Thank you, Madame Chair, for the opportunity to address
Agenda Item 8 to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. We,
the Bears Ears Prayer Run Alliance, an affiliate of the Seventh Generation Fund
for Indigenous Peoples, are a delegation from the Pueblo of Laguna, Acoma,
Hopi, Navajo and Ute. We take this time to thank the Indigenous Peoples of this
land for welcoming and allowing our visit. I would like to acknowledge the
spirits of the Indigenous Peoples that came before us.
My name is Jasmine Felipe, I am Sun Clan, my mother is
Monica Felipe and my father is Harold Felipe. (Will state name in my native
language) My name translates as, East side Water Hole Girl – where the koshare
live. I am the youth delegate for the Bears Ears Prayer Run Alliance and the
Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples. I am a traditional farmer and
trapper. I haul wood, hunt and fish. I am a proud cultural participant. I am an
advocate for the Violence Against Woman’s Act (VAWA) and a Water Protector.
Mother Earth is me and I am her. I get to be with my mother
every day and she heals me. I am not better than her or is she greater than me.
I speak for the animals and the future generations. The Bears Ears region is
the indigenous home of our ancestors. Tribal leaders and President Obama set
forth to protect and safeguard the region for future generations. Our
indigenous identity is represented in the relationship of the land, language,
culture, ceremony and traditional resources. Protection and the boundaries have
been reduced by 85% within the southeastern Utah region. This demonstrates
clear and unfortunate disrespect for the human beings that we are and the human
rights that we deserve.
March 12 2018, the Bears Ears Prayer Run Alliance engaged in
a prayer run into the sacred region of our ancestors. Youth, elders and members
of the indigenous people, as well as non-indigenous people, came out to run and
our migration of our ancestors. Six nights of camping, where stories of the
land and a time of our people were shared around the camp fires. The movements
of our elders were mimicked in our actions in that moment. We felt their
presences and acknowledged their existence.
We would like to take this time to recommend the Special Rappoteur
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to join in critical support of our next
prayer run. To be our guest, learn about and experience the land, to hear the
stories around the camp fire, share in meal time and build a relationship to
the landscape in the manner our ancestors did when they ran out on our
homelands as we have. To understand and then to return to the UN Permanent
Forum next year to report back on the importance on saving sacred sites, using
Bears Ears, an endangered and targeted sacred site, critical to our identities,
cultures, environment and human rights, as a living example.
Thank you for this honorable consideration for our sacred
sites of our ancestors and homelands of our elders. To visit and learn, and
report back to the world the realities of our homelands, and how they are
targeted by corporations and extractive industries, will provide the experience
of our ways, culture, customs and the Indigenous needs and threats to our
Mother Earth and identities and human rights. My Mother is not a commodity.
On behalf of those who have gone before us, those who are
here today, and those who have yet to come. Thank you.
