Let Me Walk in Beauty
O Great Spirit,
whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life to all the world,
hear me.
I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.Let me walk in beauty
and let my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears grow sharp to hear your voice.Make me wise so that I may understand the things
you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.
I seek strength not to be greater than my brother or sister
but to fight my greatest enemy, myself.
Make me always ready
to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes
So when life fades as the fading sunset
my spirit may come to you without shame.Chief Yellow Lark, from the book, God Makes the Rivers to Flow
Less than two weeks from now, on October 12, Indigenous Peoples Day will be recognized around the country. On this day, 534 years ago, Christopher Columbus and his men were discovered in the Caribbean, lost and trying to find present-day India. Thus began over 500 years of European colonization of the Americas.
Leading up to the 500th anniversary of that fateful encounter, in 1992, I took part in Washington, DC, with a dozen others in a 42-day, water-only Fast for Justice and Peace in the Americas. Brian Willson, Scott Rutherford, and Diane Fogliatti initiated it, and it ran from September 1 to October 12.
The overall message of this action and the much broader movement out of which it emerged was that it was long past time to turn away from all that Christopher Columbus represents—racism, slavery, militarism, imperialism, and ecological destruction—and commit ourselves to working for a next 500 years very different than the one experienced between 1492 and 1992. An Indigenous-led campaign took action over many months in 1991-92 in support of this essential new direction for the USA and other countries in the Americas. One specific demand was to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
Toward the end of the fast, Diane Fogliatti came up with an idea to keep these issues alive: do an organized fast for 12 days, from October 1 to October 12, each year going forward. I ended up taking part in this, helping to lead a People’s Fast for Justice network which did so from 1993 to 2001. Our two demands were to rename Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day and to free political prisoner Leonard Peltier, which he finally was, as one of President Joe Biden’s last official acts as President on January 20, 2025, his last day in office.
As far as the renaming of October 12th, since 1992 there have been a growing number of localities and states which have officially recognized in some way the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day, including the states of Alaska, California, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. In response to this upsurge, Biden signed a proclamation supporting Indigenous Peoples Day.
There are an awful lot of reasons to be anxious right now, knowing how important it is that there be as massive a repudiation as possible on November 3 of the Trump regime and its apologists in the Republican Party, but it is a very positive thing, something for which to be thankful, that Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and elsewhere in the world continue to survive, continue to fight for their rights as tribal nations, and continue to give leadership in the existential battle to prevent cascading ecological and societal devastation and for a very different future in the years to come. ¡La lucha continúa!