Last Updated on August 17, 2018
During the Energy Action Coalition’s 2007 youth summit on climate change, called Power Shift, Evon Peter, former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in in northeastern Alaska and executive director of Native Movement shared a particularly powerful message that seems appropriate to highlight on this day so sacred for those of the Christian faith.
The message is one that extends far beyond the need for a clean energy economy and solutions to ‘climate change’ and global environment decay. It encourages us to develop ourselves, to heal from our past, and to face our fears with the knowledge that, as a result of our efforts, we will become better people.
In all the challenges we face today, in a world where responsibility is replaced with convenience, where opinion is so often a substitute for truth and ‘the want of things’ takes precedence over our fundamental needs for food, culture, water, love, and community – it becomes necessary to overcome our fears, because they limit and paralyze us from knowing meaningful life.
It’s one that does not come by signing petitions or through confrontations with government or by imagining that ‘another world is possible.” Rather, it is one we must nurture, like a seed in the earth so that one day, maybe generations from now, our sprituality, our beleifs, our identity, our needs, our capability, and our environment live in agreement.
Right now we are wounded. We have this cut that never seems to heal because we think it’s easier and more ‘satisfying’ to put on a band-aid, take some drugs, and continue on as if nothing happened…
The wound has reached the point of infection now, and unless we start tending to it we may never be able to recover.
Confronting our fears is perhaps the most critical in our recovery, because, if we can overcome them, we enable ourselves, empower ourselves to to live… Not as other people want, but as WE NEED together.
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is how little attention it receives.
Stories like this are disappearing in real time. Mainstream media
barely covers it and the coverage is fragmented. The public is left without the context
needed to understand what is truly at stake.
That is exactly why IC Magazine exists..
For more than 20 years, IC has reported on Indigenous struggles worldwide — consistently, independently, and without compromise.
We don’t follow news cycles; we trace patterns. We don’t sensationalize; we provide context.
And when the world looks away, we stay focused.
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Thank you,
John Ahni Schertow
Founder and Editor in Chief
