eNewsChannels COLUMN: While world leaders dropped the ball at June’s RIO+20 Earth Summit to getting us on the road to a sustainable future, We the People, especially sportsmen, need to pick up the ball, including to protect our world’s playgrounds that bring us so much joy. With open hearts, here are some ways we can together Win this Race to Save the Planet through the London Games.
The consensus of the UN’s 192 countries this year was that “science combined with Ancient Wisdom through the tribes is key to restoring Mother Earth.” We are in the home stretch of this pivotal 2012, where our actions each day can shift prophesies, especially through the power of gratitude to Mother Earth through the tribes. Therefore giving back to them would also improve our karma and help enhance and safeguard a wonderful London Olympics.
Caption: Danielle Pelham (U.S. Chickasaw Tribe) winning the 2009 Taekwondo World Championships. Including her in the London Olympics could be a healing for humanity and help safeguard a phenomenal Games and Civilization.
A beautiful example is the Olympic Organizing Committees of the 2002 Utah Olympics, as well as 1960 Squaw Valley, asked our Native American tribal Elders to please lead their communities in snowdances, which restored the snow so athletes who have trained their whole lives could have their Olympic Dreams. When Tahoe Olympians and locals honored the descendants of the Washoe-Paiute-Shoshone dancers for this historic gift at their “Olympic Heritage Event” this January 15, the dancers led another snowdance that inspired five feet of snow, which ended their worst snow drought in 130 years!
While most are focused on London and Sochi’s individual Olympic events, some ask, what else could we do to give back to these Indigenous Peoples besides sharing the joy of snowsports in their beloved ancestral mountains?
One simple thing that could heal their hearts is including more Indigenous Peoples in the London and other Olympics, especially those in developed countries like the U.S., where they are no longer the majority and choose to live in their traditional earth-honoring ways. Without our country’s support and little effort to heal the past, including abuses from government boarding schools, many of our Native Americans remain marginalized, living in 3rd world conditions. See ABC Diane Sawyer’s “Hidden America-Children of the Plains” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoyR8_kQq2o
As a result only three Native American women have had a chance to compete in the Olympics in over a century. And as I learned leading the Title 1X March in DC, (Equal Opportunities for women in schools sports and education), girls/moms are the key to lifting families, communities and nations.
Olympic inclusion is NOT just dancing in the Opening Ceremonies or leading snowdances or ceremonies to protect the Games, but competing as athletes as part of the Olympic Family. They obviously love sports or Native Americans wouldn’t have helped save those Games or invent the roots of 11 Olympic sports, (which athletes from seven countries honored them for at the 2004 Athens Games – Naotf.org). Can you imagine life without your favorite sport? Plus the Olympics should include the best athletes on the planet period.
Our 2009 World Taekwondo Champion, Danielle Pelham of the Chickasaw Nation, was not included on our US Olympic Team to Beijing and the same is happening to her for London. Danielle Pelham not only won the World Championships in Denmark, but was named “2009 WTF Athlete of the Year” for being a shining role model. That includes joyfully passing on her phenomenal skills to other youth as a Master Instructor with her coach dad David at their Velocity Taekwondo School in Washington State. See her Copenhagen performance on: http://www.velocitytkd.com/
World leaders at RIO’s first Earth Summit in 1992 came up with “Agenda 21, a wise action plan for humanity to be sustainable by repairing social inequity and advancing environmental development.” For their part, a decade ago, IOC President Jacques Rogge brilliantly recommended including more Indigenous Peoples in the Olympics to enhance their sustainability, plus providing jobs. That is how they sold Vancouver as the “Tribal Olympics.” In hopes some progress could be made to help lift the marginalized for London, the UK’s Guardian newspaper ran this report on the Vancouver Olympics. “The Olympics come with fine promises of sustainability and social responsibility. But reality doesn’t always match the rhetoric.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/2012-olympics-vancouver-london.
JFK explained to America’s youth 44 years ago how our “magnificent” American Indian Nations became marginalized, yet their (most balanced) democratic ways were copied by our forefathers (and countries worldwide). He said this treatment is on our conscience and needs to be healed. Reading his words, which made me cry, could accelerate a healing for humanity and Mother Earth this 2012. http://snow-riders.org/info_pages/jfkintro.html Spain’s Queen Sophie wisely started the healing process by apologizing to a Native American group there in the 90’s.
London could make an Olympic leap in heroicly correcting this social injustice as a result of the European conquests continued by mainstream Americans, to help the Games and humanity as one happier family THRIVE. According to the U.N., 2,000 tribes go extinct each year, yet its 192 countries are listening to and following the wisdom of the Indigenous Bolivians and Native American Elders to regenerate Earth, exemplified by Bolivia initiating UN’s International Mother Earth Day in 2009.
Since Agenda 21 was also not applied to Native Americans during their 2002 Olympics beyond dancing in the Opening Ceremonies and Medals Plazas, or any other Olympics we know of, here is a golden opportunity for the IOC and London to make good on their RIO pledge.
You could appeal to their sense of fair play, social and environmental responsibility in encouraging President Rogge, a great Olympic sailor, and Lord Sebastian Coe, an Olympic running icon who heads the London Organizing Committee, to please allow Danielle to march and compete under the IOC Solidarity Flag at the London Olympics. This loophole was created for those Sovereign Nations not yet represented in the Olympics, a solution suggested at our IOC meeting in Lausanne Switzerland in 2006 with Stew Young, Tulalip World Cup speed skier, representing Joe Garcia, President of the National Congress of American Indians.
We salute the French for reviving the Modern Olympics and creating the compassionate Solidarity Committee whose “aim is to organize assistance for all the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), particularly those with the greatest needs, so that they can develop their own structures to favor the expansion of sport in their country.” Plus French Princess Caroline Murat has been the biggest champion of Native Americans and holds the vision of a Modern Olympics that embraces ALL cultures.
Despite a number of subsequent meetings, phone calls and correspondences with the IOC and London organizers, they have not moved on righting this social injustice by giving our Sovereign Tribal Nations, many having passports, the same respect and appreciation as other Sovereign Nations. Therefore, only public opinion may be able to shift their minds and hearts and bring the Olympics into a more Sustainable 21st.
So please e-mail IOC’s Solidarity Committee via pamela.vipond@olympic.org or call +41 21 621 61 11, and/or Lord Sebastian Coe, London House of Lords: 020 7219 5353 or say a prayer. Here is proof of why 1/3 of the Native American population is impoverished, added to 50% unemployment, why few have a chance to compete in the Olympics. . That’s why Danielle would give her people and all Indigenous youth HOPE.
To help make the Games a relevant force in the world for the environment, its new “Olympic Pillar,” please also encourage these Olympic leaders to get on Mother Earth’s Sustainability Bandwagon. I served on the USOC – first woman on the board with MIT’s Dr. Tenely Albright – because I respect the Olympic Movement for doing the most for the world’s youth, health and harmony. Therefore, the silence of the IOC/LOCOG/NOC’s in inspiring sports lovers to also help restore our playgrounds in this World Eco Crisis is surprising!
Since nearly half of the Olympic Sports are on snow or ice, doesn’t it make sense, including to the sponsors, that as a Green Olympic Team we do more to preserve our playgrounds and Games. At a similar pivotal moment the Oracle of Delphi guided the Ancient Olympic leaders to save their Games and Civilization ravished by war and (catastrophic) pestilence after the first 50 years. By following the Oracle of Delphi’s advice of stopping all wars for months so people could travel safely to Olympia, their Games and Civilization flourished for over 1,000 years.
Therefore, please also encourage the IOC, London Organizing Committee and your National Olympic Committee to use this most pivotal Games of the Modern Olympic, JULY 27-AUGUST 16, to spotlight the many “Olympic Champions of Mother Earth” to help inspire one-third of our planet’s citizens to make “Faster, Higher, Stronger” leaps in Green Action. For example in 2010, 70 Canadian Olympians inspired spectators to offset their air travel, the largest source of emissions of Vancouver’s Games. (p. 38 of our “Snowdance Phenomena” research:
The world’s youth groups pleaded with Earth Family at the RIO+20’s Earth Summit in June to do their part to ensure their “Climate Justice” and future by protecting the 17 billion trees lost each year to cutting or wildfires, and to plant a lot more. Trees not only supply the oxygen but the moisture for abundant snow and rain, and the snowmelt is critical to our drinking water, food supply and preventing “increasing droughts and wildfires,” according to scientists. Trees also prevent AG erosion from increasing floods. (Seedlings usually cost only about a dollar, but U.S. and Canadian citizens can get FREE organic trees (ideally fruit to help end diabetes and obesity) by contacting state or province forestry departments and there is FREE happy assistance through the Jr. Master Gardeners or 4H, according to Cherokee Master Gardener Dr. Olivia Ellis PhD!)
In helping maximize the longevity of Olympic snowsports since they are the canaries of the mine of our planet’s transition to a milder climate, we are doing the same for our glaciers, islands and coastal communities (where most live), and Summer Olympics.
By inspiring 2.5 billion viewers to ideally plant or protect an “Olympic Tree” to preserve our playgrounds, we are regenerating our Garden of Eden. Lovingly touching Mother Earth as we plant and nurture them also helps prevent cataclysms according to the Elders and mystics like Siberia’s Anastasia (Ringing Cedars Books).
Why are there more natural catastrophes than any other time in history? The tribes call 2012 the “Purification,” where Mother Earth “cleans house” at the end of each 64,000 year cycle.
How can we avoid or reduce these catastrophes? Short term though Native Elders or shamen-led snowdances and raindances because the love and appreciation for Mother Earth temporarily raises the vibration of the mountains and water that purifies them of the blanket of toxins from city smog and restores natural snow and rain cycles. The long term solution is clean green energy and giving gratitude in advance of what we want and after, like the Elders. The First Nations Lil’wat and Squamish Nations also led ceremonies “for the joy and safety of the athletes” after a Georgian Luger died in training at Vancouver’s Whistler Mt, which transformed their fog and rain that cancelled the downhill into “a rare number of bluebird days.”
As a result of our tribal “snowdance phenomena” saving U.S. ski areas for the last 52 years, the UN Sustainability leaders urged us to spread this story to communities worldwide and found that many others do snow gratitude ceremonies. More and more are leaning that natural disasters are a result of the land absorbing the toxins from our dirty energy as well as our negative thoughts, actions and wars. They must be released by earthquakes, fires, floods, tsunamis, and freaky storms, where neighbors start reaching out to help each other again.
The Elders say we can prevent these catastrophes by healing each other’s hearts and giving appreciation to Mother Earth now. They agree with the owner of Telluride Ski Co, Ron Allred, pioneer of our Ute Ski and Snowboard program in 1996, who said, “This is a good way to heal and honor the past and start a new beginning.” Native programs then snowballed across North America.
PROTECTING THE 2002 UTAH OLYMPICS:
Giving other Summer as well as Winter Olympic Hopefuls a hand so they could have an Olympic experience through NAOTF.org, is another beautiful way to give back, considering their Elders also helped protect the dreams of the 2002 Utah Olympians from “expected terrorism,” why many people didn’t attend.
Led by Utah Tribal Host Roland McCook and guided by world renowned Lakota spiritual leader Chief Arvol Lookinghorse, our foundation organized this protection ceremony next to Park City’s giant tipi, made possible by the (CA’s) Morongo Nation, where I read a touching letter of support from Muhammad Ali. At the request of SLOC the Hopis also led ceremonies at dawn in the Athletes Village. Together, thank heaven, it worked.
Three Navajo marathon runners, Brandon Leslie, Craig Curley, and Alvina Begay are a priceless inspiration to all tribal youth. They have also spent their whole lives struggling to chase their Olympic dreams and again qualified for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials for London. With a little more support they could make the 2016 Rio Olympics. See uplifting TV story of Alvina running their traditional way, and as a dietician helping end their diabetes epidemic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j79HRbEXJI&feature=plcp)
Special thanks to green leader, Gene Mulvihill, owner of New Jersey’s Mt Creek Ski Area & Water Park and Crystal Springs Golf (Green) Golf Courses and Spa in the beautiful ancestral mountains of the Delaware Nation, for making this progress possible.
By planting an “Olympic Tree/Pillar” or other green acts, tribal outreaches, snow-rain-oceandances, and holding Mother Earth in our hearts, even for a moment as we blissfully run, soar, swim, dance, ski and ride like wind like our ancient ancestors did, we are bringing in a breathtaking new Dawn.
Since our tribes are heroes to many Europeans and Asians, and Danielle is a symbol of all Mother Earth’s MVPs, I bet she would receive a standing ovation marching in London’s Opening Ceremonies under the IOC Solidarity Flag. And this heart-warming step for humanity would shine on these monumentally important 2012 Games and our Civilization!
By these Olympics also raising awareness of these virtually FREE Green solutions, EVERYONE can be a part of our valiant London Olympic Earth Team to be revered by generations for winning this Race to Save the Planet.
Contact: Suzynativevoices@aol.com, naotf.org, snow-riders.org.
Article is Copr. © 2012 by Suzy Chaffee and originally published on eNewsChannels – all commercial and reprint rights reserved.
