CANADA – NOVEMBER 27: Worlds collide: Choreographer Rene Highway crosses science-fiction with Indian lore in new dance. (Photo by Patti Gower/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
According to Hopi Prophecy things would begin to take a turn for the better for the people native to this continent when the children of the whites grew long
hair and started wearing beads. 
CANADA – NOVEMBER 27: Worlds collide: Choreographer Rene Highway crosses science-fiction with Indian lore in new dance. (Photo by Patti Gower/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
That prophecy began to be fulfilled in the 1960s with the generation I AM part of.
https://www.welcomehome.org/prophecy/hopi1.html
Now unlike most I know a thing or two about Prophecy.
Like most in my youth I laughed at such things.
However when I arrived in Toronto at 18 in 1964 a man I met who very much helped me get my feet on the ground told me he was psychic. He said, “You are going to have everyone you know turn against you on the eve of your 35th birthday which you will celebrate in a psychiatric hospital after the death of someone very close to you. Don’t worry about it. When you come out you will become the richest man on earth.”
I laughed.
I did not laugh when my sister walked into Hamilton, Ontario’s McMASTER PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL on my 35th birthday with a cake.
As I cut the cake the man in charge said to me, “Do you know what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I said, adding, “I AM on time and I AM on schedule. I AM right where I AM supposed to be.”
I was then.
I AM now.
So, too, is the rest of the world including you.
The other night the spirit of my friend Rene Highway washed over me.
As he did Rene reminded me of a few things that at that moment I needed to be reminded of.
The day Rene left this level of being the person who gave me the news asked me to bring beer to the wake which was to be at the home Rene shared with Micah Barnes.
My friend, Simon Waegemaekers, is also an old friend of Rene’s going back to the 1960s.
I brought two two fours of beer. Simon brought one.
As far as I know we were the only ones who brought beer.
Some folks sitting beside me said, “We’re Born Again Christians. We don’t approve this lifestyle but we are here because it’s good for business.”
It was a good thing I can control my temper.
Had Jesus himself been here he would have said, “Go to Hell. I do not know you.”
At the wake for Rene at the Native Center on Spadina with signs all around saying. “No alcohol” the man who had asked me to bring beer said in a loud voice so that all could hear, “YOU BROUGHT BOOZE TO RENE’S WAKE.”
As one hostile face after another turned towards me I said, “I’m Irish.”
Then I left.
The man shouted after me, “I LOVED HIM!”
Like I don’t and do.
Many asked which is worse, ignorance or apathy, will reply, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
The folks native to this continent lived here for many, many, many generations.
In their time the water was clean. The land was clean.
We whites have lived here for only a few, a very few generations
In our time the water has become unclean. The land has become poisoned.
We have much to learn from our native brothers and sisters.
Perhaps now that we begin to see how much we have harmed the living planet that sustains us we can begin to listen to them.
It really does not matter whether we do or do not.
Their elders when they first saw us coming said, “This is a disease which will almost kill us but from which we will recover.”
Join me Midnite Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, September 9, 10, 11, 12 while I share with you my memories of Rene Highway. Though his body long ago left this world his spirit from time to time comes to pay me a visit.
–Reg Hartt 2019–09–04.
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