He is an ex-marine, a writer, poet, educator, and counselor. He is co-founder of the American Indian Unity Church, and his new book is From the Gathering, The Wisdom of Little Crow, edited by C.F. Clark. Little Crow speaks to us tonight from Southern California. Good evening, Little Crow. Good evening, Sam. How are you? I'm terrific, and thank you very much for taking the time to be with us tonight. I am honored.

The American Indian Unity Church, would you tell us about that, what it is that church is dedicated to doing? The church is dedicated to sharing a simple message which is we are all related, everything it be talking about. Well, Southern California is quite a ways from the Pine Ridge Reservation. How did you end up there? Well, I came out here in the early 1950s as a member of the Marine Corps. I joined the service after high school at 17 and a half and served the country for 11 years roughly.

I just kind of stayed out here going back and forth only when necessary. Now you have the church that you just described has been actually underway for what some 13 years now I gather. Thirteen years old this year we are moving on to 14 years hopefully we will make it in January yes. The this whole book and the unity church and so on I guess is really dedicated towards trying to preserve and I guess encourage oral traditions. Can you talk about oral traditions and their importance? I hate to use the cliché our people or my people so I'll just say to the Dakota Lakota people the oral tradition or the creation myth as they are are very important because The main elements of giving us information of where we come from, who we are, our ceremonies, our rituals, the reasons why our connections and how we are connected and it gives us an identity.

So that is very important to all human beings is to have a root, to have identity, to feel root in the ground. And one of the great tragedies I think came with the exploration of this country were that so many of the people here who came here abandoned their homeland and have not been able to establish that root here and it's been almost 600 years now. Yeah, well oral traditions were the only way of bringing down the history and traditions of the people. Certainly they didn't have things to write on in those days. So they would sit around the campfire, I guess, and the elders would relate to the younger generation those things that they needed to carry on.

Well, it goes a little further Sam you know our oral traditions come in four four sequences and one of them is before we were flesh there were stories which relate to that and after we were flesh coming upon earth and the present time and there are even stories now being generated towards what is to come and those future generations that will follow us those stories are being established. So they're used as teaching modules and they teach us through listening and learning and observation our children are able to learn an adequate and appropriate private behavior. That's the hope of it all but with the chaotic conditions of the world and the universe sometimes a lot of that has been lost through conversion and other pressures assimilation, what have you, self-destruction of our cultures, our languages and things of that nature. But I don't really like the chronicle past history because it brings up a lot of sore spots.

Yeah, this whole business of assimilation, is this a serious matter as you see it now? Yes it is, it's always been a serious matter and fortunately or unfortunately, however you wish to see it and as well as indigenous or non-indigenous people assimilation has not worked for us as Indian people. We are still just as confused about the western mindset as we have ever been and the contradictory, paradoxic kinds of statements that are made in religious tenets and things of that nature still confuse us and so it is a problem and we realize that this new time that we are seeing which isn't really a new time which champions the recognition of diversity is kind of something that we have been waiting for to come back around again in a circle. We have seen it before and we see it happening again and we are well prepared to make adjustments to it and to help where we can. Is assimilation or the attempt to assimilate Indian children into the white race or the white way of thinking, is this still going on in reservation schools and so on? Yeah, it still goes on. We still have federal early controlled schools. We have a lot of tribal controlled schools now, but the assimilation process is such a far reaching term because you have to examine everything that is connected to that.

Much as the oral tradition teaches us everything is connected and related. So there isn't anything that is innocently done or not innocently done that doesn't affect the child's mind and psyche and therefore affects the future of our tribes, our nations, our indigenous nations, you know. And it really attacks our idea of sovereignty which is what we've really been fighting for and continue to fight for. And this assimilating process is very damaging to our children but we're regrouping and we're re-pursuing our spirituality in a way in which it was given to us originally and I think that we are going to overcome the damage that has been done but it will take about seven generations to do that. Now what about the attempts of the Native Americans to maintain their sovereignty? It does appear that the government and various forces are at work to try to break down that sovereignty. Every damn day, yeah. We are continuing in a struggle that goes on unseen to the American public because the American public is kept so distracted by our own personal crisis that we are not taught adequately the history of our nations, the many nations within this nation.

We're not taught the relationship that is established. We have a lot of feeling about original guilt and original treaties and it isn't our fault or our responsibility so let's get rid of it. And our obligation of federal treaties and the responsibilities of this nation who has never honored one treaty they've ever established with us. Or, you know, come to see one successful conclusion to any programs that have been established for us. that destructive. Do you see things possibly improving under the new administration? The Clinton administration has brought in Bruce Babbitt now as Secretary of Interior and evidently there were some changes in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Do you see that as a positive sign for improvement?

I'm very hopeful, Sam. I like to believe as I'm taught that each breath is an infinite possibility. It creates a new possibility as if the creator meets us for the first time and we meet the creator for the first time with each breath. So everything that President Clinton and Bruce Babbitt and the Tobe administration, both Republican and Democrats, you know, change is upon us and I feel very, very hopeful with the new administration uh... a lot of things are happening uh... that you know it first appeared to be uh... goof off uh... group of products and uh... on the part of the uh... you know administrative people but it's really going in a positive direction the fact that that it did not go to the supreme court was uh... with a real sensitivity to the issue.

I was glad that you said that because I had that feeling also that Babbitt seemed to be the first Secretary of Interior in a long time who seemed to be pretty well set up and made it for that job. Well, we just called him and he had his backside and his brain wired together and that makes a lot of difference. The previous secretary of interior didn't know left field from a hole in the ground. So that's purportedly been a lot of the problems with the administrations, predominantly republican administrations that really have no sensitivity to the needs of not only indigenous people but people in general who do not fare as well in mainstream culture and who do not have the money to contribute politically to the well-being and longevity of a governing administration. What do you see as maybe the top two or three issues confronting Native Americans in general these days?

health and long-term health care, adequate housing and education. Education is so critical but long-term health care which is the same for everyone in this nation, we suffer the worst health conditions of anybody in the United States and it has been that way historically and I don't have to do is look at the statistics that have been provided most recently and you will see that all of those things are true. And we don't, as a people, seem to be able to make any headway with it because when all of the cuts begin to happen, they begin to happen to programs and to people like ourselves who can least afford it. So it means we have to find a way to provide these health services and long-term health care and housing and treatment of diseases such as cancer and AIDS which is coming up, fetal alcohol syndrome and also to produce the financial resource to create our own educational facilities and to govern them and to run them and to really be able to give to the people those services which the federal government so far has failed to be able to do.

I am most familiar with the Navajo reservation after having lived in Arizona for a while and I have heard it said that the conditions of a great many of the Navajos are deplorable. Can you comment on that? Do you have knowledge of some of the conditions on some of the reservations? Well, I have to be really careful here to reiterate that I don't speak for the Navajo people but I like everyone else can read those accounts and have contacts with Navajo people that I know who travel back and forth between California and their home and I've been through Navajo many times and the conditions are what we would consider to be deplorable living in the standards that perhaps we live in in the city or you know in rural America or urban America and by all imagination they are difficult and hard. They may not be seen as tragic by the Navajos themselves who have lived in this manner and in conditions for many hundreds of years, but they can't stand improvement, running water, electricity, serviceable roads so that health care can be provided to the elders who live miles from the district offices and different things of that nature because they are isolated. They are people who do live in a spread out condition. So yeah, they do have a very difficult lifestyle having to haul their water and different things of that nature. But sometimes the acclamation to that does not really seem that it is that tragic. But then on the other hand, that's a position on my part and you would really have to talk to a Navajo who lives actually on the reservation and lives under those conditions.

What are the effects do you think of the entertainment world on the image of Native Americans in general, the movies and so on, the way Native Americans are portrayed. Has that created a negative circumstance that's been hard to overcome? Well, it's a toss of the coin. We are such fractionalized groups as indigenous people. One of the things that has really hurt us has been its inability to unify. But there is also historical fractionalization because certain tribes have been pictured as being representative of all Indians and for a long time Hollywood only had three kinds of costumes they had the northern plains, they had the eastern plains and then they had other tribes which was a mixture of all different kinds of costumes and regalia and sorely misrepresented Indians on the screen so that image becomes what we see and what think that Indians are about. The latest renditions of movies that we have been seeing has really benefited the producers and writers and provided employment for some Indian people but it has not helped in the image because we are still seeing us portrayed in the 18th and 19th century.

We are still riding horses, bashing and scalping people, bashing in heads, cutting people's is That is most devastating because we continue to be seen as anachronisms in time and history. It's like we don't exist only in movies and in museums and that's where you go to see or that's what you do. You go to dig up Indians and things like that and that's devastating. Absolutely. Well, to change the subject slightly to a more contemporary issue at the moment, gambling. This shows up in the news quite regularly. Gambling seems to be one of those industries, I guess if you want to put it in those terms, that the Native Americans are able to bring onto the reservations to try to create something of an economic standard for those reservation areas that otherwise don't have a whole lot.

How do you feel about this whole gambling question? I think it's probably the greatest thing that's ever happened for Indian people. And having taught federal Indian law, I'm well aware of the laws which Indian nations are governed by, as well as jurisdictional problems and things of that nature. And I can see the concerns of states, because states are part of the tri-party system that Indian nations have to live under, not only federal control, bureaucratic control through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is federal control, government control, but local, state, and county control, as well as their own tribal government. So you have now the fear of states as well as the gambling industry, which sees a great deal of money that they have had access to now going towards Indian gambling whether it is bingo or pool tabs or it is full class gambling, crab dog tracks, on site betting, etc. full casino operations. You see this fear that has risen one through the gambling industries and secondly through states that say, hey, we're going to lose control and the potential of still gaining the control of natural resources on Indian land, Indian land itself, but even for worse than that, we're going to have to give recognition to the fact that these people are able to do this and that makes them sovereign because they're able to control what happens on their land and up to now we have never let them do that.

And if they get to do this we are going to lose this whole issue and we are going to have to start looking back and say hey what has taken us so long to recognize that these are indeed sovereign nations within nations. The best part of it is that the money is being generated to provide jobs, it's not only for Indian people, it's for people who work or live near reservations and for communities which will benefit from Indians being able to go in town and to spend the money and people who work there. So it's a six and a half billion dollar a year potential industry and it will grow. But you have organized gambling, you have Las Vegas, Atlantic City, you have Nevada, states like Arizona which are very much opposed to it but it's a losing cause and they're fighting it because what is going to happen in this time of change and since the harmonic conversion began in 1987, we are going to gain our sovereignty and we are going to be able to control and rule our destiny.

Well, what about this business of Indian sovereignty? The tribes were created as sovereign nations in effect on those reservations, is that basically correct? We've always been sovereign nations. There was never anything given to us that made us sovereign. We agreed to certain conditions and part of that agreement was that we were to interact with the federal government of the United States for considerations of what we gave to them for not only monetary return but also for other considerations, education, health, housing and other services which they promised to deliver. We have always been sovereign. The recognition and signing of treaties wasn't admittal by the government of the time. They were indeed dealing with nations of people and not simply groups of uncontrolled, unorganized, with no culture, no languages, etc.

lot to really look back at that and say, hey, maybe this is the wrong way that we should have done something else. We are sovereign, have been, and we will continue to be that way. Is that sovereignty in the process of being eroded though? I mean over the years haven't there been some erosions? Haven't the reservations had to give some leeway to the states that they actually are within in terms of law enforcement and certain other aspects along the way? Oh, jurisdiction. Jurisdiction or that kind of thing? The things of jurisdiction, yeah, because the state has fought so fervently for that and failed to recognize the letter of the law.

The problem with federal Indian law is that it is complicated and there are very few people who understand it so states are at best interpreting it to their own benefit and as such the courts which are just as ignorant of it and not as enlightened of it as they could be because it's not taught in any law schools per se and it's not part of what you need to pass the bar, neither for the supreme court of the jurisprudence system and so you are going to have these rulings which have to be appealed and fought in court and you know it just goes on and on but it is mainly based on ignorance of the system. Yeah and so of course this whole gambling issue now is really going to bring the states to the fore. They are going to start really hammering away at that jurisdiction in terms of trying to put down, I guess, as much as possible the gambling on the reservations, I suppose, in light of their desire, I guess, ultimately, to have the gambling in the states so that it will benefit the states rather than the Indian nations.

Well, some states, such as Arizona, says they do not want to be recognized as a gambling mecca, but the whole issue is money, it's money Sam, it's the taxes that are not being paid that do not have to be paid to the state. The state is losing out on all of this money and what they want to do is have access to it, the taxes. They want to tax that gambling income much like they do in Nevada and because of the sovereignty of these nations you can't do it. You cannot tax that money and the Indian nations are not required to pay taxes on that money and as such the states who are in difficulty themselves financially strapped because everything else connected, our system, the economy, the productivity, the ordering, all of it, you know as our economy is it's changing and falling and nothing will ever be the same, it's very hard for people to adapt to that. So it's really a matter of resources.

It's a matter of finances. California can gain control of Indian gambling on Indian land. They could certainly alleviate a lot of their financial burden. Well, that is a whole issue that remains unresolved and it will be fascinating to see which side of the fence it comes down on. My children will be fighting that issue and my grandchildren will be fighting that issue.

It isn't anywhere near being resolved, but we are holding our own and we are going to see an increase in Indian gaming facilities. Right now it's at about 168 facilities in the United States and I look forward to it being well over 400 by the end of 1993. So you see, you personally view the increase in gambling on the reservations as a very positive thing for the peoples themselves. Well, like all gambling, you know addiction, it can create hardships for those people who become addicted and those are the natural disasters that happen to occur. If there was some way, gambling in itself is an addictive process and that's the unfortunate aspect of it that people who usually can least afford to lose the money are the ones that lose because gambling is just that, there is no guarantee.

And it's a get rich quick kind of feeling that people have when they gamble and it never works out that way, it just never does. So it's going to have its downside as well as it's going to have its plus side. What we're looking at is the ability for tribal councils and tribal governments to be able to provide services for their people which have not been provided before by the federal government. That's the key. How do you, I see a bit of a dichotomy here and I'm not sure if I'm looking at it from a secular religious point of view or what, but maybe you can help me here.

The idea that gambling is, quote, a sin from the standpoint of the basic secular religions, whereas from a purely spiritual point of view, which I suspect is where the Native Americans would come from, is it viewed as a sin or is it viewed as something negative or dark on the dark side rather than the light side? Well, let's clarify this. This is a good place to clarify that the perception that Native American people are so spiritual that they view things in such a way that it's any different than how Christians view it, I would like to clarify and say it isn't.

You know, when something hurts, if I put my hand in the fire, it's going to get burnt and it's got nothing to do with my spirituality. It's got a lot to do with my not knowing the difference and going ahead and tempting whatever it is I'm doing. So it is that we have gambled always. Gambling has been a part of many of our cultures. It's a part of our history where tribes would come together and we have games here in California tribes called stick games and there are moccasin games and there are other games which were carried on by the different indigenous groups. All people have gambled. Every tribal group has gambled and so we are not looking at it as being a sin, we are looking at it as being a way in which things can be accomplished that have a downside to it.

It has a positive and a negative. How are you? First of all, I am of Navajo and Apache descent. I had a question. Since nations are sovereign nations unto themselves. And I own this property. Can I deed the property to the Indian nations and take it back as a hundred year lease and be able to get out of the, under the controls of the state? That would depend again where your land is. Is it located on Navajo land? No, it's just located in Salt Lake City. But the only thing is, you know, if I'm part of the Indian nation, anything I own should be part of the Indian nation also. And I should have that right to be able to deed it to whoever I feel is part of my clan or family or whatever. Because I look at myself as a sovereign Indian not as a sovereign American. Because the Americans are for America but that's all of the people put together but as a native you know I hold my heart closer to this country than most anyone else would.

So you're asking... This is where my family is. You're asking basically if the land that you own here can be declared sovereign since you are of Native American ancestry then. Yeah, I want to make it... If I could, I'd want all Indians to make all their land part of the Indian Nation. Let's return it back to who it belongs to. Let's give it back to ourselves is basically what I'm saying. There is a movement going on in the Midwest area where there is a buying bank of land which have been leased or sold or whatever.

In your case I believe you're talking about giving it back to the tribe under a hundred year lease or something of that nature. That's a possibility and you would have to talk with a tribal government of your particular nation and see if that is indeed something that's workable for them. You know, going by the civic or the municipal laws that you live in, the state law and the the tax law, inheritance laws and things under which you now live. But if it is your land you indeed have the right to leave it to whoever you want. So it might be a good idea to see what you can do with that to press ahead. But you need to contact the tribal group that you are particularly interested in or you belong to to see the reality of it.

See what happened was I have this friend that lives up in Portland and he's not an Indian but he lives right on the Indian borders of the reservation up there and the county was trying to take his land away so he told them that if they didn't leave him alone he would beat the whole hundred acres over to the tribes, which would take the whole thing off the tax rolls and turn it into part of the Indian reservation up there. And boy, they didn't like that at all. No, I guess not, because they can't afford to lose that off any tax roll. The tax base seems like it's so small out there in the first place. Well, you know, they want to confiscate it anyway.

If he's going to lose it, he'd rather give it to somebody other than who wants to take it, you know. Yeah, thank you for your question. Okay, you're welcome. Bye. Thank you, Chief. Yeah, that whole business of the land and so on is, that is just going to continue also. There are so many issues surrounding this whole thing that seem to have no resolution in sight. The idea of ownership is an idea which is strictly European to a point, but we have even fallen into it and so it is an issue which does have many sides and you have to walk through it very tenuously.

Well okay, let's take a commercial break right here and when we come back with California, he is the co-founder of the american indian unity church and will be talking about his latest book from the gathering the western wisdom of little crow edited by cf clark uh... little crow the uh... there's been a resurgence in interest uh... on the part of a lot of uh... caucasian white folks uh... about uh... native american lore and uh...

and I try to be as proprietive as I can in those areas when it comes to that. And so if you feel it's alright for me to state my comments I'll certainly do that but I really want to ask you first because I have some maybe different thoughts about it. Well we haven't talked about this particular item and so I would certainly be interested in what you have to say about it, what your feelings are. Okay, then I will go ahead. There was a book written back in the 1960s called God is Red by Vine Deloria and it is now in its second revised edition and in that book Vine talks about the whole aspect of the western psyche in regards to Native American spirituality and the needs of why it has been pursued and the continued needs of its pursuit by non-indigenous people.

I've always been a protector of ceremony and ritual particularly Dakota Lakota and those issues surrounding ritual and ceremony. And one of the things that I talk about and share with people is that you are as spiritual as you need to be. There's no one that can certificate you or give you the authority to be what you already are. And if you would just accept the responsibility and have faith in that which you know already within yourself and lived accordingly, then you would have the realization that we are all shamans, we are all healers, we are all spiritual, we are all sacred, we are all connected and we are all accountable for what it is we do. My major concern is that too little is given to people in the way and there is a real infringement into the areas of ceremony and into the areas of ritual which is a misnomer given to people that that is really where some kind of mystical power comes from that Indian people seem to relationship and in the things that they talk about, what they believe in and what people believe that they can do.

A lot of that is magical, mystical hype and it doesn't have anything to do with what being spiritual is all about. That's window dressing and it is pursuit. has its roots in Tibet and the Russian language or Sanskrit and so it isn't really indigenous to this country but there are people who do practice medicine and ritual and ceremony in my culture you weep and healing ceremonies and things of that nature. So when I find people who are abusing it some of our own people from South Dakota have been traveling around the world selling this information and making it available for financial reciprocity. Enough isn't given to the individuals who pay the money in the way of information nor are they willing to make a commitment to it that the idea of it or what lies beneath it becomes a way of life.

So I see it as only again one of the things that people do to attain power somehow, to have power over something or some way in which to change their life. But there is no commitment to a way of life and a way in which they live or behave. That's only one aspect of it. I just wanted to say to Little Crow that there are things that we appreciate about the Native Americans, at least something that I appreciate. their hilt, a lot of their hilt ideas. I think that all of us, whether we're Native Americans or whether we're from countries in Europe, where we're from, but all of us, I think we don't need so much drugs and of that type.

We need just natural things that the Native American knows about and has used through the centuries. Yeah, Little Crow, the Native Americans of course have been I guess in the forefront of using herbs for healing and natural kinds of substances and certainly that's a tradition that has come down to us and a great many people are making use of that. I think that we should have more of that. I think we should change and learn from the Native American system and we could do away with a lot of the manufactured drugs. I don't think that's to anybody's advantage. Only at certain times, I know that there are times when we can use manufactured chemicals I just wanted to say that I thought that he said that we have to be kind to each other and that we have to be kind to each other and that we have to be kind to each other and that we have to be kind to each other and that we have to be kind to each other and that we have to be kind to each other and that we hadn't kept one treaty.

I don't know, I just have an understanding that President Wilkinson of the BYU, when he was president of the university, he was doing a lot to help rectify that situation from the law office there at the law college at the university. Is that true or not? Did he help these people or not? Thank you for that and I'll let you listen off the air. Do you have any comment on that little girl? There are individual efforts by human beings who see an obligation and a duty to somehow bring things into perhaps an idea or sense of balance and I am not familiar with that particular gentleman or his efforts but it is not been to the fact that it has made any great change, nor has it done anything to amend the treaty problem, which is more historical now than anything else, but it is being referred to whenever there is a need to assert the established idea of sovereignty and what was written in those treaties.

So no, I'm not familiar so I really couldn't comment with any clarity on it, but I'd thank her for her question. I certainly will look into it. Okay, and here's Margie. You're on K-Talk with Little Crow. Hi, Sam. Hi. Hi, Little Crow. Hi, Margie. Hi.

I have a couple of comments to make. First of all, do you prefer to be called a Native American or an Indian or does it matter? I prefer to be called a human being. Okay, because a lot of people, you know, think that. I would like to say that I wish the Indians would have won the war instead of the whites because it seems to me that we could take a good lesson from them. I would also like to comment on the comments you made about the gambling. I don't know if you were aware of some of the comments that the big rich guy in New York, Donald Trump, said that he didn't want the Indians to gamble. I got the biggest kick out of that because there he is, a billionaire and he doesn't want the Indians to have any of the money that they have coming to them.

And there is one thing though about you people that I would like you to explain about. Why aren't they more aggressive? It seems like they sit back and let everybody run over them. You know, you've got to fight. You can't just step back and let them make all your decisions for you. If you want gambling, it's your land. Why don't you have gambling? You see what I'm saying? Yes, I hear you. There comes a point where laying back is not really the thing. Well, I don't think they're laying back, Margie. I think they're really fighting back on this issue. I heard something that made me so mad and it was repeated to me because it was repeated to them.

The reason that disease came about is because they were promiscuous. Have you ever heard of anything so rotten in your entire life? Why is it that these things, what can we do as private citizens to make it easier for the Indians? Is there anything that we can do to help you? Let me just try to answer both of your questions or comment if you will Marjorie on what you've said. One of the things is that we need to be able to help ourselves. That is primary in my thinking and that's the kind of thing that I always encourage Indian people to remember is that we are getting to a place to where we have to come to a realization just as everyone else has that we need to do things which show the world that we are in the efforts of helping ourselves. One of the great things of fundraising is that when writing to organizations filled topic organizations to look for money as you write proposals and things, they want to see that you are doing something that is going to take you out of their pocket in three to four years and our federal government should work on such a plan and we certainly wouldn't have a deficit like we do, but we need to be able to do things by our own nature and by our own work and sweat and our own efforts. What we need from the American public is to get beyond 15% of of the total national population that has any kind of sensitivity or any kind of interest in Indian issues. We have never been able to get over 18 or 19 percent and those have only been in times of crisis. If we could ever get 25 percent of the population to be at least aware historically, politically or socially what Indians are about other than what we have perceived them to be on television, video, and in fantasized, romanticized books written by non-Indian people, we would have a better chance at opening doors both politically and socially and through government channels which will allow us to put real programs to work which are invested with our thinking and the ideas of what we know will work for us and what we need to do in order to get it successfully done, completed. The idea of being laid back, we're not laid back, we're fighting, there are new people, we stand to put America on notice that we're not laying back anymore, we're not saying hey, you're going to come through, we know somebody is going to come and take care of this. We don't do that anymore.

Our young people have gone to college, we've learned the language we learn what the words mean we know what the law means we know the legal aspects and we have the treaties to support us and to back us up and in the courtroom and that's where we're going to win the war in the courtroom well little crow you're gonna win the war in the courtroom and I hope you get some good attorneys and I think it's about time you people get what you get what you got coming thank you very much all right thanks thank you Margie. Okay, we have just come to the end of our number one of The Wisdom of Little Crow edited by C.F. Clark. Little Crow, in the prior hour you mentioned just briefly the harmonic convergence and indicated that from that time forward there had been a change in some attitudes.

What really was the significance of the harmonic convergence as you view that? Well, I believe it's said that it was the end of the world as we know it. It was the end of the civilization as we've known it because the dramatic changes began to take place as of that time. And it shouldn't be so surprising because this has been prophesied by every major religion and every other organization that has so far come along in our briefs that several thousand years of recorded history. But it ended, the things as we knew them to be and as indigenous people we have seen this cycle before and so we were most familiar and are just watching it, you know, now go through what we call the cycle of purification. And it's when the laws of the universe take hold and man per se has nothing that they can really do about it. We just kind of ride it out and one of the great tools that we will survive and all of us as humans there will be survivors who will continue to go through and to continue to build in a different way using the technology that we have perceived to this date and using it perhaps in different manners and in different directions and thereby bringing us to another place Perhaps seven generations from now now the harmonic convergence of course was back in 1987 on August 16th and 17th Yeah And a lot of people there was a lot of hoopla connected with that thing a lot of people laid bags said well