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| Nathan Phillips, Omaha, speaking at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today. Screenshot by Censored News. |
Omaha Nathan Phillips: Prayer, Lithium, and an Ancient Language Lost, UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, April 19, 2024
NEW YORK -- Nathan Phillips, Deer Clan, Omaha, spoke of prayer, traditions and lithium mining at the United Nations today, and his words brought a welcome calm, in contrast to the fast-paced rhetoric of governments and agencies.
"I came to pray for the people and bring knowledge of what's happening on our reservations, of the lithium, the copper mining and the extraction industries, these things that are destroying our people."
Phillips, representing the Native Youth Alliance at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said the Alliance started out as a vision 40 years ago.
The first time he came to the United Nations was in the 1980s, with an Indigenous group. They were singing with a drum group outside, singing for the Indigenous People inside.
This year, however, there was a lack of funding to bring youths here.
"We're here in America the richest country in the world -- maybe -- and yet the Indigenous People are struggling to survive. There's a lot of us who do have economic resources through extraction industries, so we're divided."
"There are those who are looking to go 'future' without considering what we've had, our traditional knowledges. We've come to a critical time, and this body here, this United Nations is really the thing that I see that's going to help us come to a future."
"I came to pray for the people here and bring knowledge of what's happening on our reservations, of the lithium, the copper mining and the extraction industries, these things that are destroying our people."
"We're in the decade of Indigenous language."
"My Omaha People used to have an ancient language that is gone, my mother and father were the last ones to know that language."
"I was taken away when I was a child, so I don't know that old language, and I don't know our common language of the Omaha people. I know how to begin my prayers in Omaha, and I know how to end them in prayer, and that is what I've been doing every day here."
'I don't have a piece of paper, so many people here have those words, and I depend on them to bring that knowledge forward."
What Phillips came here for was to pray.
'"That is what I've been doing every day here, and what needs to be taken to the future in a good way."
