Read this article from Indian Country Today, the preeminent newspaper of the combined indigenous nations of America.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/12/20/apocalypse-prophecies-native-end-world-teachings-146476

While this was written in 2012 in the middle of the Mayan end of days hyper-ecstatic craze that swept the New Age spiritual world, it is still a potent reminder of the pain and agony, and of the hopefulness of a world of tribal societies that Europeans cum Americans attempted to annihilate in the name of “Manifest Destiny” and some ethnocentric “right of being” brought to the so-called New World by Christianity gone aggressive armies. Apocalyptic visions are hardly the sole property of “people of the book,” namely the Abrahamic big 3 that seems to get all of the attention, still.

But, when peoples speak of the “end of the world” what are they talking about?  I think it’s safe to say, three years on, that the Mayan apocalypse was indeed the end of a calendar.  It’s not like on December 31 everyone thinks the world is going to end.  But for some people, of course that happens.  People die.  War. Earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, tornadoes,  typhoons, drought, wild-fires strike with increasing ferocity every single day. When it does, it is truly the “end of the world.”

As we turn toward another Gregorian calendar turn, may we all remember that, as far as Gaia, the beautiful, calm, serene, angry, ugly, and spinning earth, is concerned, time is irrelative. Four+ billion years ago is the same as tomorrow.  Beings upon our blessed earth come and go and SHE will keep spinning.  In that light, the very best we can do is to be good to one another.  We are 99.9% exactly the same at the DNA level.  I am your daughter, sister, mother, lover, aunt, niece.  We are all cousins, at some infinitesimal level.  Gaia knows.  She holds our space on this earth as surely as we hold space for each other in love and ritual.