(Grove, OK) “Our existence is the resistance,” Jim Wikel, Seneca-Cayuga tribal member, in Oklahoma said exclusively to the People’s World. Wikel was speaking of Native environmental issues at the 19th National Environmental Conference at Tar Creek, Sept. 26-27, in Miami, OK. The theme this year was Climate of Denial.

Tar Creek is a United States Superfund site where years of lead and zinc mines produced inhabitable living conditions. The Environmental Protection Agency relocated all residents of Picher, Oklahoma and declared it the worst site in history. The town now is a ghost town being permanently quarantined.

Governmental objectives that were racist towards the Quapaw Nation was exposed in the 2009 documentary by Matt Myers, Tar Creek. It also exposed the lead poisoning, mine waste, acid mine water, and sinkholes.

“I was involved in Standing Rock last year,” Wikel told PW. “In Oklahoma, I’ve been involved with Oka Lawa Camp which is now Good Hearted People Camp. So the conference wanted me to speak on pipelines but it is much deeper than that.” A previous speaker talked about how the government uses eminent domain to steal land, and to not do so would be the American way. He disagreed as the opposite is the American way.

“The American people from day one have taken land and exploited the natural resources for profit since they set foot on this continent,” Wikel extolled.

“Indigenous rights and environmental rights are the same if you ask me,” Wikel said.

“My mother , from Grove, Oklahoma, was Seneca-Cayuga, and my father was non-native. However, they moved to Washington state where I was born. I knew I was Indian but we never talked about it.”

Brutal beatings and forced culture loss of his grandparents at the hands of the Governmental boarding schools is why his family didn’t discuss his culture. People’s World even reported on recent accounts of this genocide happening.

“My grandfather who was sent off to the Seneca Boarding School in Wyandotte, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1905 when he was 5. He was there until he was 14. Afterwards, he never spoke the language or went to ceremony again and he never taught any of that to his kids.”

“My mother was in Chilocco Indian School when she 16 and 17. She had experiences there that I never knew about until about six years ago.”

“This trauma has carried through my family. Last year, at the age 56, during our Green Corn Ceremony, I was given my Cayuga name. I am the first one in my family since my grandfather to have a traditional Indian name.”

“I truly assumed my true identity, when I was given my name. Two months later I went to Standing Rock”

Wikel’s youth was atypical with run-ins with the law and addiction issues. He even worked in the timber industry decimating natural resources.

“Forever gone, never to return in our lifetime, the natural habitat or the sacred cedar trees and even the salmon,” Wikel relayed. Without consciously understanding his work destroyed the tribal sacred land.

“Cedar was like buffalo to them,” Wikel explained. “They made clothing, built canoes, and created houses out of cedar.”

“It was a protester that made me think about what I was doing.”

“ Crying, she just stood there crying over what we were doing,” Wikel reminisced. He was referring to the Spotted Owl controversy. “I was stunned that she was crying, but that evolved to my own awakening,” he stated.

“Getting sober, getting in touch with who I was as an Indian, that is when I awoke.”

It would be conceivable that today’s Native teenagers and 20’s year olds have lost their culture. With the prevailing video games, smartphones and internet have fully colonized them.

“That is not true”, Wikel exclaimed. “It was the young people of Standing Rock that first went to Washington. The young people did that”

“It was the young Chahta (Choctaw) youth that started Oka Lawa which became the Good Hearted People Camp,” Wikel explained.

Good Hearted People Camp is a symbiotic community for water protectors and land protectors. A place to decolonize and indigenize. “Even some of the younger ones desire to build and live there,” Wikel said.

Wikel was right that simply to speak up about pipelines it goes much deeper than that. He was right, “Our existence is our resistance.”