The Wonderful Modern Disease

Nuclear power generation and
the compulsory toxic waste
that comes with it makes as
much sense as the human
colonization of space.

 How can people be convinced whose disease makes them feel better on the surface, creates socially-acceptable symptoms and sustains their own misguided assumptions about themselves that they are indeed carrying a sickness that affects others deeply and is a proven blight upon their environment (which they can actually 'see', but the misguided assumptions cloud the need for any sort of substantive change) that they indeed have a terminal, though slow-moving, but very profound and globally dangerous disease?

Interesting how much the "intelligent" modern citizen of privileged industrial, colonial corporatocratic  countries can know about the terminal mistake of fossil fuel dependence and use and not feel behooved to actually live like they are in possession of said intelligence.  One could surmise that modernity does not give rise to intelligence at all, that it does its best work at creating veneers for terminal ideological and socio-political pathologies.

Case in point - even a grade school textbook will reveal how important trees are to the life of humans on the earth, but the modern system of cultural production behaves as though trees are simply a commodity that can be exploited at the whims of the corporate capitalist "imperative", that they are not indeed and in deed one of our most precious family members amongst All Our Relations, gifting us with oxygen, substantively and daily and beautifully while sustained symbiotically by the very gasses we expirate from our very lungs - suggesting a relation-ship that we'd do well to acknowledge and deepen - again.

Columbus Day Sale Business Boycott

This is a call to a general boycott of any and all companies, businesses and corporations that enact sales and promotions in the name of the oppression, genocide and colonialism embodied in the name and legacy of Criminal Columbus.  

Because of the serious and profound nature of Criminal Columbus's legacy and how it has negatively and profoundly affected the cultures and peoples of the Western Hemisphere and Africa directly and the rest of the world also, the organizations that exploit this opportunist's name and legacy must know that this  exploitation does not come without a price of its own.  

We must not allow Criminal Columbus' legacy of violence, rape and torture in the name of G-O-D and christianity to be used to sell electronics, furniture and groceries, adding disrespect and insult to the injury that Criminal Columbus set in motion in 1492 with the "blessing" of the roamin catholic papal bulls of the 1400's that defined the immoral Doctrine of Discovery that led directly to the genocide and holocaust of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, of south, central and north America and the enslavement and maafa/holocaust of indigenous Africans.

We call out to all merchants, retailers, store-owners, businesswomen and men to divest themselves of the legacy of Criminal Columbus, quietly or vociferously, out of a moral sense of compassion for humanity and an acknowledgement of truth and integrity beyond the mere desire to make profit based on the legacy of oppression of a pillaging butcher and torturer.  We call you to see the clarity and correctness in this heart-felt request.  Assuredly no business-owner in their right mind would have a "Hitler's Birthday Sale", so one can not understand how any such person would hold a "Columbus Day Sale" either.  No more "Columbus Day" sales and promotions!

(see list of offending companies in comments section)

"This is truly equivalent to Germany having a “Hitler Day” which is a national holiday where we’re all supposed to laud him as the “Great Conquerer” or something, with statues of him erected all over the country. This country is INSANE. Because it’s a part of the dominant culture, industrial civilization, which is killing the planet and wiping out vast, unfathomable numbers of nonhuman species and human indigenous cultures. It must be stopped." 

http://mexikaresistance.com/2012/10/10/fuck-columbus-day-rewild-the-west-and-all-the-rest/

Please, be free to use the above photograph in spreading the word about this boycott intended to extend throughout the year, but at least as long as the offending companies and businesses promote their sales in the name of Criminal Columbus.

Post the above or similar photos/images/flyers along with the names of the local and national companies that align themselves with the legacy of this genocidal opportunist.  Let these companies and owner know that they must find better ways and more creative ways of promoting their products and businesses than in such a way that disrespects the cultures and histories of so many.

For more information, please contact Ukumbwa Sauti at ukumbwa@gmail.com

Thoughts on Indigeny, from Turtle Island (North America) to Alkebu-Lan (Africa)

“Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.” – Vine Deloria, Jr.


“We are a spirit, we are a natural part of the earth, and all of our ancestors, all of our relations who have gone to the spirit world, they are here with us. That's power. They will help us. They will help us to see if we are willing to look. We are not separated from them because there's no place to go -- we stay here. This is our place: the earth. This is our mother: we will not go away from our mother.” – John Trudell


“There was a time when all people were indigenous people on some part of the Earth. But in the last half of the millennium, the migration of people from region to region and from countryside to city broke many of the ties we used to have to one another and to the land and water that supported us. Those who didn't make that move, the indigenous peoples of the world, can help us remember what it's like to be connected to the environment and to each other in a community. This is valuable not because we would necessarily want to return to the way we used to live, but because facets of that connectedness can contribute greatly as we create a sustainable way of life.” – Malidoma Some

Retrieved from the Turtle Island 42 Initiative home page for which Ukumbwa is a  co-contributor:  http://ti42.weebly.com/index.html

reply to EWTN “Women of Grace” blog: Is Paranormal State TV for Real?

EWTN “Women of Grace” blog: Is Paranormal State TV for Real?

Vun, the Spirit of Fire, is the portal to the Ancestors
in the Dagara tradition of West Africa.

http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=14401

My reply to their post  is as follows- “waiting for moderation” (ok fine, it is more than the one paragraph that they suggest, but then there were more than one in the accepted comment on the page....Susan Brinkman can come talk to us here if the WOG blog can’t handle the bandwidth...I’d love to continue the discussion of such things with her and any others so interested and inclined, but I progress):

I have also noticed the great proclivity for drama to be a constant creation in shows such as these, as it is in most, if not all (sur)reallity tv.  This is the first mistake of shows like this.  The connection to human spirits who have passed over can be unsettling as those spirits can be truly unsettled and frustrated and in our midst, but the melodrama around it is not helpful to understanding out traditional responses to assisting those spirits, our Ancestors in their successful passage to the realm of the Ancestors.  Thank you for pointing out one of the fundamental problems with these types of programs in general.

There are, though, problems with the above characterization of these spiritual dynamics:

"First, let me say that I believe homes can be haunted and that spirits can toss around frying pans in the middle of the night. But I don’t believe that these events are due to the behavior of the deceased owner of the house who got lost somewhere between here and eternity and is roaming the halls looking for peace. This is pure theater. Disembodied souls don’t have voices that can be recorded on EVP meters, not only because their voiceboxes have long ago rotted in the grave, but because our God, who loves us beyond our comprehension, doesn’t let any of his beloved creatures “get lost” on the way to eternity."

If we take spiritual energy as purely that (and we know the implications are deep here), we know that energy is conserved, transformed, not deleted or destroyed.  Why then is it impossible to conceive that that human energetic imprint or spirit can not then have a corporeal effect, still, on the potential energy in the movement of objects or emotions or human sensation?  It only makes logical, rational sense that that would be entirely possible, in addition to the multiplicity of occurrences outside of televisual narratives that confirm these dynamics, especially in traditional and indigenous  contexts (even modern ones where people have not shut down their full range of human energetic awareness) where many thousands of years of communal energetic learning, awareness and experience give grounding to such experiences in a functional and integrated way.  This is why so many, many indigenous cultures have traditions, rituals and ceremonies for engaging and reconciling energies and spiritual dynamics in the Ancestral continuum.  Malidoma Some' asserts eloquently in "Healing Wisdom of Africa" that we are in such grave straits in the modern world precisely because we have forgotten and neglected (and been terrorized away from) our Ancestral relationships.  

In addition, the multi-dimensionality of the universe must be taken into consideration when we speak of being able to hear spirits or Ancestors, those that have died.  Of course they don't have voice-boxes.  That's a simplistic argument, but it is wholly dismissive of energetic reality to suggest that we are limited to the creation of sound pressure only in the normal physiological sense.  This is why we call it SUPERnatural or metaphysical!  Nor should we assume that our human ability to hear is only limited to the ear.  Again, that is simplistic in a world that largely agrees that we can see with the mind's eye.  The learned (and coerced) limitations that many of us acknowledge are exactly why we dismiss Ancestral energetic dynamics in the face of "rational", "scientific" objectivism.  It is pure folly and ignorance to relegate ourselves to "Avatar" science, thinking based upon the requirement to have energetic dynamics show up on meters or machines to be real or reliable.  Clearly, though, study and experience shows that this can happen, but it is not the only way that these dynamics can be substantiated.  I am sure there are countless Roman Catholics who can speak to the presence of their deceased loved ones in their midst with great assuredness and clarity.

The other issue that can and must be engaged here is that so many cultures do have the experience and awareness of souls being "lost" if the correct energetic work is not done or if our relationships to them are broken or out of balance.  The cultural perspective from which the Roman Catholic viewpoint is derived is not the only valid one on the earth.  To wholly dismiss the tens of thousands of years old (and beyond) cultural perspectives, wisdom, experience and knowledge of indigenous peoples would be clearly arrogant and ethnocentric at best.  That primary human legacy cannot be undone with the writings of one particular culture, just as the rantings of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees did not necessarily make Jesus's statements and perspectives wrong.

We are on the right track with critiquing television programs that misappropriate and distort spiritual phenomena, but we are gravely mistaken when we provide narrow and simplistically dismissive filtered reads to time-proven, functional and expansive human cultural narratives.

[reposted also on my facebook page]

Reply to WGBH's "Civilization" written and narrated by Niall Ferguson

I am surprised that such a "sweeping" documentary series on westernism, capitalism and imperialism lacks a more functional and empathic critique of exactly those elements in the face of the gently implied irksome nature of environmental degradation, cultural destruction and outright holocaust of aboriginal people so Turtle Island and Africa.  Not only was the documentary highly dismissive of the fundamental nature of indigenous humanity and sensible connections to history, but "Civilization" seemed to do nothing more than semi-gently and semi-cleverly champion the support of a struggling, though still ideologically powerful economic and cultural system, completely minimizing the social effects of some of his "killer apps" (aptly put, I'd say; i.e., consumerism) and the fundamental dangerous nature of empire as expressed by Europeans seeking nothing more than a beneficent (sorta) hierarchical dominance in a world quickly running out of food, water, natural resources, biological diversity, cultural diversity and sense - precisely because of Europe's, the west's particularly pernicious form of "civilization".

One of the greatest mistakes humanity, at least those humans in dominant, western, highly-militarized "civilized" nations being made is underestimating the wisdom and technological culture of indigeny.  It is precisely the indigenous cultural perspective that has been warning and resisting the "civilizers" and their destructive nature since the initial introduction of criminal Columbus to the Tainos and Arawaks on the islands of Amerique. At the very least, Ferguson puts a pretty face on one of the most destructive and oppressive cultural mistakes known to humankind.  At the most, he seeks to convince us that no there is no viable, worthwhile challenge to this destruction and oppression.

I suggest he tell it to the Awa of the Amazon, the Kogi, the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation AND the Azanian people in the peacefully, wonderfully and harmoniously westernized (aka "civilized") settler-colony of South Africa.  If their stories are just an inevitable part of the deification of Euro-everything, then I want no part of "Civilization" or civilization.

This is a disappointing piece of work especially for WGBH (an insult to the producers of the likes of Independent Lens and POV) and has the same understated and dismissive arrogance as Robert Barron's "Catholicism", but that's another story - well, actually, it's pretty much the same.

(All right.  WGBH's interface isn't uploading my comments yet and is not indicating that there is any moderation on such.  Hmmmm....)

How Can That "G-O-D" Be A god Of Redemption?

I have yet to see how a religion brought by an invading colonizer, used as a weapon of confusion and cultural devolution by that colonizer, manifested as a direct ideology and embodiment of colonization, somehow proposed as an exclusive path to "salvation" by that colonizer can be in any way, shape or form any kind of truly long-term functional agent of liberation for those that have been colonized.

I have studied, seen and been told how Africans used "the church" and the church buildings for radical and important actions of political movement and strategic planning.  I have seen how the broken-hearted souls of disembodied indigeny have gained some semblance of energetic rejuvenation in the face of seemingly insurmountable imperialistic odds (have you seen a 70 year old woman get "sanctified", get the "holy ghost" in a baptist church in the African community here on Turtle Island?!).  I have seen scores of suited, tied, fancy-dressed indigenous peoples from North and South America, from Asia and India, from Africa show up in nice, big cars and european hair cuts, "good english" drizzling off their tongues, sure to go to nice "jobs" on monday folk flooding in and out of churches, rosaries dripping off their fingers, bibles clutched to their sides as if their lives depended on them for air.  I've felt the economic weight of the millions upon millions of hard-earned dollars pouring - no - raining tempestuously into church coffers feeding the predatory impulse of the cultural debacle of "mission".  I have heard the anguish in the voices of the "saved" as they declare their allegiance to a Jesus who doesn't look like them, clamouring for some semblance of self in a world that continually seeks to wipe their Ancestral memory from the face of the earth.

I have not seen any of these people speak to the nature of redemption of the most heinous crimes of genocide, colonialism, settler-colonialism, neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism and fascism.  I have not seen their book nor their god smite any of the colonizers down in their tracks.  I have not seen the fiery uprising continued unabated in those church buildings nor in the fetid catacombs that we can now call "the church".  I have not seen these people, so somehow empowered by their new colonial god-man, speak or act in accordance with the needs of people on earth in such a way that suggests that they are anything but insane, at the very least insane enough to think that a tool that was brought by their historical conqueror is anything but a tool of continued conquest and cultural genocide.

I have seen them pimp starving, dying children in African villages to raise money for "mission" work (see the 'work' of Jim Robison et al).  I have heard them unapologetically refer to indigenous missionary targets as "savages" (see EWTN's "Life On The Rock" live world broadcast during World Youth Day - 47:31 in on the DVD).  I have seen THEM refer to the process of proselytization and mission work as "imperialistic", while their white privilege declared that they "respect" other (non-european) cultures (see Pathways International blog post on "cultural contamination").  I have seen them disrespect African and indigenous culture on their young adult tv programming (see "Knights of St. Michael" on EWTN, the roamin catholic cable channel).  I have seen them BE the "1%".  I have seen them claim in word and deed that north and south America should be a "christian continent" (see papal statements on the Knights of Columbus website).  I have seen them aggrandize and deify the name and legacy of one of the world's worst, most beloved (by them) and most correctly maligned international criminals, Criminal Columbus.

It is somehow possible that this "G-O-D" is a god of colonialism?  I have seen many claim "Columbia" as the goddess of freedom.  Was she not the european image of the viral wave of Manifest Destiny?  Why is it that this "G-O-D" and the people who claim him as the highest expression of truth and righteous existence truly have no message of redemption or salvation or liberation against a globalizing corporatocracy gone vampirically mad on the black blood of the earth's bowels, of the now clouding, clotting blood of the riverine arteries and capillaries of the ailing Earth Mother? 

"Yea, that we must look up to the lord(s).  Turn ye heads away from that demon earth that pulls ye from a lord on high.  She is a barren harlot.  Raise your voices to him that loveth you best.  Turn your heads from the demon Ancestor that your heathen ways claim as your false creators.  Yea, shall you bask in the warmth of G-O-D that runneth down your sinful body, ignore that that warmth be your very own blood as the cross of your redeemer has been thrust into the flesh of your sinful back, now bowed and weary in righteous supplication to the lord(s).  When your blood of original sin is finally drained from your vessel, it is then that ye shall be saved, for thou needest saving.  Forget ye your demonic past.  Your truth is in the Book, the Word spaketh by the lord(s) himself.  It is so, because.....that book says it is so."  Coyote 3:14-21

~~~~~~~

" In 1863, a Catholic priest named Jean de Smet, after sojourning illegally in the Black Hills, reported the presence of gold there.  In short order, this incentive proved sufficient to cause Washington to violate the new treaty, sending Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his elite 7th Cavalry Regiment (heavily reinforced) to explore the Hills. [emphasis mine]" - Ward Churchill, pg. 70, "The Earth Is Our Mother", as in "From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995", South End Press, Boston, MA, 1996

"Indigeny & Energetics" - Primary Literary Supportive Texts:

Healing Wisdom of Africa - Malidoma Some'

Introduction to African Civilization - John G. Jackson

God Is Red - Vine Deloria, Jr.

Voice of Indigenous Peoples: Native People Address the United Nations - edited by Alexander Ewen, The Native American Council of New York City

Recovering the Sacred - Winona LaDuke

Original Instructions - Edited by Melissa K. Nelson (Bioneers)

Dreaming the Council Ways - True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge: Ohki Simine Forest

Secrets of the Talking Jaguar - Martin Prechtel

[Ward Churchill book(s) removed from list, 6/12]
[ http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ictarchives/2009/05/15/churchill-should-not-be-reinstated-84649 ]

In the Absence of the Sacred - Jerry Mander

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe - Hilda Ellis Davidson

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life - Winona LaDuke

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Cultural Survival Quarterly

Columbus and Other Cannibals - Jack D. Forbes

Modernity In A Minute

If human history was lived out in one day,

modernity will have existed for about a minute -

on which we now base our uncertain future.

 



Trees

Trees breathe out what we breathe in. We breathe out what trees breathe in. We should do more to preserve the life and safety of trees.

John Henrik Clarke - christianity before christ

This video is offered as information for support and discussion of indigeny, Africa, white privilege ("Patterns of Privilege"), predatory christianity, colonialism and imperialism.

The Eagle and the Condor in Prophecy: Where Does Columbia Stand?

A number of sources point us to the prophecy of the eagle and the condor, in which and when the eagle of the north (the capitalist, intellectual, technological, brain-based USAmerica) will fly the same skies, in harmony with the condor (the communalist, wholistic, spiritual, heart-based indigenous cultures of the "south", South America). This is an important and telling prophecy that comes from the spiritual awarenesses and visions of peoples that hold life dear, that hold people dear, that hold nature and Spirit dear. This is a prophecy that has seen unity not only of just the "north" and "south", of the United States of America and South America, but of all peoples in a world showing deep rifts between technological globalist corporatocracy and indigenous and marginalized (people taken from their land/spirit/culture-power-base).

Problems with engaging this beautiful prophecy, if even the eagle north is willing and able to see the necessity for unity, change and wholistic harmonious life, come up simply in the popular notion that indigenous peoples hold no real and functional wisdom that the capitalist, modern, digital-technological world can and should learn from and thereby enact change because of. Repeated, constant, persistent disrespect and devaluation of indigenous ideas and cultural practice, the infantilizing of modern "noble savage" is a deadly pattern that stands in the way of the capitalist north fully embodying the medicine of the eagle.

Current review of pagan writing, dominated by Europeans (and understandably so, but oftentimes the obvious must be stated) speak of a connection to the goddess Columbia. Hellenist blogger Cara writes the following:

"From the beginning, when Columbia was first revealed as the Goddess of this land, She was seen as a guardian of freedom and a generous granter of plenty. In early depictions of Columbia, she wears the cap of freedom and holds a cornucopia. The eagle and the rattlesnake are sacred to Her."
http://politics.pagannewswirecollective.com/2010/07/04/columbia-patron-goddess-of-the-united-states/

Simple questions arise here. What's inside that cornucopia? Where did the bounty come from? Who harvested it, this bounty from "America's" bosom? What does the eagle mean to her, to her adherents? Is the eagle's medicine the same as that as revealed to the Native peoples who revere the eagle with more sacred knowing than the colonists old and new who would destroy the eagle's populations and habitats? If Columbia (reportedly named after Criminal Columbus) is a guardian of freedom (though reportedly named after Criminal Columbus), why has she been so silent in the throats of those to whom she revealed herself in defense and liberation of the Native Americans and Africans who would be crushed under the weight of the nation that claims her name in its capitol.

What troubles me about the above quote and the continuing article is that it implies a pagan (indigenous?) perspective that allows itself to join the politically disintegrative, destructive energetic of the USAmerican colonial imperative, laying itself over the indigenous Native American cultural dynamic that is primary here in this land, a sort of paganized manifest destiny. It seems that Cara and other pagans are joining the "this land is your land. this land is my land" chorus while merging their spiritual ideology with USAmerican capitalist and colonial ideology. This is not to say that some Native Americans haven't joined that ideological thrust for their own survival or through their own blind complicity born of the same political violence and disrespect that has energetically affected us all. Africans have done this, too. The European populace has done this in spades and continues to walk the earth of Turtle Island as if they are actually in ownership of it. I am saddened by people who say they love "America", but haven't spent even a day walking on its back in harmony with its sacred energy.

A Blackfeet chief has said, as from the book, "The People: Native American Thoughts and Feelings":

"Our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever. It will not even perish by the flames of fire. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals; therefore we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because is does not belong to us."

This is deeply instructive to us, especially as Indian Country Today Media Network has this year reported on how and why the Lakota persist in refusing the billion dollars being offered for the sacred Black Hills.

"Sioux Forgo $1B, Continue Fight to Reclaim Black Hills" (ICTMN Staff February 15, 2011"

(http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/02/sioux-forgo-1b-continue-fight-to-reclaim-black-hills/)

The BBC also covered this story stating:

"Why the Sioux Are Refusing $1.3 Billion

Members of the Great Sioux Nation could pocket a large sum set aside by the government for taking the resource-rich Black Hills away from the tribes in 1877. But leaders say the sacred land was never, and still isn't, for sale."

(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/north_america/july-dec11/blackhills_08-23.html)

This continued, indigenously informed Native American perspective speaks to the embodiment of the condor consciousness and challenges directly the idea that the capitalist and mercenary ideology of USAmericanism is a foreign concept to this land, Turtle Island, and its people, those who have been here longest and best (do we really still need to say this out loud?). It also points us to a fundamental dissonance with some of the stated dynamics of the engagement of Columbia and how her adherents are patriotically supportive of the exploitative politics of the state that has overlaid its politics, culture, religion and people over that of the original inhabitants.

Cara goes on to state the following:

"From the beginning, when Columbia was first revealed as the Goddess of this land, She was seen as a guardian of freedom and a generous granter of plenty."

Which and whose beginning does she speak of? Who was Columbia revealed to and have they heard her spiritual message clearly? This anwers are up for brisk debate. I can only imagine what the Native peoples might have to say about this. Neither Cara nor the other pagan writers except for Galina Krasskova (who has recently and not so recently leveled similar critiques of this confusion) has even mentioned the presence of importance of their relationship to indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.

It is clear that even the rank and file "(US)American" is unaware of the deeper symbolism of eagle medicine and how it calls us to higher, clearer and more spiritual understandings of ourselves and our relationship to Spirit. "(US)Americans" veritably pimp the conceptual eagle as they destroy the energetic, living being. The USAmerica populace is still struggling to get to a place where it can even live out the prophecy of its eagleness fully, though as far as I understand the prophecy and how it's been communicated, the indigenous people are being remarkably kind to those who carry this allopathic, symptom-submerging "medicine" of the northern eagle of this hope-filled and powerful prophecy.

If the northern eagle is going to fly - respectfully and harmoniously - with the condor of the south, of the indigenous world, then it must engage the eagle in its fullness, not in the narrow, patriarchal and militaristic bravado-machismo that dominates pop culture. The people of the capitalist world must also learn something very important and seemingly very difficult from the condor. The condor (interestingly enough, still holding on here in the north after having been decimated in numbers to only sixteen birds at one point) is a bird that represents and embodies the medicine of purification and transformation, a powerful relationship between life and death, the physical and spiritual worlds. The condor looks death in the rib cage and pulls its sustenance from the rotting carcasses of that which, if left alone, would only spread illness and imbalance. The condor plunges is head into all that scares "(US)Americans" the most - that which must change for the good of all life, mortality and death itself, the visceral connection to Spirit that brings radical self-appraisal and transmutation of disease-state thinking and behavior so as to create new beings and lifeways in which imbalance and injustice are destroyed.

USAmericans in general and some elements of the pagan community in particular are still in dire need of understanding the nature and needs of the land upon which they stand, of the people who have sustained and maintained the sanctity of the land upon which they stand. There is little, but growing understanding of how people's behaviors are affecting the health of the earth and of nature and her human inhabitants. Even with all this northern, eagle knowledge and data technology, USAmericans seem to be blinded to the dynamics of their own presence, their destructive behaviors and ways of thinking and speaking. White privilege seems alive and well as USAmericans allow their government to opt out of and derail international agreements on climate change. It is alive and well as indigenous people come under arrest for protesting the Tar Sands oil pipeline (along with Darryl Hannah, James Hansen and other Europeans) and as they chain themselves to heavy machinery to halt the destruction of sacred forests and as they fight in courtrooms and boardrooms for access to Ancestral lands, waterways and mountains (like Mount Graham, attacked by the University of Arizona and vatican so that an astronomincal observatory could be erected).

The condor, the heart-centered indigenous energetic would call us all to do something else that is hard for modern people to do freely - to feel. There is a message of empathy and deep, reconciliatory observation and contemplation here, exemplified in the winged stillness of the condor on the rising thermals. There is a message, a call to see and feel more deeply, more fully here, to feel with fullness that which is of us and not of us, that which is physical and that which is spiritual, not just the data-driven religiosity that seemingly ignites the destructive nature of the DC40 predatory fundamentalist christians that have raised the hackles and fears of the pagan community in this current spate of activity and self-advocacy.

"The goal of DC40 is to effect “eternal change in our nation’s capitol so our elected officials can govern from a new position of uncompromising light and understanding as we change the spiritual atmosphere over Washington DC forever.” This effort is variously named DC40, Forty Days of Light Over D.C., and 51 Days of Reformation Intercession.

The change DC40 wants to make is electing leaders who fear the Christian God and “find that compromise is not the way” as it is impossible to “compromise with unrighteousness.” The “uncompromising light” refers to a statement released by Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, which says God’s word should be the legal authority in the United States and Christians should acknowledge no other, “no power to purpose or accept any compromise of the promises of God, and we declare illegal in the earth any action or any people, Nation or nations that undertake what is contradictory to the Word of God.”

(http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/dc40-to-pagans-we-release-the-power-of-blood-covered-light-over-you/#comment-1273)

The pagan and the larger, more deeply developed indigenous communities have a valid reason for concern here, if only in the political realm. The pagan statements coming to the fore with regard to the DC40 initiative though are not ringing a bell of clarity and liberty in the face of the larger historical injustices created and sustained by people of European descent on and in the lands and cultures of Native Americans and Africans, those injustices that created the nation whose bombs now burst in so much of the air above this earth, whose amber waves of grain get traded off as economic and (im)moral leverage against neo-colonized nations and peoples hungry for food, clean water, sovereign control of their Ancestral lands and their own freedom and liberty defined their way as their goddesses and gods and spirits led them to define.

Europeans the world over, but maybe especially the ones now living in (spite of) Amerique (an indigenous term related by Jan Carew in his important book, "Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Birth of Racism in the Americas", meaning the "land of the winds"), are challenged to get their minds and actions right, to look beyond the comfortable ramblings about red stated an blue state, beyond the minutia of conservative and liberal, beyond recycling and not recycling, beyond what level of standard of living they deserve no matter what effects that standard has on people the world over. Europeans, "whites" are in dire need of developing the will and ability to thrust their heads into the heart space, the failing rib cage structure, the rotting carcass of the nation they seem to think will last forever, the systems of racism, sexism and classism they seem to think will last forever, their modern lifestyles and lifeways that they seem to think will and must last forever even though they - mathematically, physically, spiritually, materially, ethically - can't. Other peoples who have followed this mistaken and misguided path of "unlimited growth", "better living through chemistry", destructive and short-sighted modernity have a similar task, though their path to clarity might have some different cultural dynamics in which to operate; their levels of cultural reconciliation may not be so abysmally deep.

Cara goes on to entreat Columbia:

I ask Her to guide us – our country seems to be at a crossroads and is facing difficult times. Our nation’s identity and ethics are muddled. "

On this I agree with her, but more than the nation, the people's identities and ethics are muddled. The "melting pot" and the "salad" have failed in their process of the amorphous unity they alluded or eluded to as they miss the very ground of unity that indigenous spirituality (energetics) helps us to understand. If we engage the spiritual dynamic of spaciality as Vine Deloria correctly suggests, we will have the ability to understand our environmental, ethical and social responsibilities. The Dagara inform us that it is the earth energetic that gives rise to our identity as indigenous beings in relation to All that Is. We can't ever assume to suggest that we "know" the land without the deep consideration and respect of the original inhabitants (who are still here) and how they have come to understand the land and how to live upon it. We can't ever assume to embark on political paths that continue to disrespect those upon whose lives and cultures the USAmerica has consumed and fed so fully, so gluttonously.

Columbia and those who revere her must reconcile themselves with the spiritual energetics of the land, still full of the Ancestral bones of the Native American nations and tribes. They can not place themselves in a position to alienate and injure their tenuous relationship with Native Americans and African by parading another, though more paganistic, symbol of manifest destiny over the bodies and cultures and histories and spiritual traditions and Ancestral responsibilities of the people who paid the highest price of survival here. The people of the north must embrace eagle medicine, must be clear about their lack of and hope for intellectual clarity. The people of the north must be able then to hear, respect and engage condor medicine, the winged path of the heart, the flight of the brave, able to come down to earth and plunge headlong into their own cultural shadows, that which must be changed into something else much less toxic to that which is and those around them.

"The earth was created by the assistance of the sun and it should be left as it was...The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it is no man's business to divide it...I see the whites all over the country gaining welath, and see their desire to give us lands which are worthless...The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land the measure of our bodies are the same. Say to us if you can say it, that you were sent by the Creative Power to talk to us. Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I chose. The one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who created it. I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to live on yours." - Chief Joseph, Nez Perce ("The People: Native American Thoughts and Feelings")

Is the USAmerica, its people, the people of the modern north, the industrialized, capitalist world ready to engage the indigenous prophecy, the call to unity? Can these modern people see beyond their own privileged barriers to see a world that might look much different than the one they think they see now? Can the pagan community begin to see itself with much more spiritual and political clarity and use its powerful spiritual traditions to truly liberate itself from its own confusion and isolation? Is "(US)America" truly the land of the free and the home of the brave or is it actually the nation of the unwilling, the reticent, the narrowly-defined, the exploitative, the afraid?

What will become of the prophecy of the eagle and the condor...and where will Columbia - and her adherents - stand?