Dine' Earl Tulley: Oak Flat, Where Relatives Ride on their Whirlwind Horse

Earl Tulley, Dine', at Oak Flats. Photo courtesy Earl Tulley, Censored News.

By Earl Tulley, Dine'

Censored News

Chi’chil’ba’goteel (Apache Stronghold, Oak Flat) -- Eight years of gathering our young ones has grown stronger, adults moved closer to the winter of their season.

All in all, our five-finger clan is more resilient and maintaining practices of our progenitors in nature's cathedral of Oak Flat.

Those present today witness relatives who journey on into the next world ride in and join participants on their whirlwind horse.

Indigenous sacred petition of songs and prayers were presented by those gathered on sacred grounds at Oak Flat, the ancestral territory of San Carlos Apaches.

In each season there is growth and sacred remains sacred in our Athabaskan roots.

Sent from oak flats

A note from the publisher

So happy to hear from my old friend Earl Tulley, Dine', at the gathering at Oak Flats. Takes me back, all those years ago, when Dine' Citizens Against Ruining our Environment, Dine' CARE, was being created in the tall pines of the Chuska and Tsaile mountains on Navajoland.

We lost our brother Leroy Jackson in the struggle, but today, many great yellow pines live and breathe because Leroy and Earl, and their families and friends, took them on, and shut 'em down, shut down the cutters of the great, old-growth, Ponderosa Pines.

Leroy died in the process. But a new generation follows his legacy. Today, Earl is at Oak Flats, and his poetic words from the Apache Stronghold gathering are inspiring and beautiful. Thank you Earl, and this one is for you Leroy.

-- Brenda Norrell, publisher Censored News