For those that don't know, there is a HUGE amount of FB drama/rhetoric against the Gathering happening this year, and one of the things being used/shared a lot is a document released on June 10th from the Nez Perce tribe.
If you don't know what the Rainbow Gathering is, here is my full write-up & presentation.
Now, this was 3 days before Spring Council started, and all reports from the land are consistent that this has been taken into account, the family isn't located at Parker Meadow (the location they were focusing on in the statement), and that folks from the Nez Perce have been sitting in council, part of the consensus process..
But of course people being what they are and FB being what it is, there are still folks running with that document from the 10th, and commenting/posting all over FB trying to keep people from going to the Gathering.
In my 5 years of being part of the Rainbow Gatherings, this is the third time that I've seen a situation like this play out. Here are the other two:
- Oregon 2017 - Gathering in the desert, with very little water, even though we're in Oregon. Thousands get sick from norovirus that was on the land. Location chosen because it was the only place a tribe was OK with us being. All the way until I went into the woods, there were still FB people telling people we weren't welcome, and using the earlier rejections from other tribes as the basis for their argument.
- South Dakota 2017 - FB convince a LOT of people that every Lakota on Pine Ridge was out calling for us to leave... But in reality it was just a couple of guys that all followed the lead of one (a child molester not respected on the rez.) There was in fact a large circle of tipis next to main meadow, dozens of Lakota stayed with us for a week+ (including AIM members & grandmothers), and many important councils happened on that land that no doubt helped Standing Rock be what it was.
2015 was my first Gathering, and when the waves of FB madness started, I noticed a trend: there were a lot of the same names popping up over and over in every group, always with the same message(s). Started looking into them, found over 30 accounts that had been created within the previous month.
Needless to say, I went. There were only 1500 of us, and it was absolutely breath-taking all the way through. To think, if I had listened to the loudest voices, I probably would have written off rainbow then. Thank Gaea I assume everybody's full of BS until they prove otherwise :-P
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