A Prayer for Turtle Island

This prayer was offered by Derek Tennant, as one in a group of Pachamama allies (of mostly European descent) gathered for decolonizing and anti-racism work in North America / Turtle Island.

Five hundred years ago, Europeans came to Turtle Island and began to exterminate the native peoples living here. They did this for so-called wealth; they did it with an insane sense of entitlement; they did it using guns, against people of all ages. And they did it with contempt; usually not even learning the true names of those they killed.

It didn’t take long before these colonizers were bringing slaves into their midst; both white indentured servants dragged from their homeland and black people stolen from family and land in Africa.

Now we, the wealth-crazed descendants of those first colonizers, are destroying ourselves. Now we who still live reach back to the ancestors of these terribly wronged peoples; we are sorry for what has been wrought in the name of so-called civilization. We ask for help to clear this sickness from our minds, to lead us to a path out of this greedy, evil darkness, and back into the light of our Sun once more.

Thus the circle can again be complete. We honor you by asking for your help; and we ask with all humility as a people who have gone far astray but see the errors of our ways. This is a great thing that we ask, but you are a great people with time-tested ways of seeing that we no longer teach our children. We will make mistakes; but with the help of our ancestors, for we are all indigenous in our hearts, we will find our way. This prayer is another step on this path of healing. A-ho.