DARE TO PREPARE
People across the globe have absorbed a racist European ideology that places whiteness at the top and melanated people beneath it. This belief system did not spread naturally. It was imposed through invasion, conquest, religion, violence, and law.
These lands were not only invaded physically. They were terraformed internally. The inside was reshaped through mindset. The outside followed through lifestyle, values, and systems that rewarded assimilation and punished remembrance.
Today, in places like China, India, Africa, South Korea, Japan, and the islands of the West Indies, skin lightening products are among the most profitable cosmetic industries. That did not happen by accident. It is the lingering residue of colonial ideology. The Doctrine of Discovery, imperialism, and European racial supremacy left scars across the entire planet.
That history matters. But today, these nations can no longer lean on Europeans as an excuse. Accountability must exist within as well. Promoting and sustaining colorism and caste systems is a choice. Just because you were conquered does not mean you have to remain conquered. Your land may have been taken, but your mind and your heart do not have to be.
Just because someone was enslaved does not mean they must remain enslaved.
Mental slavery is the most dangerous form of all because it is voluntary. It is accepting mistreatment as normal. It is defending systems that harm you. It is like the elephant held by a thin rope that no longer realizes it can break free. Like the domesticated dog that has forgotten how to survive without permission. Like the flea that stops trying to escape the box. Like the human being who believes their government loves them despite the oceans of blood that built it.
The Star Spangled Banner is a perfect example. The poem itself was born from colonial domination and racism. A racist verse was removed and people were told that fixed it. Fear, conquest, and supremacy are baked into its origin. Speak against it and watch what happens. You will be targeted by white supremacists and by non European people who have internalized slave mentality. The media will not protect you.
History shows that white people who stood against their own people’s crimes were often killed as well. Hung from trees alongside the people of color they defended. Some even took up arms and paid with their lives.
This brings us to an uncomfortable but necessary clarification.
White privilege is often misunderstood. It is better described as white opportunity. There are paths, plugs, and doors that exist specifically for white people. To walk through them often requires silence, disassociation, or playing both sides. But there are white people who refuse to play that game. They reject it. And when that becomes visible, those opportunities vanish. They find themselves in the same struggle as the rest of us.
These people are often offended when told they benefit from white privilege because in practice, they do not. Especially those who marry people of color, raise children of color, or stand shoulder to shoulder with people of color against oppressive systems. Simply being a free thinker can cost a European American those opportunities.
And make no mistake, a white supremacist would kill them just as fast, labeling them traitors or worse.
So let’s ask the real question. When exactly was America great.
Ask Indigenous people from the Eastern Woodlands, the Plains, the West Coast. Ask about slave codes, Jim Crow, boarding schools, sterilization, Pine Ridge living conditions, land theft, poisoned water, stolen food systems, identity erasure.
Ask Africans about the rape of a continent whose resources built the modern world while its people were left impoverished and demonized.
Ask Black Americans about Jim Crow, lynching, police brutality, redlining, and generational trauma.
Ask Japanese Americans about concentration camps.
Ask Haitians why they are the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere after being punished for daring to free themselves.
Ask Hawaiians about their stolen kingdom and ongoing resistance to imperialism.
Ask Puerto Ricans about being abandoned during disasters and told they are not real Americans.
Ask Mexicans and those south of the border about cages, family separation, being called animals and rapists by wealthy politicians and their followers.
Then ask a white American.
The contrast will tell you everything you need to know.
European racism runs deep. And people who follow without thinking will build religions around it. They will kill for it. They will die for it.
These same systems once burned their own women alive, calling them witches. This is not fiction. It is history. Many women alive today would have been tied to stakes and burned. Indigenous women. Black women. Polynesian women. White women. Healers. Midwives. Water protectors. Mothers and grandmothers. Women who refused to bow to patriarchy.
Women are still oppressed today, just through cleaner language and legal systems.
History also includes pregnant women being cut open so unborn children could be fed to dogs bred to hunt humans. Toddlers fed to alligators. Children separated from parents by law. Sound familiar. Look at what is happening today.
Blood and gore built this empire.
And people want to make it great again.
That is their definition of greatness.
Many elders teach that humanity is too far gone to correct itself. The imbalance will be corrected by Earth Mother. Not by politics. Not by technology. The Hopi say this. Our elders here in the east say this too.
All I can say is return to your roots. Learn to live from the land again. Remember how your ancestors survived without destroying everything around them.
To my people, light skinned and dark skinned, we are family whether you like it or not. Skin does not define kinship. Blood does. Humanity does. Compassion does.
Train your mind, body, and spirit the Indigenous way.
To everyone else, listen to Indigenous people. It may save you and your generations from destruction.
The other ways have failed.
And in one word, prepare.
I do not claim to know everything. That is why I continue learning, improving, and becoming better than I was yesterday.
I hope to host Indigenous survival workshops and survival weekends when conditions allow, bringing together instructors with specialized knowledge so our people can remember how to stand on their own again.
Nyá’we disne Oo’neh
Eagle Elk
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