While visiting with the Ojibwa people in a small village outside Winnipeg, Manitoba, I was pleased to be invited to dinner with the tribal chief. At the conclusion of the meal, after sending our prayers to heaven on a cloud of smoke, the Chief took out a pen and began to draw on a napkin. Throughout dinner, we had discussed race and culture. “I want to show you why the races exist,” the Chief explained in a low, confident voice. “This is a Medicine Wheel. A Medicine Wheel is a physical manifestation of Spiritual energy, an outward expression of an internal dialogue. Between its spokes, there exist spaces where the four races, the yellow, the red, the brown and the white people, reside. Each has been sent here for a specific purpose.”
With that, he drew a second wheel around the first and wrote four words that he described as “attributes of humanity.” “Each race must master a different attribute possessed by our Creator,” he explained. “Once each race’s task is completed, the outer wheel turns, and it then becomes each race’s job to teach the mastered attribute to the next group. After the outside wheel turns four times, humans will fully know God. The yellow man must master peace, the red man, harmony, the brown man, love, and the white man, truth.”
As I stared at the Chief’s drawing, I pondered how well each race was doing with its task. Images of Genghis Khan, Sitting Bull, black gang bangers, and a myriad of lying white journalists and politicians ran through my thoughts. “We aren’t doing too well so far, are we?” I queried. “Not as bad as you might think,” the Chief replied. “A few will pave the way for many. It is only through great tests and hardships, that strong and worthy attributes are developed. Some who have gone before us and many still to come will lead us on our respective journeys,” he said as he stood to leave.
On the drive back to my hotel, I thought about who from each of the races had begun leading their race towards their goal of mastery, and I realized that I would have to research to find those answers. Specifically I wanted to learn about contemporary Americans who had brought our country to a better understanding of the four attributes of the Creator.
It didn’t take long to find the story of Dr. Haing Ngor on the website for the Dr. Haing S Ngor Foundation. Despite the fact that he had never acted, Dr. Ngor won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe in 1985 as best supporting actor for his role as Dith Pran in the movie “The Killing Fields.” Born in Cambodia, Haing received training as a surgeon and gynecologist, and was a practicing physician in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country in 1975. Soon thereafter, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp along with his wife who died there while giving birth to a premature infant who did not survive. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Dr. Ngor and his niece came to live in the U.S. Unable to practice medicine stateside, he turned to writing and acting. In 1988, he wrote his first book, “A Cambodian Odyssey.”
Dr Ngor and Jack Ong, organized The Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation in 1990. The two actors met in 1989 while filming “The Iron Triangle,” and soon after, Pastor Ong’s church launched Project Cambodia to raise funds to care for orphans and help rebuild the devastated country’s infrastructure. The goals of the Foundation include preserving the legacy of Dr. Ngor’s accomplishments and human rights endeavors, as well as the promotion of Cambodia’s history and culture through education, activism, and the arts. Dr. Ngor was murdered outside his home in Chinatown in 1996 after he refused to give up a locket containing his wife’s picture, to a street gang. Indeed, Dr. Ngor was a true man of peace whose life was tested, tempered, and ultimately taken by violence.
Is it a coincidence that while researching the Native American contribution to America, I was unable to find a single name of a person who was outstanding in their personal contribution? Perhaps to create harmony in a culture one must be very selfless and without pride or ego. What I did find is that “The Bemidji Statement on Seventh Generation Guardianship,” sited on the website of The Indigenous Environmental Network. This statement was created by “a handful” of people who came together at two locations in North America to create a document explicitly assigning guardianship and responsibility for protecting the Seventh Generation of humanity that is yet to be born. The Statement is written with the intent of being able to adopt it at all levels of our society. It is also written to change the way we think about our future. How better to promote harmony?
Who guards this web of life that nurtures and sustains us all?
Who watches out for the land, the sky, the fire, and the water?
Who watches out for our relatives that swim, fly, walk, or crawl?
Who watches out for the plants that are rooted in our Mother Earth?
Who watches out for the life-giving spirits that reside in the underworld?
Who tends the languages of the people and the land?
Who tends the children and the families?
Who tends the peacekeepers in our communities?
We tend the relationships.
We work to prevent harm.
We create the conditions for health and wholeness.
We teach the culture and we tell the stories.
Jimmy Carter was the 39th President of the United States. In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize 22 years after leaving office for the work done by him and his wife Rosalynn through the Carter Center, a non-profit organization that works to advance human rights.
Known for his honesty and passion for truth, he once confessed that he had “lusted in his heart” for women other than his wife. That could not have been an easy truth to tell. In 1971, when Carter became Georgia’s 79th governor, he declared in his inaugural speech that the time of racial segregation was over, and that racial discrimination had no place in the future of the state. He was the first statewide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public. To be sure, Jimmy Carter is a white man who, to this day, tells the truth unabashedly and without fear of consequence.
Clara Hale, an African-American mother of two became a widow at age 33. Clara struggled to raise and educate her children in the post depression era of the 1940’s, and chose to make her living by providing daycare to the neighborhood children, and eventually became a foster parent after her own children were grown. As she prepared to retire at age 64 in 1969, her daughter introduced her to a young woman who was addicted to drugs and had just given birth to a drug-exposed infant. This baby became the first of many addicted infants who were loved and nurtured by Mother Hale.
In the early 1970’s, Mother Hale opened Hale House , a New York brownstone that housed and treated drug exposed children and their mothers. In the 1980’s, she expanded her reach to assist mothers and infants with HIV. Mother Hale passed away in 1992 at the age of 87, but her work goes on at Hale House. Mother Hale believed unconditionally that all children, from all walks of life and circumstances, need and deserve love. With this love they will not only survive, but will overcome the hardships into which they are born. What greater love could exist than this?
Peace, harmony, trust, and love, have been shown to us by members of each race as they move towards mastery of their task. Just four brief examples of the contributions that the four races have made toward the welfare of America. They have started us on the journey, and shown us the path. Who will be the next in your race to make such a worthy contribution to the benefit of all Americans? I hope it is you and I.