As Youth of the Peaks we wish to send
greetings and good health to you!
Welcome to 2006!
To Youth, Parents, Elders:
To the Flagstaff City Council:
To the Arizona Snowbowl:
To the Flagstaff Police Department:
It is customary during this time to make a New Years resolution, to
clear up bad feelings, mend relationships, and commit to new beginnings.
With this New Year, we would like to once again ask Arizona Snowbowl to
resolve to respect our sacred mountain, our culture, our people, and our
community! The San Francisco Peaks are sacred to 13 indigenous nations
and are an integral part of everyday life and worship. When Indigenous
peoples pray at this sacred mountain, they pray for all of humanity. All
of humanity is affected if the mountain is desecrated.
The Youth of the Peaks strive to build a world founded in justice,
dignity, and peace. We strive to live life with more dignity, more
respect, and more happiness. We are young people committed to learning
about our cultures and traditions. We wish to know the songs, dances,
ceremonies, stories, and knowledge that our elders can pass down to us.
How can we understand this knowledge, honor and respect it if the sacred
mountain is being desecrated?
We recognize and commend the Flagstaff Police Department for its own
steps towards positive transformation. We look forward to seeing the new
look (khakis and Polo shirts) and pray that with this change in clothes
also brings a more positive approach towards youth and the diversity of
our communities. We would like to offer our services in any way towards
building a more culturally sensitive department.
We feel that it would
be appropriate for indigenous elders and teachers to share with you
cultural taboos, reflections on racism, colonization, culture and
traditional histories.
We ask the Flagstaff City Council to make a New Years resolution to
honor sacred sites and to listen to the voices of the Indigenous peoples
of this land. We ask the City Council to please say No! to selling
reclaimed wastewater to Arizona Snowbowl. By doing this you will show
the world and the people of this community what it means to have respect
for the diversity of spiritual practices rather than compliance to
cultural destruction for the dollar. Yet, a healthy economy can also
support cultural diversity.
Flagstaffs economy is driven by indigenous
people from the labor to shoppers. If the City of Flagstaff sells this
reclaimed water to the Arizona Snowbowl it will have a hand in
desecrating one of the most sacred sites to 13 indigenous nations. What
message will that send to the Indigenous peoples of this land who are a
major economic base to Flagstaff? What message will that send to all
peoples of faith in this community? This is a time for healing and
reconciliation, not furthering of injustices.
We wish to thank our parents for their continued support. We ask our
parents to continue giving us the love we need to maintain our efforts
to protect our culture. This is a cross-generational movement built on
families supporting one another and passing the torch to their children
to continue to work for a better world. Again, we thank our parents for
their support; we could not have made it through the past few months
trials and tribulations without the love and care of our parents. We
invite all families to join our efforts.
We further wish to thank our Elders for their continued support. For
spending time to teach us to grow as people and maintain our strength.
We attempted to honor all that our elders have given us by hauling wood
for many of them. We will continue to show our appreciation by
maintaining these types of humble efforts. We want our elders to know
that we are here to listen to you, to learn about our cultural and
traditional knowledge. We know we need the guidance our elders provide.
Protecting our sacred mountain, preserving our culture, defending the
health of our Earth, and strengthening our community can only be
achieved with the blessings and teachings of our elders. We want to
learn more about our traditions and culture. We want our elders to know
that we are here to help support them. We want our elders to know that
our commitment to them will never cease and it will only grow.
As Youth of the Peaks, we strive to see the bigger picture. We see that
we are ALL Youth of the Peaks; we are all of these sacred mountains, of
this holy land. We are sustained by it. By the water it provides, the
food it produces, and the air that we breathe, this land is what keeps
us alive. We see that across our nations many people are struggling,
including young people. There is a lot of pain. We face language loss,
violence, alcoholism, drugs, hopelessness, suicide rates, feelings of
loneliness, and loss of land. The Youth of the Peaks has become of
family of families and a community of communities working together to
heal these wounds. It has provided a place where we are loved and cared
for and can work positively in our communities.
To the Youth the time is now it is a New Year, and a new day is coming.
We can choose how to live our own lives. Resistance comes from within.
It is time to listen to our own voices, our own stories, our own
histories, and be guided by our parents and elders. We call for your
support to start working locally. We will be starting Youth of the Peaks
chapters across the Southwest encouraging local struggles by connecting
to a broader Youth Movement, with the same values that we have expressed
of dignity, respect, justice, sustainability, and protection of sacred
land. Our struggle is yours, and yours is ours.
We are artists, food
growers, students, teachers, workers, filmmakers, and revolutionaries.
We wish to build a world where many worlds can fit. It is not just
Snowbowl there is a whole world out there struggling for respect,
dignity, and protection of the sacred. Everyday there are struggles we
must all go through. We have to transform our world so we have a
stronger voice. It is possible to say that we are in the process of
creating new histories. We have an ongoing connection to this mountain,
land, and culture and it has been disrupted. As Youth of the Peaks, we
want to continue our way of life that has been passed down to us so that
we are able to carry it on for future generations.
A new voice is emerging from the Southwest, United States. It sweeps in
from the peaks, from the sacred mountains, from the high deserts, and
fills the cities, towns, and reservations with hope and a new sense
dignity. It writes of a new story and of a new day - of the youth, the
dignified, the indigenous, the marginalized, the women, the farmer, the
worker, the exile the different. A Youth Movement is here that is
creating a new story, a story of healing, a story of hope.
Happy New Years! from the mountains of the Southwest,
The Youth of the Peaks
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Special thanks to Firefly for passing this on.
Contents
January 2006 Reports
Last updated on January 12, 2006
