Phillip Deere, a traditional Mvskoke (Muscogee Creek) healer from Nuyaka Grounds, Oklahoma, became a spiritual guide for the American Indian Movement (AIM) and an elder statesman for the International Indian Treaty Council, an organization founded in 1974 and focusing on the human rights of Indigenous people around the world. At the United Nations International Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 1977, Deere declared that Native Americans are America’s original people who survived colonization through their traditional laws of love, peace, and respect—unlike the confused modern society that requires prisons and asylums. He described how Indigenous peoples welcomed and taught Europeans how to survive, only to face centuries of land theft and broken treaties that now force them to seek human rights abroad. He warned that Indigenous oppression was a preview of coming universal oppression, and that all Americans would soon lose their freedoms. While he operated on a global scale, Deere encouraged Mvskoke youth to retain their culture while pursuing education, insisting that songs and ceremonies could only survive through the Mvskoke language. This poster features a quote from Deere that expresses his desire for future generations to embrace and promote Indigenous culture. It is surrounded by the four colors of the medicine wheel (yellow, red, black, and white), respectively representing east, south, west, north, and the cycles of life itself. The medicine wheel—interpreted differently across tribes—maps the sacred relationship between all beings, the seasons of life, and the four aspects of existence: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. The blue and green handprints are meant to invoke a covenant between Deere’s words and Native children, pulling the past into the future through the collapse of time as a wheel.
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