Willie Nelson

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Susan Bame Hoover uses images from the Omaha Reservation and Winnebago Reservation in northeast Nebraska to illustrate her video over the Sirus B recording of “A Peaceful Solution.”

How appropriate to bring forward the current state of the indigenous people of America in the context of peace. We must acknowledge and account for fruits of our actions regarding these people.

Never forget that the road leading to the current horrific Iraq and Afghanistan debacles began in the abysmal treatment of the original inhabitants of America. The history of the United States of America recounts a continuous destruction of indigenous peoples worldwide in order to extract a few highly valued resources and despoil the rest.

The path to peace must begin with a reconciliation and every possible restitution to the benefit of Native American people. No compensation could be commensurable. We also owe Hawaiians for destroying their culture and stealing their islands. Indeed, remembering all the victims would produce a long list.

Certainly we can see by now that the foolishly violent and wasteful path this country has been on leads to no good end. Soon enough we will be needing the good will of all our neighbors and unfortunately we have given them little reason to help us.

Yes, there will be hard adjustments to make. But these adjustments must be made. To not make these adjustments seals our own death and destruction.

Already many countries hold back from exporting their food to the United States and this trend will only continue. The slide down the energy curve from Peak Oil will make long distance shipping of anything problematic.

We are moving into a time when most people will have to depend upon their local economies in a post-petroleum world to meet all their needs, wants and desires. Already an Alliance of Post-Petroleum Local Economies has formed and more communities see the wisdom in this every day.

By no means is it too early to think about this and many feel any later will be too late. Consider all the local talent and labor that becomes ignored when the globe is searched for the cheapest exploitable human resources.

The luxury of hiring only the most desperate people at the lowest wage and pocketing the rest to pad your profits will not be possible when transportation costs take all that profit won at human expense and more.

Finally we will be forced to make peace with those around us. Our days of hit and run exploitation are at an end. Peace is the solution, a peaceful resolution and a peaceful revolution can save America.

Susan Bame Hoover feels this is an important story about Carter, Sadat and Begin: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/SADAT/lecture/lecture/carter.htm

* * * * * Artist’s Statement * * * * *

To look at it one way, I’ve been working for peace as a mediator for about ten years. Another way to look at it, I’ve been working for peace all my life. I have recently created a mediation service in my local community where I mediate juvenile court referred cases.

One of my greater visions is to create a mediation program that offers free mediation services to the entire community, and trains and mentors local community volunteers to mediate cases. In this way, people will learn how to create peace in their own lives.

What motivates me to work for peace is looking for the next moment when people in conflict with each other connect with each other deeply.

I remember mediating a truancy case where the school representative met with the mother and the 6th-grade daughter who had missed 50-some days of school. The school representative was angry, but she listened. It was the daughter’s job every morning to get Mom up and get her off to work by 6:30. There was no father in the picture. The daughter had to get Grandma up and out of bed and help her to the bathroom and feed her breakfast. Grandma had come to stay with them while she was dying.

The 6th-grader then had to get her three younger siblings up and out of bed, get them breakfast and make sure they met their buses in time – all three at a different time. When it was her turn to meet her own bus, she was exhausted, and would sometimes go back to bed. Once the school representative heard this story, her attitude changed completely, and she could for the first time “see” this student as a child with a desperate home life, not just as a truant student.

My ideas for peaceful solutions: listen.

Begin by listening to yourself. Find out where the conflict lies, within.

We all want to feel connected to each other, and we truly are, yet when we feel a separation exists within or between us, this is where conflict erupts.

Conflict is an opportunity for inner growth, so welcome conflict when it comes. Then listen openly, deeply, and with compassion, to others.

It is your own Self you see reflected back to you, in the eyes and deeds and soul of the Other.

When I watched the video create itself and unfold before my eyes, beginning and ending with the innocence of the children on both reservations and their dreams of peace and freedom and a better life, it reminded me of the story Jimmy Carter told about the Camp David Accord he brokered between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin.

The three men had gathered at Camp David for peace talks, and after eleven days no progress could be made. They were all just about ready to give up and go home. What made them go back and try again was when Begin began to think about the legacy he was leaving for his grandchildren.

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