"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

    OSHKOSH, WI, September 01, 2013 /24-7PressRelease/ -- "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The relevance of this citation, authored by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., resonates in today's society as it once did during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. Fifty years have passed since the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. took pause to fervently and forcefully address the criticism of his work. For those "privileged" citizens of our society who disproportionately prosper from the laws and policies enacted by politicians whose loyalties remain misguided, these words constitute an unalienable birthright. For the remaining "less than privileged" citizens of our society, the call to justice cited in these words remains beyond our reach for we do not possess either the means or the opportunity required to attain this justice.

As with any valued commodity, justice has become a commodity traded behind closed doors and eventually sold to the highest bidder or power broker. Respectfully, I have taken the liberty of including the following excerpt from the "I Have a Dream" Speech to place the cited quotation within its proper context. As for the reader, you are invited to interchange Negro with American Indian for the two ethnic communities are intertwined by the injustices to which each is subjected, both joint and several.

"But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men -- would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

And yet, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was not the first man of color to contest the arbitrary and capricious injustices which preceded the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. As early as the 1860's, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (Nimiputimt) is attributed to having offered the following counsel and wisdom as a means by which the American Indian would be allowed to live in peace with the burgeoning population of American immigrants seeking to escape the injustices from whence they came.

"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty."

As for me as an enrolled tribal member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, I do not profess to speak on behalf of the Tribe nor do I profess to speak on behalf of the Nations. But I do profess to speak on behalf of myself, my father who preceded me, my father's father who preceded him, my sons, and my son's son; all of whom are enrolled tribal members. In spite of the injustices inflicted upon my person and upon First American Engineered Solutions, L.L.C., it remains my cultural and moral obligation to insure that the next Seven Generations of American Indians enjoy the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to which they have been granted under the United States Declaration of Independence as adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

This note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men as well as American Indians -- would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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