A thank you letter from Eustace Conway

Update: Friends, the response to our story last week about what local government is doing to one of America’s last true mountain men has been overwhelming. In less than four days, our story has been read by more than 25,000 people. In less than a week, more than 8000 people have signed the petition to save Turtle Island Preserve.

On Saturday evening, we got a phone call from Eustace himself asking if we’d share the letter below expressing his personal thanks for the support… We’re happy to do so. Please continue to share this information with as many friends and colleagues as you can and urge them to sign the petition to save Turtle Island Preserve here.

And please be sure to “like” us on Facebook so that this important information is shared with your friends and colleagues. You can do so, by clicking the “like” button on the “The Resilient Family” box to the right. 

 We’ll continue to provide periodic updates on the situation as we get additional information… Best, Coley & Trey

Friends,

My heart doesn’t have a voice big enough to express thanks on the level of magnitude that I and my volunteer coworkers feel for your contribution of support. In a week’s time we have gotten over 5000 signatures on the petition showing support for Turtle Island’s right to exist. We need your help to make it through the attack from our government.

Freedom to live naturally and sustainably is very important to us. We feel it is an inalienable right to choose a low-impact, sustainable lifestyle that creates a much healthier, balanced, graceful, meaningful relationship with the planet.

Now, after our local government invaded our home and shut us down, they are threatening criminal charges against me and other continued legal action. We need your voice to spread the word that our government is harassing, attacking, and persecuting one of the last vestiges of natural living.

We choose to live the way we do to create a model of a healthier lifestyle in hopes that people will be inspired to slow down the tremendous impact to our natural world, which creates rampant demise of the health of our planet. Ironically, the Health Department has demanded that we cease and desist because of our healthy, low-impact, natural methods of life. We have complied and turned our visitors away; cancelling classes and keeping students from learning about our traditional lifestyle that is much healthier and a thousand times less impactful than the lifestyle the Health Department sanctions and supports.

Our tax dollars are paying the local government to police our most intimate actions of existence and survival. They won’t let us eat the natural food from our property. They won’t let us serve the naturally occurring spring water from our land. They won’t let us poop in our outhouse. They won’t even let us urinate in our compost pile and are taking legal action because we want our urine to go back to the earth and compost. They are threatening us about our local, organic, sustainable, low-impact housing. So far they have not told us how or where to breathe. And clothing, they have not yet attacked our clothing style. (Maybe that will change if we get a prison uniform.)

When I look at these primary aspects of human survival and see that we don’t have the freedom to exist naturally in the ancient traditions of our ancestors I am severely alarmed. Who would have thought “in the land of the free” we can’t drink, eat, poop, piss, or live in a natural structure like we want. I believe our founding fathers would do anything to come back and get in on this one.

I have volunteered over 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for the last thirty years of my life to create a model and non-profit education center that focuses on making the world a healthier place. I took him seriously when my grandfather, Chief Johnson, encouraged me to live a life of service and make the world a better place for my presence. One of my neighbors said about the attack, “You guys weren’t hurting anybody.”  Actually, we were working extremely hard at helping everybody.

Now, because of our tax-supported government invasion and their decision that we, a non-profit education organization, are a “threat to public health”, we can’t volunteer our services to the public any longer. The building code enforcers have directed us towards tearing down all of our buildings, even our doghouse.  The health department has cited us with a violation for composting and threatened to persue legal action if we don’t respond in six more days.  That definitely doesn’t feel right, or just, or reasonable, or honorable, or meaningful, or intelligent, or American. Or at least the America I was told about growing up and learning to be a good citizen and contributing member of society.

In the last 26 years, since starting Turtle Island Preserve, where I’ve been volunteering full-time, donating my life to making a positive social, economic, and environmental impact, we have never had any health issues on our land due to any of our traditional practices. We have never had anyone injured due to the sustainable designs of our buildings. We see our governments attack as a human rights issue. The way we want to live is based on a precedent that goes back as far in time as humans have existed. That is sustainability!

Thanks for helping us get the word out about our government’s oppression and the need for citizen support and justice.

In Sincere Gratitude,

Eustace Conway