A letter from Finisia in jail…
to the Lemhi County Court
(This is an exact copy of what I gave to the court) I would like it to be known that the reasoning in my violations is a deliberate act of civil disobedience. This was to bring to light that I have been violating U.S. Government treaties of war by engaging in that indigenous life way that was disallowed to force the native onto reservations and to complete the genocide of that life way.
I find life in this civilized way unconscionable and immoral! I find myself without freedom of conscience in it. For twenty-five years I have been planting back the native food flowers of lomatium, cymopterus, bitterroot, yampa, lilies, and berries without permit on public lands. I have done so to complete my cycles and to give life to that which fed me. If I am always planting these flowers there is constantly more of these plants rather than less. This is my duty to God and to Earth. I have been doing this secretly, knowing that I am a violator of statute, code and treaty. I have come out of the closet, so to speak, in order to bring to the attention of all, the injustice of these laws that continue to enforce the genocide on this way of life. I do this only to follow my spiritual convictions, and to have any sense of conscience.
I further am of the opinion that there is criminality in civilization that is not unlawful. It is criminal what is done to the Big Lost River system in favor of farming industries, as is the damning of rivers and the results of salmon depletion, and destroying ozone in nuclear test. I’ve tried many times to assimilate into society but it would require a psychosis of denial to all of these realities. I find I would forfeit my soul and live a fabric of lies in order to enjoy myself in the destruction and extinctions and genocides required by civilization.
I would hope that the destructive results of the civilized world would result in some relinquishment of dominion and that those who destroy this way of life and continue to forbid it could find reason to begin to allow those of us who can to engage in a socio-environmental experiment to show once again how I and others can be effective in enlivening the natural world.
I have many friends who would like to participate in supporting this or being this thing I call human being. I believe all those who will not complete their circle and give life back to mother earth for all that she gives us, are not standing up to their obligation to creator, creation or even their own children. I am asking for your help to establish this way again. I am doing this as a way to blaze a trail to liberty in this way and to open the door to it so that those who would choose this can, without threats of incarceration that I now face for doing such things.
There is now only 2% of God’s aboriginal planting left on earth. I reject that I should be criminal to live a migratory, planting back, walks in beauty way. This hoop in the west is the last place on earth where it is even possible to live in that symbiotic way. All over the earth this aboriginal planting has been done away with. The earth has been made to be like a girdled tree and here in my home in the west is the last small ribbon of bark. Even so, there isn’t any slacking of exploitation of the last 2%. Here even now these plants and animals are being plowed and burned and ground to extinction and those who benefit from these thefts and murders are in denial in order to continue unabated. They are full of self-excuse and justification.
I am at a point in my life I would echo Patrick Henry, “Give my liberty or give me death.”… if I cannot be allowed this life way that my people and my Mother earth cry out for. All of nature is in travail crying out to us to be this kind of people and begin to revisit this old way that provided what Americans called a “Garden of Eden”… to do the work of restoration and re-creation. If I cannot have this, my life is worthless to me and a forfeiture. To be permanently incarcerated in jail or mental institution or grave is better than what I now live. I care for nothing else and for any life outside of this old way. I have strived to not be against anything but it is a fact that to be for a life giving way over a culture of death put me in a perspective where I am an outsider and all is against me and what I am for.
You tell yourselves maybe that you love nature but live outside of it, and the road kill under your tires does not know anything of love from you.
To have hope, I do not say these things in a condemning tone, but to have hope I need to see this liberty to be this kind of person. I am sick at heart to have sneaked around like a criminal for 25 years doing this.
Jesus told you that you make evil good and this good thing evil. I hope that I have illuminated a path where any can see this is now so. Further, I hope in seeing this thing with me, you can help me to change our legacy and give our children an abundant natural world and a chance to see themselves as a beautiful life giving thing in it. I know they all most all can only see themselves now as a plague on earth.
I Hope. Here is my unreasonable delusion: I hope.
Joel, Chapter 2 - The Bible
I will show you a people unique in their ferocity, like a flame of fire, where before them is a Garden of Eden. Behind them a vast, toxic. desert wasteland.
Revelations, 11:18
God should and will destroy all those who destroy the earth.
A tree is known of it’s fruit. A child of creator would even suffer pains of death to give life to creation. A child of the destroyer lives to enjoy and perform the destruction of it.
Finisia Medrano
Lemhi County Jail
Inmate Finisia Medrano
206 Courthouse Drive
Salmon. Idaho 83467
Finisia’s letter to Coyote Camp…
Seeking Counsel
August 21, 2008
To Coyote Camp and Friends,
I am writing to tell you that indeed I need your help. When I was in a state of extreme grief and desperation of loneliness, I felt that this walk back to these old ways might be engaged by others if those laws preventing us were somehow removed. I know my judgment was clouded with grief and hopelessness. Also, a sense of desperation born of helplessness.
What I want you to know is that I have never been so meek as to do what I am doing today. I have never truly been humble or even loved enough to trust any one very much. What I hope to do is put myself into the hands of the council of “The Round Dancers” and Coyote Camp. I would like to ask Coyote Camp and any who identifies with our purpose and shares our common goal to council together thru our website. It may be my actions have harmed our cause more than helped. I do not know, but I will trust those of you who love this fledgling movement to Council together and let me know how you all feel. I want to trust your good judgment and then do what you say and provide for.
There may be $2000 in legal expenses for my angry misdemeanors. There is now a Paypal account in the www.pullingforwildflowers.org website for contributions. I will be following through with my original plans to give up to the “authoritiesâ€Â. As one without home, money or transport, I can not pay fines or even fulfill the demands of a supervised, stationery probation. Further, I wish to continue in my own returning to the hoop with a much-lightened load for my horses.
I will forgo all of these plans and give myself to the will of your collective wisdom. If Coyote camp and “The Round Dancers” will council together, I will do as they decide and provide for, for I can do nothing without you all.
My grief is for the mother and the seven generations. My actions were born of hopelessness and my ineffective effort to bring to life this dying life way. My contrition is for the damage and hurt my actions may have brought to Coyote Camp. I put myself and future decisions in your hands. I hope you know I will need your answer and help to fulfill it.
I thank you for your council. I would like all of those whoever participated in any of our camps or “The Round dance” or any in those websites who have published our works to participate in this council to make these decisions for me and I thank you all.
I love you all,
Your Servant,
Grandma Finisia
An open letter to Judge Roos August 27. 2008
by Finisia Medrano - from the Lemhi County Jail
Judge Roos,
I grew up believing one person can make a difference. I am here to see if this is indeed true. I resisted in the encounter with the officers to precipitate my arrest. I do not know of or even have imagination enough to see how else I could address you or anyone else with enough power in the system to help me in my endeavor. I do not want to make enemies but I am doing all I can to meet with those who might be allies in what I hope to accomplish. I am not practiced in law or governance, so I expect this attempt looks rather like an infant trying to play piano, or worse.
I hoped, perhaps foolishly, that you and those gathered here could help to arrange meetings between myself and State and Federal agencies that have land holdings where maybe it would be allowed space for me to make the difference that I hope to make. I also hoped to stimulate my own camp to make greater efforts on behalf of the ideals that have brought us together in action.
I have watched all my life, 51 years, a devastation in all areas of the environment that I grew up in and have loved. I have seen a pernicious belief that the natural world was a bank of resources to be exploited as the true driving force behind this devastation. I have had no institutionalized education in the field of environmental studies, but instead have pursued an education in those native life ways that provided an abundant natural “Garden of Eden” as an inheritance to that civilization that destroyed those natives and that life way. That “Garden of Eden” has only suffered insults and extinction ever after.
I am convinced, that if allowed to return, these native life ways could return the biodiversity and mass that once existed here where monocultures of useless and dangerous non-natives are pervasive. I would like at least a chance to try where now many laws prevent even the least lawful attempt.
If I might have these meetings and in them be allowed some exemption from those laws, my friends and myself would like to prove our ideas. This is what I am here for. This is what I would ask of you, that is to help me meet with those who could help. I submit this to you with all sincerity, hoping to make a difference.
Finisia Medrano
An open appeal to anyone who has ears to hear August 25. 2008
by Finisia Medrano - from the Lemhi County Jail
Who was it said he came to give life and make it abundant? Jesus came in the name of God and we know he was killed and not received. I come in my own name.
Will you receive me? I was born with a name that if interpreted means king.
At age 12, spirit came into my life like a great evil and made me Finisia, meaning The End or Last. I speak now not caring what twists any enemy may make my words to mean. Without vanity and with meekness of spirit and humility of heart, I will only speak those things that are true. I have eaten the red clay and washed in the smoke of the sage to purify myself to speak only the truth.
When Black Elk was old and saw from his hill all that had gone on in his life, he saw the life, hope and dreams of his people all dead. He saw the hoop broken and the center gone, the sacred tree of life here on earth dead. People protested this for the leaves were still green, they would not see where they had girdled the tree by killing these people and their way of life.
Now a century later life is failing all around you, still so few want to confess this, or their part in it. Black Elk, wishing to die with hope said perhaps deep in the earth maybe there is a small root alive and in time it could grow up to live again. Many white people make lies, talking about their Indian blood. I am Irish and do not want to make such lying boasts. Like these other whites the only Indian blood in me is that blood my ancestors spilled on the earth and plowed in to fertilize the crops that fed me. I have never been happy with this legacy and have worked most of my life to change this legacy. And so, if only for myself, I have.
You all know my efforts. You know words and money will not help when words are hollow and money is never enough, and it is for money all things are ruined. I tell you the truth, the mother needs many people to do as I have done and better. I do not speak vanity when I say that I am that small root trying to return. What happens to me is the fate of all life on earth, for if we can not live a life the earth can sustain, she will die at the hands of those who live life in unsustainable ways. Help me. Those who have destroyed this way are the same ones who need to resurrect it. Help me to live again. We need to return humans and human rights to this old way. Together we can make a good ending, if we don’t… ? I do not lie.
Help me,
Finisia
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