Very few would question or challenge the reality of climate change and the perilous situation of the present day, yet it is often overlooked that indigenous communities have in many cases been impacted the hardest by the environmental crisis and have been on the frontline of the struggle to protect the earth, as witnessed most recently by the events at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The First Peoples of the world provide an integral vision as to how human beings can live in balance and harmony within themselves and simultaneously with the world around them. It needs to be remembered that it was not until relatively recently that the religion and shamanic traditions of the First Peoples—with all their diversity—were viewed to be one of the world’s religions itself. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed and put into law in 1978, allowed indigenous peoples to freely practice their traditional religion without fear of persecution.

Mitakuye oyasin—“we are all related”2—is a well-known Sioux phrase, often voiced at the end of a prayer. It is with this affirmation of the interconnectedness of all things, and no less respect for all things, that this collection Spirit of the Earth of Indian voices sets forth. This book is comprised of authenticated quotations from men and women of some fifty North American tribes, which are placed alongside striking historical photographs of the American Indians, depicting their diversity and illustrating the timeless message of this sacred tradition.

The powerful symbol of the circle dominates the indigenous people’s sense of reality rather than that of linear causality. The cyclical pattern within the web of life occurs in the human being through his or her development and within the natural world. This is summarized by Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk):

Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls, birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round.

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tipis were round like the nests of birds and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

This volume provides readers with a powerful glimpse into the traditional world of the indigenous peoples of North America, bringing together diverse voices from North American tribes complemented with a stunning series of photographs. The timeless wisdom and beauty contained in this small book provides an antidote to the nihilism and confusion by returning the human being to a spiritual frame of reference that is inseparable from the sacredness of the earth. 

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