To Hansel & Gretel AKA Harmful and re-Gretful,

I see your empty bottles of booze and cans alongside the roads of Akwesasne. Are you trying to remember your way home? Or are you just not thinking? A few days ago a very young child was taking a walk with his parents on one of our first warm spring days. He was happily hopping along and singing when he tripped and landed face first on one of those tossed from the vehicle bottles. It was a broken bottle - YOUR BOTTLE!  YOU MADE THAT LITTLE BOY CRY - YOU HURT HIM! A friend of mine  likes to take her dog for walks on his leash. Her dog  was also terribly hurt by your  thoughtlessness. The dogs foot was so badly cut, it had to be amputated, infection set in and he did not survive - maybe his spirit is following you.  You know one day you will have to answer for your wrongs in one way or another.  Did you ever stop to think that maybe a child cut by the glass you threw out the vehicle window could be one of your relatives, or some young child in your own immediate family, or the pet hurt could have been owned by someone you do care about? Do you even care? Someone out there is the mother and father and grandparents of “Hansel & Gretel” -  Do you ever see what your children, even those who are supposedly grownup,  are up to? Do you care? I remember when Akwesasne was a fairly safe place. Where people cared about one another, and watched out for one another.  When we did not even lock our doors. Remember folks, sometimes what goes around comes around. You people who are tossing your bottles and cans - save them up and leave them at the recycling bins in Hogan or pile them safely where “Tom The Bottle Man” can get them. Please stop behaving like those who unlawfully invaded this land.  It is a shame so many of us have become like the invaders.  Be Onkwehonwe - be proud - have some integrity -  make your parents, relatives, friends, your Nation, your community, and the Creator proud of you.

Signed

Akwesasne Tota