Any nation that has lost contact with their elders, appointed history keepers, teachers, spiritual, civic, and martial leaders, would, within a generation, cease to be a nation. Without the instructions of their living culture bearers they would no longer resemble their ancestors - in customs or beliefs. For lack of the knowledge and wisdom of their People’s past experiences, they would fall prey to the same weaknesses that befell other cultures who having lost their original foundation, could no longer stand against foreign influences. In our case, the case of the Quiripi (Quinnipiac), this scenario is compounded by the fact that we only have one living culture bearer left alive, and he is unjustly imprisoned by the government of Texas. This reduces us, a small family barely functioning in a dysfunctional society – to accepting a foreign opinion, which considers our nation to be only a memory of what was, while we are left with little hope of what we might be. Yet, a huge body of knowledge regarding language, traditions and ceremonies, lies just beyond our reach, and our need for that knowledge can only be satisfied by occasional letters and e-mails.

Being that our grand Sachem, Iron Thunderhorse, is not within the realms of physical contact, as far as his people are concerned we must suffer this exclusion from our rightful cultural inheritance. It is not only our fate, as the Quiripi, but also, I dare say - with great respect for all our brothers and sisters - the fate of many Eastern Woodland Algonquin people. Iron Thunderhorse is a repository of customs, languages and skills, without whom, it would be far more difficult, for the various nations, here in the East, and on reservations out West, to recover the ancient ways that make them a people.

If you wished to know the accumulated knowledge of your culture, would you trust in a version written by a people who, at best, considered your culture to be alien, primitive and godless? In our case, if we were to remain Eastern Woodland Algonquin, without the help of Iron Thunderhorse, we would have to compromise the meaning behind that knowledge with the ideals and customs of, actually, alien, Nordic European Christians. They would certainly insist upon changing our traditions so that they match up with their beliefs, just as they did when they first came into contact with us in the 1600’s. The knowledge of our past greatness, our struggles with nature and the evil of human greed, all the knowledge which has come down through the millennia, would then be interpreted by a people ignorant of its true meaning, suspicious of the oral tradition behind the history, and hatefully disrespectful of our beliefs.

What we are missing now is the right to interpret our own futures through the knowledge given us by our ancestors - the knowledge of who we are. It is one thing to know that injustice is being done in the case of Iron Thunderhorse and great injustice has been done, indeed! It is another thing to understand that this injustice will seep into the lives of his people, who may never recover their full cultural identity without him. If you understood just how selfless and devoted a man it takes to hold on for the good of his People’s future, under conditions that average men would have died from long ago, if you understood, truly, the kind of genius it takes to absorb all of that knowledge and make it grow within himself, until it lives as if it were a full nation there within him, then, you would know Iron Thunderhorse.

Please consider just how important it is to return this man to freedom. His freedom is our freedom. His release will allow an entire nation to have a future, to say nothing of the injustice that this man had to suffer at the hands of bigots who consider indigenous peoples of America to be much less than human. What ever you can do to help, you’ll be greatly blessed for your effort since the spirits that watch over us will gratefully watch over you as well, and these powerful spirits have kept us, all these many thousands of years, from total annihilation. The outcome of our survival into the future depends on: the ancient knowledge handed down from generation to generation, having small, if any, gaps in sequence and content, should Iron Thunderhorse be free to hand that information down to his people, or, large gaps and misinterpretations, should he not be free to do so. The latter would, almost certainly, change the original instructions and intentions behind our cultural knowledge, which, in turn, would at best leave us wanting and at worst leave us a broken people.

Look to the white line of the dawn land sky and cast your prayers for Iron Thunderhorse to the rising sun and when he is free we will all be free…

BLESSINGS!
KIROUANA PADDAQUAHUM