From Hollywood to Homeostasis

From Hollywood to Homeostasis

Indians need to get out of Hollywood and get back home
and work from our own communities.
Hollywood will never get the story right.

This means we are going to have to get our own story right,
and take charge of the direction in which we are headed.
What kind of story are we making?
Is it one in which the junk food corporations win
and we all die of diabetes and other “food”-related illnesses?
Is it one of name-calling and pulling each other down?
Or is it a story of facing the challenges together,
each of us? Are we telling the story in our own voices?

A cascade of military transport planes heads over my house
on the way to kill in Iraq. In the predominant story
coming from the country’s leadership,
“we” are killing for peace, for democracy.
It doesn’t work that way, for words without roots
in honesty and respect can and will do things recklessly.
Iraq is the new Indian country.
The corporations want oil.
Sound familiar?

Maybe if we take care of our own story of our people,
and make a story of justice, honesty, with a vision
of caring for all within the tribe, we might inspire
the same in others. If I remember the story correctly,
we had no need for jails, for institutions, for military
transport jets. We had everything we needed.
We took care of each other.

What a story.


Joy Harjo July 2007