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| The
Art Mile Project Silverbird Speech
J.Reuben Silverbird |
 This picture is painted on Sept. 11 2001 |
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| September 11, 2001, I was not home in America. I was in Europe, on the road driving to Innsbruck, Austria, a city near the German border. I was alone in my car, happy because I was going to do some media interviews for a Concert I was doing September 13th. Suddenly,
my Cellular phone rang and almost simultaneously the second one rang and
I stopped the car, answered the first one and put it on hold while I answered
the other. I heard my friend from Vienna crying, asking if I knew what
had happened. I said, “No”. And almost incoherently she told
me about it. The message from the other Cell phone was the same from my
other friend and her children that joined with comforting words. |
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I was not far from Innsbruck at this point and I wanted to get to some place that had Cable TV so I could see what they were talking about on CNN. Frankly, I thought they were overreacting, because it just didn’t make sense… The
anxiety built up in me as I continued to drive thinking about it. I couldn’t
wait to get to Innsbruck, where luckily my friends there had CNN and my
first reaction after watching it on television with my own eyes, was like
watching a bad movie. My feelings inside were in full turmoil, like that
of an American that had just lost his country. I will never in my life
forget where I was on that tragic dark moment, just as I can never forget
where I was when President JF Kennedy was assassinated. With the flags
at half mast that day I had an interview in Tokyo on Japanese television
and I, with tears swelling in my eyes, dared ask for a moment of silence
for our President before I spoke on TV. |
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| One never forgets tragic moments like these. And one never should. But we must not allow these dark moments of tragedy to take over the whole part of our heart and soul. As an Apache/Cherokee Indian, I, like my people have never forgotten the dark tragic incidents that have happened to our people throughout American history. Tragic moments like, the genocidal reduction of 40 million Natives in the New World before the white man came to our shores, to a mere 1.9 million today. “The Trail of Tears, The replacement of Apaches from their Home land and the tragic memories go on and on. Yet,
right or wrong, these dark and tragic moments are good to remember, but
to dwell on them can ultimately bring eventual disastrous results. They
are neither good for ones own healthy well being, nor for the survival
of the world so close around us. |
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| If
the Indian of America can learn to forgive and try to forget, than peoples
of the world can and must try to co-exist with one another. For the sake
of the children and all humanity, we must put aside malicious thoughts
of acts of war and think of the drastically needed peace for one and for
all in this small world we live in today. |
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Because
of greed and power, we are forgetting to
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