CPTnet
14 August 2006
BEAR BUTTE REFLECTION: A real School of the Americas
by John Spragge
Many people have heard about the institution the United States government
calls the "School of the Americas." It is a "school" dedicated to
training mostly Latin American military officers to oppress their own people
in the interests of international capital. But if someone set up a real
school of the Americas, dedicated to teaching the values of the people
indigenous to this part of the world, what would it look like? At this
encampment the Lakota people have set up to protest the desecration of their
sacred mountain (Bear Butte, or Mato Paha), I had the privilege of seeing
what a real school of the Americas would look like. The CPT team attended,
and assisted, with "Unite to Fight," a school of indigenous resistance. Owe
Aku ("Bring back the way"), an organization devoted to protecting the
heritage of Native Americans--and the Lakota people in particular--operates
this school for young First Nations people, age eighteen to thirty. At
'Unite to Fight,' we studied topics ranging from the effects of colonization
and techniques for decolonization, to nonviolence, resistance, and self
defense. Elders of the Lakota Nation spoke of the need to shift from the
extreme individualism of colonial values to the holistic Lakota teachings.
Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams presented a session on the practice of
nonviolence, and members of warrior societies presented a session on
non-lethal self-defense techniques. The hunger for information kept
participants working and studying during some hot dry days with temperatures
of up to 112 Fahrenheit.
A chairman of the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation said when he goes to the
reservation, he feels the oppression as a great, exhausting weight. At Bear
Butte, at the Unite to Fight school, we could feel the hope for the future
in the commitment of the students. Given the past genocidal behavior of
Euro-American Christian settlers toward indigenous people, the coming of a
real school of the Americas should appear as a beacon of hope for immigrant
and Christian societies as well as for Lakota societies.
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Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
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