On May 2^nd, OWH Community Columnist Lance Morgan, a member the Winnebago Tribe, wrote about the prevailing racism that prevented the burial of his great uncle, John Price, an Army sergeant who had won high honors in WWII and died heroically in Korea, in a white cemetery.  Sgt. Price’s burial service was actually halted and his body removed from his grave once whites realized he was Native American.

That Mr. Morgan’s uncle fought heroically in two wars is no surprise – Native Americans have a long and proud tradition as warriors, a tradition dating back into the mists of antiquity and still alive today.

I was recently reminded of how long Native Americans lived in southern Boone and northern Nance counties when I was given a tour of the area by long-time amateur archaeologist Ron Cruise.  Ron, now approaching 80, has been fascinated with the people who lived here before us since finding an arrowhead as a child.  Ron’s tour illustrated how at one time or another over many millennia people lived just about everywhere along the numerous small creeks in this area.  And there’s no reason to assume that the principles exemplified by Sgt. Price don’t extend back to the most ancient of these Nebraskans.

Mr. Morgan also mentions perhaps the most famous Native Nebraskan, Ponca Chief Standing Bear, who after being forced with his people to leave their ancestral home near the mouth of the Niobrara River and walk to Oklahoma, returned with the body of his son to bury him among his ancestors.

Apprehended near Omaha, Standing Bear’s small party would have been returned to Oklahoma had it not been for a landmark legal decision which finally recognized that the original inhabitants of this land were human beings in the eyes of the law.

The power of Standing Bear’s connection to this land was brought home to me a few summers back when my family and I visited the Northern Ponca’s Educational Trail near Niobrara. A young Ponca man gave us an extensive tour.  As we stood under a stature of Standing Bear, looking out at the lush Niobrara Valley, he explained that so many of his ancestors lie buried in that soil that the land itself is Ponca.

In the traditional view of many tribes everything was a part of their extended family.  By including all of Nature in their family, they were literally brothers and sisters to the land and sky.

Lakota visionary Black Elk termed this great pan-human family the “hoop of the nation”.  Black Elk was a deeply spiritual man, and his visions were immortalized by Nebraska poet laureate John G. Neihardt in the book Black Elk Speaks.  Black Elk’s vision transcends the boundaries of culture, speaking to all mankind, and Black Elk, who later converted to Catholicism, is currently being considered for sainthood.  But Black Elk’s visions were just a few of many – most tribes encouraged both men and women to undertake vision quests, and Native culture was richly infused with spirituality as a result.

Though much Native American culture is now forever lost, a few writers with tribal connections recorded as much as they could.  Among these authors was George Bird Grinnell who recorded stories of Nebraska’s Pawnee tribe in his book Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales.  Among these is the story of Pa-hu-ka’-tawa, who was believed to have been transformed after death into a powerful spirit who stayed with his people to heal, guide and protect them.

A beautiful insight into Nebraska’s Native spirituality is captured in Pa-hu-ka’-tawa’s ghost’s description of what he had become:

‘I am living but I am a spirit.  I am in everything; the grass, the water, the trees.  I am a part of all these things. I am the wind and I go over the whole world.  I know everything, and about everything, even about the ocean, which is so far off, and where the water is salt.’

Unless one has explored the terraces surrounding Nebraska’s many small streams, as my friend Ron has spent a lifetime doing, it’s easy to overlook that they provided homes to people for at least 10,000 years.  Ten millennia of bones rest somewhere beneath our feet.  And the fact that not that long ago a Native American military hero was not allowed to rest in this same earth is a damning reminder of what happens when we forget that we are brothers and sisters with everyone and everything that shares this earth with us.

I sometimes watch Ancient Aliens, but in my own defense, it’s purely for entertainment.  I don’t know if we’ve been visited by aliens and I don’t think the people on that show know either.  But they come up with some pretty creative ideas, and that’s more than I can say for most shows.

I have a good friend, though, who takes Ancient Aliens so seriously that he pays to visit the websites of several “talking heads” who regularly appear there.  It seems they only tell part of the story on TV; there’s a lot more to the alien story, and this information is available to anyone willing to pay.

Recently my friend told me that the human race is poised to “ascend” to a higher level of consciousness.  Soon we will all – thanks to our “space brothers and sisters” – transform into wise beings with powers rivaling the gods (or aliens, I guess, since these people have just replaced “gods” with “aliens”).

In looking at the state of humanity – at least in this country – I see few signs of consciousness evolving but many signs of it devolving.  The arc of human history has generally bent towards increasing levels of consciousness and with it advances in civilization.  But today civilized behavior seems little more than an impediment to promoting one’s own agenda.  Where once civilization rested on a foundation of objective truth, today one selects whichever “facts” further one’s ends.  Where once we enshrined a system of written laws to ensure justice for all, now our Constitution is merely something to brandish at one’s political enemies.  Everything from gross immorality to blatant illegality is blithely ignored when one’s own party is in power.

For thousands of years Western history has been the story of the struggle of morality against immorality, of justice for all rather than for an elite few, of striving to find truth through reason and observation.  But not today.  So despite what the aliens say, I don’t see that we’re advancing.

Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco has spent his career studying evil.  To him evil arises from “the absence of imaginative sympathy for other human beings.”  In other words, evil is deliberately ignoring the suffering of others, a human tendency ALL civilizations have struggled to evolve beyond.

Today, though, it’s fine to stop protecting air and water quality to win votes from coal country.  Today it’s fine to ignore mass shootings to win votes from those whose personal insecurities require unrestricted access to a range of deadly weapons.  Who cares about the people who’ll suffer as a result.

And I have to wonder – what about those who rather than ignoring suffering inflict it deliberately?  Those who hide behind Holy Scripture so they can discriminate?  Those who separate families, keeping children and parents locked in separate cages many miles apart? Even those who overpay for plastic straws just to make ocean pollution worse. Deliberately inflicting harm would seem to go well beyond Professor Delbanco’s definition of evil as simply ignoring the suffering of others.

Those who claim to speak for the aliens say this is all part of humanity’s evolving spirituality.  If they do speak for the aliens, then one nagging question has at least been answered – aliens are, indeed, evil.  More likely, though, these alien interpreters – like politicians – simply profit by saying what their followers want to hear.

Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to decide – is our collective consciousness trending up or down? The fate of civilization may well depend on getting this answer right and then acting – and voting – accordingly.