Ted Robert Self, Cherokee!

Ted and Denise with Chief Red Hawk

I am Ted Robert Self, ordained minister, Yogi, singer-songwriter and part Cherokee Indian. I invite you to my webpages and to the living presence of my Guru, Sri Paramahansa Yogananda. I have made this page for Sacred Mother Earth and all the sacred animals which are endangered. Humans are pushing an ever-increasing number of mammals, birds, trees and plants to the brink of extinction. To find out more about this visit our webpage at Save our Planet! We are very concerned about the Scarlet Macaw, one of the largest and most beautiful birds in the world.

The Canadian power company, Fortis, Inc. wants to build a hydroelectric dam on the Macal River in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve. Their immediate partners in this controversial project are BEL (Belize Electricity Limited), Belize’s power monopoly, and the Government of Belize. The dam, opposed by every major environmental and conservation organization in Belize, Canada and the US, would destroy the breeding habitat of the endangered Scarlet Macaw and wreak havoc on one of the most biologically rich and diverse areas of Belize. It would also flood several unexplored ancient Mayan sites.

Also we are concerned that our glorious President Bush cares little about the world we live in, and is only another pawn of his rich supporters who wish to gut the National Forest "Roadless Area" Rule, the largest nationwide public land conservation decision in America's history.

On January 12, 2001, the U.S. Forest Service finalized the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a plan to end virtually all logging, roadbuilding and coal, gas, oil and other mineral leasing on the wildest of our national forest lands. But this plan to protect our last reaches of truly wild forests from wholesale logging and other exploitation fell under immediate attack from timber-industry and other commercial interests and their political allies. The Bush administration has signaled its distaste for the rule from the beginning -- first delaying when it would take effect, then refusing to defend it in court. Now, while proclaiming its commitment to wilderness values, the administration has started a formal process to gut the rule by allowing individual national forests to opt out of it, one roadless wildland at a time. That would turn back the clock to the old piecemeal decision making process that allowed millions of pristine acres to be developed every decade. The culmination of a decades-long effort to protect America's wild forests for future generations, the roadless rule arose out of time-tested science and painstaking inventories of national-forest lands, and its final form was shaped through a high-profile, two-year-long process that included more than 600 public meetings and triggered a record 1.6 million public comments. The final rule is the largest nationwide public land conservation decision in America's history, affecting 58.5 million forest acres, or about one-third of the national-forest system's total acreage.

For more information about this visit NRDC.org

Visit our sacred links page and see a special message to all Native Americans

Click to see the Six Nations Confederacy indictment of "civilization".

Visit saverainforest.net, It is estimated that we are losing 2 acres of rainforest every single second. The rainforests produce 40% of the oxygen we breathe. At the current rate of destruction, earth's remaining rainforests will disappear completely within 40 years. The United States has the resources to stop such madness but our collective vision is too narrow. Can you help our Sacred Mother Earth?

Denise, my sweetheart with her little bear.

Go to Denise's Cherokee Maiden page, where you will find a message to all Cherokees.

The Wisdom of the Native Americans : Includes the Soul of an Indian and Other Writings by Ohiyesa, and the Great Speeches of Red Jacket, Chief Joseph,
by Kent Nerburn (Editor) (Hardcover - February 1999)

Of all the Native American writers, I find none that speak to the heart as does Chief Ohiyesa. Here are samples from his writings:

THE original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the "Great Mystery" that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life. The worship of the "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, & there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires & pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great- Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas -- He needs no lesser cathedral!

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, & the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril & temptation. Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree - a matter profoundly important to him.

He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded & unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power inseparable from too close contact with one's fellow-men. All who have lived much out of doors know that there is a magnetic force that accumulates in solitude and that life in a crowd quickly dissipates this force, & even his enemies have recognized the fact that for a certain innate power & self-poise, wholly independent of circumstances, the American Indian is unsurpassed among men.

The elements & majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary & intermediate in character. We believed that the Spirit pervades all creation & that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence. The Indian loved to come into sympathy and spiritual communion with his brothers of the animal kingdom, whose inarticulate souls had for him something of the sinless purity that we attribute to the innocent and irresponsible child. He had faith in their instincts, as in a mysterious wisdom given from above; and while he humbly accepted the supposedly voluntary sacrifice of their bodies to preserve his own, he paid homage to their spirits in prescribed prayers and offerings.

The Circle Continues....
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