Land, Culture and Settler Consciousness

People's culture and strength is tied to land. Native American cultural strength is tied to Turtle Island/North America. European cultural strength is not tied to North America as it is an oppressive presence, not one of oneness with the earth or nature OR the original people here. Remember, Europeans were originally welcomed here, but they forsook that welcome because they came as christian dominators, not allies or humble tenants. They systematized genocide and holocaust in North and South America and Africa and beyond. So how can their children, who still benefit wildly from that original oppressive crime wave, claim to have some ethical, political, social connection to this land? The math doesn't add up unless you steep yourself in the groundless fantasy of christian Manifest Destiny/Doctrine of Discovery, "cowboys and Indians/western movie narratives and bulls**t "American exceptionalism" fantasies. On another level, settler colonists, most of the people living in USAmerica/Canada are leeching off the death, genocide and current oppression of First Nations/Native American peoples....real humans that are alive now who still remember their Ancestors who were terrorized to death then in true ruthless fashion....by people with bibles and crosses. The only way forward is to decolonize, to engage in anti-colonial social change and act like real, intelligent, informed ethical adults. Part of this transformation will be the shift of non-Native populations and individuals from settler-colonists to settlers. Settler-colonists live in privilege based on the historical and current theft of land, indigenous cultural destruction and rampant, destructive exploitation of land, nature and resources. A major element of the oppressive settler-colonial presence is the sustenance of dominator, colonizer ideology most currently expressed in the concepts of "patriotism", "american exceptionalism" and "christian religious privilege", the presumptive diminance of "G-O-D" and the culture from which the dominant ideas about that mythological deity emanate. Settlers consciousness comes into play in a much more ethical and intelligent way, defining a new egalitarian, respectful relationship with the indigenous nations, their members and the political and cultural endeavors and aspirations of those nations, including the honoring of treaties made between these indigenous nations and the settler-colonial governments of Canada and the United States of America. Becoming a settler is a radical project, challenges many, if not most of the ideological tenets of industrial corporatocracy and is absolutely necessary to the idea and work of living in correct relationship to Mother/Father Earth, nature and all its now fleeting tenants.

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.