will come when the Saquasohuh (Blue Star) Kachina dances in the plaza and removes his mask.

The world is now in the "great purification," a time of the rising of the Phoenix, when the world clears away the old clutter to allow for new growth. Before the emergence into the New World, a purging of all that is out of balance will take place to restore the natural cycles of the planet, and of Life itself.

The cleansing will probably not be gentle as weather conditions, as foretold, are now changing dramatically as Noo Halidzoks (Mother Earth) repeats and repeats her warnings of dire consequences should humans continue on their destructive path.

It started in the mid-80s when the long dormant Mount St. Helen's volcano one day came to life and wrecked havoc in its wake. Still humans did not listen, preferring to chalk it up to yet another 'act of god'.

The two Els - Nina and Nino have started their dance in warming up the planet. Famine, human genocide, pestilence of all kinds are at an all time high. Does this sound like doomsday? No, it is simply fact. Never in human history has there been a greater ability for destroying whole nations, as governments continue to amass weapons of mass destruction.

....And the American Twin Towers came tumbling down....

Many Native teachings do not view this change as necessarily a frightening or terrible time. Rather, they see it as birthing a new world with a new way of being and thinking and feeling and living. The current world has taken itself to the edge of the abyss of annihilation; it is close to taking the final step and releasing the despair in order to remake the world in a spirit of love, balance, harmony, cooperation, and inter-connectedness - in other words, the way it was designed in the first place.

This movement is starting already wherein groups of like-minded individuals are gathering together to contemplate, meditate and pray about the state of the current world. They are following up their prayers with action, as they go out and try to influence change in small and large ways.

Do not say to yourself, "I am but one person, there is nothing I can do." Such whiney statements are cop outs. The newspapers are often full of feel good stories of "one person" making a difference in the life (lives) of others. As the Ancients would have said, "there is no greater gift to give back to the Earth Mother than to be in service to her."

These are the End times and the people must know the truth, share what we have taught you. There can be no more secrets now if we are to survive as a thinking species through these times." "This," they say, "must be done because the dream of humanity can only be preserved through the combined efforts of all peoples, and the joining and merging of all cultures into a oneness." (Statement of the traditional Hopi Elders as told to Cho Qosh Auh Ho Oh, a Chumash/Yaqui/Maya Native)

POSSIBLY HOPI

"They say there's going to be the Third Shaking of the Earth. It's not going to be a good thing to see, but we will survive it. We will survive it. And when we survive it, there's going to be another attempt to make a circle of the human beings on the earth. And this time the Native people will not have to petition to join but will be invited to enter the circle because they say the attitude toward us will have changed by then, and people will let us into the circle, and all the four colors of the four directions will share their wisdom, and there will be a peace on earth. This is coming close."

SEVENTH GENERATION
(Haudenosaunee)

Legend has it that the Spirit Doctors who predicted the arrival of the white man and the near destruction of the Red People also foretold the resurgence of the Indigenous people seven lifetimes after Columbus. According to the Haudenosaunee the current population is the seventh generation.

The Mohawk prophecy states that the Onkwehonwe would see the day when the elm trees would die; strange animals would be born deformed and without the proper limbs; huge stone monsters would tear open the face of the earth;. The rivers would burn; the air would burn the eyes of humans; the birds would fall from the sky; The fish would die in the water; And humans would grow ashamed of the way that they had treated their Mother and Provider, the Earth.

The Haudenosaunee draw their inspiration from the Gayaneshakgowa, the Great Law of Peace, the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. Providing wisdom to its people and the inspiration for their Nations constitution. The Gayaneshakgowa states: "...in our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

That idea embodies everything the Haudenosaunee believe: that the environment is only temporarily entrusted to them and their actions within and upon it will affect it well into the future....And so their name was chosen, a name that reflected not only their philosophy but their dream of restoring and protecting the earth for their children and all who would follow in their path.

Finally, after seven generations of living in close contact with the Europeans, the Onkwehonwe would rise up and demand that their rights and stewardship over the Earth be respected and restored.

When Deganawida was leaving the Indians in the Bay of Quinte in Ontario, he told the Indian people that they would face a time of great suffering. They would distrust their leaders and the principles of peace of the League, and a great white serpent was to come upon the Iroquois, and that for a time it would intermingle with the Indian people and would be accepted by the Indians, who would treat the serpent as a friend. This serpent would in time become so powerful that it would attempt to destroy the Indian, and the serpent is described as choking the life's blood out of the Indian people.

http://www.bahai-library.org/file.php?file=buck_native_messengers#N_63_

Mad Bear (Wallace Anderson, Tuscarora) goes on to describe how the appearance of a red serpent distracts the white serpent. As the two serpents feud, the Indian retreats to the "land of the hilly country" and revives the spirit and principles of peace that Deganawida had established. A seer in the form of a young boy appears and, while watching the contest between the red and white serpents, would impart a message of hope to the Iroquois people, with the promise: "And Deganawida said that they will gather in the land of the hilly country, beneath the branches of an elm tree, and they should burn tobacco and call upon Deganawida by name when we are facing our darkest hours, and he will return." The prophecy ends as follows:

The next direction that he [a young leader, an Indian boy, possibly in his teens, who would be a choice seer] will face will be eastward and at that time he will be momentarily blinded by a light that is many times brighter than the sun. The light will be coming from the east to the west over the water.... Deganawida said as this light approaches that he would be that light, and he would return to his Indian people, and when he returns, the Indian people would be a greater nation than they ever were before.

http://www.bahai-library.org/file.php?file=buck_native_messengers#N_64_

The prophecy of Deganawida's return is sufficiently attested in Iroquoian tradition to be considered an essential, though not prominent, feature in the Deganawida cycle.

(http://www.mail-archive.com/moq_discuss@lists.moqtalk.org/msg25983.html)

WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN
(Lakhota)

When White Buffalo Calf women entered into the circle of the Lakota nation, she sang a sacred song and took the sacred bundle containing a pipe to the people who were waiting for her. She spent four days among the Lakota and taught them about the sacred bundle, the meaning of it.

She taught them seven sacred ceremonies.

Sweat lodge, or the purification ceremony; Naming ceremony, Child naming; Healing ceremony; Making of relatives or the adoption ceremony; Marriage ceremony; Visionquest; Sundance ceremony, the People's ceremony.

She promised to return again. The birth of the first white buffalo in 1994 was a sign to the Lakota that the world was near the time when she would return again to purify the world, and return it to its original state of harmony, balance and love. (To date, nine white buffalo have been born in the South Dakota area)

Guboo Ted Thomas, Australian Aboriginal Tribal Elder

"I was in dreamtime. I see this great wave going. I tell people about this wave. It wasn't a tidal wave. This was a spiritual wave. So, to me, I believe that the Dreamtime is going to be that. I believe the revival is going to start in Australia when we're Dreaming. It's the hummingbee that I'm talking about. And love. We've got to learn to love one another. You see, that's really what's going to happen to the earth. We're going to have tidal waves. We're going to have earthquakes. That's coming because we don't consider this land as our Mother. We've taken away the balance, and we're not putting it back. I look at the bush, and those trees are alive. They're not dead, they're alive. And they want you to cuddle them."

An Inuit woman born on November 5, 1877 predicted:

the start date World War One
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, two years before it happened
the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Fatima
the Challenger space shuttle disaster

LEON SHENANDOAH, ONANDAGA

"It's prophesied in our Instructions that the end of the world will be near when the trees start dying from the tops down. That's what the maples are doing today. Our Instructions say the time will come when there will be no corn, when nothing will grow in the garden, when water will be filthy and unfit to drink. Then a great monster will rise up from the water and destroy mankind. One of the names of that monster is "the sickness that eats you up inside" like diabetes or cancer or AIDS. Maybe AIDS is the monster. It's coming. It's already here.

Our prophet Handsome Lake told of it in the 1700s. He saw Four Beings, like four angels, coming from the Four Directions. They told him what would happen, how there would be diseases we'd never heard of before. You will see many tears in this country. Then a great wind will come, a wind that will make a hurricane seem like a whisper. It will cleanse the earth and return it to its original state. That will be the punishment for what we've done to the Creation."

WHEN THE WORLD CHANGED FOREVER
(Tsimshian, Hopi)

The old one sat in contemplative silence, smoking his pipe and thinking about the future. "There will come a time," he said, "when the world will be choked by a huge snake that has wrapped itself around and around the world below us. The snake will have coloured eyes...different colours. Each time he shivers, his coloured eyes will create a firefly. Firefly will burst through the earth and flash out into Father Sky pulling a tail of coloured light. As Father Sky continues to turn, more and more fireflies will cover the world until the tails of coloured lights intertwine so muchl it will be hard to see between or around them. They will control the people and the world in a way that pits human against human."

(Indigenous explanation of fibre-optic cable, the Internet and other multi-media technologies - clearly there is nothing new under Grandfather Sun!)

For 500 years the Incan Q'ero Elders preserved a sacred prophecy of a great change, or "pachacuti," in which the world would be turned right-side-up, harmony and order would be restored, and chaos and disorder ended. The Q'ero had lived in their villages high in the Andes in virtual solitude from the world until their "discovery" in 1949.

According to ancient prophecy, this is the time of the great gathering called the "mastay" and reintegration of the peoples of the four directions.

The Q'ero are releasing their teachings to the West, in preparation for the day the Eagle of the North and the Condor of the South (the Americas) fly together again.

They believe that "munay," love and compassion, will be the guiding force of this grade gather of people.

The new caretakers of the Earth will come from the West, and those that have made the greatest impact on Mother Earth now have the moral responsibility to remake their relationship with Her, after remaking themselves," said Don Antonio Morales, a master Q'ero shaman.

The prophecy holds that North America will supply the physical strength, or body; Europe will supply the mental aspect, or head; and the heart will be supplied by South America.

When the Spanish conquered the Incas 500 years ago, the last pachacuti, or great change, occurred. The Q'ero have been waiting ever since for the next pachacuti, when order would emerge out of chaos.

The prophecies are optimistic. They refer to the end of time as we know it -- the death of a way of thinking and a way of being, the end of a way of relating to nature and to the earth. In the coming years, the Incas expect us to emerge into a golden age, a golden millennium of peace. The prophecies also speak of tumultuous changes happening in the earth, and in our psyche, redefining our relationships and spirituality.

The next Pachacuti, or great change, has already begun, and it promises the emergence of a new human after this period of turmoil. The chaos and upheaval characteristic of this period will last another four years, according to the Q'ero.

"There was the cycle of the mineral, the rock. There was the cycle of the plant. And now we are in the cycle of the animal coming to the end of that and beginning the cycle of the human being. When we get into the cycle of the human being, the highest and greatest powers that we have will be released to us. They will be released from that light or soul that we carry to the mind. But right now we're coming to the end of the animal cycle and we have investigated ourselves and learned what it is to be like an animal on this earth." (Hopi)

"And so he gave each of us a responsibility and we call
that the Guardianship."

"To the South, the red people, were given the Guardianship of the earth. We were to learn during this cycle of time the teachings of the earth, the plants that grow from the earth, the foods that we could eat, and the herbs that are healing so that when we came back together with the other brothers and sisters we could share this knowledge with them. Something good was to happen on the earth."

"To the East, the yellow people were given the Guardianship of the wind. They were to learn about the sky and breathing and how to take that within ourselves for spiritual advancement. They were to share that with is at this time."

"To the West, the black race were given the Guardianship of the water. They were to learn the teachings of the water which is the chief of the elements, being the most humble and the most powerful. When I went to the University of Washington and I learned that it was a black man that discovered blood plasma, it didn't surprise me because blood is water and the elders already told me the black people would bring the teachings of the water."

"To the North, the white race were given the Guardianship of the fire. If you look at the center of many of the things they do you will find the fire. They say a light bulb is the white man's fire. If you look at the center of a car you will find a spark. If you look at the center of the airplane and the train you will find the fire. The fire consumes, and also moves. This is why it was the white brothers and sisters who began to move upon the face of the earth and reunite us as a human family."

(Lee Brown, Cherokee)

ANISHINAABE (OJIBWA)

Seven major Nee gawn na kayg (prophets) came to the Anishinaabe. They came at a time when the people were living a full and peaceful life on the northeastern coast of North America. These prophets left the people with seven predictions of what the future would bring. Each of these prophecies was called a fire and each fire referred to a particular era of time that would come in the future. Thus, the teachings of the seven prophets are now called the Neesh wa swi ish ko day kawn (seven fires) of the Ojibwa.

The First Fire said to the people, ”in the time of the first fire, the Anishinaabe nation will rise up and follow the Sacred Shell of the Midewiwin Lodge [post European contact]. The Midewiwin lodge will serve as a rallying point for the people and its traditional ways will be the source of much strength.

The Second Fire said to the people, ”you will know the second fire because at this time the nation will be camped by a large body of water. In this time the direction of the Sacred Shell will be lost. The Midewiwin will diminish in strength.

A boy will be born to point the way back to the traditional ways. He will show the direction to the stepping stones to the future of the Anishinaabe people.”

The Third Fire said to the people, ”In the third fire, the Anishinaabe will find the path to their chosen ground, a land in the west to which they must move their families. This will be the land where food grows on water.”

WARNING OF THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS

The Fourth Fire was originally given to the people by two prophets. They came as one. They told of the coming of the light skinned race. One of the prophets said,” you will know the future of our people by what face the light skinned race wears. If they come wearing the face of nee kon nis i win (brotherhood), then there will come a time of wonderful change for generations to come. They will bring new knowledge and articles that can be joined with the knowledge of this country. In this way two nations will join to make a mighty nation. This new nation will be joined by two more so that the four will form the mightiest nation of all. You will know the face of brotherhood if the light skinned race comes carrying no weapons, if they come bearing only their knowledge and a handshake.”

The Other Fourth Fire said, ”Beware if the light skinned race comes wearing the face of ni boo win (Death). You must be careful because the face of brotherhood and the face of death look very much alike. If they come carrying a weapon...beware if they come in suffering...they could fool you. Their hearts may be filled with greed for the riches of this land. If they are indeed your brothers, let them prove it. Do not accept them in total trust. You shall know that the face they wear is the one of death if the rivers run with poison and fish become unfit to eat. You shall know them by these many things.

THE LOSS OF CULTURE

The Fifth Fire said, ”In the time of the fifth fire there will come a time of great struggle that will grip the lives of all Native people. At the waning of this fire there will come among the people one who holds a promise of great joy and salvation. If the people accept this promise of a new way and abandon the old teachings, then the struggle of the fifth fire will be with the people for many generations. The promise that comes will prove to be a false promise. All those who accept this promise will cause the near destruction of the people.”

IMPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY, RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL, DISEASE, THEFT OF LAND, INDIAN ACT...SO MANY PROMISES BROKEN...

The Sixth Fire said, ”In the time of the sixth fire it will be evident that the promise of the fifth fire came in a false way. Those deceived by this promise will take their children away from the teachings of the chi ah ya og (elders). Grandsons and granddaughters will turn against the elders. In this way the elders will lose their reason for living...they will lose their purpose in life. At this time a new sickness will come among the people. The balance of many people will be disturbed. The cup of life will almost be spilled. The cup of life will almost become the cup of grief.

WHERE WE ARE NOW - FIGHTING OUR WAY BACK

The Seventh Fire that came to the people long ago was said to be different from the other prophets. He was young and had a strange light in his eyes. He said, ”in the time of the seventh fire a osh ki bi ma di zeeg (new people) will emerge. They will retrace their steps to find what was left by the trail. Their steps will take them to the Elders who they will ask to guide them on their journey. But many of the Elders will have fallen asleep. They will awaken to this new time with nothing to offer. Some of the Elders will be silent out of fear. Some of the elders will be silent because no one will ask anything of them. The new people will have to be careful in how they approach the Elders.

The task of the new people will not be easy. “If the new people will remain strong in their quest, the Waterdrum of the Midewiwin Lodge will again sound its voice. There will be a rebirth of the Anishinaabe nation and a rekindling of old flames. The Sacred Fire will again be lit.

It is at this time that the light skinned race will be given a choice between two roads. If they choose the right road, then the seventh fire will light the eighth and final fire, an eternal fire of peace, love, brotherhood and sisterhood. If the light skinned race make the wrong choice of roads, then the destruction they brought with them in coming to this country will come back to them and cause much suffering and death to all the Earths people.

(Taken from the Mishomis Book: The Voice of the Ojibway by Edward Benton Banai, Saint Paul, Minnesota, Indian Country Press, 1981)

When the end is near, we will see a halo of mist around the heavenly bodies. Four times it will appear around the sun as a warning that we must reform, telling us that people of all color must unite and arise for survival, and that we must uncover the causes of our dilemmas. Unless man made weapons are used to strike first, peace will then come.

So the time will come when we will experience late springs and early frosts, this will be the sign of the returning Ice Age." (Hopi)

"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that: THIS IS THE HOUR! and there things to be considered. Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in the right relationship? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader." (Statement by a traditional Hopi Elder)

SYMBOLS AND THEIR MEANINGS

SPIRITUALITY