So You Want to Be an Indian....

Will you be an Indian Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, as well as weekends?

Will you take the hatred and misunderstanding along with the mystique?

Will you honor other people’s sovereignty and protocol as well as your own?

Will you confront bigotry or hide from it?

Will you believe books and paper or visions and stories?

Will you respect human beings as faithfully as you do animals, plants and other beings?

Will you continue to learn or perpetuate the mockery?

Will you declare yourself to your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors?

Will you promote unity or disunity among Indians?

Will you take responsibility for your daily spiritual maintenance?

Will you let others tell you who you are?

Will you object to racist jokes, textbooks, Indian mascots and commercial rip-offs, or let them go?

Will you endeavor to profit from it or accept poverty and loneliness as the Indian’s traditional lot in life?

Will you question other Indians or show them answers?

Will you tell your employer you are Indian? Your minister?  Your doctor? The government?

Will you follow your head or your heart?

Will you listen to elders and ancestors or to authorities and officials?

Will you nourish your spirit or deny it?

Will you pursue honor or compromise?

Will you call yourself Indian or part-Indian?

Will you regard all the earth as a sacred place or only churches and special buildings?

Will you judge others by their words or by their actions?

Will you give prayers of thanksgiving or bargain for more?

Will you address the white man as Big Brother or as Little Brother?

Will you honor women for being women and men for being men?

Will you enjoy your earth walk or go in bitterness?

Will you protect the spiritual life of your circle with your own life?