 please all join in a few moments of centering silence together. Please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn number 317 for which the words also appear in your order of service. Good morning. Welcome to the first Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are welcoming congregations so whomever you are and wherever you are on your life journey we celebrate your presence among us. New comers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your beverages and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give building tours after each service. I'm not sure if we have one for after this service is there a guide here? Okay okay we have one so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house please meet near the large glass windows on your left side of the auditorium excuse me after the service. In this lively acoustical environment it is sometimes difficult for people in attendance to hear therefore we remind you of our child Haven back in that corner hello folks back there and our comments behind the auditorium which are excellent places to go if a child wants to talk or move around sing dance normal child things the service can still be seen and heard very well from those areas also we have hearing assistance devices available please see one of our ushers if that would be helpful for you. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly for this service we have Mark Schultz managing sound and Smiley as our lay minister our greeters our Joan Hightman and Jeannie Neusbaum our ushers are and Smiley Karen Jagger and Sam Bates hospitality coffee and tea service is being prepared by Jeannie Hills and Sharon scratch and now I would draw your attention to the many many announcements which appear in the red floors insert to your order of service there are lots and lots of interesting things in there today about today's service and upcoming activities I'm flying this around sorry I have some things that we'd like to call your attention to particularly the first one is Black Lives Matter weekend which is next weekend Saturday October 14th and Sunday October 15th on October 14th 9 a.m you may help hang prayer flags and again at 4 30 in the afternoon you may hear poet and performer Christopher Sims speak about at our Saturday service with a potluck that follows on Sunday we welcome UW's first wave back to our services and we cap off the weekend with Dr. Christie Clark Punjara's lecture why history matters in the landmark auditorium right here snacks and light refreshments will be served and child care will be available so please register on the website so we'll know how many people to expect regarding today our f.u.s opportunity fair is this weekend wondering how you can become more involved here at f.u.s group members representing those open to you will be in the commons after this service right out there you've seen all the tables probably grab a cup of coffee or tea and find out about social justice groups spiritual practice groups chalice groups exploration groups book discussion groups and more walk around the atrium commons to see the ways you might want to become more deeply engaged here at f.u.s at the opportunity fair you can also find out more about becoming a greeter usher sound operator or part of the after service hospitality team so please sign up and be matched with an experienced team member to keep the services running smoothly that's very important and we really appreciate your participation I also want to call your special attention to a particular announcement title lights camera at f.u.s we're so excited to welcome Michael Doyle Olson to Sunday services this weekend he'll be gathering some background shots no audio for a promotional video being made for f.u.s Michael has a special connection to our community as he's also the brother of Matthew our capital campaign chairman if you see him wandering around or one of his assistants he'll be or they will be the ones with the cameras please extend a warm welcome and a hearty thank you in advance for his time and energy in efforts showing us or helping us to show off f.u.s in our wonderful community I saw one of those guys on a skateboard during the interim he was flying down through the middle I'm not kidding the middle of the commons with a camera so you don't know where they'll turn up watch out for them if you're out there they won't want to run over you again welcome we hope today's service will stimulate your mind touch your heart and stir your spirit thank you very much our opening words are from the Kiowa novelist and poet M. Scott Mamaday best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel House Made of Dawn I am a feather on the bright sky I am the blue horse that runs in the plane I am the fish that rolls shining in the water and I am the shadow that follows the child I am the evening light the luster of meadows I am the eagle playing with the wind and I am a cluster of bright beads I am the farthest star the cold of dawn the roaring of the rain I am the glitter on the crust of the snow and the long track of the moon in a lake I am the flame of four colors a deer standing in the dusk a field of sumac and palm blanche I am the angle of geese in the winter sky I am the hunger of the young wolf I am the whole dream of all of these things you see I am alive I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth I stand in good relation to the gods I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful I stand in good relation to the daughter of sentan you see I am alive I am alive I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice please join your voices in repeating with me the words of affirmation that accompany the lighting of the flame our father the sky hear us and make us strong our mother the earth hear us and give us support spirit of the east send us your wisdom spirit of the sound may we tread your path of life spirit of the west may we always be ready for the long journey spirit of the north purify us with your cleansing winds and now I invite you to turn to your neighbor in exchange with him or her a warm greeting please be seated and if any children who are with us this morning would like to come down at this point for the message for all ages gotta be a couple of you out there other than in the children's choirs so have any of you ever sat by a stream that was kind of running over the rocks and it was kind of making a sound like kind of burbling and if you kind of listen closely to it you might say hmm that stream seems to be kind of talking to me I don't exactly know what that language is but kind of sounds like it's talking right and then sometimes if you're walking in the woods and there's tall pine trees and the breeze is blowing what does that sound like if you stop and listen like whispering kind of something like that again you kind of think hmm that's some kind of language that the trees have but I'm not exactly sure what what the trees are saying so you know a long time ago people used to listen to those things and think that they really could hear some voices that they were actually the natural order was talking but those people didn't have TVs and smartphones so they listen to the earth a lot more than we do today so this is a story about people who listen to the earth a long time ago there were seven wise men and they belong to an Indian tribe called the lanapi and these men were wise in all things about the world about matters here on the world below and things that were going on up in heaven as well but because of their great wisdom people in the tribe were pestering them all the time for answers from dawn until deep into the night people would come to them and ask questions and the old men were getting old and they were getting kind of tired and at last they couldn't even find time to eat a meal by themselves or or to go fishing or to sit around the campfire at night and just kind of chat among themselves because the people were giving them no rest whatsoever and people wanted all these answers from them and so at last the seven wise men got really tired of not having any time for themselves and so they they crept out of the village and they met in secret one night on a hillside and they thought to themselves what are we going to do how are we going to find some peace and eventually one of them came up with an idea and all the others thought it was a pretty good idea you see these wise men were so wise that they actually knew some magic and so they turned themselves into seven big stones boulders and they sat there on the side of that hill and they didn't come back and they didn't come back and people of the village wondered where they'd gone they really missed their wise men but then one day there was this young man who was very clever and curious and he was just out walking along the hillside he sees these seven odd shaped stones and he says oh i haven't seen these before i wonder where they came from because he was kind of leaning down to get a better look at him and he reached out and touched one ah said the rock who woke me up oh said the young man a stone that talks he began looking and he counted the stones one two three four five six seven i think i found our seven missing wise men he said to himself shh the stone said don't tell anybody but it's the only way we could get any rest and so the young man said he wouldn't but he went in the inside of the circle of stones and he began talking to them and the wise men who were stones began giving him answers to all of his questions like why the northern lights you know just kind of are up in the sky and they dance around and why why why dear have short white tails and all kinds of questions that this young man was curious about and the wise men would answer them but they made him promise he wouldn't tell anybody else where they were when the young man promised he wouldn't so he went back to his village but every day he would come back to the hillside to have conversations with the stones but then the people of the village began wondering where does this young guy go every day he always goes off in the same direction so one other person in the village decided he was going to follow him and so he follows him in a distance so he wouldn't be detected and he sees the young man go up the hillside and sit down among the stones and he hears he hears them talking but he can't make out what they're saying and this other man he begins counting the stones and he says I think I found our missing wise man so he goes back to the village and tells all the villagers and the villagers all get together and they march up to the hillside and the wise men see them coming and say oh no but then they had to answer all the people's questions and by the end of the night they were completely exhausted well this isn't working they said to themselves so we better figure out another plan we're gonna have to go even further away from the village where we won't be found so they become human beings again and they march into the woods deep into the woods and they turn themselves into seven tall cedar treats and for a long time nobody finds them except the birds that go up and are roosting in their branches they're feeling really content at this point but then there is a hunting party that comes oh I might get chopped down that would be bad wouldn't it yeah but they didn't but eventually what did happen is that a hunting party came out of the village they went deep into the woods looking for game and one of the people in the hunting party said I've never seen such tall magnificent cedar trees in my life I wonder where they came from and he counts them seven cedar trees I think that I have found our wise man and so he goes back to the village with the hunting party and everybody comes out into the forest and once again they start clamoring for the wise men to answer all of their questions and by the time night comes around once again those poor wise men are so tired and they haven't gotten any peace at all and for a third time they hold counsel with each other what are we going to do well we're just going to have to leave our country entirely but then the great spirit who's been kind of watching all this happen feels sorry for the wise men and so he lifts up his arm and a great wind comes up and carries the seven wise men way up into the heavens and they become seven bright stars and you know those stars are still up there and as stars human beings can't get anywhere near them to help them with questions right and today we know those seven stars that group of stars as the Pleiades and they're part of a constellation called Taurus and today we human beings are still trying to recapture all the secrets about the natural world that these seven old men took with them up into the sky oh no stars don't fall down yeah they're going to be up there they're going to be up there for billions of years I have a budding astronomer up here well thank you those are very good points yeah a gravity gun that would help too well thank you for listening my story but now we have to listen to our choir sing another beautiful piece of music before you get up and leave say everybody sit down let's let's listen to our our youngsters your peers time for our children to go to their classes have a good time first of two readings comes from steve nukem's essay 500 years of injustice when christopher columbus first set foot on the white sands of guanahani island he performed a ceremony to take possession of the land for the king and the queen of spain acting under the international laws of western christendom although the story of columbus's discovery has taken on mythological proportions in most of the western world few people are aware that this act of possession was based on a religious doctrine now known as the doctrine of discovery 40 years before columbus's historic journey pope nicolas the fifth issued to king alfonso the fifth of portugal a bull and titled romanus pontificus it declared war against all non-christians throughout the world and specifically sanctioned the promotion and promoted the conquest the colonization and the exploitation of non-christian nations and territories and in this same bull the pope directed the king to capture vanquish and subdue the saracens pagans and other enemies of christ and to put them into perpetual slavery to take all of their possessions and all of their property acting on this papal privilege portugal continued to traffic in african slaves and expanded its royal dominions by making discoveries along the western coast of africa claiming those lands as portuguese territories and thus when columbus sailed west across the sea of darkness in 1492 he and the spanish sovereigns of aragon and castile were following an already well-established tradition of discovery and conquest and indeed after columbus returned to europe pope alexander the sixth issued another papal document granting to spain the right to conquer the lands which columbus had already found as well as any lands that spain might discover in the future and thus it is important to recognize that the grim facts of genocide and conquest committed by columbus his men and their successors of all the peaceful people in the caribbean these were fully sanctioned by the roman catholic church and by virtue of these two papal bulls a christian law of nations developed a law which asserted that christian nations had the divine right based on the bible to claim absolute title to an ultimate authority over any newly discovered non-christian inhabitants and their territory over the next several centuries these beliefs gave rise to the doctrine of discovery that was used by england holland france as well as by spain and portugal and then in 1823 this doctrine was quietly adopted into us law by the supreme court in the celebrated case johnson versus macintosh according to chief justice john marshal the united states upon winning independence became a successor nation to the right to discovery and acquired the power of dominion from great britain in other words the u.s supreme court affirmed that u.s law was based on a fundamental law of nations which made it permissible to virtually ignore the most basic rights of indigenous heathens and to claim that the unoccupied lands of america rightfully belonged to discovering christian nations for john marshal unoccupied referred to the lands in america which when discovered were occupied by indians but were unoccupied by christians and thus the doctrine of discovery was not only written into us law but also became the cornerstone of u.s indian policy over the next century and then the second reading from kenton nerburn's book the wolf at twilight kenton nerburn lives in northern minnesota and he has been an active presence both among the ajibe way and the sue people he became fast friends with a sue elder by the name of dan and this particular selection comes from a conversation the two of them were having as they took a road trip together through sue territories in the dakotas americans feel guilty about slavery dan told me but they never had to give back anything to black people that was hard for them to give what they'd stolen from black people was their freedom so they just said hey we'll give it back to you that was easy let them go to the front of the line now and let them do everything that white people do and we can all stop feeling guilty wasn't that easy with us indians look at what you stole from us you took our land our houses everywhere that we lived and the only way you can make that right is to give the land back to us and you can't do that because all of america was our land that's something you can't face and so you have to say those were different people that was a different time and instead you tell us well here you can have some chunks of land that we don't want and here's some casinos for you to make money and maybe then you'll shut up and then you just go your merry way just doing what you want there's no way that you can feel it's okay to take folks from another country in chains that's wrong and you know it but with the indians you can say hey we beat you in a fair fight get over it or you can say you signed all those treaties you made a deal what you don't say is that there was never any fair fight because you were beating us with smallpox and all sorts of other diseases and we made all those deals with cannons pointed at us or with some interpreter lying to us or with someone that you called a chief who wasn't a chief being bribed with money or big houses to sign those treaties but none of that really matters what matters is that you've got a way to lie to yourselves about what you did to us while you don't have a way to lie to yourselves about what you did to black people you follow me cat i'm not telling you to feel guilty about this i'm saying you need to take responsibility for it guilt is just an inside out way of feeling good about yourself by saying how bad you feel i don't have any time for that taking responsibility that's something different it's saying that some of the good you got is because some of the bad you did and that you are going to do something to try to make up for the bad that was done and i'm not saying that any of this is your fault or even that your grandparents did any of it i'm just saying that it did happen and it happened on your people's watch you are the one that's benefited from it and it doesn't matter whether you're way downstream from the actual events because you're still drinking the water now i would invite you to remain seated as we sing together from the teal hymnal number 1069 and we will sing it through twice as we gather today images and sound bites from the mass killing that took place in las vegas a week ago may still be haunting us and while we mourn the many deaths and the traumatic injuries caused by a lone affluent white male gunman we might also be echoing what one of that night's country and western performers exclaimed afterwards he said something has changed in this country and it's very scary to see yes it is scary to see but what if anything has changed ever since two teenagers shot up their columbine high school in 1999 incidents like these have been happening with alarming frequency and before that we had american soldiers in vietnam slaughtering the residents of entire villages one of the most notable perpetrators of this gratuitous violence was lieutenant william cali he spent just three years under house arrest and was ultimately pardoned by president jimmy carter some commentators called this latest spasm of violence the deadliest mass killing of the modern era but when does modernity begin european settlement in north america commenced some 500 years ago but as recently as 1921 300 african americans living in tulsa oklahoma were killed when white mobs torched their neighborhoods mary j perish later recounted how she fled with her infant daughter amidst showers of bullets from machine guns a half century before that during the reconstruction period 150 african americans were gunned down by white vigilantes in colfax louisiana the historical record is sad to say replete with such stories so perhaps the only thing that has really changed is our increasingly permissive gun laws and our ability to produce cheap weapons of mass destruction that do make it possible for virtually anyone acting alone to go on such a killing spree and still our forebears didn't need bump stocks they didn't need large capacity magazine clips you can buy one that holds 40 bullets for just 1999 at cabela's they didn't need these to engage in mass slaughter to give just one example shortly before the revolutionary war an entire village of delaware indians living in pennsylvania all christian converts by the way were beaten to death with clubs they had been falsely charged with stealing goods and household items that their attackers claimed should only belong to white people but the root of the matter really lies much further back even than this from the very beginning violence has been woven into the warp and the weft of the american experiment now tomorrow monday much of the nation will observe the federal holiday instituted in 1937 known as columbus day parades and other civic celebrations will be held in communities across the country and particularly in those communities where citizens of italian descent reside in large numbers but this is not going to happen here in madison wisconsin because our common council voted in 2005 to replace columbus day with indigenous people's day a decision that they then reaffirmed just last year and thus madison joined a number of cities and states in an initiative that began in berkeley california in 1992 which was the 500th anniversary of columbus's first voyage to the so-called new world and with this shift communities have been taking an important step toward rejecting the pernicious doctrine of discovery and acknowledging the grievous harm that it has caused the proper focus the proponents of this new holiday argue should be the long neglected rights and interests of our continent's native peoples it should also be pointed out that in most of the americas columbus enjoys far less celebrity than he does here there there are no celebrations of columbus day in most of the americas why because many of the citizens of mexico and bolivia are of indian heritage and as a george p horse capture observed no sensible indian person could ever celebrate the arrival of columbus or as the historian james lohan put it cherishing columbus is a characteristic of white history not american history our own faith tradition unitary universalism reached much the same conclusion and in 2012 delegates to our annual general assembly approved a resolution quote repudiating the doctrine of discovery as a relic of colonialism feudalism and religious cultural and racial biases and that particular resolution also called upon our congress to implement within our territorial boundaries the standards outlined in the un declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples something congress has yet to do by the way the episcopal church the disciples of christ the society of friends the united methodist church have all approved similar resolutions but the roman catholic church has not nicholas the fifth 1452 papal bull which gave a handful of christian nations the license to exploit indigenous peoples in perpetuity that bull still remains on the books now to be sure pope frances did recently address this issue and pope frances did declare that native peoples have the right to prior informed consent in any matter affecting their land or their resources but frances was not speaking ex cathedra and thus his statement did not have the effect of overturning established church doctrine now although symbolic gestures like the substitution of one holiday for another although these are important they really aren't a substitute for deeper investigations into the ideological underpinnings of this relentless campaign to subjugate our native peoples and to destroy their traditional way of life the doctrine of discovery represented just one piece of a larger set of arguments that were used to dispossess tens of millions of american indians that particular doctrine focused on their lack of christian faith their alien culture but what also made the indians dispensable was their perceived racial inferiority because in conjunction with the doctrine of discovery the roman catholic church developed another concept known as limpieza desangre which is spanish for blood purity that doctrine was used originally by spanish and portuguese christians to discriminate against and to persecute jews and muslims but eventually limpieza desangre became a useful tool in the hands of colonialists now before this time rocks and dunbar artis writes before this time the concept of biological race based on blood is not known to have existed in law or in taboo in christian europe or even elsewhere in the world the ideology of white supremacy was paramount in confiscating the lands and the properties of morris and jews in iberia of the irish in ulster and ultimately of native and african peoples one can readily see how convenient this concept proved to be in the enslavement of africans but it was equally valuable as a rationale for subjugating and exterminating indians and thus when communicable diseases were introduced by european explorers and settlers and those diseases decimated the population of new england a puritan leader's reaction was not to lament the loss of thousands of indian lives but rather to praise god for miraculously creating this open space for his own people's farms and settlements his indian lives just did not matter and so deeply embedded was this sentiment in european consciousness that whites who questioned it were routinely ostracized sometimes driven from their communities roger williams the founder of the state of road island was one of the very few among early colonists who made an effort to understand and to connect with his indian neighbors he studied and learned their languages he visited their villages he he invited indians into his own home and in the end roger williams was forced to revisit many of his prejudices about native americans he rejected the racism of his pure and brethren's and wrote nature knows no difference between europeans and americans in blood birth bodies god having of one blood made all humankind from close observation roger williams also gained an appreciation for indian agricultural practices they farmed the forest he wrote in amazement they used the land in a very exact and sustainable fashion and what was clear to roger williams was opaque to more casual colonial observers who for their part charged the indians with failure to improve the land failure to subdue the land in accordance with god's commandment in the book of genesis as william cronen writes european perceptions of what constituted a proper use of the environment thus reinforced what became a european ideology of conquest and all of these ideological factors the doctrine of discovery white supremacy a eurocentric concept of land and its and its use all of these contributed to the suppression of native peoples and although many of us were taught at least i was in my american history class that the west was one in a fair fight between hostile indians and intrepid settlers numerous well documented studies have rendered that narrative completely false no fair fight would produce such chilling statistics as this a reduction of the native population in the continental united states from an estimated 20 million in the 1500s to 250 thousand at the dawn of the 20th century the loss by indians of 97.7 percent of their original land holdings during andrew jackson's eight-year presidency alone the government entered into 86 treaties with 26 native tribes east of the mississippi and every one of those treaties required land concessions or the removal of the tribe from their homeland and in the case of the forced resettlement of the cherries the muscogies and the seminals a removal known as the trail of tears indian consent was not asked for and it was not given half of the 16 000 men women children and elders who embarked on the trail of tears died before they reached oklahoma the volunteer from georgia who later served as a colonel in the confederate army lamented he said i fought through the civil war i saw men shot to pieces and slaughtered by the thousands but the cherokee removal was the cruelest work i ever knew this sort of thing happened all across the country wherever white and indian interests clashed it happened here in wisconsin it happened in the badger state i'm sure some of you are familiar with how we acquired that nickname but perhaps you did not know how it relates to the fortunes of our indian tribes you see beginning in the early 19th century miners from the east began entering southwestern wisconsin lured by rich deposits of galena or lead ore and by 1825 as many as 10 000 outsiders had descended on mineral rich sites like pandarovits and platvul and galena and these were men who were so intent on their mining tasks that they had no time to build themselves homes and so they lived in abandoned mineshafts or they dug makeshift burrows into the cliff sides just like badgers would do but as it as it happened these fortune seekers were horning in on an enterprise that the hochunk and mesquaki tribes had claimed as their own for hundreds of years indians patty low rights had long mined lead for personal cosmetic use or to trade with other tribes and for the hochunk lead possessed sacred qualities and particularly attractive pieces of lead nuggets were buried with their dead and although the 1814 treaty of gents supposedly protected tribal land claims the invasion continued like wolves in the plains to the dead buffalo one hochunk leader observed they spread out in every direction to dig and to find and to carry off lead from our lands and ignoring appeals by the hochunks appeals to the treaty of gent the government did what it could do to encourage these miners providing them with generous leases in exchange for a 10 percent royalty well the problem was finally resolved by the removal of most of the hochunk tribe to areas west of the mississippi and to this day the wisconsin state flag depicts a miner holding a pickaxe while his aboriginal predecessors have been rendered invisible expropriation of indian lands continued well into the 20th century because in the late 1800s the government instituted a new policy called allotment and under this policy reservations were converted to private property and small parcels of land were were handed over to individual indian residents but through a variety of stratagems and loopholes non-indians were eventually able to gain title to many of these private holdings fragmenting the reservations and creating even greater impoverishment and before allotment ended in 1934 wisconsin's a jibway tribe to name just one had lost an additional 40 percent of its territory including many sites that they regarded as sacred land grabs continue last wednesday at the ywca's racial justice summit i listened to a man named jossy ross he is a columbia university trained attorney and a member of montana's blackfoot tribe he explained the politics behind the dakota access oil pipeline now as we know this project has been routed just north of the standing rock reservation the home to 10 000 sue indians a portion of that pipeline will travel underneath the upper missouri river from which that reservation draws most of its water this has been a cause of grave concern as we know because since 2010 there have been over 3300 instances of leaks and ruptures in oil and gas pipelines in the us and should such a leak occur under the upper missouri it would be catastrophic for the sue indian tribe but here's the thing ross told us that the original preferred route for the dakota access oil pipeline would have taken it through bismarck a predominantly white community that option he told us was considered too risky by the government and its builders but apparently not too risky for the well-being of 10 000 sue indians who lived downstream well apart from the tangible losses that i have touched on here perhaps equally or even more devastating for native peoples have been the spiritual losses that they have sustained over the centuries the uw historian patty lowe she belongs to the red cliff ojibway band and in her book on wisconsin's indian tribes she describes how the boarding school system that the government had put in place affected her own people because for many years she writes parents indian parents were forced to send their children to these boarding schools and as in other states these schools were used to drill the culture the religion and the language right out of these youngsters often through the use of corporal punishment and or shaming and moreover what education these schools did provide was wholly inadequate as one person said when an indian is 14 and enters of a white school he is only as far advanced as a child who would be still in nickerbockers this was back in 1910 and as a result young adult indians often had difficulty finding employment they were often reduced to apathy indifference and idleness the loss of sacred sites that also produced hardship native writers have argued that the sundering of a tribe's relationship to a place like the black hills that does more to explain the malaise and the alcoholism that's found on a reservation than any number of purely economic factors and so for example the pine ridge reservation contains one of the most impoverished communities in the us but its members steadfastly refuse to claim the 1.5 billion dollars that are sitting in a federal account for their exclusive use won't touch it why is that well in 1980 the us supreme court ordered that the sue nation be given monetary compensation for the loss of the black hills way back in the middle of the 19th century but the tribes declined the award because if they had accepted it it would have suggested that what they regard as sacred the center of their spiritual universe that it can be commodified that it can simply be sold off only a return of the black hills would be satisfactory to the suit and this rejection rocks and dunbar or teas rights demonstrates the relevance and the significance of the land to the sue not as an economic resource but as a relationship between people and place an indesolable relationship well it's still hard for non-indian americans to be honest about this history even president obama former president obama has repeated a trope that leaders in the us have been trotting out even as we were annexing half of mexico even as we were conquering cuba and the philippines even as we were driving hundreds of driving indian nations into the ground during a 2009 interview obama sought to explain why the united states could serve as an honest broker in the israeli palestinian conflict and during his comments he said yeah sometimes we make mistakes we've not been perfect but he said and here's the trope if you look at the track record america was not born as a colonial power really as a highly educated man of color i have to believe the barack obama knew better than this what does colonialism being a colonial power look like according to another keynote speaker at last wednesday's summit senali banjita balaji this is what it involves conquering land obviously eliminating difference oa owning and perpetuating the production of knowledge and the ways of proper being eradicating collective spirituality and liberating and prioritizing capital-based systems sounds pretty much like tried and true us policy to me and so as indigenous people's day draws near but let us perhaps agree that a trope like this is long overdue for permanent retirement ketner burns old indian friend dan would say that that might be the first step toward taking responsibility because it doesn't matter that we who are here today are innocent of the wrongs that have been done we belong to the dominant culture and we are as dan so aptly put it we're still drinking the water blessed be and on that justified anger alex g's initiative is the recipient of our outreach offering today and i encourage you to contribute as generously as you are able there were no new entries in our cares of the congregation book that lives outside the middle doors so we will proceed to our closing hymn it's already been sung in part by our children's choir so you will recognize the tune and given the lateness of the hour and the fact that we have the opportunity fair we will just sing the first three verses our closing words come from the creek nation from the poet harjo remember the sky that you were born under know each of the stars stories remember the moon know who she is i met her in a bar once in iowa city remember the sun's birth at dawn that is the strongest point in time remember sundown and the giving away tonight remember your birth and how your mother struggled to give you form and breath you are evidence of her life and of her mother's and hers remember your father he is your life also and remember the earth who skin you are red earth black earth yellow earth white earth brown earth we are earth remember the plants the trees animal life who all have their own tribes their own families their histories too talk to them listen to them they are alive poems remember the wind remember her voice she knows the origin of the universe i heard her singing kaiowa war dance songs at the corner of fourth and central ones remember you are all one people all people are you remember that you are this universe and the universe is you remember that everything is in motion is growing is you remember