Wounded Knee, Food, Land, and Freedom

I’ll probably lose followers but honestly I don’t care…you may have followed me for cute cows but I am so tired of being superficial and no longer care about numbers…

As a teenager, I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and it changed the way I saw the world forever. It was the first time I questioned the version of American history I had been taught. Our history books pushed patriotism and American exceptionalism, but all I could think was, “Are we the baddies?” History is written by the winners.

I don’t support either side politically. I personally believe that, at the highest levels, both sides are either compromised or have sold their souls to the same agenda. I don’t believe the people at the top care about us as much as we would like to believe they do. Throughout history, there has always been a ruling class that benefits from controlling the working class.

That is why I keep coming back to food and land. Controlling the food supply is one of the most powerful ways to control a population. I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation this week. Our government never simply defeated the Sioux in battle. They cheated them, lied to them, broke treaties, took their land, and destroyed the food source their entire way of life depended on. You don’t have to defeat people on a battlefield if you can make it impossible for them to survive without you.

Their land was taken, their food supply was destroyed, and eventually men, women, and children were massacred at Wounded Knee and buried together in a mass grave. Standing there made something I had read about most of my life feel very different.

I keep thinking about what I am supposed to do with the platform I have. I know the things that feel worth fighting for to me are the people, the land, and the animals. The older I get, the more connected those three things seem. The more dependent ordinary people become on systems they don’t control, the less freedom they actually have.

On an unrelated note… read Agenda 2030 and look at how the pieces are all falling into place.