We had an excellent Comment on our Website that We wanted to share with our 57,000 plus followers . He has been following us for many many Moons! We would like to Thank him for his insightful Comment.
We, like He were chosen by The Creator to be on the wolf side of the raging river between wolf and human. We are but the Messenger to educate those that would accept the truth wholeheartedly and join the movement.
Comment By: MM
Yes, that particular Washington rancher purposely placed the salt blocks near the denning or rendezvous site of that family of wolves.
He has also stated that he does not want wolves in “his” state. Outside of the early Hudson’s Bay Company trappers, his kind has only been in Washington since the 1830s or so. Some christian missionaries came there, bringing domestics and the disease of believing that other animals should be enslaved for their lifetimes corralled, and denied fulfilling natural lives to become exclusive food for the social profit of humans.
The problems i Michigan’s UP also stem almost entirely from te purposeful actions of a “private” lands livestock keeper, who expressly refused to use nonlethal conflict-prevention. The issue is complex (From Apache and Navajo to Coleville and even among the Wolf-brother Ojibwe, there are individuals who group together to exclude wolf from their (the wolf’s) home.).
It is as Twowolves says, necessary to only extend our hands to help the wolf and those who will protect them in this time.
The states especially, and the present federal government, eek to profit from all the land, air, water, and at present fight to take the lives of trees and fish and insects that pollinate and balance life, as well as wolf and bear.
This has led to the difficulty in preserving life connections, and the public lands upon which these connections depend.
There are groups of individuals and of determined scientists and lawyers who fight to restore and recreate the connections and places where native natural life can be safe from the taking by humans.
I notice that one famous scientist, Edward O WIlson, has begun an effort called “Half Earth” because he believes that life and lives will be saved only if humans give away half of the Earth from their use.
Other scientists, ecologists, have understood that we must give back at least 2/3 of earth to successfully protect life, if not the individual lives that many, like those ranchers, will take without thought, because they believe that guns and fences and machines in their possession, entitle them to something called “ownership.’
Even our very bodies are composed of only about 10% of the cells we carry. The 90% that is “other” help us live, and so we should be cognizant that without accepting the validity of all other things, there can be no balance, no life.
I have recently written to an Ojibwe Protector who was part of AIM many decades ago. If you explore the young water Protectors up in the Dakotas now, you will see how they are constantly met with violence from superior armed forces who desire to take and use and poison.
While this way gains publicity, and after all is desperate in attempting to protect the last of life in many places, each of us who desires to help the wolf live, must still choose to encounter those who have forgotten that other lives have the same value as theirs and their co-profiteers, whether these are their children or investors or imaginary way of life and values.
Lawyers have consistently told me that their business is to expose truth.
The wolf cannot speak to those who do not choose to understand, , and very few humans will stand clearly between wolf and those who seek to take their home and lives.
I have seen zoos, and “ambassador packs” of wolves who had the misfortune to be born among, or know humans too early. They proceed in the lives they have been bound to, but if a hole appeared in a fence, they would choose the chance to live lives as they are made to.
This is a cruel fate, to be bound by a creature that has too much power to rule and kill and take vengeance.
And it must not be forced on the wolf.
There are polls that consistently show that from two-thirds to over four in five humans desire that wolves live and be free to be as they were made to be.
Yet, almost none vote or demand that this be so; other more selfish interests take precedence in the minds of these tens of millions of humans.
Who will speak for the wolf? asks the old tale of the Seneca.
Why do none who seek public service speak for wolf? I ask.
Because even though four of every five people you will ever see, claim to care for these lives, they first seek to enrich themselves over the other humans competing with them.
Yet we know from the hard work of those who put some other lives before their own, that we are most effective when we put the need of another before our own.
It is surprising how much Twowolves has gathered on this site – there are years and years of links not preserved by other wolf advocacy sites, information on wolf-human interactions over the lives of wolves has occurred.
I only know through personal experience and the explorations of scientists, some traditional shared knowledge, and a few others in the Northern world where the wolf lives, something about how the wolf lives and communicates; this is not as well-known as the fighting, the arguing, the incidents, the emotions of humans over their desire to take lands and waters for their own benefit.
It is very very difficult for those who have chosen to be on the wolf side of the gorge, on the wolf side of the raging river between wolf and human.
It is understood that most of the time, each human will choose for a human desire or need. But the wolf has never poisoned our kind, never trapped and held or bred for comfort or curiosity. Never not given way. Each event of wolf and human I have ever looked closely into shows the wolf only acting to survive, or even accepting what happens.
I do not wish to moralize, or to make excuses. Each wolf life is worth saving, protecting. You who work with captives and rescued wolves probably share this understanding.
I have paid for and worked to promote coexistence many, many times, and have tailored my language to situations. THe goals of many who compromise, are the same goals as i mention, except for that recognition of the immeasurable value of each single wolf’s life, as ephemeral as it may be to you.
I spread what money comes to me among the organizations that work for wolves, and try to only materially support those who do the most good (size is not always the measure). I have also worked at length for restoring natural landscapes where all who live can be self-willed, not subject to human taking.
Almost all humans, though, lean toward taking whether little or all. This is a concern. I have known Ojibwa, as I say, who used to work fro USDA Wildlife Services, who learned more and more, and chose to undo the collaring, monitoring, control work they had originally done because they thought they were helping the wolf to survive.
There is so much disagreement, so much that the only answer can be your own. When you encounter this disagreement, you will also need to spend time with yourself, to clear your mind, to find who and what you are.
Compromise may mean that one or more wolves die because humans chose either to kill or to compromise.
This is not a path for those who have been looked into with trust by wolf.
Money does not hurt to lose, if you can still live without compromise. It does not take much money to live. THe wolf does not even ask – I have spoken elsewhere about their natural courtesy, not demanding other than freedom to be themselves.
What does your life look like to you when going alone to look at your relationship with other life? You can do this each day, each night. It takes little time, and what you learn has immense value.
The probably poached wolf family of the north of Shasta possibly has two survivors. At least one is not yet learned to be wise. But in lives such as their, so fractured, broken by the humans, is the hope of balance of this far west. Any one whose life is lost, sets back the balance of life for an unknowable time, possibly years and years.
This is not so certain for the many humans, and is certainly NOT true for the selfish among them
Comments
MM You have managed to say what I have not been able to put into words. I thank You, as well as knowing that in 1998 Creator chose me to fight for wolves and since then I have always done what I could or was able to. It’s sad that their are wolf advocacy groups that are only interested in making money off the plight of the wolf, have had my run in with some and withdrew my support. Your words have rekindled my spirit to work harder for the wolf,( which I feel I have been doing recently ) May you always be at peace with yourself and your fight for the wolf as we both are on the wolf’s side of the raging river.
Without Wolves, We Humans will not have protection agaisnt diseases & plague. Wolves have a very important role in keeping Elk, Deer, vegetation, rivers healthy. Hunting can never be safe from diseased Game.
One day or night you encountered a wolf. In the case of those who rescued them from confining cages or humans who thought that they were made larger in some way by “having” a wolf as pet, but found that the wolf would not submit, and so it was the wolf who suffered abuse or limits which he or she was not made to endure.
This migt have and should arouse yoour pity.
Did you know that the same word that means pity to the Polynesian peoples, also means love?
When they speak of the Aloha spirit, this constant present feeling is what they mean.
Have you noticed how the tenderness you feel toward wolf, even in absence remains?
(I have felt tenderness toward many beings that are regarded as hateful because they must be defensive?
Rattlesnakes and scorpions run away glide away, unless they feel cornered. In spite of teir never attacking, they are only trying to retain thheir place in life.)
So, the wolf engenders something within you, what is it?
Once the wolf did not have to hide. They and their families used to run along with other cursorial (running) hunters, to use us as we might use their capacities to obtain necessary food. Without going into it deeply it still can be understood that tey know us, their kind has known ours for unimaginable time.
Ours have known theirs for that time. We cannot really know why some meeting with a wolf changed some of us. I talked about this with some different people of different nations, who might say – “Oh, our family was wolf clan”, or “I felt most attracted to the Wolf Clan so I begged to learn the Way.”
Those people who governed themselves by clan preferences and duties, did so with recognition that ALL were equal, and each kind, each personal skill, unique.
The Dakota have some applicable words to all our paths.
Wakan Tanka. has this meaning:
Wa =something
Kan = unknowable Tanka = big, large, great.
That people are honest, and their very name means Friends” or “allies” along the way. They had many unknowables some of the big and great. These unknowable things required respect, but they were not some single thing disassociated from life. Whhat you know now, happens to be something they accepted from the people they once called “Mni-Washca”, the “good water people”, who first happened to travel down the clear rivers,to Mni-sota – Cloudy river.. THey accepted this unnatrual way of looking at things , that denied the equality of all beings, because there were wakans that they appeared to have been gifted with: steel, guns, explosives-gunpowder. The other animals and plants with which the peoples of North America seemed poor by comparison.
This inequity was repeated wherever the Mni-wasca traveled. They would trade these mysterious implements if one changed over to their beliefs.
Now you understand both how deeply those metal things penetrated into hearts, although I could tell you horribly cruel stories about it and its results.
Instead, for now, I’ll tell this story:
The dakota people often followed seasonal ways, just as do te buffalo, to live lighhtly and let the places they loved restore themselves.. So, sometimes and for different reasons one could become spearated. Once a winnter storm blew up ans a young woman was gathering water or plants [ i hope you’ll hear such stories from different people, as they tell them differently in order to make different lessons]. But, lost, she wandered in directions not toward her camp. As she was getting so cold that she could not move, in the blizzard, she sat down, losing all hope. Two wolves found her there. They also sat, close warming her with their fur and the hot life that is in th
e wolf. She returned to life, and the wolves, who had shelter on the open plains nearby signaled to her that she could come with them. So she did, and ended up staying with them for seasons into the warmer times.
Her family people came upon her one day and she told them how the wolves saved her.
This, I was told, is why the Dakota take pleasure when they see their wolf neighbors near, and why they always regard them as valuable friends.
Does this story have meaning? Internal, or as you would say in this language, spiritual meaning? I reckon it’s clear enoughh to you who found in yourself a feeling of relationship with wolf.
Any of you who has traveled where there are no bears, can understand how much more difficult it is to travel without the paths they open for all.
If you know bears, you will also know that they eat and transport seeds, and it’s often that I suspect the world would look different if these beings were not here. Far more berries and other seeds are put into new places by their just naturally going about their way.
One day I watched an exuberant wolf chase a young bear, just grown away from his mother. That little bear suddenly turned and chased the wolf, teaching him TO be more properly careful.
THe wolf knows that he is not the top of creation, and any who have met the big bears and the adult bison, also share this knowledge about ourselves.
Among the young wolves, they both play and decide who is to be listened to. In this way their arguments are very very short. Arguing doesn’t make us feel at all good, and I’ve always felt unhappy when someone says or writes “we won!.”
That’s not the way of things. Snow comes and goes, leaves sprout and fall, memory returns at need, and should not cloud the present too much when it is not called.
Like the small bear whose mother chased it wisely into the tree when this wolf came along, it grew into prominence, convinced the other that it was not the one before whom all must make way.
By the way, you may not know, but even the grizzly is at heart peaceful, avoiding conflict unless the draw of food is great and hunger must rule.
THe little bears, the black bears you’ve recently heard of in Washington, were, as bears can get when the complex foods of the land are cleared for taking for nonliving purpose, other lives diminished by roads and noise and fear and grazing and “private” property.
September and October are the time when bears must eat all they can in cold country, in order to even survive the winter in their den. Hunger right now is little known to humans, but this time has only existed for a hundred years or two. Seasons change.
Out here where normally the third salmon run of the year once took place, has been ended by humans.
The dams, the overexploitation, the cutting off of life’s access, and fishing of rivers for pleasure, have taken most of what bears need to survive to accomplish their other purposes. What would you do , if faced with starvation?
We hear that the Lassen rancher is disturbed by a few wolves claimed to have taken “his” domestic food-slave cows. I can tell you that forensic biologists who stated that most of them died from other causes, were not lying, no matter how much he claims otherwise.
So, two, in a year.
He thinks he will leave if he cannot wipe out (again) the few wolves. He can buy and sell and drive his huge pickup towing trailers; he is not dependent upon the land for home, as are all beings who are connected to it with their very bodies.
That county is large, with parts in high desert, parts flat and often wetland where the migratory birds sojourn and pass, other parts are forest, with some steep and thick, and elk do also live there, except they are carefully counted and shot by humans who don’t need them, won’t starve without. So their populations are kept down, also to assuage the ranchers.
Parts are more high, with snow for many months, THe wolf and I used to travel in those riverine forests in the cold season, seeing no sign of humans for miles. It is not, then, really a country that should in any way “belong” to humans over native life. Were we willing to share, however . .
I hope it is clear that I comment to reconnect any readers with the knowledge that is theirs, the beauty, whatever the ferocity of season, or weather, or necessity that makes the real world that they yearn to inhabit.
I have a debt to my Teacher, who answered to no name, but only to real emotion. That Wolf, who demanded for two years to come to me, letting nothing and no one deny him, lived as free as I could manage while keeping us both alive, during the barren time of human greed.
We love and learn, and yearn, because of endings, because we all live passing, exuberantly chasing, through time and place, always taught by the wolf, that nothing remains, all changes.
This is the great mystery, the unknowable beauty that teaches us love and pity, and care, along with hunger and splendor.
I once placed his body facing North to his kind, for that was the direction from which they come, in part to restore wholeness and balance, and surely in part, to teach us.
I speak because of the Wolf’s gift of wholeness, as fierce and gentle as the weather, the day, and what gift must be given in return.
Guess you can tell that this is typed in the dark sometimes.
It Does not Matter 😉 People are getting the Words from the Story!!