Day 934: Thursday, October 6, 2022

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song

Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.

Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.

Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.

The land is a being who remembers everything.

You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—

The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.

As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:

By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.

Do not parade, pleased with yourself.

You must speak in the language of justice.

5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.

I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.

There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.

6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads

that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the

doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.

We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story

because it was by the light of those challenges we knew

ourselves—

We asked for forgiveness.

We laid down our burdens next to each other.

BY JOY HARJO