Daniel Stange de Acatl
Posted February 19, 2026
“Native to the Earth!” should be the response. This language we use is not even native any longer. English today is completely alien to its native speakers in their native homeland of England. Y los que hablan español tampoco sabe la lengua natural de aquí. Nikan Ashkan – right here and right now.
We use labels and titles and stereotype the world into a Rubik’s cube of identities, but we discredit our predecessor and dishonor our ancestors when we bury their language. When we think of language as a means to transmit and communicate the values, ideas and inquiries of our conscious mind, we see an obvious evolution of words as new concepts appear. This creates the dilemma of losing the old ideas that kept us rooted in the world. Native languages the world over have been forged in symbiotic relationship to the Mother Earth. An authentic European American would speak Latin due to their affinity for Roman-Greco society. Y luego sera capaz de comunicarse en frances, español, itlaiano además de ingles.
This came to my mind when I heard a Lakota Brother talk about how the term America is only as new as the colonization of the land we call Turtle Island. Pachamama, Tonantzin-Coatlicue. So how could describing him as Native American be accurate? Another label that mislabels the liable party’s intent. What is obvious is the connection of Chicanos to the land because our ancestors did not cross an ocean to be here. All humans are native to the planet; are they not? There are many today who would debate that question. Modern technology filling our minds with adventures of space travel in machines that take us to the moon or bring others to our atmosphere.
Wouldn’t it better to think of the planet as the Mothership. That our earth is already spinning through space is largely not an argument for people today. That our basic needs for existence are intrinsically tied to the elements, so that wanting to leave the planet in a metal box is a rather poor excuse for building phallic shaped missiles. Could we just put more focus on making our own planet a better place to live before we try to go mess up some other planet? We also might consider that if our Mothership is a conscious being, perhaps we could talk to her about where we are going because there is a trajectory around the galaxy. The sun is rotating with the other stars we assume.
Bring us back to this terrestrial level, and we understand why people behave like orbits that revolve around one another. One of the key points to focus your attention is that the spaces we occupy are repetitious, like the sun rising every day. So, if solar cycles through the galaxy are larger cycles, then we are returning a space that was once occupied over 5,000 years ago. This is at the dawn of recorded history when Sumerian texts and Mayan temples were scribed.
We are coming back to a new start, but there is always something familiar about the return. Like the seasons of the solar year have Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. We find ourselves in a space that ancient people began to write a new story for mankind. Perhaps, we could become inspired to be the new myths for future generations that transcend all the conflict and drama that the Greco-Roman mythologies pretended.
This country has been called an experiment by many scholars. The attempt was to build a better nation, but they towed along the tragic myths of loss and pain. Today, we can revisit Native histories and build new stories for our children to share and teach the world a harmony of nature and human society. Sounds better than burning it all down and throwing our political structures into further chaos. The U.S. Constitution is after all a document that was inspired by many Native Tribes we call the Iroquois confederacy.
Danny Stange de Acatl is a Denver Native and Cultural activist that serves his community on various levels.
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