Hellenion would like to state that we stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, the Lakota people, and all Indigenous Peoples who are fighting to preserve and protect their homes and lands. We stand in solidarity with all who declare these things sacred: clean water and air, verdant forests, meadows, prairies and wetlands, and ways of life that honor people over profit.
To hold something sacred means that its well-being becomes the standard by which we judge our actions and decisions. In the words of the defenders who have made their stand at Standing Rock, water is life. No amount of money, no profits that benefit a few, can justify a threat to the very means and sustenance of life.
Today, climate change threatens the life support systems of the planet. We know that we must stop burning fossil fuels and turn to safe, renewable sources of energy. Yet the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry continue to exploit dirty and unsustainable sources of oil, delving for every last drop in ways that assault Mother Earth and fracture her very bones, spilling filth onto the lands and spoiling the waters. Around the world, from the Tar Sands of Canada to the oil fields of Nigeria, indigenous peoples have borne the worst brunt of this assault, through loss of land, health and life, through epidemics of cancer and outright assassination and torture. The fight to stop this pipeline is also a stand to make the shift we know must come—to leave the oil in the ground and make our energy from sources that do not threaten the stability of life on earth.
The Standing Rock Sioux Nation and their allies have now taken the lead in this struggle, and we support them and accept our own responsibility in this crucial time to protect the health of prairie lands and mountains, of rivers and underground waters, of green valleys and ancient forests, of the web of life that sustains us all.
We invite groups and individuals from other Pagan and earth-based traditions to join with us in heeding the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and the Sacred Stone Camp’s calls for solidarity and support. We are all related.
To read the full statement, or sign on in solidarity, please see: http://paganindigenoussolidarity.org/