Jasper Young Bear: And so I thought, well, if the end is close and there’s a change in nature, I felt if there was ever a time to share this with the world, this is the time now so that people can prepare. Because the greatest preparation isn’t a physical preparation—it’s a spiritual and emotional preparation for the change in the world.
Tami Simon: In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Jasper Young Bear, whose Indian name is Redheaded Woodpecker. Jasper is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation and lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. He’s from the Hidatsa Water Buster Clan on his father’s side and the Arikara Bear Society and Arikara Medicine Lodge on his mother’s side. Jasper is the founder of the Medicine Lodge Confederacy, as well as the Running Wolf Wellness Center and Cultural Survival School.
I feel deeply honored to have Jasper Young Bear as a guest on Insights at the Edge. He’s a storyteller and wisdom teacher featured in what is being described as a medicine film, along with a four-part audio series in which he shares the creation story that he was taught through the oral traditions of his lineage. You can learn more and watch the film and listen to the audio series at no charge at thecreationstory.co. Jasper Young Bear, welcome.
Jasper Young Bear: Thank you for having me. I am honored. It’s good to be here with you, and what a powerful topic we’re going to discuss.
Tami Simon: Let’s get right into it. You chose to record your people’s creation story because you believe—in your own words—that this is an urgent and pertinent hour to share these sacred oral teachings. Tell me more.
Jasper Young Bear: I grew up on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. My life was pretty much shaped the way most people’s lives are on Indian reservations. There were a lot of social issues—a lot of dynamics that demand that you either fall in line with those issues or you develop your spirituality.
I got into this not to aggrandize myself, but more to save myself from what I went through—abuses, sexual abuse, physical abuse, poverty, all of those things. When I looked around at my own people, I saw them in dire need because many were dying from a lack of knowledge of self.
As I got older, I left the reservation, went out into the world, and saw that many people weren’t grounded in their spirituality. There were no real practices. We as Indigenous people have practices that have worked for eons and millennia. I developed my compassion for other people because I could feel them—and it was really a heart-based decision. My mind would normally tell me to save these things, keep them among our people. But there is a part of the film and audio series that speaks to the unity of mankind and the need for human beings to unify under the tree of life, as prophesied on the Hopi Prophecy Rock.
The Hopi are a critical tribe to the tribes of Turtle Island—North America, as it’s called in English. I thought about things like the Seven Fires Prophecy of the Anishinaabe, or Chippewa, which speaks of a time of unity. Many other tribes share similar teachings.
So I thought, if the end is close and there is a change in nature—I’ve witnessed the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the earthquakes, the volcanoes that were prophesied—if there was ever a time to share this with the world, this is the time, so that people can prepare. Because the greatest preparation isn’t a physical preparation; it’s a spiritual and emotional preparation for the change in the world.
The rift prophesied on the Hopi Prophecy Rock is happening as we speak. Our gardening cycles are changing. Our ceremonial cycles have been influenced. I thought it would be a good idea to leave this not only for the posterity of my people and my family, but to offer it to the world. I’m not trying to make money from it. I simply want to offer it to people, to give them a perspective. If they’re seeking the Creator, maybe this could be an instrument and a tool to illuminate the subtleties and complexities of the natural world—which is directly connected to the spiritual world.
The prophecies say we need to spiritually help each other and unify as a human family. And I chose this moment consciously, not without context. Thomas Banyacya, the Hopi spokesman—selected by the ceremonial leaders to represent the Hopi prophecies beginning in the 1940s—shared far more than I am. I thought: I want to help this process. I want to encourage people to look more deeply at our collective unity and what we are doing to the planet, to the elements—the earth, wind, water, fire—and to address the lack of continuity in our relationship with nature itself.
Tami Simon: Can you tell me more about the specific prophecies you received that you feel are important to share at this time, to help people see and understand what’s happening?
Jasper Young Bear: I was an apprentice to a spiritual leader, a cultural leader—you might even call him a medicine man—who was practiced in Lakota culture. One of the prophecies that came through that I found particularly profound was the prophecy around the Seventh Generation.
When the Northern Plains tribes were moved to Indian reservations—for those who don’t know the history, most of those tribes weren’t defeated in war—it was the genocide of the 30 to 60 million bison that moved us there. We were deeply connected to them. During that time, our people collectively were at a loss.
There were ceremonies conducted to ask the spirits and the ancestors what would become of us. The answer was not a good one. They were told: you will suffer for six generations. But a seventh generation was promised—that in the Seventh Generation, Wakan Tanka, the Creator, would send elevated souls into the wombs of Indian women. These souls would be born with knowledge and power that no one else carries, and they would begin to rebuild the Sacred Hoop of Life. It would take generations to rebuild it, but during that time, unity, harmony, and balance with nature would reestablish itself.
That is exactly where we are right now. We are in the Seventh Generation. The Eighth Generation has already been born. There is an explosion of spirituality on the Northern Plains.
There is another prophecy connected to this—the Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. The eagle is the symbol of the Northern Plains tribes and many of the nations of the north. Our relatives in the south carry the condor as their symbol. The prophecy speaks of a time when North and South would reunite—the 70 million Mexicanos and Chicanos, the millions of undocumented Mexicanos and Chicanos, as well as the tribal peoples, would begin to unify. That has been happening for a generation. We are sharing ceremonies, sharing understanding, and inviting the whole human family to sit at the table.
To really sit at that table and receive that education, you have to study nature. Our people say nature always has the last word. Some of the prophecies are sobering: if we don’t pay attention, there will be suffering. This whole film and audio series is intended to soften that blow as much as we can for the people.
That brings in the broader context of the hegemony and the genocide that has taken place and continues as an ongoing genocide in our own homelands. I don’t want to dwell on those nuances here, but I think it’s important that we look at them truthfully. Part of what Hopi Prophecy Rock says is that all the misdeeds of the federal government will fall upon those who have perpetrated them. It is with great compassion that we offer this to the world—not to aggrandize ourselves or make money, but to allow people to make better decisions. Specifically, the leaders of the state, the tribal governments, the federal government, and municipalities, to make better decisions about how they interact with the land and the people of the land.
In Za [Hidatsa], they call them the people of the earth—the Indian people. We have been suffering for many generations, and we know what can potentially happen. So we want everyone to come together under the tree of life, under the divine laws of nature. What you’re seeing in 2026 is the falling apart of empire.
For people to understand that nature always has the last word, that the Creator has always been with us—and to give people hope. Hope that is grounded in reality, in nature, in millennia of sacred knowledge passed from one generation to the next. Whatever we are doing will, hopefully, spiritually soften the blow for the human family so that we will rise.
One prophecy I don’t often mention: there would be a lake of fire that forms at the confluence of the Madison, Missouri, and Yellowstone Rivers in Montana—not within Yellowstone itself, but some miles away. A lake of fire is prophesied to form there, that the red man will meet the blue man at the lake of fire, and the Indian people will rise. That is happening as we speak.
Tami Simon: Can you explain how that’s happening as we speak? I’m not clear on that.
Jasper Young Bear: Look at the seismic activity happening in and around Yellowstone. Look at the animals running out of Yellowstone Park, at the changes in the timing of the geysers—Old Faithful used to blow every 45 minutes, and now it’s no longer on that cycle. The ground itself is becoming unstable. That is in alignment with significant seismic activity all over the world, specifically along the Pacific Rim.
Tami Simon: Jasper, as I’m listening to you and hearing your emphasis—and you are a member of this Seventh Generation, a new generation here to help us restore the Sacred Hoop of Life—I notice I’m feeling quite hopeful. This is in contrast to the destruction I see all around me, which often leaves me without hope. Can you say more about our passage to the restoration of the Sacred Hoop of Life and how you see that occurring?
Jasper Young Bear: Part of it is that the unnatural systems imposed upon the human family were not of our making. Most white Americans, for instance, don’t see themselves as the defeated tribes of Europe. They have entirely lost their spiritual connection to their ceremonies, their sacred names, their land—they don’t remember. In some ways, that makes them very pitiful.
Many of our Black brothers and sisters have forgotten their African roots. Our Asian brothers and sisters live similarly. The Indian people hold an understanding that in the time that is coming—just as in any purification—the purification of the earth will take place on Turtle Island. When the unnatural systems fall, when the dark powers and dark ceremonies fall, there will be a vacuum. But the Creator abhors a vacuum. We want to fill that with sacred knowledge, with meaning—not the existential nihilism so many people are living in, where life has no meaning.
Life and nature always have meaning. Within each one of us is a silo of sacred knowledge—of the ancestors, of the elements, of fire, earth, wind, water, and awaxawi, the fifth element, which people might call spirit—and of the feminine divine. It has also been prophesied that Indian women would lead this. Twenty-five years ago, I strongly encouraged many of my female relatives to stand up and take their rightful place as leaders, as thought leaders, as ceremonial and cultural leaders. The world is unbalanced because it is so patriarchal, so linear, so focused on facts, on cost-benefit analysis. Spirituality is about being—the understanding that every one of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and words has meaning and comes from somewhere deep within us. We just have to look within.
Our ceremonies are built on that—on looking within and seeing yourself as a sacred center. There is a great deal of metaphysics built into and integrated within Native American languages. Four of the five most complex languages in the world are Native American; one is African. Within these languages lives a technology—a way of perceiving. Our ceremonies are technology. Our sweat lodges are technology. Our sacred instruments are technology. Our language is technology.
People have never understood the sacredness of the Indian people—that we have carried on supernatural ceremonies. I could never simply explain that to people; you would have to see it for yourself. I don’t think this is the time to show the world that part, but it is a time to plant seeds—so that perhaps in the next generation, in the next 20 years, people might say: there really is a Creator, there really is supernatural power in this world. There is real wakan—real mystery and sacred power. The last ones to hold it on this land are the Indian people.
Tami Simon: There is one thing I wanted to ask you about, because you do speak of it—your connection, and the connection of your people, to the stars, and that relationship with the beings of the stars. How might that actually be accessible and useful to many of us?
Jasper Young Bear: Part of it is that people love to talk about UFOs and extraterrestrials. But the stars never left people. People were distracted by the dark power—by materialism. Many of those things came from the stars, specifically from the planet Saturn. Saturn inhibited spiritual practice and promoted materialism. But now, if you look, Saturn’s rings are melting—and that is not an accident. Most people don’t even know Saturn’s rings are melting.
Tami Simon: I didn’t know that. I’d love to know more.
Jasper Young Bear: Most of the Abrahamic religions are based, in part, on Saturnine symbolism—Rome was originally called Saturn. Whenever you see a cube in that context—and I want to be careful here, because this may be difficult for some to hear—what came across the ocean on the ships brought a dark power to this land, hence slavery, hence genocide, hence making evil appear fair-seeming. It has the ability to affect the way your senses work, and even at a genetic, epigenetic level. There is a reason we have never assimilated.
We have ancestors from the stars. One thing most people don’t know: our Black brothers and sisters are nearly 100% Homo sapiens—a species 300,000 years old. The rest of us—Asian, white, and the red man of North and South America—carry admixtures of Denisovan and Neanderthal blood, species that are anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 years old. But Native Americans have two ghost ancestors that have never been found. Those are the star people. That is why we are connected to the stars, and why we have the ability to draw power from above.
If you truly want to understand that power, you have to study the stars—not modern zodiac teachings, though those are fine. I’m not against them; I learn from them. But what I mean is the creation stories. The stories that explain the significance of the Morning Star, the Evening Star, the North Star, and many others. There are actual stories written in the sky, and our people carry many teachings about them that explain the phenomena upon the earth. When things happen here on earth, they are connected to what is happening up there. If you know what’s happening above, you know what’s happening below.
Right now we are in late spring—around February and March, the arrival of spring coincides with certain movements of the Big Dipper and another constellation that brings what some people call cabin fever—short-temperedness, restlessness. We have practices to help us find balance during that time.
When I look at the star people: everything external is masculine, everything deeply internal is feminine. This is why we fast, why we make sacrifices in our ceremonies—so that we can embody that internal knowledge and interact with both the external and the internal. We are constantly receiving messages from above and constantly sending messages to them.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) came here, and people are making a great deal of conjecture about it—but that didn’t happen by accident, especially at this time. Within a very short time, within the next couple of years, the whole world will change. We need to help prepare the human family for that time.
As the Native Americans rise in our sacred knowledge—as we bring ourselves together, teach our young people, and perform the ceremonies—that is one of the things we can help with for the rest of the human family, because most of them are cut off. Our Black brothers and sisters are cut off from the sacred knowledge that was their birthright, taken by slavery. The white people on this land seem very wealthy and powerful, and we are going to help soften the blow for them, because they have not listened to what the Indian people have been saying.
The really powerful people—the billionaires—everything is materialism, and they are going to find out they cannot eat their money. Food will be the new gold. Clean water will be the new gold. But if we pay attention now, we can change it. And that is one of the things ceremonies are for—we use them to solve problems, to get information we could never get any other way. We go into the spirit world and we see what has been and what is happening.
The things that are happening now in America—certain revelations about those in power—the aspersions being cast are real, and they have been real since the beginning. The people who are really in power need to understand that they are trying to keep their people in a burning house. I use that as a metaphor because Martin Luther King, before he was assassinated, said to Malcolm X that he might have made a mistake—that he might have brought his people into a burning house. He could see it burning then. We can see it burning now.
Here is the positive part: if we pay attention, if we unify, if we have heart and mind for each other and go on our healing journeys—there are many people who need to go on their spiritual healing journeys. And the first step of the healing journey is this: you must forgive the unforgivable. That is why there is no acrimony in what I am offering. I have already healed. I am not hurt; I am not traumatized. I have been through it, and I have arrived at compassion—especially for perpetrators and victimizers. What this spiritual journey has taught me is that if you forgive the unforgivable, you will operate in the frequency of freedom. That is true freedom. True freedom is within.
So when I speak to people, I want them to understand: if we turn all of this completely around—the Lakota people call this the time of the Heyoka, the sacred clown. The sacred clown is the one who reverses things, the jokester, the one who is deliberately inappropriate, who makes fun of the sacred. When you look at how ridiculous the world has become, you know we are in the time of the Heyoka.
If we do this correctly—one heart, one mind, one spirit, one prayer—we can let the empire that is choking the world fall to its lower nature and die. Or we can bring back a new spiritual covenant with the Creator and change the whole world from Turtle Island. That can give hope to the world. Several prophecies among our people say: if we do this correctly, and people listen, we can bring about a time where everyone lives in harmony with nature and with each other. That is what I would like to see.
This is my offering to the world—my most sacred teachings. It took me a long time to memorize this. I have my shortcomings; we are not meant to be perfect. We are perfect in our imperfection. But most of all, we are real. Authentic, original human beings. We never lost our connection with the Creator and with the supernatural powers that exist within us and have always existed within our peoples. Until people truly see that, they will not believe it. I think that time is coming in the next generation.
These powers are like nature itself—fragile, not meant to be monetized. Because you are using cosmic power, it resists empiricism, it resists observation, it resists materialist monetization. There are rules. Those rules, those rituals, those protocols—it is a delicate balance when you bring that power into this world. And most people have not yet developed the subtlety of mind required.
This teaching is meant to help develop that subtlety, so that people can say: I need to show a deep inner respect for the Creator and the creation. I need to respect myself and I need to respect these original instructions.
I speak about the original instructions in the film—including each of the guardianships that were given to the four races of humankind—and of the deep and abiding awe we hold for the Creator in our ways. So much so that we are willing to sacrifice ourselves, sometimes in painful ways. The time that is coming is a time of the feminine divine—not just of women, but of men who understand their own femininity.
Aho.
Tami Simon: Jasper, I’m listening to you extraordinarily carefully, and I think the listeners who are joining us are as well. It’s clear to me that you are speaking from a very deep and connected place. What I want to understand more specifically is how people of conscience can align themselves with these original instructions you’ve received. What is our alignment with what you’re teaching?
Jasper Young Bear: Part of it is that they are going to have to change almost everything about their lifestyle. The socioeconomic system—capitalism—demands that people feed upon the earth, upon its resources, and upon each other. They will need to change what they believe in, specifically regarding the institutions. That will be hard for them, because they have been miseducated. The educational system has miseducated them. The religious systems don’t produce spiritual people; the socioeconomic system produces slaves, because debt equals slavery.
When I look at the judicial system—there is no justice there, not for my people, not for people of color. The research shows you cannot separate socioeconomic level and race in the justice system. It disproportionately affects people of color and those of lower socioeconomic status. That is not justice.
When we talk about real justice, we need to think about how not to be punitive. The Creator is not a punisher. The Creator allows things to happen, and natural law takes over. Real justice is reparative and restorative. It returns the one who has erred to the correct path.
So part of it is this: everything they have ever been taught has been a lie. That is a hard pill to swallow. And this is one of the great gifts of being the poorest people in America—we don’t carry illusions.
It’s going to be hard for America to swallow that pill. And if they don’t swallow it quickly and change the way they think—because what you think and what you feel matters; it matters in the spirit world—if you simply want to make this world a better place and align with nature, then the people who are most numerous in America have a responsibility to change it for themselves, for their children, for their grandchildren. They have not been told the truth. The people who are really in power are not their friends. That system does not love them.
You asked me a direct question, so I’m giving you a direct answer: how do we find faith and happiness in the coming time? We need to invert the systems. Instead of the human family serving the systems, the systems must turn around and serve us. The people in power must be willing to sacrifice themselves. We need to invert the system.
Tami Simon: In the creation story as you tell it from these oral teachings you’ve received, you speak of how the more we understand the story of the universe, the better we can understand ourselves and this moment in time. Could you pull out a couple of teachings from the creation story that will really help us understand ourselves and this time? Maybe one or two aspects.
Jasper Young Bear: One of the most important things I see people lacking is this: almost everything you have learned in your life is part-to-whole thinking. But when you are raised in our culture and ceremonies, you are taught both whole-to-part and part-to-whole. Your everyday walk of life is part-to-whole, but your spiritual life is always whole-to-part. You sandwich your understanding between the two. Most people, however, don’t have whole-to-part perception—holistic perception—including their understanding of time.
There are 11 dimensions in the tree of life; we speak of some of them in the creation story. And the way people interact with time traps them. As I speak of chronos and chronology—real understanding of time is that it is relative. That truth is vitally important. Changing your inner self is vitally important. And you have never been separated from the Creator. You only thought you were.
Where is God? People say there is no God here. But the Creator is not a thing; it is everything. Everything is connected. Everything is a web of life, and everyone is responsible for their thread. People are searching because they have been miseducated—they think too logically and too empirically. They haven’t learned to dream.
They are also spoiled by abundance, disconnected from nature. Go into nature. Nature will show you. The thunder beings in a storm will show you who is in charge. The animals in nature will show you there is a place for all living beings here. The hegemony and control people cling to must be surrendered. Realize that this isn’t about control—it’s about living a dream, and that you are the dream.
Whatever you want becomes possible when you think that way—because the tree of life, not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the tree of life, is a wishing tree. You simply go to that tree and ask the Creator: this is what I want, Creator. The more sincere you are, the faster your answer comes. If you come in tears, in sincerity, your prayer lands. If you come voyeuristically, it does not.
The good thing about living in chaos is that chaos can become a ladder for spiritual ascension. When your life is too easy and you’re disconnected from nature and you don’t know how to think from whole-to-part, begin the process. Learn a creation story—not the short ones from the Abrahamic traditions. A real one, one that takes a long time to learn. That’s what I’m sharing—a creation story that holds a great deal of knowledge about what existed before anything became visible. You can go to the Creator sincerely. If you make yourself humble, without food and water, in nature, the Creator will hear you.
And if you help each other, you will be rewarded. These are the sacred laws: whatever you do to the whole, you do to yourself. That is why the healing journey matters. That is why forgiving the unforgivable matters—because that negative energy will come back to you if you send it out into the world, even as a thought or an emotion. And you don’t want it. You want peace. You want harmony. You want to fulfill your purpose on earth—because every human being was born with one.
That is partly why the purification is happening: it has gotten so imbalanced in the spirit world that people are not fulfilling their purpose.
Many of the Black, white, and Asian people being born right now are here to purify their family’s bloodlines. And you know who it will be: not the golden child. Not the successful one with the doctorate and the new car. It will be the black sheep. It will be the one who struggled with addiction. It will be the one who took the road less traveled. Those people are the ones who will be sincere—who will pray, who will do the work. They were selected to come here to change their bloodline and make it safe for the children yet to come.
I know I’m ranging across many things, but they are all connected. We as souls come from the spirit world. Before we come here, we make commitments and vows to the Creator—I will come here, and I will fulfill this for you. And there is a great power and protection that goes with that, if you follow it. The Creator will make sure everything works out for you, as long as you remember the Creator, as long as you remember Ina Maka, Mother Earth.
And people don’t think about these things. It’s not what you think about; it’s what you don’t think about that you need to think about. The raping of Mother Earth—people can conclude logically that it’s mining, that it’s extracting oil and minerals. But one of the most powerful things people forget is that 2,056 nuclear bombs have been detonated inside Mother Earth. Those are the people in power—that is the war machine. And the leaders are responsible for that.
A new type of leadership is coming. It will be spiritual leadership. It will be real justice—not punitive, but restorative and reparative. It is all connected with the creation. Aho.
Tami Simon: It fills me with tremendous heart longing—a deep desire to align with your aspiration. Jasper Young Bear, again, I want people to know that you share the essence of the creation story that is part of the oral lineage you’ve received in a new medicine film and a four-part audio series. You can watch and listen for free at thecreationstory.co.
I’m personally trying to digest what you’ve said here in our conversation. When I think about inverting my relationship—turning it upside down—with respect to all the conventional systems I’m part of, I think: what am I supposed to do? Go live off the grid? Start growing my own food? Step out of the business I’m running and the whole system? How do I contribute to that inversion when I’m embedded in the system?
Jasper Young Bear: That is what most people are going to wrestle with. One thing is non-participation—you feed the system every time you go to the store, every time you buy gas. It’s hard not to. It’s almost impossible. But if you put enough pressure on your leadership—and there are very intelligent people out there who have solutions—change becomes possible.
For instance, the United States recently withdrew from the World Health Organization, and since then, cures for many illnesses have been emerging. Because they were being suppressed. We have had hydrogen fuel cell cars for over a hundred years, but that has been suppressed. The people in power—these billionaires, these policy makers—have gone to great lengths to be disingenuous with people.
People have to change what they believe in, because whatever you believe in, you give power to. If you take away that belief, it ceases to hold power.
So we start small. The change isn’t going to be big at first—it begins small. And we have to organize ourselves as a human family across all races, all socioeconomic backgrounds, all belief systems, and present that to our leaders and say: this is what we want. And if you really want to speed things up—help the Indians. Right now on the Indian Reservations—and the Mexicanos, the Chicanos in the United States: they are Native Americans. Many Black people and white people claim Native American blood. My uncle told me this 30 or 40 years ago: people will claim our identity as Native Americans, and it is happening.
As the dark power falls and the United States becomes fragmented—and that is what will happen—when martial law is attempted on this land, Mother Earth will shake. When she shakes, the whole earth will shake. People will then be confronted with what I’m saying. I’m trying to say it gently, but if they don’t listen, it will not be gentle.
Tami Simon: Just to say, Jasper—you don’t need to hold back in any way in this conversation. Not for me and not for our listeners. You don’t have to soft-pedal anything. I want to see clearly. I want to be able to avail myself, if you’re willing, of your visionary perspective.
Jasper Young Bear: All right. I’ll take off the filters.
Tami Simon: Yes—as they say.
Jasper Young Bear: Mother Earth heals herself through fire. Every memory of the atrocities committed upon my mother, Ina Maka, Mother Earth, she remembers it all. The people who are striving to understand the spiritual path have not lived in nature—and nature can be very unforgiving. Nature does not soften the blow. And if you break the sacred laws, the consequences are quite harsh.
One of the things that is going to happen is a shortage of food—both planned by those in power, and because that is what the prophecies foretell. During that time of food shortage, some people may become cannibalistic.
Some of the spiritual events that are going to happen have never been seen before. We know the beings that live underground. We know some of them are cannibalistic. We know some of them are not our friends. When Mother Earth shakes, some of them will emerge onto the surface. You will hear a terrible sound—a frightening, loud sound. You will see a great wind.
My grandmother cried when she told me this. She said: “Grandson, there is a time coming. I will be dead when it happens, but it will happen in your lifetime. We have been waiting for it for generations. But when it comes, gather the people—gather those who have gone on their healing journeys.”
There will be three days of darkness on this side of the earth. I don’t know if it will be the entire earth or only here, but during that time, many spirits will be released from the earth. That which is invisible now will become visible. Even gravity will be affected.
The sun will rise in the west and set in the east—what you would call a polar shift. It will be caused by a solar event. And if you look at Tashunka Witko’s—Crazy Horse’s—prophecy, he said a time will come when the day will be brighter than day, meaning a solar burst. Those who remain will be the Creator’s children.
When ash falls from the sky, the Creator will purify everything. All the things you worry about now—plastics, cancers, sicknesses, money—will be swept away, and a new beginning will come to be. Spiritually, everyone will turn toward the Indian people, because they know. We know. We never stopped holding the ceremonies, and the ancestors have told us these things. And the ancestors—many of them have been dead for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years—you have to expand what you think ancestors are.
The Morning Star is my father. The Evening Star is my mother. The chief of the stars is the North Star. These are our relatives. Our people treat them as we treat our living relatives—be good to them, talk to them, sing for them, gift them, feed them. You don’t treat them any differently from the people in your life.
There is a lot of propaganda about the Indian people. But we are not stone-age people. We have a different technology—a spiritual technology. This isn’t about race. This is about consciousness. The battlefield is consciousness. The battlefield is the unseen world—it is what you think and feel.
Some of the most powerful people I have ever encountered are the Irish Travelers, who have been genocided and oppressed in their own land for nearly a thousand years in Ireland. They still speak Shelta and Gaelic. They still hold their clans. If Ireland wants to save itself, it should turn to the Irish Travelers. Australia needs to change the way it treats the First Nations people, the Aboriginal peoples. In Aotearoa–New Zealand, the Māori people must be treated differently. The Indian people, the red man of North and South America, must be treated differently and valued.
Because if you don’t value nature and the people who care for it, that is the real litmus test. We are the indicator species. Whenever you study an ecosystem, there is one species that, if you understand it, will tell you the health of the entire population in that given area. For America, that species is the Indian people. It is the knowledge we carry.
Think about wildfires—why didn’t we have wildfires on this scale for thousands of years? Because we always burned the land strategically. That’s why you hear of the Blackfoot Nation. The Lakota have a band called the Siha Sapa—the Burnt Thigh people. Different nations carry these remembrances in their very names—because we burned the land; we knew how to tend it. We didn’t overhunt.
They’ve been studying us. The wolves that were reintroduced into Yellowstone healed the rivers. If you really want this land back, you’re going to have to reverse-engineer the genocide of the bison. The bison are the greatest power that will restore the land to health. This was evidenced in Texas, where 5,000 bison were brought to the desert—and it is no longer a desert. It is flourishing.
If you change how you think about the land, and how you practice and how you support it—how can you change it? You change it by first changing what’s inside you. Your sense of reality doesn’t come from out here; it only appears to. The real reality comes from within you. You can change a thought. You can change an emotion. You can reframe something for yourself. You can forgive. You can begin to become loving.
In the end, it is really going to be about love. I know that sounds simple. But when it comes down to it, we are going to heal through love—through mutual affection for the land, for each other as a human family.
Tami Simon: You are, and it doesn’t sound simple to me at all. I actually feel lifted up when you say it comes down to love, because that feels like something I can do. It’s within my capacity, moment to moment. I imagine other people may feel that way too.
Jasper Young Bear: Yes. And the people who have the most power to change things are white people—particularly white people in powerful positions. But many of them are yes-men.
We live in a fascist state. Most fascism is the relationship between government and business—and in most historical examples, it is the government dictating to businesses. But in this empire, it is business dictating to government.
It is your capitalist business leaders who are responsible for the collective state of America—the fear, the dysfunction. It is your military-industrial complex. It is your prison-industrial system. It is the lack of food sovereignty, the suppression of alternatives. You have to go to your people and tell them what is being done wrong and say: we need to change this. We needed to change it yesterday.
There was a chief, Oren Lyons, of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—the Iroquois Confederacy—who went to the international climate change conferences for years and said: you haven’t changed. And you will ask me to come here again, and you still won’t change anything. And that has been true. They haven’t changed anything.
Maybe I’m speaking in generalities, but here on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, change doesn’t happen very often—and we need to think about that as a collective. If my voice reaches those in power: I have my ideas about how to change things. You have to know the history. You have to look at what happened in 1913 at Jekyll Island. You have to understand when certain institutions were created—the IRS, the Federal Reserve, and the legal doctrine that gave corporations the rights of persons.
Those are your oppressors. That may sound rough, but I’m telling you how I see it. If you were to take away legal personhood from corporations, to do away with corporations as a whole in that regard, to take away the Federal Reserve and the IRS—those are your kings. We Native people never had kings, and we never will. We don’t have messiahs either. Everyone is responsible for themselves.
Right now people are protesting all over America—calling it the No Kings protests. Most people are saying the same things, but the leadership has never listened, and doesn’t listen now. Not until the billionaires fall. Not until the banking system changes.
Everyone can talk about spirituality until their bank account is empty. Then we find out how they really feel about themselves. I’ve never been on a vacation in my life. I have nine children. I’m not poor compared to many of my people, but I love life more than I love my wallet. And that is going to be the greatest hurdle—both in changing leadership and in the changes individuals need to make within themselves.
What can you do? Go support Native American ceremonies. Go support spaces of belonging for everyone. Help create a platform—this is what I would say if I could have anything I wanted: a place where multiple generations, multiple belief systems, all the races of the human family can come together and see what is spiritually possible. Because the future is spirituality. Feminine spirituality, at that. It is not about government. It is not about patriarchy. It is not about materialism. It is the actual opposite of what the world is right now.
If you really want to support change in the world: feminine, spiritual, sustainable communities. Aho.
Tami Simon: I notice in this conversation, Jasper, that I don’t feel much impulse to ask a lot of questions. I’m listening. I feel like receiving what you have to share, creating an opening for that, rather than letting my mind jump in with well, what about this? It simply isn’t doing that.
As we close, I wonder if we could end in a place of shared prayer—of direct connection with the creative forces—and if you might lead us in that, in whatever way feels natural to you: in your native language, in any way that feels organic and appropriate to you.
Jasper Young Bear: I’ll sing a song.
[Sings]
That is what those words say: Mother and Father of the Universe—they are together, one. They are speaking as one. They are making their way as one. All life throughout Mother Earth: it is good.
This is a prayer for the unity of all the human family—the male and female aspects of the universe, and all life on this planet. We are responsible for it. When we pick up our sacred instruments, my teacher told me: you don’t pick them up for yourself. You don’t pick them up for your family, your tribe, your race. When you pick up these sacred instruments and you’re going to carry them for the rest of your life, you pick them up for all life—all sentient beings in the universe, both visible and invisible.
So I’ll sing the song.
[Sings]
May the Creator bless all of us. Wherever you are, whoever is listening to this—act for the Creator. Put the Creator at the center of your life. Live your whole life around the Creator, and the Creator will answer all of your prayers.
Act as though you are already enlightened—because you are. You only think that you’re not.
Act as a responsible ancestor to all your children, and their children, and all the generations to come. Make them proud of you. My grandparents—this is what they did for us. This is how they repaired things for us. This is how they believed on our behalf.
Be that ancestor. If you don’t remember your ancestors, be the ancestor who will be remembered. Make spiritual decisions. Sometimes they are not logical—a lot of the time, they are not. Make them anyway.
That is what I want to say to the human family. Have heart and mind for each other. Put the Creator at the center of your life—and be your best version of you.
Aho.
Tami Simon: Jasper Young Bear, whose Indian name is Redheaded Woodpecker—a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation—is the featured teacher in a new medicine film and four-part audio series called The Creation Story. You can watch and listen for free at thecreationstory.co. Jasper Young Bear, it has been a supreme honor to have this time with you. Thank you so much for being direct and true.
Jasper Young Bear: Thank you. You did a beautiful job. I appreciate you very much. May you have a great day.
