Editor’s note: Kylo Prince, Dakota and Ojibwe, is a spiritual leader with the American Indian Movement. He was interviewed by Brett Jelinek for the People’s Tribune in October at the Oceti Sakowin Camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Edited for publication.
The last world war will be fought over water. Never mind the oil that they’re trying to ship out and sell. They’ll be choking when they try to eat their money. You can’t eat or drink your money.
In Boulder Colorado, I got to meet one of the oil execs from here in North Dakota. So I called that oil exec on stage. I really wanted to hurt the man, but I said, “You know what? I want to thank you for giving our young ones scars, because our scars define us as warriors. I want to thank you for trying to destroy the water, because in doing so you’ve been able to unite a whole bunch of nations that previously wouldn’t even get along.” He thought it was great that I was thanking him, that he let oil companies sic dogs on our people, that they used the tear gas, which in itself is an act of war. Why are all these police and military people protecting the [oil companies] who are trying to destroy their water, too? They should be arresting them, not us. They’ve already been told to stop.
Back home in Canada I’ve been urging the chiefs to get everybody into Ottawa, into Parliament Hill, let’s do something. “Oh we can’t afford it.” Well if you wait any longer then you won’t be able to afford it and you won’t be able to do anything else either, but perish surrounded by water that you can’t drink.
Under the [former Canadian prime minister] Harper administration, they passed the bills, a whole bunch of them… a whole new genocide policy. They’re gonna start reclaiming First Nations [reservation land] and do with them what they wish, and evict all the people and leave them homeless. It’s terrible. And people say, “Well why don’t you just get a job?” Where? Where? And I agree, we could start harvesting our own crops. We could start fishing, hunting again. But some of the ones that have started to do that, they ended up in legal battles where they lose everything because of the greed, because of the greed of the corporations; they don’t want us to feed ourselves. They want us to depend on everything they can [sell] us.
It’s corporations that rule. There’s a few wealthy [people] that own all those corporations. … Look, they’re gonna start treating the average [non-indigenous] citizen like they’ve been treating [the First Nations]. It ain’t gonna fly very far before people start standing up.
It’s time that we all stood together. Under the prophecy of the eighth fire, of the Anishinaabe, we all stand together and we heal each other and our Mother [Earth]. The healing of forgiveness. We can never forget, but we can always forgive.
That prophecy of the rainbow, it’s not a made-up thing or a New Age thing. When we ignite the fire within us, we all shine that different color, we all burn that different color. It has nothing to do with the color of our skin, but the color of our medicine, the color of our spirit. And when we can all shine together, ignite that fire together, within each other, that’s where we get that rainbow, that bridge across the sky.
I know that when I was lit on fire, it was the most amazing experience of my life. … That was my vision, to take down those barriers that we’ve been hiding behind so that people know who the warriors are; and it’s not just American Indian Movement people, it’s everybody.
They tried genocide on us, and it didn’t work, and now they’re trying it on everybody. Obama already signed everybody’s rights away anyway. Nobody has any rights. Unless we take them back. Unless we pray together for our water. Again, it comes back to that spirituality. Colonialism came in and robbed us of our spirituality. So then our people, starved of spirituality, fell into the addictions. And a lot of them can’t find their way out, until we take them to that sacred fire. Because that’s what our spirits are starved for. Because we’re all fire and we’re water. That’s what we are. We need both: We need that sacred fire. We need the water. And it’s the fire that’s gonna save the water. The fire that consumes all of us, the eighth fire.
What’s your vision for the future?
People learning to forget about self. We are all so selfish. All we think about is what we need, what our family needs. I know through colonization we have become consumers. We have to have the best tent, or the best teepee, or the best TV, or the best car. “Oh, there’s a new iPhone, I better have that one, too!”… In a society with instant everything, we forget to go back to our ceremonies. We forget that through our suffering and our ceremonies that we have life. We have good life for all of our people—all the people—if we come together like this.
When I think of the beautiful people I’ve seen and met, and I think about people on the rez just as beautiful, but broken and hurting, have not found that love yet, have not found that self yet, that fire yet. We all need to learn to help them up, too.
That’s one of the other things of being oppressed, is we are divided on so many fronts on so many battles at once. But when it comes down to the water, that’s where we can all fight together, that’s where we can all stand together, because we all need it. It’s not an Indian thing anymore, it’s an everybody everything thing. And that’s why it’s so important that we’re all here together.
Just like the directions. When we do the directions [ceremony], we are connecting all of creation. Not just you or me, but all of us. Even the ones without the voices, everything that uses that water to live. The birds that come and visit and eat the fish. The turtles. Us, we drink the water. We eat the fish, we eat some of those birds. That’s what life is, is a circle. And we’re about to lose that circle in a big way if we lose all the water. And that’s why it doesn’t matter if you’re calling yourself a Water Protector or Water Warrior or ‘water worrier,’ because we’re all in it together. We’re all made of water. That’s what it is.
If you can’t come here, go somewhere to protect the water. There’s places all over the country where that help is needed. Facebook is a good place to get educated on those things. Not to get lost on Facebook. That’s what Robert said, from Sacred Stone Camp—he’s been there since the beginning. “If it wasn’t for Facebook,” he said, “none of this would have happened.” They would have still been a small little camp over there. So yeah, we do have social media, and media outlets like yours like you’re reporting for [the People’s Tribune]. The Small victories, add them all up, we can stack them all up, and when we’re done we’ll be victorious through unity.
Do you have a message for all the other water warriors and water protectors out there?
I have to say thank you. Thank you and stand strong. It might sometimes seem like what we do is thankless, but it doesn’t go unnoticed. And if you keep doing it, maybe we’ll get that attention that we need. When after all the elections are done, and everybody says, “Holy shit we’re fucked, again. Now we’d better stand up together.” So yeah, stand strong, stay strong, support each other, love each other. That’s the way.
