Take a walk on the wild side:  The 12th World Wilderness Congress, August 25-31, 2024

RAPID CITY – From August 25th to 31st, 2024 Rapid City will play host to Indigenous tribal members from around the world for the 12th annual World Wilderness Congress: Wild12.  The Congress will be held at The Monument located at 444 N. Mt. Rushmore Road.

The 12th World Wilderness Congress (WILD12) is a global forum that brings together thousands of delegates to coordinate and mobilize the protection of Earth’s remaining wilderness and wild places. It is hosted by the Oceti Sakowin on behalf of the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council, and will seek and agree upon new actions and principles in the stewardship of Earth, with special emphasis on reinterpreting wilderness through Indigenous perspectives.

The Congress was convened to bring together wilderness advocates from around the world to address the root cause of the environmental crisis: a broken relationship with nature.

This yearly conclave was the brain child of Rosebud Sioux Tribal and Treaty Council member Phil Two Eagle and Wilderness Chief Executive Officer of the WILD Foundation, Amy Lewis, who have collaborated for the past twelve years on this event.  Phil’s vision was to bring the world to the Black Hills to listen to the Lakota Nation and protect Lakota territory.  While walking in the Black Hills, Amy and Phil heard a resounding “yes” to the question of whether or not it was time for another Congress.  It is almost impossible to turn away when the cosmos provides direction.

Philimon Two Eagle is Executive Director of the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council in Rosebud, South Dakota. He has been working on preserving the inherent rights and treaty rights of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate (Rosebud Sioux Tribe). Mr. Two Eagle believes in preserving his Lakota language as he recognizes language as the source of inherent sovereignty and a connection to the ancestors. Mr. Two Eagle works with the elders and Spiritual leaders, traditional knowledge, treaty rights, Lakota language, climate crisis and the environment with the Oceti Sakowin Oyate (the Seven Council Fires) of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people to have the US Federal Government honor the Fort Laramie treaties that they signed with the Lakota people. He believes the Tiwahe (the family unit) as the very first form of Lakota traditional government and that life teachings begins in the Tiwahe. The Tiwahe is the also the very first line of education for the children.

For more than two decades Amy Lewis has worked as a social movement scholar and practitioner in the environmental and human rights sectors. In 2015, she brought a unique, social science approach to the WILD Foundation, first as its development officer, and later as its vice president of policy and communications, adding to her existing knowledge and insights about building effective social movements while working on wilderness policy processes in places as far-flung as India and China and as close-to-home as the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Amy is committed to building global support for the protection of half of Earth’s lands and seas while also strengthening and expanding the land tenure of Indigenous Peoples, nature’s best guardians. At this moment, there are more than 40 committed tribes with Indigenous people traveling to South Dakota from as far away as the Amazon, New Zealand, the Sami delegation from Lapland, Hawaii and the Pacific Rim and multiple tribes from across America.  The goal for this important gathering is to announce the protection of wilderness because wilderness represents our true home.  With a focus on local and regional issues surrounding the Black Hills, those gathered will reinterpret wilderness in a formal way and redefine Indigenous sovereignty in the process.

Since the coming of the European settlers to this country, Indigenous people have struggled with treaty rights to treaty land as the United States government has renegotiated agreements whenever a discovery of something new and of value was identified. Whether the natural deposits of uranium, gold, lithium, rare earth or oil was found on land that was given to Native Americans, their undisturbed use of said land has not been respected as government and corporate powers have continually confiscated what was not theirs.  The U.S. Congress and House of Representatives added a rider to the 1871 appropriations bill ceasing to recognize individual tribes within the United States as independent nations “with whom the United States may contract by treaty.” Treaties, in fact, are international agreements. The tribes were coerced into signing treaties with the U.S. government. Any time coercion is used to force an agreement, that agreement can be considered null and void.

The Dawes Act of 1887 was designed to break up the Oceti Sakowin Territory.  Traditional Indigenous leaders need to tell Congress to repeal the 1871 Act.  The United States government is not listening. It will take a presidential order to return the Black Hills to the Lakota people.

The Doctrine of Discovery or domination focused on making Christians out of Native people.  Explorers coming to the New World turned Indigenous people into slaves.  Lincoln freed the Black slaves through the bloody conflict of the Civil War but he did not free Indigenous people from the shackles that held them bound. Native Americans were given land that was thought to be barren yet important minerals and most importantly water were hidden beneath the ground. The ancestors told the people that there was water hidden under the Black Hills. Yet, the contamination of toxic chemicals releases created a high incidence of cancer causing pollution in the water.

The first economy in the New World already existed before the colonizers came to American shores. 200 million buffalo roamed the land and provided the foundation for a completely sustainable economy fulfilling the need for food, shelter, tools, clothing and just about everything else a person needed to live. This agreement had long existed between the Lakota people and the buffalo. The people understood that what is in the sky is in the ground and treated the buffalo with respect.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse is the 19th keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Pipe and Bundle. In service to the Lakota Nation and the land upon which they depend, he has also helped lead the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).  Lakota tradition teaches that the White Buffalo Calf Pipe was given to the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) by White Buffalo Calf Woman, who also brought the Seven Sacred Rites to the Lakota Oyate. Arvol Looking Horse was entrusted with the White Buffalo Calf Pipe when he was 12 years old. He is the Pipe’s youngest Keeper in a lineage stretching back over 400 years. His grandmother cautioned that if the world did not improve within his lifetime, he would likely be the last of the sacred bundle keepers.

Indigenous people from around the world will be brought to the oldest mountains in the USA – the Black Hills.  Hosted by the Oceti Sakowin on behalf of the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council a strategic plan to educate and inform people about the true nature of existing treaties in the area and to ask Congress to mend these broken treaties by returning sacred land are the focus of this important Congress.  All Indigenous peoples attending will be invited to sing in their own language.  On the first day, August 25th, the Congress will hold a plenary meeting on a global level with 70% of the speakers being Indigenous and acknowledging that, moving forward with the next 7 Generations, everyone and everything will be recognized to hold its own sovereignty.  The goal is to create natural caretakers of this land as we are not the first people to inhabit the earth, we are not the first to arrive.  We must act in unison to keep the wild areas of our beautiful planet wild.  All of life is to be treated with respect so that we can create and maintain a healthy environment.  It is up to us to fulfill the prophecies of Indigenous people.  As people converge on the Black Hills this dream can become a reality.

Key partners in this event are Krystal Two Bulls, the Executive Director of Honor the Earth;  Tatewin Means, the Executive Director of Thunder Valley and James Rattling Leaf, the Principal of the WoLakota Labs.  The World Wilderness Congress: Wild12, will be held at The Monument located at 444 N. Mt. Rushmore Road in Rapid City.

For information on Wild12, please visit www.wild12.org.

(Contact Mia Feroleto at mia.feroleto@gmail.com)

The post  Take a walk on the wild side:  The 12th World Wilderness Congress, August 25-31, 2024 first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

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