The following quote is from a now famous talk given by Lee Brown, Cherokee, in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1986. On our Circle of Life page, in the Sovereign United Nations section of our SUN Nation Website you will find a large amount of information shared by Lee Brown, Hopi and other indigenous Elders, a multi-cultural history of revolt against tyranny and a plan for shifting the foundations of our spiritual-political inheritance!
On our Rainbow Prophecy page are links to a page for each of the four races: Black, White, Yellow and Red, and, ultimately, what we are all becoming: Brown!
“At the beginning of this cycle of time, long ago, the Great Spirit came down and He made an appearance and He gathered the peoples of this earth together and He said to the human beings, ‘I’m going to send you to four directions and over time I’m going to change you to four colors, but I’m going to give you some teachings and you will call these the Original Teachings and when you come back together with each other you will share these so that you can live and have peace on earth, and a great civilization will come about.’ And he said ‘During the cycle of time I’m going to give each of you two stone tablets. When I give you those stone tablets, don’t cast those upon the ground. If any of the brothers and sisters of the four directions and the four colors cast their tablets on the ground, not only, will human beings have a hard time, but almost the earth itself will die.’ “ – Lee Brown, Baha’i- Cherokee, Baha’i Continental Indigenous Council, Fairbanks, Alaska, 1986
- Red, White, Yellow and Black Mixed into Brown
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He developed the original racial model of four races: white, yellow, red, and black. It was his protege, anthropology founder Johann Blumenbach, who completed his mentor’s color-coded race model by adding the brown race.
Browns in South Africa
In 1950s (and later) the racial slur “Colored” was invented to describe “brown people” from South Africa, including those born of black-white sexual union. The Afrikaans terms, which incorporate many subtleties of heritage, political agenda, and identity, are “bruin” (“brown”) , “bruines” (“browns”), and “bruinmense” (“brown people”). Some South Africans prefer the appellation “bruinmense” to “Colored”.
- U.S. President Barack Obama
U.S. President Obama, born to a black father and a white mother, is not only the first black president but the first biracial, or “Brown” president.
Pardos in Brazil
In Brazil, the “brown people” are the “pardos”, one of the skin colour categories (“branco”, “pardo”, “preto”, “amarelo”, and “indigena” being Portuguese for “white”, “(grey) brown”, “black”, “yellow”, and “indigenous”, respectively) that have been used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics since 1940. It is a broad classification that encompasses people of mixed race, mulattos, and assimilated indigenous people (“caboclos”).
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, this South American nation received more African slaves than any country in the Americas. But the shortage of white women, and a less rigid view of racial differences, led Portuguese settlers to mix more readily with nonwhite women than did their English counterparts in North America. The result was the creation of a large, racially mixed population. And unlike the Anglo Americans in the United States, who generally saw society in stark, bipolar racial terms and chose to deny the mixture that did occur, the Portuguese learned to view race on a continuum — white and black with many shades in between.
South Asia
It is said that the racial qualities mentioned by Elliot Smith were exactly the same as those mentioned by Giuseppe Sergi who wrote of the “Mediterranean race”. Sergi too spoke of a brown race, although he discussed their distribution throughout Afro-Eurasia. Scientific racism often included the populations of South Asia as blending from the Mediterranean (Europid) to the Australoid (Dravidian) race in a north-to-south gradient. The term ‘Brown’ was also used by British Empire as a derogatory term for natives of the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia. Later, the term ‘Brown’ began to be used as descriptor for British people of South Asian origin.
The Punjabi people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group from South Asia. They originate from the Punjab region, which has been host to some of the oldest civilizations in the world including one of the world’s first and oldest civilizations, the Indus Valley Civilization.
- Spinner, Punjab, India
Austronesians
The Austronesian-speaking peoples are various populations in Oceania and Southeast Asia that speak languages of the Austronesian family. They include Taiwanese aborigines; the majority ethnic groups of East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Madagascar, Micronesia, and Polynesia, as well as the Polynesian peoples of New Zealand and Hawaii, and the non-Papuan people of Melanesia. They are also found in Singapore, the Pattani region of Thailand, and the Cham areas of Vietnam (remnants of the Champa kingdom which covered central and southern Vietnam), Cambodia, and Hainan, China. The territories populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are known collectively as Austronesia.
Taiwanese Aborigines are Pure Austronesian
Hispanics
The terms Hispanic and Latino tend to be used interchangeably in the United States for people with origins in Spanish-speaking or Portuguese-speaking countries, like Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil. The 1970 Census was the first time that a “Hispanic” identifier was used and data collected with the question. The definition of “Hispanic” has been modified in each successive census. The 2000 Census asked if the person was “Spanish/Hispanic/Latino”.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget currently defines “Hispanic or Latino” as “a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race”. The U.S. Department of Transportation defines Hispanic to include, “persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or others Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race.”
Hispanic Ancestral Homeland
Aztlán (from Nahuatl: Aztlān, pronounced [ˈastɬaːn]) is the mythical ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. And, by extension, is the mythical homeland of the Uto-Aztecan peoples. Aztec is the Nahuatl word for “people from Aztlan”.
After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the story of Aztlán gained importance and was reported by Fray Diego Durán in 1581 and others to be a kind of Eden-like paradise, free of disease and death, which existed somewhere in the far north. These stories helped fuel Spanish expeditions to what is now the American state of California.
The Spiritual Plan of Aztlán
- Aztlan National Movement
In March 1969, hundreds of Chicano activists gathered for the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado. The name of the conference is significant as it marks the replacement of term “Mexican” by “Chicano”.
At the conference, activists developed a manifesto of sorts called El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan or “The Spiritual Plan of Aztlán”. The plan presented for the first time a clear statement of the growing nationalist consciousness of the Chicano people. It raised the concept of Aztlan, a Chicano nation, and the need for Chicano control of the Chicano community.
“Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class, and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon.” – El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
- Terrritorial Map of Aztlan
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans.
We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner “gabacho” who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation.
We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.
- Flag of Aztlan
Plan Program and Organizational Goals
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán sets the theme that the Chicanos (La Raza de Bronze) must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once we are committed to the idea and philosophy of El Plan de Aztlán, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture and our political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society – the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional – to La Causa.
UNITY in the thinking of our people concerning the barrios, the pueblo, the campo, the land, the poor, the middle class, the professional-all committed to the liberation of La Raza.
ECONOMY: economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and developing our own talents, sweat, and resources. Cultural background and values which ignore materialism and embrace humanism will contribute to the act of cooperative buying and the distribution of resources and production to sustain an economic base for healthy growth and development Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended. Land and realty ownership will be acquired by the community for the people’s welfare. Economic ties of responsibility must be secured by nationalism and the Chicano defense units.
EDUCATION must be relative to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education, contributions, etc. Community control of our schools, our teachers, our administrators, our counselors, and our programs.
INSTITUTIONS shall serve our people by providing the service necessary for a full life and their welfare on the basis of restitution, not handouts or beggar’s crumbs. Restitution for past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights. Institutions in our community which do not serve the people have no place in the community. The institutions belong to the people.
SELF-DEFENSE of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The front line defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their involvement as protectors of their people will be given respect and dignity. They in turn offer their responsibility and their lives for their people. Those who place themselves in the front ranks for their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of liberation and for La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.
CULTURAL values of our people strengthen our identity and the moral backbone of the movement. Our culture unites and educates the family of La Raza towards liberation with one heart and one mind. We must insure that our writers, poets, musicians, and artists produce literature and art that is appealing to our people and relates to our revolutionary culture. Our cultural values of life, family, and home will serve as a powerful weapon to defeat the gringo dollar value system and encourage the process of love and brotherhood.
POLITICAL LIBERATION can only come through independent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feed from the same trough. Where we are a majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group; nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de La Raza!
- Chicano Revolt
For more on the Brown Race, see the Sovereign United Nations section on our SUN Nation website.
Thank you!
SUN symbol of Unification
Life Crystals
