Objections to Palin

Hanh mitakuyapi. Hello, my relatives.
On just about any grounds you can think of, I Object, in spades, to Sarah Palin.
First, she works overtime to come across as perky & cute. I detest perky & cute. It's fake.
Second, she has no detectable respect for anything or anyone unless they can raise her status on her 'agenda ladder'. She is anti: (a) the First Amendment to the Constitution, especially on the grounds of Freedom of Speech, Expression, & Religion. (b) stopping - or even addressing - global warming. (c) saving polar bears - or any other species that isn't human - from extinction. Apparently this bimbo doesn't realize that we all have to eat, what happens to one is likely to happen to all sooner or later, and humans are for the most part, bor-ing. And she definitely hasn't figured out that if only 2-Leggeds are preserved, sooner or later, we'll either all have to become vegetarians or resort to cannibalism. On the Rez, a vegetarian is The Definition of a lousy hunter!
(d) wolves. Sarah the Bimbo supports aerial slaughter of wolves and promotes a $150/right foreleg bounty on wolves. Obviously she has never heard of the concepts of "fair chase", "fair play", or "respect", let alone the concept of "showing respect". I have hunted since childhood and the idea of aerially slaughtering anything turns my stomach. Literally. (e) sex education other than abstinence. Lessee here.. she has a 17-year-old pregnant daughter. Doesn't sound to me as if abstinence as sex education is a workable concept. Doesn't look like it either.. or it won't in a few weeks.. (f) a woman's Right - not privilege - to choose whether or not to remain pregnant should she become so. We females are the only ones who can take all the risks associated with pregnancy. There is no such thing as even one instant of vacation from them for 9 long months. And, Gross Sexual Imposition is defined in law as, "the imposition of a desire by one group or person on the sex organs of another". In short, Sarah the Bimbo promotes rape, and 'thinks' it should be sanctioned by law. Giving, of course, no thought whatsoever to the 'sticky details' of what to do with all the rapists alreadcy in jail, or what to do to / about rapists who commit this crime in the future. (g) Sarah the Bimbo refers to everyday people as "Joe and Josephine Six-Pack". This is alcoholism, folks! This is promoting the perspective that alcoholism characterizes the majority of people! This is promoting the perspective that alcoholism is somehow a joke. NOT STINKING HARDLY! Alcoholism has devastated millions of people & virtually every culture on earth - particularly those of us First Nations / ITI.
Even "if" she had any qualifications for a potential President - and considering John McCain's age, that's an important consideration, her perspectives and attitudes toward simple courtesy and showing of respect prove beyond any shadow of doubt that she is totally unfit to be elected to office at all and most of all, to the Vice-Presidency of the U.S.A. , now, or ever.

Ice SHELVES Have Fallen Into The Ocean

Hanh mitakuyapi. Hello my relatives.
If there are still skeptics "out there", yesterday's online headlines stated that an ice shelf the size of Massachusetts has fallen into the Arctic Ocean.
This redefines "scary" for any thinking person. For this horse-Indn ITI, it's scarier, because I am the woman who Dances The Four Winds - a prayer from Lakota Traditional spirituality to heal the Sacred Hoop of the world.
Everyone is a part of this hoop, as is every kind of People - the Standing Nation (plants, e.g.), the Rock Nation, the Water Nation, the Winged People, the Unktechhi (little monsters that live in warm, wet, dark places and make you very ill), the 2-Leggeds (humans), the 4-Leggeds, the no-Leggeds; - our Holy Mother the Earth and all we who live together on Her.
I Danced my obaghi (sacred commitment) twice, as the spirits directed me; giving flesh twice, overcame all the obstacles that tried to stop me, so far as I know. As in anything, I gave it my best shot, and pray it was good enough. The Elders said I did a good job. I trust them to know better than I, since when I'm in the ceremonial way, I'm between this world and the spirit world, so my perspective is different, to say the least.
So when I read that this huge block of incredibly ancient ice and snow has separated from the land it has been stuck to for thousands of years, I become very uncomfortable.
I realized when I made the obaghi that the world would still go through some radical changes. My prayer includes that no species becomes extinct as a result of these changes. But when confronted with a change as huge as an ice shelf the size of Massachusetts falling into the Arctic Ocean, I pray my prayer more often and with greater intensity than I have in the past.
This storehouse of data on the earth's history can't be put back, after all. Once it melts, all of that information will be lost forever.
You who read this are welcome to join me in praying for the healing of the Sacred Hoop of the world, since you, too, are a part of it. In the long run, after all, it's your skin you're praying to save & to keep from suffering unduly due to radical climate change, too.
Mitakuye oiasin.

Everything Has Limits

Hanh mitakuyapi.
I was reading a back issue of National Geographic this morning as I ate breakfast and there were several articles on decimation of species, both land and sea.
It occurs to me that the tone of National Geographic's articles has changed in the past roughly 10 years, from reporting on how marvelous various places and/or species are to how endangered. Have you noticed this, or are you just a passive watcher, but not a wonderer?
There are only 3 kinds of people, after all.. those who watch what happens, those who make things happen, and those who wonder "what happened?!?!". With luck, I'm generally in the first 2 categories, and I strive to stay out of the 3rd one. Still, when I find myself in that 3rd category, I use failure analysis to try to determine what went wrong, why it went wrong, and with luck, how I can prevent recurrences in the future. I learned it long ago from an article on a major glass maker; I figure if it was good enough for them, it's certainly good enough for me.
Throughout history, and until recently, everything I've read about the oceans and the "New" world (i.e., Turtle Island, my Peoples' home) stated how "limitless" they are. The prairies, the buffalo, the passenger pigeons, the virgin forests, the fish, the water, the air, the sky. What a gigantic lie!
Just as there ain't no free ride, there ain't no such thing as "limitless", at least within the bubble we live in - the biosphere surrounding and including our Holy Mother the Earth. And if you notice, every entity I listed above as considered "limitless" is now either extinct or in danger of extinction.
The only tall grass prairie left is the Flint Hills in Kansas. The buffalo have been brought back from near extinction - there were fewer than 500 left when someone decided to save them.. The passenger pigeon is gone. Saving virgin forests from loggers is a constant battle, and there aren't many patches of them left - certainly nothing like the thousands of square miles that were here when the enviornmental rapists began invading from Europe. Fish? Over 90% of the oceans' fish stocks are gone due to over-fishing. Over-fishing, of course, is due to 2 things - gross human over-population and waste of caught species not intended to be caught. Water pollution is an ongoing battle; and recently there was a spate of articles on contaminants found in every water sample tested, from every part of the land. Air pollution is rampant - witnessed by smog, often called 'the price of progress' by enviro-rapists.. If that's progress, I'll take regress gladly, although the fact is, much 'progress' can be had without pollution - it is simple greed that makes the enviro-rapists fight so hard against doing things in a responsible fashion, and showing respect for our Holy Mother the earth and our place in the web of life. But then, such people don't respect anything - including themselves - thus they fight having to show that they don't know what respect is, and that they don't know how to show it.. As for the skies - satellites, airplanes, rockets crowd the skies. It's nearly impossible to go anywhere on earth - no matter how isolated, and not see one of more of them, or evidence thereof..
Once again, we has met the enemy, and he is us, takoszja. Humans. Not the "mightiest" species on earth save in one way - the potential to cause utter devastation by means of irresponsible treatment of the many resources available to us from Her bounty. Humans made the problem, other humans can turn the mess around - provided enough of us 'other' humans get busy and act.. The time is now. Actually, it was decades ago. Catch-up is never a fun game. Pity we 'other' humans have allowed this mess to develop.. My prayer is that it's not too late. The spiritual responsibility for the devastation that has occurred rides in varying degree on every one who has treated the biosphere with disrespect.
So what have you done today to help heal the Sacred Hoop of the world, of which you, too, are a part?

China, Quakes, Population Problem

Hanh mitakuyapi. We've been reading about the death count after the earthquakes in China since May 12, and the number appears pretty hefty.
To those who have lost loved ones, the immediate impact and loss are tragedies, of course.
But in the face of human over-population of our Holy Mother the Earth - most of it in China - is 68,000 really all that many? I can hear the flack already from the "humans are sacred" camp, but the answer really is, "No. It's such a tiny drop in the bucket, that compared to the burden humans have become on the earth, it is negligible. Let's run the numbers and get a new - more realistic - perspective.

The current estimate of human population on our Holy Mother the Earth is 6 billion 500 million. That's 6,500,000,000. The death count in China is about 68,000. If you divide 68,000 by 6,500,000,000 - breaking it down in easy steps - you get 68 / 6,500,000; or about 1/ 1,000,000. If you want to express this number as a percentage, it is 1/10,000 of 1 %, or 0.0001 %.
In terms anyone can relate to, if you have 1,000,000 $1 bills in a room and you lose one of them, can you tell at a glance? No. Is there 'noticeably' more air, water, food, or space in the room? No.

Our Holy Mother the Earth is our "room". We humans all share her bounty for our entire lives. We ITI refer to the earth as our Mother because She provides us with every physical thing we need to survive during our lives. The passing of 68,000 humans from this life is not a tragedy for them. They have no cares now.
Unfortunately, the loss of 0.0001% of the current human population is not a real big stress-reliever relative to the needs of the rest of us who share the room on this planet - the Standing Nation (plants; rain forest, for example); the water people (fish, many species in danger of extinction from over-fishing to feed humans); the four-leggeds (too many to mention, especially those in danger of extinction due to human over-population); and concerning all.. global warming, which is caused by human activities - and there are too many humans. The ongoing mass die-offs of bees is a warning sign no one should ignore - most of our food crops require bees to pollinate them or we get no crops!

The most responsible thing humans can do these days is not reproduce themselves. We should be rewarding women who refuse to have babies and men who refuse to sire them. This doesn't mean living without bed-sports; it means dedicated use of contraceptives, including tying tubes and vasectomies. It also means ceasing to caterwaul about human deaths as 'tragedies' when in reality, they contribute to saving the rest of the world from mass extinctions. Every 'drop' counts, in this bucket..

So - what have you done today to help heal the Sacred Hoop of the world, of which you, too, are a part?

Earth Day Thoughts

Hanh mitakuyapi. Yesterday was the official Earth Day here in the U.S.A. Here are some of my thoughts on it.

Every day is Earth Day, April 22 is simply a day set aside for official recognition of that fact. Why is every day Earth Day? Because we only get one earth to live on. If we humans foul this one up - and global warming says we are fast approaching the State of Fubar in this matter - we have no place to go. We are literally in a "save the game or die" situation.

I went to the local Earth Day Celebration (in Bismarck, ND) - all 4 hours of it out of the 24 hours that make up any day. There were demonstrations, a proclamation by the governor that we could all sign, and 4 talks. The 2 talks I went to were good; I learned things. This is how I judge the value of a presentation. There should have been at least 8 hours of "celebration" and many more talks.

The "celebration" had something like 20 booths. I noticed that the Sierra Club did not have a booth there. Neither did any of the major conservation organizations, such as Ducks Unlimited, which is headquartered at Bismarck, ND. I cannot help but wonder why not. Preservation and restoration of the potholes where ducks breed is excellent activity for helping our Holy Mother the Earth.

At one of the booths, there were trees being given away. We were offered a sheet with the names of 5 kinds of trees on it. The trees we were given were not labelled, so I have no idea what I got, other than that it was some member of the pine family. Had it been chokecherry, which is the ND State Tree, and holy to my People (the Lakota), I would have been happier, but I will find this tree a home and take care of it and pray that it grows. ND is high plains prairie, so trees are not common here, except along creek- and river-bottoms. This 'pine family' tree is not something we would expect to find growing in a river bottom, so now I have to do some homework to find out where best to put it. I find this lack of attention to detail bothering.

There was absolutely nothing about bale buildings or green roofs. I asked the state forester about green roofs, and he said he had heard of them, but didn't know anything about them or where to find information. Given that many square miles of the earth's surface are covered with blacktop, concrete, and buildings daily, thus taking out many square miles of plants that process carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere and so reduce global warming, I believe he should have been knowledgeable about bale buildings and green roofs. Don't you?

I made some good contacts which will enable the organizations I head - one for-profit and one non-profit - to become greener than they already are (and have been for more than 30 years).

I pointed out to the people handing out CFL bulbs that incandescent bulbs are an excellent source of heat in our houses and businesses in the winter time, and that I have made sure that we burn incandescents in the winter to take advantage of this, while burning CFLs in the non-heating months when we don't need to heat. Tain't many such months in ND, but there are some. (They bulb-handers said they hadn't thought of making use of the heat from incandescent bulbs, but realized that this is a good idea..)

I visited at length with the man from Waste Management Corporation, and told him that they need to do more advertising, since I didn't know what to do with plastic bottles, there being no known place to take them for recycling here. I also told him that since we had lots of such bottles and didn't know what else to do with them, I had our people save them in bags and when it got cold in the fall, we fired up a hammermill shredder and shredded the bottles and made packing out of them. It's excellent packing. We continue to look for other uses for it. He liked that we do that, and said he will see about more advertising of the fact that WM takes plastic.

Since I am already greatly overloaded with work, networking is something I don't do tons of. "Should", but it takes time I don't have. Still - there was not one booth that talked about solar heating, alternative energy, insulation, or any other such subjects. This is a major failing in my view. Next year, my company will have a booth at the Earth Day celebration, we believe, and we will talk about solar heating (we make a passive solar heater which can also be used for passive solar cooling in some buildings), bale buildings, and green roofs.

I Sun Dance, and I am the woman who Dances The Four Winds, which is a prayer to heal the Sacred Hoop of the world. My question in this regard is, "What have you done today to help heal the Sacred Hoop, of which you, too, are a part?" Ask yourself this question daily and keep track of your answers. That is what Earth Day is about....

Insight vs Elephant in Living Room

We all know about the elephant in the living room.. I realized a couple of days ago that I've been tripping over one for nearly 2 years now. This is more than a tad embarrassing, mitakuyapi..
I design things all the time. Beadwork patterns, powwow outfits, solar heaters, ways to improve the mileage of vehicles while cutting emissions without computers, bale buildings, and on & on. More than one person has asked if my mind ever shuts down.. The answer is, probably not. I know I'm a restless sleeper.. High energy people are like that, I guess. Regardless, I am.
About 2 years ago, I doodled a design for a passive solar heater that would hang on the outside of a wall. I built some for myself, then filed it under "the 2-year plan", which means I might get to "doing something positive" with it in 2 years or so, or I might never, or somewhere in between. This was before $2 and $3 / gallon fuel, obviously.
Then about a year ago, I read an article on someone else's design for a passive solar heater that hangs on the outside of a wall, and while it felt awfully familiar, it didn't ring any loud bells for me. Until a couple of days ago, when I was looking for something else, and came across my old design doodles in my files.
Em-barr-ass-ing! No wonder the article and the design of the units seemed awfully familiar.
Not to mention - I've been racking my brain for ways to get the tiny company I founded in 2000 back in the market we had to withdraw from due to inability to meet demand for our product with the equipment we had, and insufficient money to build or buy the equipment we need to meet demand.
It has never been a matter of "need to make market" with us; it has always been a matter of "how to meet demand". Yes, lucky us on one hand, and pity us on the t'other. Funding Indn projects is not popular in the U.S, no matter what the hype says.
Please, don't say "write a grant" - I'm a good grant writer, but we've struck out repeatedly with that approach of late because we insist we plan to hire non-drinking, non-doping people with a strong bent towards other ITI (Indigenous Turtle Islanders. You call us Indns or "Natives"). Indn Preference is federally mandated and there are gobs of incentives for it, not to mention, if we don't preferentially hire our own the way majority-culture types preferentially hire whites, I believe we're kicking ourselves in the shins. That's stupid, so we try hard not to do that.
I've been out of work since early November 2007, and out of 'spare' cash since about mid-January, 2008. I've heard more ridiculous excuses for not hiring me than I can shake a stick at. My current favorite is, "we don't want to hire you because you have a college education, and our process is patented. Our belief is we must do everything we can to protect our patented process from thieves." Takoszja, I don't want to work for any company that believes 'everyone else is a thief', and that includes me..
Personally, I - like nearly everyone else - find the making of windows to be supremely boring work. I want a job, not a career, so I can pay my bills & build the equipment I need to get 'my' company - with one food product and two non-food products - back in the marketplace. Period. I could give a flying damn about stealing anything; especially something as expensive as a patent. They have an offensive - and stupid - attitude. There's a lot of that around of recent times, as we all know.
I was searching through my notebooks for an old design the other day and found my design for passive solar heaters. Bells rang, things banged, and I saw the elephant! Right there where it had always been, smack in the middle of my living room! Or in this case, my office.
I had recently figured my personal carbon footprint at an online site, and found it to be between 6,000 and 7,000 lbs. of carbon per year (compared to an average of 20,500 lbs/ year for most people in the U.S.).
The passive solar heater would not only cut that for me, but it would cut the carbon footprint of everyone who heats. Lessee, now, that's most of the country, sooner or later, isn't it? I believe it is. Up here in the northern tier states, it's 5-6 months of every year.
Now this is exciting, takoszja! For about $500, I can put together a web site, information brochure (preferably email, not paper), and manufacture and sell enough units to get my tiny little company back in the market(s)! We can support the 501c3 I also head at a level it has only dreamed about for the 35 years of its existence. We can make a Difference!
I am a Sun Dancer, therefore, a Pipe Carrier. The prayer that orients my Channunpa, and therefore, my entire life, is called the Prayer of The Four Winds. I am the woman who Dances The Four Winds. This prayer is a prayer to heal the Sacred Hoop of the world. If anything would help heal the Sacred Hoop of the world, it would be something like these passive solar heaters, which cut the carbon footprint of everyone who uses them because they cut the amount of fuel needed to heat a building - be it a house, a shop, a chicken coop, a trailer / mobile home, or an apartment.
Now all I have to do is get a job so I can put the $500 or so together & get this out there. I find this so exciting I don't feel embarrassed any more for having not seen the elephant in my living room (OK, office) for so doggoned long. All of this will happen because I doodle and I save the doodles. Pilamiyaye! Wopila tanka!, Takuskanskan.

YOU CAN Combat Global Warming - Easily

It's true. YOU can do a number of simple things to combat global warming, easily and effectively.
On the Rez, the 3R's usually refer to tires for the motorized ponies; Round, Rubber, and Rolls.
Off the Rez as well as "On", the 3R's refer to Recycle, Re-use, Renovate.
(1) Sort your trash and recycle aluminum cans. Aluminum is an ecological nightmare to produce, 'new', because it takes huge amounts of electricity to remove aluminum from its original bauxite ore. Not to mention, mining is not friendly to any part of our Holy Mother the Earth. I have read estimates that enough energy is wasted producing 100 lbs. of new aluminum as is needed to power 100 'average' homes! I have not checked this out, but I will. No matter how much it really is, it is disrespectful to our Holy Mother the Earth and Her bounty to waste it.
(2) Buy fabric shopping bags and use them. Plastic shopping bags do not biodegrade, and they 'live' for decades, mangling and killing all manner of beautiful and innocent People of other Nations; our neighbors on this earth we all share. Moreover, I read that the manufacture of plastic bags wastes something like 12 million barrels of oil a year (!).
(3) Own a home? Rent one? Even some apartment dwellers might be able to use this one.. Passive solar heating save fossil fuels and money. A simple thermosiphon solar heater can save a bundle if you have a south- or southwest-facing wall to put it to work on. Easy to build, requires no maintenance, has no fan, uses no electricity, and the design goes with any style. Take a look at Gary Reysa's article(s on it in the Mother Earth News, or go to his web site, BuildItSolar.com for ideas, instructions, and inspiration.
I enjoy winter camping, and my dog, Chalki ("coal") goes with me everywhere anyway.. It get down to zero F and even below in the winter up here, so I made a small collapsible version of Gary's thermosiphon heater to hang on the side of the camper to warm it up in there and keep Chakli more comfortable on those c-c-cold days. Even on a cloudy day, it can raise the temperature enough to notice.
I love it. It fits right in with my favorite Theory of Operations, the KISS! Theory. Keep It Stupidly Simple! As you can tell, I love low-tech.
(3A) Variation on thermosiphon heater. Windows. Clean glass windows let in a lot of infrared radiation (heat). If you're worried about fading of your art and furnishings, figure out ways to let the sun shine in and heat your place without allowing fading. There are all kinds of solar films available to do this.. Or rearrange your furniture! Cover it while you're gone. Then, be sure to cover those windows at night to keep the heat in.
(4) Remember the 3R's On the Rez? Round, Rubber, and Rolls? Refers to tires, right? Keeping them properly inflated means saving fuel, because they Roll better when they're Rounder.
(5) Walk more, drive less. Not only saves fuel, it shaves off the moder American nemesis .. wahSHEE (washi). Fat. Yes, it takes longer. If you just used that for an argument not to walk more and drive less, you need to slow down anyway. Whether you live longer or not, you'll feel better.
(6) Begin using LED lights instead of CFLs wherever possible, for greatest energy savings. LED lights have the huge environmental advantage of not containing any mercury, as well. I have an LED flashlight that runs on 4AAA batteries that is amazing in the amount of light it puts out. It is a small spotlight, even at a distance. I have LEDs running off batteries that are charged by solar panels for walk lights.. Safety lights are LED too, along with Yule lights.

There are plenty of options - you do the next 6 - 7 and let me know what you come up with. Pilamiyaye.

To Combat Global Warming -

We all need to pitch in. "Now" is good; "yesterday" / decades ago would be lots better. If we all had been doing everything we could to live in harmony with our environment ("live green") for decades, now, we would not be facing annihilation from global warming now. Never doubt that we are.. Right now.
As the woman who Dances The Four Winds, it is my job to know this. This isn't 'superstition' or 'myth' or 'my personal perception' - it's something my bones know, right along with the rest of me.
There's a myth-conception, takoszja, that "one person's actions don't count". That's a lie. I don't know where it came from, but everybody's cultures have example of one person whose actions not only counted, they counted massively - and they still do. For that matter, there are such people alive today whose actions count, massively.
Historically, the majority culture has Joan of Arc. The English burned her as a heretic; the French got her canonized. 50 million Frenchmen "might" be wrong, but they weren't in her case.
There's Sitting Bull. He had a vision (which is different from a dream) in which he saw blue coat soldiers dying en mass, and sure enough, on June 26, 1876, they did. The majority culture calls it the Battle of the Little Big Horn. We call it the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Same river, just that the invaders have always insisted on renaming everything; it's part of their effort to destroy our ITI claim to Turtle Island.
There's the majority culture's Jesus Christ; we ITI have Crazy Horse, our Holy Mother the Earth and the Holy Woman Who brought us the Sacred Channunpa that is the center of Lakota spiritual Ways.
Islam has Mohammad; China has Confucius & Buddha.
On the down side, there's Hitler and Mussolini and Pol Pot; Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer and a host of serial killers. Each of them - good or bad - "just one person" - whose actions had a huge effect on large numbers of people.
If there's no one else, there is your mother and father and one or more teachers, aunties, and uncles.
Dr. Stephen Chu, Nobel Laureate of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has said in speeches that "...global warming is so much worse, and so much bigger a threat to continuation of life on the earth as we know it, than has been published in the media, that every engineer should be working on this problem right now. There is no time to waste."
What can you do? Use cloth shopping bags rather than getting plastic. Find uses for those bags instead of justing putting them in the trash and the landfill. Keep your tires properly inflated and your car's ignition system working properly. Drive diesel instead of gasoline.
It takes less petroleum to 'crack' diesel out of crude than it does to 'crack' gasoline and diesel engines give better mileage than gasoline engines. Otto Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil, and while modern diesel engines are more complex than the original, they are also easier to convert to "grease mobiles" and biodiesel than modern gasoline engines are.
Use a solar clothes dryer (a clothesline) whenever possible, rather than a dryer. Be environmentally conscious when you buy clothes.
Think. Think for yourself, and think ahead. Keep in mind the ancient saying of my People, which has come into considerable use of recent years - mitakuye oiasin. It means, "All, my relatives". My language doesn't have words like "are", but you can substitute the word 'are' for the comma. This saying is both a blessing and a reminder of where we Two-Leggeds "really" stand in the Grand Scheme of Things.
Up in New England, there's an old saying that makes excellent sense if we are to stop global warming - "Use it up, wear it out, reuse it, or do without". "Americans" consume entirely too much 'new' when they could recycle. This is a relatively recent development - within my lifetime, I know.
Encourage people to have fewer children. Human beings are not sacred, nor are we the most important life form on the planet. We Two-Leggeds are simply the species with the most capacity to make permanent changes in our environment. As we are seeing, these changes are not always good.
In the case of global warming, it will not be only species the majority culture calls 'lesser' that will go extinct. It will definitely include us Two-Leggeds; us humans. Which, if you think about it, is only fair, since we -especially of the majority western culture - are the ones who made it happen. What's sauce for the goose is still sauce for the gander, after all.
Remember the old story of Everybody, Somebody and Nobody? Everybody thought Somebody would take care of the problem, so Nobody did, and nothing got done to solve or prevent the problem. Everyone is part of that - You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem. There is no middle ground or fence to ride in this. And we are essentially at the eleventh hour. What you do - or don't do - does count. Mitakuye oiasin.

Calling you Gear heads - Who is Jonathon Goodwin?

I will read almost anything that isn't pornographic or which proselytizes for Christianity, so recently I picked up a copy of the November 2007 issue of "Fast Company". The cover story is about Jonathon Goodwin, a motorhead from Wichita, KS. If you can't find a copy, put a comment with your email & I'll send a set of scans. I've been reading this article until I nearly have it memorized and it makes me so excited, I nearly drool.
Jonathon Goodwin has figured out a way to use off-the-shelf parts in new arrangements to get amazing mileage out of engines - especially big ones and diesel - while increasing their power output and radically decreasing their emissions. Intellectually speaking, this is a man after my own heart.
Like many other people, I've always known that the solution to the oil problem - & now, to the global warming problem - is tons simpler than the automakers & the oil companies would like us to believe. Unlike many people, I have the training and experience to know, rather than simply to guess at this. Unfortunately, I haven't had the money & tools to tinker and see what resulted when I had the time. A problem lots of women, ITI, and minorities have, it seems. It costs the world greatly, this waste of creativity, and it will so long as the majority culture's predominant attitude is one of "massas and slaves". That attitude is anti-environment, anti-people, and just plain disrespectful. Maybe blogs such as this one will redirect that. We can hope.
Regardless - Even with training, skills, and knowledge, most of us are just too busy scratching for a living & slaving to hold the ITI / Indian world together in the face of continuing assaults by the majority culture. Luckily, not everyone is in this position, and I'm so0o thankful for that. Jonathon Goodwin is one such.
I first got involved with diesel engines about 4 years ago. The diesel engine is easier to reconfigure (tinker with) than the gasoline engine, was originally designed to run on peanut and other vegetable oils, and puts out more usable power per unit of displacement. In case you hadn't already figured it out, I'm a wrench-wench. Hmm - OK, a granny wrench-wench.
Age is just a number; it doesn't matter how long you've walked the earth or hung around the fort; it matters what you did while you were walking. Joan of Arc, Crazy Horse, and others from every culture prove that. I've always been a 'whiz kid', and I expect to be one until I die.
Regardless - if enough people put their heads together we should be able to come up with simple, workable ways to help him put his discoveries together in a form that large numbers of people can put to work in their own vehicles, and so make a really valuable contribution to a whole list of problems confronting oil use and global warming.
Duwahleh! Now there's a really radical and useful thought!