I have been asked to write a letter to someones grandchildren for the solstice. I think this fitting since i have no children. Sometimes i think of the movement as my children and is certainly a consideration when devoting to this path. 7 generations.
To all the grandchildren i have this message for you. As some of you know the world is in dire condition. Many of you have been born into a world where your existence and quality of life is questionable. Despite this please try to rise to the occasion and meet the challenges of your generation head on with dignity and determination. Defend your communities and the natural world. Challenge yourself to learn your roots. It helps to know where your coming from to know where your going. Try to get back to your roots before industrial civilization. Form sustainable habits. Find ways to give back to the earth who truly is our mother and source of your true power. Benefit and restore her whenever possible. Stick up for people. Stick up for all the creatures of the world the swimmers, the four legged, those crawlers and those who fly. Extinction is a major issue you will face in your lifetime. It will be difficult. Do it anyway. More people are coming to join you because there is no turning away from this truth. You will face climate catastrophe. Over 200 species go extinct each day. In the Anishinaabe wolf story it explains that what happens to the wolf will also happen to human kind. Remember not to be so worried about what people think of you that it prevents you from making a stand. On difficult days try to remember the animals and forests you fought for. Your causes. Put some water or tobacco on the ground from time to time.
If there was any wisdom i wanted to leave the youth was that we set out to prove wolves are sacred to the tribes of Turtle Island and they are. Wolves like humans in their ancient forms are what science calls a keystone species. This means they benefit the natural world around them. Its a compass telling you where to go, where to return to. How to find your way home.
Regularly study martial arts. One of the most useful things you can do for this world. Keep your self capable, and fortified. Do this for the planet so you can respond in defense of her, do this for your community, your family, lastly do this for yourself. This way you can protect. Solve problems as they arise. Build your mind and your spirit by building your body. Do this so your as a responsibility to pull your own weight. Be your own security. This is especially important for women so you don’t have to run to a man or the system for help, you can handle it right there on the spot. This is a huge and overlooked solution to many of the problems we face today.
At times it will seem difficult to work with other people and the people will be divided. Seek unity and collaboration where you can and hold it in high regard. The wolf teaches us to work together. That we are strong together. Community. This is the same for humans. Individuality is a lie. Contribute to the lives and well being of others. Seek to deeply understand the meaning of family in life. Be present for them. This is a very important time to be alive. Embrace it.
This article by J.P. Linstroth contains some helpful wisdom regarding respectful ways of relating to each other and Earth. We do not agree with the author that so-called ‘green’ energy technologies are solutions to the climate crisis. However, the article raises important points regarding human separation from the natural world, soil degradation, indigenous rights, continued destruction, and the need to find a new way.
It may sound patently absurd to discuss a “re-Indigenization” of society.
Yet, I argue not only is it practical but necessary if humanity is to survive into this century and beyond. Humans, for most of their history, lived as hunter-gatherers, for about the first 290,000 years or so. It is only in the last ten to fifteen thousand years from the “Agricultural Revolution or Neolithic Revolution”, did we begin domesticating animals and plants, and thus began so-called “civilization” with writing, hierarchies, state systems, endemic warfare, and worst of all, slavery. In fact, most of us do not even think about this pre-history. We simply “are” in the world today—a globe we inherited from our collective human shift of moving away from hunting and gathering to a world of domesticating the natural environment.
If we are to legitimately address a history of these inequalities and their historical consequences, “environmental destruction”, “genocide”, “racism”, “systemic warfare”, “human exploitation”, and “state system oppression”, we must begin by examining if progress means a continuation on our present path toward self-destruction. In part, I address some of the effects of these colossal man-made calamities in my new book, Epochal Reckonings (2020, Co-Winner of the Proverse Prize)—a poetic guide to some of our 21st century crises.
What I wish to examine here is a re-thinking of ourselves on our planet earth, in relation to an indigenous understanding of “Mother Earth”.
Moreover, I will argue while we have moved well beyond the likes of French philosopher René Descartes, for many reasons his intellectual legacy still remains as we struggle to come to terms with our environment and our heritage from the Agricultural Revolution.
Descartes is well-known for his “Cogito, ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am”, which in many ways, makes Descartes the father of “philosophy of mind” and “consciousness” from a Western perspective. He thinks and therefore he knows he exists. But what does existence mean though in terms of our own present day understanding in relation to the world and the environment? In biology, cognition, and neurology alone, our knowledge of brain, mind, and body are indeed profound. With basic evolutionary knowledge, we know biologically we are animals, although perhaps a special kind, and why it is a false narrative to separate humankind from nature. When René Descartes wrote, for example: “…For as to reason or sense, inasmuch as it alone makes us men and distinguishes us from the beasts, I prefer to believe it exists whole and entire in each of us…” (Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 1637 & 1641, 1998, trans. Donald Cress, p. 2), Descartes had no way of knowing the future of human epistemology. Perhaps he might even have been amused by the contemporary subdiscipline of primatology as aiding our comprehension of human behavior. Who is to know?
What is extremely dangerous, however, is holding on to a kind of Medieval thinking that somehow our world is centered around us, humans and humans alone, and God made man (humans) for the world and for him (them) alone. In the Old Testament, Isaias (45: 18) in the Bible (1899 edn.) it states: “For thus sayith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, and made it, the very maker thereof: he did not create it in vain: he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other”. Yet, it is in Descartes’ Meditation 6 where he explicitly outlines why he separates “Mind from Body” as if the mind itself in all its abstractive capabilities can somehow be divorced from our corporeal selves.
And thus, if men’s (human’s) minds may be divided from our bodies then humans may be divided from nature.
Here is what he asserts: “Thus it seems to follow that the power of imagining depends upon something distinct from me. And I readily understand that, were a body to exist to which a mind is so joined that it may apply itself in order, as it were, to look at it any time it wishes, it could happen that it is by means of this very body that I imagine corporeal things…” (p. 93) Of course, and to be fair, René Descartes was well ahead of his time on his discourse about the mind, human perception, and the brain. Even so, there are remnants from what he contended which have remained with us, namely, “Cartesian Dualism”, or our complete divorce from nature.
In Maurice Bloch’s (2013) seminal work, In and Out of Each Other’s Bodies: Theory of Mind, Evolution, Truth, and the Nature of the Social, he explains rather than thinking of the separation of mind and body, or culture and nature, “…The social is understood as the flow of interaction between people: I call this the transactional. On the other hand, the transactional social is contrasted with conscious, explicit representation of the social: these I call the transcendental social. I argue that the transcendental social consists of second-order phenomena created and maintained by rituals. The transactional social is governed by norms and ways of doing things that are largely subconscious. It involves the continual mutual monitoring of each other by the members of a social group” (p. vii). In other words, there is no separation between mind and body, nor nature and humankind, nor between culture and nature the biological is intertwined with the social and vice versa.
In addressing the human issue of our separation from nature may have its Western roots in the so-called “Scientific Revolution” of the 1500s-1600s and the “Age of Enlightenment” of the 1700s, but today, we may re-examine some of the erroneous philosophical carryovers and create a future of cohabitation and interbeing akin to an indigenous understanding of our world. A skeptic may declare, “Well that’s all fine and good but what about poverty, starvation, over-population, and the like?” A re-indigenization of society means a re-orientation of human thought. It does not mean becoming Native or indigenous. It means re-imagining our humanity.
As a society we need to think beyond technological progress and using the planet as an unending natural resource. Here is how in my humble opinion.
1) Accept human beings as part of Earth, and not apart from it, and by this acceptance, accept our dependence upon it;
2) Accept Earth as a living being, the Gaia theory. And if we are to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of the Earth too and become its guardians. We need to love the Earth and respect it as much as indigenous peoples everywhere do;
3) Being grateful for our being on this planet and not endlessly destroying it and polluting it is a good beginning which has been around for a while in ecological consciousness circles;
4) Instead of putting resources into warfare, put resources into renewable energies and into solving malnutrition and poverty in sustainable ways. Make farming more sustainable too instead of a form of factory production and endless soil depletion;
5) Allow indigenous peoples to have “more voice” with first-world nations (Europe, United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other powerful states as China and Russia) in United Nations forums and such environmental decision-making as the Paris Agreement of 2015;
6) Protect indigenous peoples and their rights and allow for indigenous parks and reserves to remain and to be expanded upon by protecting larger tracts of land, instead of developing and exploiting natural resources on indigenous lands for industrial farming, mining interests, oil extraction, electric dams, lumbering, and ranching;
7) Make the “re-indigenization” project official in international law and international treaties, and along with other international laws concerning indigenous peoples (e.g. ILO Convention Number 169 of 1989 and the 2007 UNDRIP, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Make all nation-states adhere to such a project if possible;
8) Create more public awareness through more education programs through universities, and above all, create an ecological consciousness understood from indigenous perspectives and in their own voices;
9) Remember scientists believe we are entering the sixth extinction phase on the planet and we must prevent this by all productive means necessary;
10) And finally, allow more indigenous peoples to be spokespeople and to become planetary ambassadors for realizing such a re-indigenization project before it is too late.
One indigenous leader in Ecuador, Nemonte Nenquimo, First Female President of the Waoroni Organization of the Pastaza Province and Co-Founder of the Ceibo Alliance, declared in an open letter to world leaders:
“My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people. The Amazon rainforest is my home. I am writing you this letter because the fires are raging still. Because the corporations are spilling oil in our rivers. Because the miners are stealing gold (as they have been for 500 years), and leaving behind open pits and toxins. Because the land grabbers are cutting down primary forest so that the cattle can graze, plantations can be grown and the white man can eat. Because our elders are dying from Coronavirus, while you are planning your next moves to cut up our lands to stimulate an economy that has never benefited us. Because, as Indigenous peoples, we are fighting to protect what we love—our way of life, our rivers, the animals, our forests, life on Earth—and it’s time that you listened to us. In each of our many hundreds of different languages across the Amazon, we have a word for you—the outsider, the stranger. In my language, WaoTededo, that word is “cowori”. And it doesn’t need to be a bad word. But you have made it so. For us, the word has come to mean (and in a terrible way, your society has come to represent): the white man that knows too little for the power that he wields, and the damage that he causes. You are probably not used to an Indigenous woman calling you ignorant and, less so, on a platform such as this. But for Indigenous peoples it is clear: the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy. And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate.” (The Guardian, October 12th, 2020).
J. P. Linstroth is a former Fulbright Scholar to Brazil. His recent book, Epochal Reckonings (2020), is the 2019 Co-Winner of the Proverse Prize. His article was published in Counter punch on DECEMBER 11, 2020. You can access the original article here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/11/why-a-re-indigenization-of-society-makes-sense/
Featured image by Max Wilbert: fish-trap basket and weaver in a rural part of the Philippine archipelago.
Indigenous teachings are thousands of years old. People born into these traditions are raised into knowledge that those born outside do not—and should not—have. Do not steal from others traditions. Instead, research your own family history and connect to your own roots.
This award-winning documentary deals with the popularization and commercialization of Native American spiritual traditions by Non-Indians.
Important questions are asked of those seeking to commercially exploit Tribal rituals and copy sacred ceremonies and those vested with safeguarding sacred ways. The film represents a wide range of voices from Native communities, and speaks to issues of cultural appropriation with humour, righteous anger, and thoughtful insight.
Written by Daniel Hart Youtube copyright notice : “Alice Di Micele-Not For Sale (24:16)”, sound recording administered by: CD Baby
The event was originally produced on Sunday, March 8, 2009 and tells the history of the Iroquois Confederacy, whose practice of gender equality inspired the emerging women’s rights movement in upstate New York over 100 years ago.
“Feminism is about transforming society to create whole human beings” — Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, the two major theoreticians of the early women’s rights movement, had direct knowledge of the Haudenosaunee, writing about the superior social, political, religious and economic status of women in the Iroquois nations. Their work for women’s rights, Wagner argues, was inspired by the vision they received from the Haudenosaunee of gender balance and harmony.
Jeanne Shenandoah is a member of Eel Clan of the Onondaga Nation and serves as a representative of the Onondaga Nation in Onondaga Lake Environmental Cleanup. Jeanne is a member of Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force, founding Vice President of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, and practiced as a homebirth midwife for 28 years. Shenandoah has focused her work on educating the community about her traditional life as a member of the Eel Clan and bridging between the native and non-native nations and the impact it has had on our community over the past 30 years. In 2002, as a Haudenosaunce woman representing the spiritual tradition of indigenous women, Shenandoah attended The Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Shenandoah has also shared her personal story in Syracuse Stage’s production, Tales from Salt City. In 2005, she received The Harriet Tubman Humanitarian Achievement Award.
Deep Green Resistance gives thanks for the decades of thinking, writing, sharing and work of women globally.
The stories and legends handed down from the Nootka women of Vancouver Island are more poignant, more relevant than ever. Listening, learning, doing and engaging in serious resistance as women of strength may make a difference to the destruction of earth. There is a lot of work to be done.
The Warrior Women
“In the time before the strangers came, women were fighters same as men, and got the same trainin’. Not all members of the women’s warrior society were members of the secret society of women, but all the members of the warrior society. A woman warrior recognized the face of the enemy and was prepared to do whatever was necessary to defeat it.”
“Sometimes the women warriors would meet without the men, to sit in a circle and talk women talk, and if a woman had somethin’ botherin’ her, or puzzlin’ her, or scarin’ her, or makin’ her feel uneasy, she’d say what it was. She could take all the time she needed to talk about it, but it was expected she’d put some of her own time into findin’ the words and not talk in circles, endlessly, takin’ up everyone else’s time.”
“Then the other women in the circle who had maybe had somethin’ the same happen in their lives would talk about it, and what they’d done, or hadn’t done, or should have done, and sometimes out of it would come an answer for the sister with the problems. And even if not, sometimes, it was enough to just have been heard and given love”.
“It was expected that besides just talkin’ about what was botherin’ you, you’d do something about it. Usually it’s better to do almost anythin’ than let things continue if they’re botherin’ you. But sometimes the best thing you can do is nothin’. Sometimes you have to wait for the right Time before you can do”.
“A woman would come to the circle as often as she needed, but the circle wasn’t there to encourage a woman only to talk about her problems. The first three times you came with the same story, the woman would listen and try to help. But if you showed up a fourth time, and it was the same old tired thing, the others in the circle would just get up and move and re-form the circle somewhere else. They didn’t say the problem wasn’t important, they just said, by movin’, that it was your problem and it was time you did somethin’ about it, you’d taken up all the time in other people’s lives as was goin’ to be given to you, and it was time to stop talkin’ and do somethin’.
A woman might not know what was botherin’ her. And it was fine to go to the circle, or even to ask to have one formed, and just sit with women, and listen and maybe get strength from smiles and cuddles and just bein’ with women you knew loved you”.
“A warrior woman had to be able to recognize the face of the enemy or she couldn’t be a warrior woman. [. . .] A person who couldn’t control her bad moods or temper would lose her headband until she learned control because ragin’ around at nothin’ is wastin’ energy needed against the enemy.”
The Face Of Old Woman.
“We must reach out to our sisters, all of our sisters, and ask them to share their truth with us, offer to share our truth with them. And we can only trust that this gift, from woman to woman, be treated with love and respect, in a way opposite from the way the evil treated the other things this island had. Rivers are filthy that used to be clean. Mountains are naked that used to be covered with trees.
The ocean is fighting for her life and there are no fish where there used to be millions, and this is the work of cold evil. The last treasure we have, the secrets of the matriarchy, can be shared and honoured by women, and be proof there is another way, a better way, and some of us remember it.”
The survival of several uncontacted tribes is now at risk after fires were set inside their territories. Activists have described this year’s Amazon fires, and President Bolsonaro’s war on indigenous peoples, as “the gravest threat to the survival of uncontacted tribes for a generation.”
Four tribal territories face an especially serious crisis:
– The famed Papaya Forest on Bananal Island, the world’s largest fluvial island. It’s inhabited by uncontacted Ãwa people. Eighty per cent of the forest burned in fires last year – fires have been seen this year in one of the last areas of intact forest. More than 100,000 head of cattle now graze on the island.
– The Ituna Itatá (“Smell of Fire”) indigenous territory in Pará state, inhabited exclusively by uncontacted Indians. This reserve was the most heavily deforested indigenous territory in 2019, as land grabbers and cattle ranchers invaded. In the first four months of 2020, another 1,319 hectares of forest were destroyed, an increase of almost 60% compared to the same period last year.
– The Arariboia territory in the eastern Amazon state of Maranhão: uncontacted Awá inhabit this territory, which has already been extensively invaded. Amazon Guardians of the neighboring Guajajara tribe are warning daily that illegal loggers are destroying the forest at alarming rates. (The Ãwa people of Bananal Island and the Awá tribe of Maranhão state are distinct peoples).
– The Uru Eu Wau Wau territory. Uncontacted Indians inside this territory shot and killed famed Amazon expert Rieli Franciscato last month – campaigners fear the group is being forced out of the forest by the invasions.
Many of the fires are being started to clear the rainforest for logging and ranching, and millions of tons of soya, beef, timber and other products are imported into Europe and the US each year.
APIB (the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil) has launched a campaign to highlight the links between Bolsonaro, his agribusiness backers, and the genocidal violence being committed against indigenous peoples across the country. They are asking people and companies around the world to stop buying products that are fuelling the destruction of their territories.
Survival has launched a global action calling on supermarkets in Europe and the US to stop buying Brazilian agribusiness products until indigenous rights are upheld.
Ângela Kaxuyana, spokesperson from COIAB, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, said: “Land grabbing, deforestation and arson directly threaten the lives of our uncontacted relatives. The destruction of the territories that are their only sources of life, from where they obtain their food (fauna, flora and water), could end in their extermination.” “A grilagem de terra, o desmatamento e os incêndios criminosos ameaçam diretamente a vida dos nossos parentes em isolamento voluntário. A destruição dos territórios que são suas únicas fontes de vida, de onde garantem sua alimentação (fauna, flora e água), podem levá-los ao extermínio”.
Tainaky Tenetehar, one of the Guajajara Guardians who protect the Arariboia reserve for the Guajajara people and their uncontacted neighbors, said today: “We fight to protect this forest, and many of us have been killed doing so, but the invaders keep coming. They have damaged the forest so much in recent years that their fires are now much bigger, and more serious, than before, as the forest is so dry and vulnerable. The loggers must be evicted – only then can the uncontacted Awá survive and thrive.”
Survival’s Senior Researcher Sarah Shenker said: “In many parts of Brazil, uncontacted tribes’ territories are the last significant areas of rainforest left. Now they are being targeted by land grabbers, loggers and ranchers emboldened by Bolsonaro’s open support for them. Consumers in the US and Europe must understand that there’s a direct connection between the food on their supermarket shelves and this genocidal destruction – and act accordingly. Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet, and at the same time nature’s best guardians, by far. We cannot let their land go up in flames.”
