mother of our nations

Winona Laduke’s address at the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) forum in Huairou, China in 1995 was ingenious and sincere. She spoke absolutely nothing but the truth! She used Mother Earth as her case study topic to describe the ills of indigenous people in a world that use to belong to them and how people who harm Mother Nature ultimately harms themselves by recalling a saying by one of her great leaders named Chief Seattle, “What befalls the Earth, befalls the people of the Earth”. She exerts the fact that her people, indigenous people, are not being represented or kept in mind at all when big decision making is to take place. I did not know that under international law they did not meet the criteria of the United Nations although they meet the criteria of nation states by having a common economic system, language, territory, history, culture and governing institution. Not being represented by the United Nations and being represented by states that have only been existence for 200 years while indigenous nations have been in existence for thousands of years to me will indicate that some misunderstanding which will result in a misrepresentation will take place and any specific issues of indigenous nations will be ignored. ”Decision making is not made by those who are affected” describes, to me, the entire system of America on the national, state and city levels. I honestly believe that most state or city official currently or formerly governing people who are negatively affected by the social and economic ills of life have not been in similar therefore leaving them to blindly “dictate” what is and what is not important to the people they are governing or making decisions for in regards to employment, benefits, health care and so on.