In Honor of All of you who made Baldwin Park 2 a unified and potent expression of the heart and will of our People .
Dear Sisters and Brothers;
As a member of the Aztlan Mexica Nation Harmony Circle – the Harmony Keepers – I want to thank all of you whose thoughtfulness, focus, spirit and power made Baldwin Park 2 a unified and potent expression of the heart and will of our People -- and we want to thank all of you who helped invoke and defend of the spirit of the land. Tlazocamati.
We came to Baldwin Park 2 embracing the spirit of the young Tongva medicine woman – Toypurinah – who united her people at a time when their ceremonies were threatened by the invading Spanish, and who led them to rise up in defense of their land of their self-determination.
We honor all who do likewise.
We are the red shirt people. You have seen us at Baldwin Park 1 and 2, and at Garden Grove, and at other batallas where the spirit and future of our people is in the balance.
You might have thought of us as “security.” But we are, in reality, something other than that.
We are a warrior society – an akicita, to use the term of the plains Indians – and our task is to safeguard the ceremonies and traditions, the cultural integrity of our Peoples.
Our outlook is indigenous, our leadership is indigenous and our practices are indigenous.
We come to keep Harmony – our work is an extension of the purposes of our indigenous elders and spiritual leaders. All indigenous ceremony is focused on Harmony. Our task is simple – to assure that the balance and power in the ceremony – as led by the spiritual guardians of this land - remains undisturbed. We do so by keeping harmony in the environment in which the ceremony is taking place.
Such work requires, first of all, a will and an ability to extend oneself to respect all those present. It requires a consciousness of the subtleties of the energies of people, of the environment and of events. To keep the harmony one must be attuned to it.
Our approach is, simply put, not European. It does not reduce to “security” - we are not security guards protecting anyone’s property.
We do our work, not for the hatred of our enemies, but for the love of our People.
We consciously and at a very practical and direct level follow the leadership of indigenous elders and of the traditions that have been maintained in the face of over 500 years of genocide aimed at destroying those traditions.
The traditions are strong.
They have withstood every effort to eradicate them. Our purpose is to ensure their continuation. As Tia Oros of the Zuni people has pointed out, “Indigenous peoples of the Americas live on intimate terms with the shadow of terrorism.”
In their “Basic Call to Consciousness: The Hau De No Sau Nee Message to the Western World,” the “Iroquois” people make it very clear: “The Indo-Europeans attacked every aspect of North America with unparalleled zeal. The Native people were ruthlessly destroyed because they were an unassimilable element to the civilizations of the West”
They tell us that Spirituality is the Highest Form of Political Consciousness.
We are in accord with them.
And the traditions teach us self-reliance. We rely on the spiritual powers, on the awareness of our People, and on ourselves.
We do not in any case rely on the powers of the state, or on the police powers of the colonizer to protect us. Five hundred years of genocide points clearly to the reality that we cannot, under any circumstance, depend on our oppressor for our well being, much less our liberation or rights to self determination.
Our purpose has never been and will never be to “tell the police about...intruders and to calm down the crowd in order to avoid confrontations.”
Finally, while we sought to avoid any situation in which riot police might be brought down on our people in a situation in which our children were present, we respect all forms of struggle, and those who engage in them. There were strong and heartfelt reasons why our people cheered and saluted the bravery of our returning warriors that day in Baldwin Park.
We respect all of you who came with good hearts, and recognize that, in the end, everything worked together, weaving a whole, in the way of nature, that comprised a ceremony of depth and dimension, one that honored the land and the ways of all our peoples.
In the Spirit of Toypurina,
A Harmony Keeper