Indigenous Wisdom: Healing Individual Alienation and Communal Decay

Excerpt from "Healing Wisdom of Africa" by Malidoma Patrice Some'

"Purpose begins with the individual, and the sum total of all the individuals' purposes creates the community's purpose. The community thus takes upon itself the responsibility of nurturing and protecting the individual, because the individual, knowing her or his purpose, will then invest energy in sustaining the community. There is a certain reciprocity at work here, because the community recognizes that its own vitality is based in the support and protection of each of its individuals, especially in the constant support and reminding of each individual of his or her purpose. The individual, knowing this, in turn delivers to the community the gifts that the community has successfully awakened in him or her.

The presence of a community to awaken our gifts in us is necessary because the process of being born tends to erase our memory of why we came here. And the blindness that we have toward our purpose is progressive. Early in life you are still at that place where you feel that you might do something. Children's vitality and enthusiasm are reminiscent of the forces that motivated them to come here. Of course, the coldness of this world and the rather clear hostility that most of us encounter trying to survive discourage us from the ind of purpose that we were originally so enthused about. Even within the indigenous context, there is a need for ritual to make sure that the damage done to you by society, to the point where your enthusiasm is tampered with, is repaired, so that you can embrace your purpose fully. Being born into this world is a trying experience. Whatever enthusiasm you bring with you here can be toned down and radically edited simply as a result of being here. The time of physiological transformation when you are growing up is particularly trying, and in this process a toll is taken on your sense of purpose, including forgetting. All of these changes at the time of puberty have a deep influence on the dynamics of relationship, both with the unseen world and the world that can be seen.

Also, for most young people, the stark visibility of the seen world affects their perception of the unseen world. Discrimination begins when you say that you can touch this and that, and therefore the reality of the tangible. If you are not exposed to community ritual, you are vulnerable to growing away from Spirit, until you die. The physiological signs of puberty mark a time when a specific type of ritual is called for. one designed to reconnect the person with the world of spirits and their purpose, and this is what we call initiation. Later in the book we will speak more of rituals of initiation, but for now what is important is that rituals of all kinds help to reawaken the intensity that brought us here. Making ritual a part of daily life will help to rekindle the intensity that keeps us on the path of our purpose."

(pp. 34-35)

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The above passage begins to illuminate the solutions that lie mostly dormant as we are challenged by the continual alienation of human from nature/spirit and human from human, especially with respect to youth alienation from the larger society, defined sharply and tragically in the continuing occurrence of teenage boys committing murder and other crimes in an attempt to "self-initiate" themselves, to create community for themselves seemingly at any cost. This dynamic is taking place in the "inner-country" and the "inner-city".

Some of the essential work in this regard that is necessary in this and many other societies and communities is being defined and developed by people like Malidoma Some' and other Dagara Elders, Martin Prechtel and Michael Meade. Organizations like East Coast Village, Rights of Passage Council and Sacred Fire, amongst others, are moving community, ritual, nature and Spirit into the forefront of human consciousness and life in ways that are challenging the problems that modern life presents at their core.

No community is safe from the neglect and ignorance of it's own hidden pain and self-made trauma.

Our greatest communal legacy may yet be that we will be able to look back and say we faced our deepest collective fears, together, with spiritual intent, with courage and compassion.

Spirit, Indigeny and Modern Christian Missiology: A Short Ride on a Long Train

It was a weekday afternoon and I was going home from doing some unjoyous errands and came upon a somewhat familiar, but conceptually incongruous sight, four young men dressed in black pants and shoes, white shirts, ties and the compulsory backpack - Mormon missionaries. They were getting on the same train as I was, but I made sure to get into the same car as they boarded, feeling much like a security agent sent to make sure that they would do no immediate harm, like a wolf patrolling the perimeter of its own forest homelands, sniffing at bushes, trees for signs of interlopers, dangerous to life and limb, family, child and nature's balance itself. I got on that train car with them to observe, to see if there were any new behaviors, any new evidence of their utility in a world gone modern, a world gone mad, to see if they would engage the passengers or myself, as they have in the past, to see if they were prepared to do harm or good.

I have come into contact with these young men in numerous situations. As a person who regularly gives eye contact to people in my travels and work, I have often become privy to the stories of homeless people, veritable life stories of contact-hungry people whose emotional or mental state we often would characterize as unstable, stories from people carrying bibles in their hands, scripture cards in their "briefcases or their religious hearts on their sleeves. Not all of them were Mormons, not all of them were mentally unstable, but many of them seemed to be wandering, aimlessly or aimedly, in the Land of the Homeless.



As I think back to these four young men, I am reminded of a number of my path-crossings with them. A few of these experiences come into focus now as I ponder, contemplate and calculate the primary role of indigenous cultural concepts and lifeways in the world's development. I am reminded of my great and deep feelings of trepidation, quieted anger and historical resentment as I watched these young men, or boys, without words, enter the train car and distribute themselves at least a seat away from each other, not unlike most young men in this society seen traveling together, too homophobic, insecure to sit next to each other and risk touching each other, keeping intimacy and genuine brotherhood at bay.

In yet another crossing of public transportive proportions, a pair of young, European (the only sort I've ever seen) Mormon men boarded a bus headed into deepest, darkest Roxbury, the predominantly African, Black or people-of-colored section of Boston, a city well known for its parochial demography, cut up into it's neat, yet contested sections of well-controlled diversity, carved by capitalist economy, modern classism and cultural momentum. I remember wondering even then, why just men, why not women...why the uniform....why wouldn't they dress as they might as they would go to the movies, if they ever went to the movies or as the people they so vociferously and dedicatedly sought to influence. I gazed upon them with resentment, with controlled and, then, controlling anger, seeing them as lead runners for an occupying force, a cultural, spiritual and political distraction, preying and/or praying upon a people, a population who didn't actually need them and who, most likely, in my estimation, they didn't even truly understand. It smacked so directly and powerfully of the christian missionary process in Africa, the violently coercive force of the forward military troops of and for European colonialism, with its concomitant cultural, spiritual, emotional, social, sexual, "racial", political and intellectual oppression that still lives like a rotting, but living zombie, watching from it's Washington D.C., London, Paris, Luxembourg and Beijing sarcophagi, seeking to forestall all genuine and independent inclinations of African people everywhere, let alone on this Boston bus or the neighborhoods it would whisk these two young men into that sunny afternoon.

I wondered why then in that day and age, was it necessary for yet another christian faction to come into "Little Africa" for it's pounds of religious flesh, its span of ever-increasing spiritual surreal estate amongst people that had been so completely stripped of their original, powerful and empowered indigenous roots and spiritual nature, supplanted by violence, not by intellectual discourse, out of compassion and understanding or spiritual comraderie or ascendancy. These African people were probably some of the most christian and christinized people on the face of the earth. It is well known that even now the face of christianity is changing most dynamically in the areas of the world least populated by Europeans, though they may hold strongest neo-colonial sway there. In short Africans, Latinos and Asians are the fastest growing groupings of new christians around the world. These two young men, bedecked in their workplace attire, were living, walking, fare-paying overkill. Roxbury didn't need them, replete with numerous christian sects of all ilks and sizes and influences and flavors. But there they were, fresh-faced and recently-pressed, ready to save African people from themselves for a god not of their own creation, as often stated by historian John Henrik Clarke, cultural advisor to El Hajj Malik el Shabazz (Malcolm X), but of their own historical coerced adoption, at home and abroad.

At that time, I was not yet aware of the depth of spiritual and cultural displacement that had taken place for African people with the onset of Euro-christian warfare, the legacy of power that would be disengaged from their hearts and socio-political structures, leaving them...leaving us...deep in alien territory, struggling to maintain our legacy of Ancestral connection, our relationship with nature and our relationship to our own stories of love, compassion, strength and spiritual ethos. that bus rode into Roxbury during the 80's crack epidemic. I'm not sure if those young men, the same age as those that would so devastatingly turn inward on themselves, killing each other so often, so brutally, "Black on Black", if those young Mormon men knew what to do with that Euro-political criminal legacy anchoring itself now in the minds of Africans generations and centuries-removed from their indigenous home, if they knew and could offer any more than yet another version of the same religious legacy that had watched, zombie-like, as they descended into hell.

Years later, but not many years later, I would be walking down a main street in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was a cool evening, darkening and quieting as I made my way back to Boston with a friend, back to the culturally and economically diverse, but gentrifying section of Jamaica Plain. We were "getting out of Dodge", as it were, when a Mormon tract was thrust in our faces by a seemingly friendly, but decidedly over-driven young man in black pants and white shirt and tie. I engaged him and his partner in time reciprocally to fend off his assumptive advances. Terse pleasantries exchanged, it seemed neither of us had lost a step, no rhythm displaced, but I can still remember the feeling of intrusiveness that accompanied the interchange. My friend and I might have only shared a passing greeting with the two young men in black, but were indiscriminately marked in that moment as being in need by people who didn't know us, who hadn't seen us long enough to identify the brand of our over-priced sneakers, but maybe long enough to place our faces into longer term memory banks to be recalled someday in a deeper exchange of human connection and compassion.

All in all, it seemed as though these young men also had someplace important to go, in a rush, though not overly so, but enough to notice...and they thought they'd throw out some of their bait to a couple of geographically convenient fish to see if they'd reel anything in. They didn't, but the hook snapped of in my jaw, in my craw, waiting to rust and fall out much later as as I chawed on numerous interactions such as this. Many more of them came from the Boston Church of Christ, which was known for gigantic churchish, revival meetings held then in the Boston Garden, too large for the average chapel. Their numbers seemed interminable as I bumped into BCoC reps everywhere, everytime, everyway imaginable, my freely-given eye contact making me a glaring target for their highest hopes for their conversion numbers goals. The BCoCies were often much ruder and more abrupt than the Mormons, but their approaches blurred, though no Mormon ever said, upon hearing my ever-challenging-to-some African name, that they'd instead call me "Adam". The rudeness of that interchange blocked the righteous and right (correctly applied) indignation deep in my throat. The anger passed, but the learning remained.

My anger had been re-upped for active duty as I walked past the living room of my parents' home to see two of these modern missionaries and an older Mormon counterpart sitting there, listening with rapt attention as my father, a deacon in the Roman Catholic church, explained to them, as it would be explained to me later, the finer points of how to approach the African community in USAmerica. It was not so much that my father was the one telling these people how they might best be influential to the African population in and around New Jersey, a formidable number to say the least. My father was at the time a vocal and empowered teacher of the African presence in and source of Roman Catholic doctrine, ideology and philosophical underpinnings. He championed the African historical elements of the Roman Catholic experience like very few others at that time, a time when non-European populations and control mechanisms were beginning to make themselves apparent in the Archdiocese of Newark and all over the world, the entrenched cultural momentum of the church showing it's bigoted and racist tendencies clearly to him and many others who dared to remove the planks from their own eyes (seemingly a very few) or who had their planks forcibly removed by nature of their cultural place as Africans or Latinos by a religious corporate conglomerate that did not value nor respect their presence in the world save for their regular and often stellar contributions to the ever-present collection plate and regular relinquishment of real estate the world over. My father was also relatively highly versed and enlightened in the realities of African history around the world, especially in USAmerica, so if these or any Mormons where going to talk to anyone about the African community, my father was one of the best ones in the world of christianized Africanity to hear it from, especially from the standpoint of a desire to protect Africans in a still hostile cultural environment, a necessity that exists to this day even with a quasi-democratically-elected president who claims multi-racial heritage, but is popularly considered Black.

My problem, again, with the presence of these particular Mormons in my parents' house was that they were indeed gaining intelligence on how to move "against" a population that didn't need them, already removed from the cultural container of their indigenous origins by a so-called-christian set of European nations before, during and after chattel enslavement in castles and ships named after their namesake, Jesus, himself. These particular, thoroughly-modern missionaries had a historical legacy that was playing itself out, continuing materially and ideologically on my parents' fine furniture. The horrid history of christian violence, murder, rape, abuse, cultural domination and degradation had not only knocked on the front door, but it had been invited in and offered a plate of vanilla creme sandwich cookies and orange soda (a stereotypical, but persistent memory I have from just about every Roman Catholic or christian fellowship apres-worship snack table).

Fast-forward years later to a very cold, wintery night in Lynn, Massachusetts. I was, yet again in proximity to public transportation, leaving the commuter rail station after a long and hard day at work. Lo and behold, as I am crossing the street and, I might add, in the middle of the street, a card gets thrust in my general direction. At the end of my energy and patience rope, I firmly said, "No, thank you!". Trying to move on, I realize two key things: 1) this man's hand is moving again toward me on a dark, cold, "tough city" street after I rebuked his advances the first time and, 2) this is the same man that thrust a Mormon tract at me in Waltham years ago. It was as if deja vu had been scientifically proven an empirical surety. I continued to move past him, not needing nor desiring to nor owing him a look in the eyes. My body/mind/spirit knew it was him from his voice and body language and mannerisms alone. I walked briskly home that night in a sort of reeling vertigo, anger and disdain and a bit of confusion raised clear and sharp as the single-digit temperature that cut through my bared skin and sensibilities.

My feelings rose, pushed hard by the legacy of cumulative history and personal experience, but crystallized by the realization that not only had the spectre of christian missionary intrusion found me on this dark and frigid city street near where I tentatively called home, but that, somehow, amazingly and maddeningly, this same Mormon man had gotten, yet more completely rudely and disrespectfully - another shot at me. I was non-plussed. I was mortified and pissed-off and turned inside out all at once, but not so completely as when my warming brain began to realize that there was a defensible case for having hauled off and clocked him right there in the middled of the street - and that I had missed my historical opportunity.

It was a structurally perfect case. A man, alone, gets off a train at eleven o'clock at night. It's cold. It's dark. It's a city with a reputation of crime and bad elements. "Lynn, Lynn, city of sin...you never come out the way you go in!" was the belabored mantra. An unidentified (at that moment) man, so an attacker, thrusts a hand at this man-alone with no one to assist him in this moment of violent, unwanted approach. The man dodges, but strikes his attacker, clear and sharp - and hard - in self-defense...self-defense!... then stands over his unconscious attacker and waits for the police to arrive as he holds the criminal, vanquished, righteously defeated. My Ancestors would be collecting around me, nodding in tacit approval, calling forward the legacy of missionary attacks to this night hundreds of years later, executed courageously by one of their now glorified sons, a modern tribal warrior, still clenching his fist in case the perpetrator flinched a finger or parted a lip to speak.

Though I knew in my heart that this oppressor-approved fantasy was not the finest outcome for this brief, inopportune encounter with yet another christian missionary in the African midst, nor was it indicative of any personal response pattern that existed or would ever exist as part of my own heart, mind and body, I wrangled with the idea of the historical catharsis that would have been enacted by one functionally justifiable - and hard - punch to a christian missionary chin. I was livid as I told my friends the story, sure, as I did, that they probably did not share my zeal at the idea of dropping a man to the ground, missionary or not. I actually can't even remember their reactions, so caught up in my own instant, feel-good replay as I was. And as good as that punch might have felt, however fleeting, it wouldn't clear away the negative and continuing legacy of the christian missionary relationship with Africans or other indigenous people. Africans, on the continent and in the diaspora, still hold dearly to christian concepts and disempowered cultural concepts of themselves, so many displaced from their physical, spiritual and cultural home. Even on the Motherland, Africans flock to christian congregations in astronomical numbers. It is in Africa that the largest Roman Catholic basilica outside of Rome, Italy was erected in one of the most impoverished countries on the contintent. The contradictions are interminable. And on Turtle Island, Native Americans still live in the shadow of christian boarding schools that stripped children from their families, cultures, from their security, self-esteem and ultimately from themselves, contributing to the deep social pathologies that are the scourge of the reservation system. The works of Winona LaDuke, Oren Lyons, Vine Deloria, Jr., Wilma Mankiller and Alfred Taiaiake are but some of the many who so clearly recount the history of violence and devastation at the hands of those that would call themselves "Christians". We have but to look at John Henrik Clarke, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, Seku Ture, Eric Williams, Lerone Bennett, Assata Shakur, Marcus and Amy Garvey and Malcolm X for that christian legacy as applied to Africa.

Only a return to, an advancement on behalf of and with a renewed embrace of the indigenous cultural and spiritual reality that has dominated the development of human history over our past three million years would be recompense enough for the tragedy of misplaced materials and intentions that has marked the adoption of foreign and culturally-ineffective spiritual and/or religious systems, structures and ideologies. The intrusion of christianity has predominantly come along with the oppressive colonial and global capitalist systems of economy, ideology and sociology. Winona LaDuke, in her excellently written book, "Recovering the Sacred", recounts in no uncertain terms the dangerous lifeways that have been adopted and sustained in and by this modern world of capital above human potentiality and indigenously grounded spirituality. Poverty, disease and violence have become hallmarks of daily life for so many First Nations, Native American and indigenous people, not only here on Turtle Island, but around the world. And though there have been many instances of genuine support coming from people and organizations purporting to be of the Christian faith, the overriding relationship of christianity and the missionaries that carry it around the world, into villages and neighborhoods and cities, to indigenous cultures has been predominantly negative and culturally damaging. In addition, Vine Deloria, Jr. in his trademark work, "God Is Red", details clearly how Christianity is ultimately devoid of its original functional dynamics having been pulled out of its cultural and historical timeframe and geographical setting to be transported about the earth in its current form. His book explains the necessity for indigenous peoples, particularly Native Americans, to hold onto and utilize the spiritual frameworks that come from their own cultural experience and the dangers that arise from giving those indigenous systems away for foreign systems that come from other cultural frameworks. Brenda Norrell's "Censored News" (http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com) highlights many of the realities of Native Americans in the modern world and many of the challenges that have arisen for these people in a world that forcibly projects foreign systems of thinking and being upon them. The contradictions become clear and unquestionable.

Enter then these four young Mormon men on a train. I'm not sure if their training for missionary work prepares them to have a deep understanding of the people they attempt to win over to their way of thinking. I am not sure if their teachers gave them a fundamental background in the reality of chattel slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and cultural imperialism. I'm not sure if their education included compassion, caring, love and sensitivity. History clearly shows us that these virtues are not compulsory additions to christian life and work, though they seem to be major tenets of the faith in general, how and if they get implemented is another issue. The larger issue is that these missionaries and christian missionaries in general seem to have no concern for indigenous people's spiritual and cultural independence, displaying an arrogance and ignorance that are stellar in scope. The adoption of christianity by indigenous peoples has actually moved them further away from their most genuine historical relationships with Spirit, with the earth, with water, wind and all the elemental and nature spirits. This has been tremendously damaging to the naturo-spiritual human dynamic, to indigeny in general. Historical and modern missiology is, again, largely ineffective, if not dangerous to indigenous life and those, like Africans, who have been forcibly ripped from their indigenous roots, that which sustains and defines them. Missionaries have more important and more fundamental work to do amongst themselves, reconciling the contradictions that are the hallmark of modern christianity at large.

These particular four young Mormon men said little if anything to each other during their short trip. Maybe my energetic attention toward them gave them pause (not overstating my influence, but realizing the possibility of their intuitive abilities) or they were deep in thought of their duties ahead, just as I was that day as I considered my own upcoming initiation into Dagara Eldership....yet there watching these young men, officially called "elders" in their religious construct. This time, there was no anger, only concern for those young men and the work that they engage in, the effects of their missionary work in the world. Before they left the train, one of them looked up at me and began to put on that smile that I've seen so many other times before, but he backed off of what I suspected was going to be an amateurish attempt at small talk leading to religious proselytizing. He backed off nicely before he could display the arrogance that comes with some forms of ignorance, such as I have seen in similar situations, once begun by asking me about a book I was reading, then swerving conversationally like a drunk driver toward biblical allusions.

It was apparent that modern christian missiology was alive, structurally supported, but probably not well in that moment. This missionary process was and is problematic and dangerous to healthy human development. Humanity is still in need of a major transformation in its relationship to Spirit. Indigeny, indigenous culture and spirituality is the fundamental path back to that renewed, healthy human-Spirit relationship and the essential ideological shift that so many people world-wide, whether they are indigenous or not yet aware of their indigenous soul, are correctly and currently calling for and working toward.

Excerpt from "Environmentalism and Revolutionary Energetics: Monadnock, Oxbow and a Very Sad River in Chicago"

"Environmentalism and Revolutionary Energetics:
Monadnock, Oxbow and a Very Sad River in Chicago"

Part One

This is an 'article' (I'm not sure what to call it) I wrote about issues of environmentalism and spirituality. It addresses concepts of indigeny and energetics along with religion, politics and even Ayn Rand. Stay tuned for further excerpts. Comments and feedback are highly regarded. US

"Put "environmentalism" into your search engine and see what comes up.

(long pause.... waiting for you to do as suggested.... ok...do it later...)

As I pondered the relationship of environmentalism and revolutionary energetics in the purview of the information supersidewalk, I was confused, surprised and disappointed considering my assumption of the positive nature of a movement or set of ideas named "environmentalism". Envisioning images of well-written picket sign slogans outside of corporate headquarters, brave and valiant, nay intrepid eco-warriors in Navy Seal-esque inflatables buzzing behemoth high-tech whaling ships on the cold, open seas and quietly powerful women setting up shop in beloved trees, I was summarily smited by such resources as:

"Environmentalism.com home
Links and articles analyzing the destructive religion of environmentalism."

"The Death of Environmentalism
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
In this remarkable report on how environmentalism became a special ...
modern environmentalism is no longer capable of dealing with the world's most serious ..."

"Environmentalism Refuted - George Reisman - Mises Institute
Environmentalism is the product of the collapse of socialism in a world that is ignorant of the contributions of Ludwig von Mises-a world that does
not know ..."

"The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: Environmentalism and ...
Argues that environmentalism uses false scientific claims to frighten the unwary , has a doomsday mentality reminiscent of Dark Age fanatics, ..."
(electronic search, Google, retrieved 10/25/08 from http://www.google.com/search?q=environmentalism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a)

The above links were not the only ones that came screaming bloody-humanity-murder off of my computer screen, but they were the ones that demanded the most of my attention. As a student of progressive and revolutionary social movements and politics (and physics), I know that there is always a reactionary backlash to any substantial progressive or revolutionary action or set of ideas. The presence of these websites on the first of many pages about environmentalism was a clear statement of the organizational power of these reactionary forces and, unluckily, a tip-off to a possible deficit of organization of the environmental movement, at least on the pages of Google.

I wondered why one of the first links, "environmentalism.com" was an anti-environmentalism page. Had no one in the environmentalist movement thought about, cared enough or had enough money or time to safeguard one of the main portals to information about one of the most dynamic and enlightening ideological thrusts in these modern times? Was the environmentalist movement merely a hodge-podge of under-funded and over-emotional neo-hippies sitting at their Macintosh laptops in their hardwood-floored group-domiciles in Cambridge, Austin, Oakland and Portland? I wasn't sure, but then I couldn't remember the last time I met someone who proudly and expansively bore the moniker of "environmentalist" on their sleeve or in their words (interestingly enough, my experience with "republicans" and "democrats" is much the same).

Perusing environmentalism.com, embarrassed that the ‘bad guys' had outbid ‘us' on ‘our' domain name, I found their reference to the Unabomber as an "explicit environmentalist" akin to the same extreme kookism that marks the globalization movement's characterization of anything or anyone remotely smelling, walking or talking like socialism (peoplism as I like to call it conversationally), a system which focuses primary attention and resources to the needs of humanity. Silly, right? Deep within that kookism reference, the parallel between anti-peoplism and anti-environmentalism was clear.

The nature of that first Google page could have also lent itself to the pernicious move of the capitalist corporatocracy toward the destruction of net neutrality, a real and current effort that threatens the democratic nature of the internet and would render non-tribute-paying (read progressive, socially-responsible and/or peoplist) sites imperceptible or virtually inoperational in the web realm.

Nefarious machinations of the capitalist corporatocracy (thank you, John Perkins, for a perfectly concrete and functional buzzconcept) notwithstanding for the purposes of this communiqué, there is an element of our human experience that is deeply missing from the somewhere-over-the-radar work of environmentalism and the steadfast legions of reducers, reusers and recyclers. The contemporary environmental/green movement is missing a major power dynamic in its attempt to bring balance back to our natural world. We find ourselves doing material things in relationship to our desire to "save the earth". We find ourselves doing political things, all be they rocks against a brick wall (not pessimism, but a reminder that if the rocks are numerous and big enough, brick walls can be reduced to dust) in the interest of creating a world free of rampant pollution and animal (including human) extinction. We find ourselves doing physical things, biking instead of driving fossil fuel vehicles, taking stairs instead of elevators, building green buildings instead of status quo office complexes to help cool a warming globe.

And we still find ourselves in the lurch of wholism and functional completion in our efforts to live in harmony, in balance with the very physical and naturo-spiritual reality that gave us birth."

The sad river in Chicago.

Copyright 2008 Ukumbwa Sauti

Response to "Open Letter From Leonard Peltier to Barack Obama"

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/11/open-letter-from-leonard-peltier-to.html

The following is a comment left at the above blog. At the time of this posting, it had not yet been approved. It is copied here to advance the discussion of indigeny and how these ideas are connected to current events in indigenous people's struggles for freedom and self-determination. As always, ideas are shared here to be a catalyst for greater clarity of thought and action in the interest of the highest good of all life. Approval of these comments by the blog poster/creator is not assumed.


"Thank you, Leonard, for you constant presence of clarity and power in the face of the oppression that continues, seemingly unabated, even in the face of the first president of the United States of America that shares African ancestry.

It is important, this symbolism that Obama represents, but it is more important that we, not only use that symbolism to inspire us to greater action and clearer thinking and discourse, but that, if it is possible, Barack Obama is held to the responsibility of the political and spiritual legacy from which he has been born and in which he is being held.

We should wait for no president, especially one of the United States of America, to do for us what we are to do for ourselves. But we must utilize his position and any positive moves he makes for the ultimate liberation of the human spirit and mind and body, beyond all limitations of state and non-natural law.

If Leonard Peltier is not free, none of us is free. If we stand outside his bars of incarceration and can clearly see him there, we are no more free for our ability to move about this yet colonially held land and spiritually-imprisoned earth mother. We lack the clarity of our own place upon this sacred earth.

Unluckily, and I hope this is not true, Obama may serve to be more of an intoxicating force, diverting our attentions from real work and real clarity and knowledge that was required before his appointment and will be required during and after. His symbolic presence is important and historical, but his actions are yet to be realized in the context of the most powerful force in human development, that of indigeny, the thought and practice of indigenous people worldwide, that which must be empowered and returned to.

May we be guided by the prophecy of the eagle and the condor. May we yet stand next to brother Leonard as we look back someday - soon - at the bars that once held him back from our physical embrace. May our footprints mingle softly on mother earth together with his as we watch the walls of injustice and spiritual and intellectual incarceration crumble, destroyed by the empowerment of indigeny and the functional support of people worldwide.

On to an empowered and unified indigeny.

Ukumbwa Sauti"

To add depth to this discourse, it is important to state that a number of Native American people have been asked to work on Obama's transition team. More information on this can be found at the following link:

http://missoulian.com/articles/2008/11/20/news/local/news03.txt

Condor and Eagle Prophecy - youtube

The prophecy of the Condor and Eagle is a powerful message become real as we look upon the imbalance in the science and industry overdrive of the Eagle north and the nature/heart/spirit/mind/body orientation of the Condor south. I submit to you this youtube video that puts it in perspective. There are more like it there and many places to find out about this prophecy.



Many important issues are raised with this prophecy. Many discussions are yet to be had, especially in the USAmerican culture. The ramifications of this prophecy are not limited to the western hemisphere. There are global implications as the world moves through this challenging period of the faltering of industrial globalization in the face of climate change and environmental destruction and the promise of an indigenous-led spiritual/social/political renewal that marks the period of unified indigeny and revolutionary energetics.

Legal Rights for Nature!

On Sept. 11, 2008 the Matter Network posted an article written by Erica Gies entitled "Legal Rights for Nature". Gies detailed the yet to come ratification of a new constitution that would include legal consideration for the needs of nature and its elements. Gies wrote:

"Ecuador has played host to major environmental offenses -- such as Texaco’s almost three decades of dumping toxic waste into waterways that sustain indigenous people – and, as a result, is primed to adopt such legislation. In a political reorganization designed to correct inequality and exclusion in government, the country is currently redrafting its constitution, which contains language granting nature rights.

These proposed laws seek to limit the economic activity of corporations and the state in favor of the common good, saying that no human activity will be allowed to endanger the regenerative processes of nature.

The Pachamama Alliance, a U.S.-based NGO that works with native Ecuadorans on protecting indigenous rights, suggested the language, which gained support from the indigenous and environmental movements, artists, media figures, and political sectors."

It is a joy to report that Ecuador has since ratified that constitution. As reported by Lynne Twist, co-founder of Pachamama, at a November 22 fund-raiser at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist church in Cambridge, MA, the completely new constitution now states clearly the need for anyone within Ecuador's borders to adhere to these laws. This adherence now includes Texaco which, as Twist noted, will now have to deal with this new, nature-empowered constitutional law after stalling for so long since the beginning of its legal wranglings. Sweet justice even before Texaco enters the court room.

Twist further reported that "legal rights for nature" amendments were being considered in Peru, Columbia and Bolivia, the latter of which is now headed by an indigenous president, Evo Morales.

This is an important move in the interest of indigeny as it formalizes in modern legal structures perspectives and practices concerning nature that indigenous people have been holding dear since the period of sovereign indigeny. Modern society, culture and political practice have moved markedly and dangerously away from the essential view of nature as key to the physical, social and spiritual culture of humanity. This move away from this essential viewpoint is the hallmark of the disintegrated indigeny/devolutionary energetics period in which humanity now struggles for clarity. The people of Ecuador, including, and importantly, the indigenous people of Ecuador, have made a powerful statement in the interest of nature in an era of climate change and backward capitalist cultural practice. They are to be applauded for this bold and necessary action.

Clearly, it would seem an ethical mandate that every constitution be changed to include such natural legal rights. One might only ponder for a moment to understand the sheer bedlam that would be created in the soiled ivory towers USAmerican corporate offices if the same were to be seriously proposed by a USAmerican electorate.

I wonder, in the post-election elation of our Obama love-fest, if said president-elect's administration would be so brave and forward-thinking to embrace just such legislative initiative. For many reasons, the ground for such may be more fertile in the southern climes and populations of this hemisphere, their ethical and political clarity more resolute, bravery in the face of blind, ignorant and purposefully destructive industrial momentum more powerfully - and beautifully - defined.

Indigeny and Energetics - Historical Framework

This table describes the general and fluid timeline for the three main historical periods of indigeny and energetics. Exact years of demarcation are not as important as the ramifications of the functional dynamics of these time periods. The table is provided mainly to illustrate the progression of these periods and to identify the timeline. The table content is provided below for better reading.


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Sovereign Indigeny:
society internally directed and developed on familial land masses, communalism, organic communications systems Evolutionary Energetics:
spiritual technologies created and developed in tune with natural environment; use of ritual, herbology, vibrational/ energy healing techniques

Evolutionary Energetics:
spiritual technologies created and developed in tune with natural environment; use of ritual, herbology, vibrational/ energy healing techniques

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Disintegrated Indigeny:
society effected by increasingly globalized capitalism, cultural norms and traditions subverted and repressed, the machine age is borne out of capitalist demand for control of resources and over-production, globalization of mass communications technology and sub-cultural dissemination, environmentalism emerges as a political force

Devolutionary,
Revolutionary Energetics:
spiritual technologies supplanted with alien religious/ideological content, radical shifts in relations to natural environment & human health practices;
beginnings of reestablishment of and reeducation to traditional thought and practice, wholism, cultural compositing

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Unified Indigeny:
Traditional Indigeny resurfaces in newly organized and interdependent, democratic structures, communalism and socialism, organic communications systems aided by digital communications technology;
(Organization of African Unity, International Indian Treaty Council, Organization of American States, Cultural Survival, New England Aboriginal Council – organizational examples of attempts at or movements of or toward unified indigeny and/or socio-political unification)

Revolutionary Energetics:
universal expressions of Indigenous Spiritual Technologies (Some’ et al); cultural compositing; naturo-spiritual/humanist traditions reestablished deepening concepts of wholism, adding external nature dynamic to concept of mind/body/spirit connection

g Definitions of some of the above terms (i.e., cultural compositing) will be provided in a later post. Be free to email me or post questions here. Thank you.

Indigeny and Energetics Definitions 01

indigeny – indigenous thought and practice, ideology and modes of production and distribution that stem from a historical, familial and cooperative relationship with a body of land, the relationship with which gave rise to a set of values and traditions that are pivotal to sustaining the people within that cultural framework

1. sovereign – 1. indigenous socio-cultural reality as defined by the independent, autonomous development of cultural thought and practice, based in a particular geographical container, unencumbered by the degrading qualities of capitalist and colonial ideology, economy and modes of production that would come millions of years into indigenous cultural development, but effect gross and deleterious changes upon indigeny world-wide; 2. period in which indigenous socio-cultural reality/indigeny was defined by autonomous, independent development on familial land masses

2. disintegrated – 1. period in which cultural elements are conceptually devalued and/or physically destroyed, most always creating a condition in which the particular indigenous social structures and socialization patterns are fully or partially destroyed, destabilized and/or conceptually devalued; 2. period in which the values and practices that have sustained a society through sovereign indigeny are removed from or devalued in their state of integration in the lives of individuals and the society as a whole; 3. (disintegration) extraction, destruction of devaluation of traditional cultural elements and dynamics from the human social container that created, developed and refined them, often accompanied by the supplanting of foreign and/or antagonistic values and cultural elements by force or unethical coercion (e.g., Christian missionary schools in Africa, Asia or America); 4. period of indigeny in which ancestral, familial land was/is forcibly or otherwise coercively misappropriated and natural resources were extracted and exploited at ever increasingly phenomenal rates

3. unified – 1. indigeny as expressed during an intra- and post-capitalist period in which indigenous thought, practice and social collectives are in direct control of their own cultural realities and destinies and are supported, framed and enlivened by the essential features of their traditional past; 2. historical period marked by the dynamics of cultural compositing, socio-political reunification and socio-economic reorientation to communalistic modes of organization and production

energetics – naturo-spiritual thought and practice and healing modalities expressed in multiform indigenous frameworks, including,, but not limited to direct body work, ritual technological applications of natural elements, herbology, naturopathic medicine, spiritual healing technologies and invocation of and work with spiritual energies and beings, all of which involve the assumption of the union of the physical and spiritual realms (energetics assumes the oneness of the human and naturo-spiritual worlds)

1. evolutionary – energetics as defined and expressed by indigenous cultures before
   the incursion of the destructive external forces of colonialism, capitalism and Christian-dominated religiosity

2. devolutionary – 1. medical, medicinal and energetic thought and practice that focused on suppression of symptoms, was defined by its exploitation of or separation from its constituent component’s natural qualities or orientation and whose effects (whether in production or application) were deleterious to nature and/or the recipient; 2. physical, emotional and/or spiritual healing modalities that give rise to substantial negative and destructive effects in the human individual body or larger social structure; 3. any medical or religious thought or practice dangerous or destabilizing to the ethics and practitioners of indigeny

3. revolutionary – 1. indigenous energetic thought, process and practice recovered
   from a culture’s traditional past and often marked by new modes of production /or distribution, especially as a progressive response to the ravages of disintegrated indigeny in an effort to usher in new waves of cultural reclarification and reunification and the age of unified indigeny; 2. indigenous energetic thought, process and practice as expressed in the process of progressive projection; 3. Indigenous thought, process and practice that takes place and finds dominant expression during the age of unified indigeny

√ addendum to revolutionary energetics - environmentalism and sustainable agricultural movements are important steps toward and may be included within the framework of revolutionary energetics, but are not in and of themselves complete statements of this concept as they do not, at least in popular communications, include a naturo-spiritual dynamic; the concepts of revolutionary energetics and unified indigeny may find themselves in debt somewhat to the powerful ideological and material forces of the environmentalist and

Indigeny and Energetics Introduction 01

This work around indigeny and energetics seeks to place indigenous thought and practice, including naturo-spiritual dynamics (nature and human spiritual development have always been partners in history), in its correct historical perspective, to empower indigenous people and others through a change in conceptual outlook and an opportunity to move humanity forward in time with the correct vision and intellectual and spiritual motives. Indigeny and energetics seeks to provide a place for the organization of thought and work that has been put into a tailspin by the forces and ideas of modernity/capitalism and the machine/industrial age, which the framework of indigeny puts into a correct perspective as a sub-cultural, functionally-limited and necessarily temporary socio-political dynamic.

Indigeny and energetics concepts are strengthened by the substantial and growing awareness of the relationship of capitalism/consumerism/ materialism to the continuing destruction of the natural environment, the home and sustenance of humanity on both the physical and spiritual planes. Indigeny has existed for thousands, upon millions of years - modernity for about 250 to 500 years at most in its infancy, adolescence and adulthood. Modernity is aging quickly, becoming outmoded, fraught with irreconcilable ideological and material conflicts. These conflicts cannot be mitigated within the offending system due to the nature of its shortcomings.

This blog is offered as a repository of the initial literary developments and writings of indigeny and energetics (concepts developed by Ukumbwa Sauti, M.Ed.) in particular and as a place for discourse on the issues of sustainability, environmentalism, spirituality, religion, media, modern culture and technology in general.

Ukumbwa Sauti is informed and guided by the works of Malidoma Some’, Alwyn Thomas, David Sprague, East Coast Village, Vine Deloria, Jr., Winona LaDuke, Jerry Mander, John Perkins, Kwame Nkrumah, Seku Ture, Malcolm X/El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, Ted Andrews, Bernadette McDonald/Douglas Jehl, David Helvarg, George Gerbner, Ben Bagdikian, Don Jorge Tamayo, St. Suzan Baltozer and the millions upon millions of indigenous people who have contributed so beautifully to the great body of knowledge and work and life and living experience that we know as human development.