Working with the Indigenous Women's Network for the current "Honor the Earth Tour" is a beautiful "marriage," said guitarist Emily Saliers, who with Amy Ray comprises the contemporary folk duo the Indigo Girls.
One of the stops during this 21-date tour will be Friday, May 19, at Wolf Mountain. The music begins at 8 p.m."We're not too much concerned about our involvement in this relationship, as we are about the (Honor the Earth) message," Saliers said during a phone interview from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. "This tour is very inspiring for me as it is for Amy."
The idea for the "Honor the Earth" theme began four years ago when the Indigo Girls met Winona La Duke, chairwoman of the Indigenous Women's Network, during a benefit concert, said Saliers.
"We got things together and did an `Honor the Earth' tour in 1993, and it worked so well we decided to to it again," she said. "It's all part of being human beings in the human family."
The tour's proceeds will be distributed through the Seventh Generation Fund, an Indian-controlled private foundation that benefits various American Indian environmental, social justice and cultural organizations, said Saliers.
Among the organizations benefiting will be the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which opposes timber clear-cutting in Minnesota; Native Action, an effort to extend the moratorium on gold mining in the sacred Sweet Grass Hills of Montana; and the Eyak Rain Forest Preservation Fund, whose mission is to protect the land, forests and water in Alaska's Prince William Sound, the site of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
"But there are a lot of positive reinforcements also connected with the tour," said Saliers. "It's not all trying to prevent the negative, but to move forth the positive."
For example, a portion of the tour's funds will benefit new projects in development like the solar power research on the Dine/Hopi reservation in Arizona.
In addition to the concert venue performances, the Indigo Girls are also making appearances at various reservations along the way. The duo performed at the Circle of Life School on the White Earth reservation last week.
"That was so much fun playing for those kids," exclaimed Saliers. "I'd never been invited to a place like that and I can't even begin to describe what I felt at the time. The children are our future. And if we don't do something about the world today, they might not have one tomorrow."