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------Regaining traditional tribal values and ancestral homelands

-----------------------------------------by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

------------------------- Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) and this writer in Anoka, Minnesota
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----------------------------------------- Photo by Timothy Dahlheimer

This article is about my mission to help aboriginal people regain their traditional tribal values and ancestral homelands as well as influence them to take a leadership role in helping to create a new U.S.A. culture based on their traditional tribal values.

Anoka, Minnesota is a very sacred part of the Dakota's Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) Watershed traditional/ancestral homeland, which the Dakota were forced from and to which they are beginning to return and reclaim.

references: (1.) - (2.) - (3.) - (4.) - (5.) - (6.) - (7.) - (8.) - (9.)

After I sent a prominent member of the Anoka Human Rights Commission an e-mail wherein I presented a link to my article Creating a new U.S.A. culture based on traditional tribal values he sent me a response e-mail wherein he (in part) wrote: "I read your article and have a few questions for you":

The questions that he sent me are presented below.

(1.) What are the traditional tribal cultural valves that you are referring to? Please list them.

(2.) Do you believe that they apply to all North American indigenous tribes/people?

(3.) What/where are the traditional/ancestral homelands? Are they general geographic regions or are there specific locations? Who is making this determination? How?

(4.) You speak of "root ownership"; Since the indigenous people did not "own" land (as they did not follow the English concept of property ownership); why would they want to "own" land now? What land could be given? What would happen to those currently living there?

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My answers to the above questions are presented below.

(1.) What are the traditional tribal cultural valves that you are referring to? Please list them.

The traditional tribal values that I am referring to are:

Traditional Tribal Values.......The Dominant Society's Values

(1.) GROUP: Take care of the people........SELF: Take care of #1
(2.) TODAY: is a good day..........Prepare for TOMORROW
(3.) A Right Time: (Indian time) natural order.......TIME use every minute
(4.) AGE: knowledge and wisdom........YOUTH: rich, young, beautiful
(5.) COOPERATE............COMPETE
(6.) LISTEN (and you will learn).........SPEAK UP
(7.) GIVE and share.........TAKE and save
(8.) Live in HARMONY (with all things).........CONQUER nature
(9.) Great MYSTERY/intuitive..........SKEPTICAL/logical (prove it)
(10.) HUMILITY................ self (EGO) attention
(11.) A SPIRITUAL LIFE...........RELIGION (a part of life)
(12.) INTERDEPENDENCE OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS (treat others well, they are a part of who we all are).....SELFISH RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM, (take care of yourself, be selfish, you will not hurt yourself by hurting other people)
(13.) GENDER EQUALITY and BALANCE - God is male and female and lives in the sky/heaven and in/on the earth (Mother/Grandmother Earth - Father/Grandfather Sky).........MEN ARE SUPERIOR - God is a man and He lives in heaven ("Our Father, Who art in heaven,...").
(14.) God IS (in part) HERE WITH US (Mother/Grandmother Earth)......GOD IS DISTANT ("Our Father, Who Art in heaven,...")
(15.) Holistic health care: LOGIC DOES NOT VALUE CONCEPTS LIKE SEPERATNESS, BOUNDARIES, INDEPENDENCE AND PERSONAL HEATH (aboriginal medicine sees well-being between people)......INDEPENDENT PERSONAL HEALTH (Western medicine puts emphasis on independence, self-esteem, personal power, assertive self-representation.)

Traditional tribal values:

(1.) Kinship tribalism, or the larger love of the extended kinship family - a value that is radically different from the selfish, rugged individualism, "value" of our nation's dominant society.

(2.) The communal brotherhood of the tribe - the value of compassion, caring for and sharing ones material possessions with other members of the tribe. The person that gives the most away to needy members of the tribe is the most honored member of the tribe. In our nation's dominant society, often it is whoever can collect and horde away the most material possessions is the most honored person of the community. Our nation's greedy unrestricted capitalistic system is the opposite of the economic systems of traditional tribal nations. Greed was not considered a virtue in ancient tribal cultures and many tribes/nations to this present-day do not consider greed a virtue.

The main idea of Adam Smith, the founder of unrestricted capitalism, was the idea that the individual's pursuit of self-interest should be regarded as the main foundation upon which society benefits as a whole. This is perhaps the central premise of his book, The Wealth of Nations. Prior to the Enlightenment, avarice, or greed, was viewed with contempt as one of the seven deadly sins, but Adam Smith, buttressed with the work of Mandeville, Hume and other avowed atheists, paved the way for greed to be viewed as a natural, and even as a positive thing. This change in values was perhaps one of the most important and profound changes that helped to overthrow Judeo-Christian morality as the foundation of Western civilization.

If our nation's dominant society, which is a part of Western civilization, would replace its current greedy economic system with a traditional tribal economic system it would be going (in respect to the economy of our nation) back to Judeo-Christian morality.

(3.) In traditional tribal societies, religion is valued as a way of life. The religion of the tribe is interwoven into the people's lives. Traditional tribal religion is a way of life. To call it a "religion" is misleading. In our nation's dominant society, religion (denominational Christianity - an expression of "organized religion") is, for many people, a separate part of their lives, something they are involved with on Sunday mornings (church services), and/or at funerals and weddings. There is no separation of church and state in traditional tribal societies. Our founding fathers came up with the "insane" (as a pope once said) idea of separation of Church and State and subsequent governmental laws and policies. In traditional tribal societies religion is the basis and principle of unity, as it should be. A greedy materialistic value system (or greed) should not be the basis and principle of unity for a society. As is the case in our nation's dominant society.

Recently, Sojourners founder Rev. Jim Wallis, while addressing the economic downturn in his keynote address Feb. 28, at the annual Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, California said: "Our goal cannot be to get back to business as usual. We have to say, 'No, we want a new direction. We've tried the greed culture, and it hasn't worked.' We need to create something new, a common good culture, rooted in compassion." This statement by Rev. Wallis was (in bold letters) published in a recent edition of The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

(4.) The value of having an ecological spirituality - or deep caring respect for Mother Earth: In traditional tribal cultures living in harmony with the natural world is what is valued. However, in our nation's dominant culture the conquest and exploitation of nature and the tribal people who live in harmony with the natural world is valued.

Aboriginal spiritual teachers speak of the reestablishment of the balance between human beings and the whole of creation. Christians of the dominant culture believe that Christ came to save the world, but many mistakenly make that statement anthropocentric, and for hundreds of years their theology has excluded the whole of creation/earth/world from Christ's salvation plan. This is the reason why we have an ecological crisis, this will have to change. Christ came to save the whole of creation, not just humans. Aboriginal spiritual teachers sharing traditional tribal values can help many Christians of the dominant culture to make the necessary theological corrections, that they need to make, so that they no longer continue to be anthropocentric earth destroyers, but people working to bring about the "reestablishment of the balance between human beings and the whole of creation"...or, in other words, while taking this concept and plan even further, become people working to bring about the fullness of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Native American stories and myths, and in particular Native American creation stories (such as, to name one, the Dakota's Mille Lacs Lake creation story), accentuate and develop the tribe's landscape tradition. This process is often recognized in the association of particular tribes with what Alfonso Ortiz, a Native American scholar, anthropologist and activist, has termed "precise spatial referents." This process of association embodies a particular form of tribal identification, acknowledging specific tribal grounds not only as home, but also as the creator of the people. Traditionalist tribal people believe that they belong to their creator or sacred homelands (this sometimes includes traditional/ancestral homelands to which they are returning and reclaiming) and therefore their homelands are with parental qualities. Note: Mille Lacs Lake is within the Dakota's Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) Watershed traditional/ancestral homeland.

A traditional tribal homeland, where there is a creation story, is considered the tribe's birthplace, and it is the birthplace of all living forms. Therefore everything that was created is equal; hence man and nature are brothers...and not enemies who are at war with each other, trying to dominate and conquer each other, which seems to be the belief and behavior of people who are of our nation's dominant society.

Aboriginal tribes' traditional homelands where there are creation stories are paramount to their ancestral identities and also critically important to their oral narrative, and simultaneously to their spiritual practices associated with their spiritual traditions, which bind them and their creator/homelands together in love and harmonious unification, including Pow Wows, various sacred ceremonies, rituals, prayers, sweat lodge ceremonies (the lodge represents the womb of Mother Earth) and the experience of belonging to a place with parental qualities.

When Father Louis Hennepin and the other members of his 1680 party of explorers came up the Mississippi River to the Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) he called this river "the river of the Isanti". The name Isanti is a name for the four Eastern Dakota bands (including the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Wahpeton and Sisseton). The Isanti bands, as well as the other Dakota bands (including the Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton), belong to the Wakan Wakpa. The Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton bands had left Mille Lacs Lake and their entire Wakan Wakpa (Rum River) Watershed traditional/ancestral homeland (but not necessarily forever) shortly before Hennepin and his fellow explorers arrived.

The river (Wakan Wakpa) is a part of the Dakota's (all seven bands') Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) traditional/ancestral homeland. To the traditionalist Dakota people the Wakan Wakpa is a living being, the river has a spirit. And this spirit is a god who is one with Wakantonka, their Great Spirit. Forcing the Isanti Dakota from their Wakan Wakpa, which European colonists, with the help of a newly arrived Ojibwe band, did, was the same as forcing the Dakota from their spirit god of the river and (to some extent) their Great Spirit. ref.

The U.S.A. government's action of retaining ownership of the Wakan Wakpa and land on both sides of it is a violation of a fundamental human right of the Dakota people, the right to freedom of religion. The river and land (banks) on both sides of it are sacred to the Dakota. And the river and its banks at its mouth and where it meets with the Mississippi River are very scared to the Dakota, these sites are like churches or temples to the Dakota people. The Dakota consider all Bdote sites, meaning all sites where there is a jioning or juncture of two bodies of water, very sacred. This is why the mouth of the Wakan Wakpa and the confluence of the Wakan and Mississippi rivers in Anoka are considered very sacred sites to the Dakota people.

During a meeting with the mayor of Anoka (now a former mayor of Anoka - Bjorn E. Skogquist), Jim Anderson, the Historian and Co-Cultural Chair for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, said, while envisioning and talking about a possible future Dakota sacred gathering at the Wakan Wakpa in Anoka: "We could use nets to fish in the river without getting a license or permission from the U.S.A. or state government." At the time, Mr. Anderson was making a point, as to who he believes the river belongs...or rather, to who he believes belongs to the river.

In 1656, the Dakota were living at the headwaters of the Wakan Wakpa in five villages numbering about 5,000 people. On about July 1 hunters, 250 in number, departed, as was their custom at that time of year, to hunt the buffalo on the prairies of southern Minnesota. While canoeing down the Wakan Wakpa they would stop and camp along the way at their favored locations. The rendezvous was at the confluence of the Wakan and Mississippi rivers, or at the Dakota people's sacred site now known as Anoka.

In three articles about a Dakota youth canoe journey down the length of the Wakan Wakpa (Rum River), from Mille Lacs Lake to the Mississippi River, where are the words: "'These young people are taking the initiative to scout the length of the river in order for their tribe to become familiar with it, and in so doing, reclaim their tribal legacy,' says LeMoine LaPointe, director of the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center." And while corresponding with Leonard Wabasha, a hereditary Mdewakanton Dakota Chief and Dakota leader, who often represents the Mdewakanton Dakota people during historic events of commemoration and homecoming gatherings at traditional/ancestral homelands, Mr. Wabasha told me that he approved of the Dakota youth reclaiming the Dakota tribe's tribal legacy in the sacred Mde Wakan (Lake Mille Lacs) Dakota traditional/ancestral homeland, and doing so, by canoeing down the Wakan Wakpa and contributing to the articles about their canoe journey.

And when Jim Anderson and I were working together and had (to some extent) established the beginning stage of an Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance, Leonard Wabasha told me that he approved of the work that Jim Anderson and I were doing in Anoka.

(5.) In traditional tribal societies there is more respect for elders than in our nation's dominant society. Family members take care of their parents in old age. They do not put them in nursing homes when they reach old age and are still healthy. Elders are given a prominent social engineering voice in their tribe's day-to-day social and political decision making processes.

(6.) In traditional tribal societies there is a lack of the dominant society's excessive competitiveness, which causes hateful rivalries, greed and wars.

(7.) In traditional tribal cultures there is value attributed to having a deep spiritual life, a spiritual life that puts spirituality at the center of their lives. The aboriginal people who are of traditional tribal cultures are radically opposed to the earth and health destroying as well as imperialistic warmongering materialistic value system of our nation's dominant society, a value system that is at the heart of most American's lives.

(8.) The unnatural and inhumane regulation of ordinary people's lives by the elite of large organizations and institutions is necessary for the functioning of the current industrial-technological society. Solutions: Create nearly self sufficient communities. Brake down large organizations and institutions into small units. Create freedom-loving, small, autonomous communities, like traditional tribal communities. Create smaller local churches where people can get to know each other better and share their faith. Get rid of the big cities. Brake up large suburban communities into smaller communities. Put an end to the current brainwashing school system, where many youth get dummed down so that they can work like unthinking mechanical machines in large factories. Communalize churches and families, bring back kinship tribalism. Put an end to the big corporations that have to much of an influence on civil governments, the media and the leaders of big denominational churches.

These big corporation's excessive social engineering power is the reason why big tobacco is able to stay in business. It's also why big alcohol is able to stay in business. These poisons and gateway drugs (tobacco and alcohol) remain legal because of the big corporation's greedy and corrupt influences. And it is also why big gambling stays in business. It's why people buy big polluting and fuel consuming automobiles and houses. It's why most people are not living in communal earth homes, with solar heating, wind generators and organic gardens, etc. It's why our nation is the biggest polluting nation in the world. It's why our nation has the most prisons and jails, there are more people incarcerated in our nation than any other nation. It's why our nation has the biggest military industrial complex, etc.

(9.) The current system forces people to behave in ways that are increasingly alien from the natural order of human behavior. For example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent to spend most of his/her time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his/her time in active contact with the real natural world. Among primitive tribal people the activities that children were trained to do were in harmony with natural human behavior. Among American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active outdoor pursuits - just the sort of things that boys like. But in our nation's dominant society children are herded into crowded indoor class rooms to study technical subjects, which most do with resentment.

(10.) Another example, the elite think that they need to prolong young adults' sexual inclinations and behavior in order to efficiently prepare them for occupations in the system. Instead of preparing young adults for marriage, by helping them to stay in harmony with their natural biological time table, as primitive tribal societies did, (young adults married by the age of fifteen) they prolong adolescents. And by doing so, they promote sexual perversion, which causes young adults to have multiple sex partners, which in turn causes venereal disease health epidemics as well as unwanted pregnancies, which in many cases end with abortion. In addition, this problem with the elite also creates a lot of fatherless welfare recipient families.

Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to unnaturally modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society's requirements: fraudulent welfare recipients, youth-gang members, counter-cultural hippies, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and many other resisters of various kinds.

The current system does not exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that is being unnaturally modified to fit the needs of the system. Therefore, if the system is not radically transformed, so that it exist to satisfy natural human needs it will soon self-destruct into anarchy.

(11.) In traditional tribal cultures sharing and group survival is more important than individual prosperity. The individual is judged by his contribution to the group. In traditional tribal societies individuals have the ability to put first the needs of other individuals of the group. Individual identity emerges from membership and participation in group life. Harmony with nature pertains to the values of cooperation and harmony with the environment. Group goals are arrived at by consensus, and an attempt to advise is seen as interference and considered to be bad manners. Patience is often expressed as a desire to live in an unhurried manner. Circular time is a concept of time rooted in activities which are regulated by the repeating seasons. The notion is that things are done when the "time is right," that is when all environmental and interpersonal factors converge to ensure success. Non-confrontation averts inter-group rivalry and prevents any embarrassment that a less able member of the group might feel in an interpersonal relationship. Non-confrontation is often misinterpreted by non-Natives as lack of initiative and ambition. Broad view of the family refers to a structurally open family which may include many extended family members living together in one house.

(12.) Many Native Americans drop out of the labor force intermittently in order to meet community and family obligations, or to pursue other activities such as hunting, fishing, berry and wild rice gathering. Living in harmony with the natural world's seasons and placing more value on taking care of family members who need help than on making more money than they need is a traditional tribal cultural value that is not appreciated by most people of our nation's dominant culture. Making more money than they need and hurrying here and there as well as being out of touch with the natural world's seasons is what is valued most by people of our nation's dominate society.

(13.) The traditional tribal value of compassion, associated with aboriginal people's belief in the interdependence of all human beings, influences them to care for the well-being of all human beings, including sharing and sometimes giving away some of their material posessions, and not taking advantage of people's addiction weaknesses to make money - is a value that is in opposition to the greedy materialistic value system of our nation's dominant society.

Waziyatawin Wilson, a leading Minnesota Dakota activist, once said on a radio program interview, when speaking to Minnesota's Dakota bands: "you can not be spiritual and have casinos". She also said on another radio program interview.. (part 2) that Minnesota's Dakota bands are "gaming" bands that have an invested interest in their casinos and that the tribal councils of these bands are more interested in, both, the money they make from their band's casino businesses and the respect they get from prominent non-Native leaders of the dominate society (who like them because they are leaders) than they are about regaining and preserving their people's good traditional cultural values or liberating themselves and their people from the earth and health destroying dominate culture.

A tribal chairman wrote: "We won't put a casino here in Onondaga. It's an addictive detriment to the community, and the surrounding community. People lose their houses, jobs and families because of casinos. We won't base our economic development on such an (enterprise). As soon as you put up a casino, people want to go there and make money, and all they care about is money," Gewas Schindler, a grandson of an Onondaga chief said: "It's almost a complete mind-changer. You put it up and it begins to destroy your traditions."

I believe that when the federal government as well as state governments allow/lure oppressed and deeply impoverished tribes to establish casino and bingo gambling businesses - instead of helping them to establish businesses that are compatible with their traditional cultures - they are allowing/luring these impoverished tribes to assimilate into one of the most greedy and corrupt aspects of our nation's dominate culture; and that by doing so, they are participating in another cultural genocide scheme.

A letter to the editor of mine about this topic was recently published in Minnesota's best-selling statewide daily newspaper, the Star Tribune. To view and read this letter click INDIAN GAMING - A grave threat to Indian culture .

(14.) The traditional tribal social values of gender equality and balance: The transformation of the dominant society's popular religion (Christianity), wherein God is imaged as [only] Father to God as Parent(s) will not destroy the dominant society's popular religion, but it will fulfill it. Mother God is not an alternative to Father God; She is an expansion of the dominant society's Christian possibility to experience God. God as Father will not be lost by including the experience of God as Mother.

Father images of God will still tend to discipline, order, history, progress, judgment, duty, military protectionism, transcendence, and all that the masculine has to offer. Mother images of God will make more available immediacy, creativity, intuition, enduring nurture, tenderness, extended family values, environmentalism and all that the feminine has to offer.

Both traditionalist Native people and Natives who have converted to Christianity, and in the process incorporated their people's traditional religion's images of God as Mother into their expression of Christianity, can contribute to Christianity's transformation and fulfillment by sharing their experience of God as both Mother and Father.

We are all interdependent and interconnected with each other and Mother Earth, a divine feminine Being. We are the very essence of the Divine Mother, in essence we are who She is and She is who we are. She abides in the heart of every being. She manifests in forms of consciousness as an adoration for Her beloved, the eternal formless Supreme Being - God the Father. In truth these two timeless married lovers are not two. Rather, they are inseparably bound to play out their cosmic dance of love for all eternity. The Divine Mother is one in being with the Divine Father, and we are the children of our Divine Father and Mother. We are a family, we are interconnected with each other, and in a process of becoming fully united in love, peace, and eternal happiness.

(15.) The traditional tribal value of holistic health care, including the healing of physical ailments and psychological wounds: According to aboriginal native Hawaiian medicine: "All healing requires reconnection by 'restorative justice' through which responsibility for the disconnection is taken and amends are made."

A proclamation of contrition for the healing of the wounds of aboriginal natives who live in Minnesota as well as for those who are the descendents of the exiled Dakota natives who live where their ancestors were exiled after the 1862 Dakota war is presented on the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission's "May is American Indian Month in Minnesota" Web page. It reads:

"Minnesotans pride themselves today on living in a state that is forward-thinking and compassionate. We have become a haven for refugees from countries where genocide still occurs. We recoil at the holocausts of World War I and II, and the more recent acts of savagery in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Yet we remain either unaware of or unable to look at our own history and acknowledge the painful wounds of ethnocide and genocide right here in Minnesota. We have a very hard time acknowledging that the pain remains and that it has affected much of our history thru to the present day.

Holistic health care -- Traditional tribal cultures have a long-standing and well integrated orientation to the whole. This is readily apparent in various aspects of aboriginal native cultures, ranging from healing to social organization.

The traditional tribal cultural values associated with holistic health care: Aboriginal native Hawaiians speak of the importance of loving connection, a concept that 2000-year Hawaiian medicine considers to be the essence of health. To Hawaiian healers, all illnesses takes place in the context of some form of disconnection, and all healing requires reconnection by "restorative justice" through which responsibility for the disconnection is taken and amends are made.

The genocide and ethnocide of the Dakota people by Europeans and Euro-Americans as well as the grand theft of Minnesota's Dakota traditional/ancestral homelands and violent expulsion of many Dakota people from Minnesota (where many of their descendants remain in poverty and exile) has caused a great disconnection that is contributing to serious heath problems within Dakota communities, including alcohol and drug abuse epidemics. If the dominant society takes responsibility for this disconnection and offers reconnection by "restorative justice", meaning - returning the Dakota's traditional/ancestral homelands to them and restoring their fundamental human rights, by granting them (both) full independent sovereignty rights and the religious freedom right to fully restore their traditional religion within their traditional/ancestral homelands - the healing of the Dakota people will begin and both communities (native and the dominant society') will benefit from the process and end results.

(2.) Do you believe that the traditional tribal culture values apply to all North American indigenous tribes/people?

I believe that there are some traditional tribal culture values that many North American indigenous tribes/people share.

The majority of North American indigenous people's values and actions relate to four universal objects that have been important in the culture for thousands of years. These include God, as the great power above everything, including one's destiny. The spiritual God of the native Americans is positive, benevolent, and part of daily living. God is part of everything; thus all of nature's objects are to be respected as both spiritual and physical entities.

The world in North American Native culture(s) is interconnected -- everything, including human beings, is believed to live according to the same process. Each being has its own unique function and place in the universe, and every part of nature contains a spirit. While mainstream society has attempted to overcome/overpower nature, and tends to make material comfort an end goal in itself, Native North American culture seeks a balance with nature wherein both can benefit from and support one another.

Within the context of the four universal objects, the role of family emerges as an important factor in North American Native culture(s) and, thus, in developing relationships with their elders. The family structure may vary from tribe to tribe. However, generally speaking, Native North American families are characterized by a strong role for women and dependence on extended family support (often through second cousins) versus mainstream society's reliance primarily on the nuclear family for help.

Traditional tribal people believe that all life forms are interdependent and interconnected, and because of this belief of theirs, many of them are attempting to unify the world view of human beings who are interdependent and interconnected. Many aboriginal people believe that they and all other human beings are a part of all life and that the continuation of know-it-all theological belief systems is divisive and not relevant because the modern day spiritual pilgrimage is one of unity in which there are many truths in a variety of merging religious traditions that are on their way to a triumphant unification that will be the creation of a one-world religion that will serve as the basis and principle of unity for all of humanity, a triumphant unification that will help unite humanity within a single global culture that will be made up of the best of the pasts of all the world's different traditions and cultures. "ref."

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(3.) What/where are the traditional/ancestral homelands? Are they general geographic regions or are there specific locations? Who is making this determination? How?

An appropriate federal agency, one that now exist, or one yet to be established, could, - by way of working with tribes and bands, historians, anthropologists, the National Historical Society, state and county historical societies, state governments, county commissioners, city governments, human rights commissions and the general public, - determine - by way of panels, commissions, caucuses, official public meetings, write-in statements, internet public forums, etc. - what traditional/ancestral homelands are (provide a official definition) and also determine where they are located. And this process could also determine where the outer (general) boundaries of the traditional/ancestral homelands are located and where very sacred sites (specific locations) are, within the homeland territories.

However, most traditional/ancestral homelands are already known to exist by tribes and the general publish because of the well known written and oral history of an area. In these cases, determining the exact outer boundary lines of the traditional/ancestral homeland of a particular tribe or band would need to be officially determined before those lands could be given back to the tribe or band. And what this "giving back" term would mean would also have to be determined by a similar process.

Federal agencies are already determining, by way of a process that is somewhat like my (above) proposed process, where "sacred sites" and "traditional cultural properties" are located and who should own and manage the sacred sites and traditional cultural properties. To learn more about this already existing process check Bruce White's interactive website out. It is located at: http://minnesotahistory.net/

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(4.) You speak of "root ownership"; Since the indigenous people did not "own" land (as they did not follow the English concept of property ownership); why would they want to "own" land now?

Indigenous people did not follow the English concept of property ownership, but never-the-less they had homelands that they considered their territory, so they did "own" land. And they would defend it if invaders tried to take it away from them. And do so by forcefully driving them from their land, if they had the military might to do so.

They believed that they belonged to their homelands and Mother Earth, a living Being. Individual tribes had the fundamental human right to believe that a particular peace of land was their homeland, because they discovered it and lived on it. And they made good use of this right, until the colonists Europeans and then (later) Euro-Americans denied them the right to consider the land that they discovered and lived on as well as had a spiritual relationship with to be considered theirs and live on it. ref.

They were sometimes granted occupancy rights to land, like wild animals in a wildlife reserve. The colonizing "Christians" believed that only Christian nations could own land and that they were suppose to convince the natives that they could not own land. Euro-Americans had the same belief and forced the native tribes/people to become "wards of the state", so that they and their lands could be regulated and exploited. The natives were to be subjugated and "Christianized", and their cultures and languages were to be destroyed. Indian boarding schools are a good example of how they went about trying to accomplish these goals. And supplying the natives with the additive drug [alcohol], a drug that they had a weakness to abuse, is another good example of how they went about accomplishing these despicable, human rights violating, goals of theirs.

The indigenous people did not believe in personal ownership of real estate property, all real estate property belonged collectively to the tribe or band. They did not have a property deed of ownership to their homelands written on a peace of birch bark that said it was forever theirs, even if they moved a long ways away from the land. That was/is a European and American concept of ownership of land.

However, now-a-days as tribes and bands return to their sacred traditional/ancestral homelands, they will (I believe) come to understand that because there are a lot more people living in this land today...that this will make it necessary for them to gain a property real estate deed (or deeds) that acknowledge that they have absolute root ownership of their sacred traditional/ancestral homelands, or to at least a part (or parts) of them. Never-the-less, this will not change their belief that they belong to the land and do not own the land. The deeds will help them convince people that the ancestral/traditional homelands that they will be living in are their territories.

Treaties are made between equal nations. This was not the case in respect to the so-called treaties between tribal nations and the U.S.A. government. The tribal nations were not considered equal. This will have to change, so that real treaties can be made between tribal nations and the U.S.A. government.

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(4.) What land could be given? What would happen to those currently living there?

What land could be given and what would happen to those currently living there would have to be determined by a process like the one described above. I am hoping to see a blend of cultures. If this occurs, it would make a big difference as to what decisions would be made in respect to these questions of yours. "What would happen to those currently living there?". What would happen to their land [stolen land]? Some Indigenous leaders would like for [only] public land within their people's traditional/ancestral homelands to be returned to them and their people.

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