It's time to transition beyond our fossil fuel addiction to a just economy based on green jobs, renewable energy, and local organic food.

Ojibwe prophecy speaks of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It is our choice as communities and as individuals how we will proceed.

Water is life. We are the people who live by the water. Pray by these waters. Travel by the waters. Eat and drink from these waters. We are related to those who live in the water. To poison the waters is to show disrespect for creation. To honor and protect the waters is our responsibility as people of the land.

We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.

The military is the largest polluter in the country, and so you have a lot of military waste contaminating reservations - as, for example, on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, where 5,000 sheep died in some kind of experimental military nerve gas test 10 years ago. Many of our communities are dealing with that kind of waste, and an absence of political will to clean them up.

I would like to see as many people patriotic to a land as I have seen patriotic to a flag.

Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists.