----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 3:47
PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Tragedy in
Iran, too
Ray's in black, I'm in
blue.
Ed Weick
Ray:
Thank you for your statement
of our tragedy. It was clear, accurate and well
put. I would argue differently only in one
area. The knowledge is not lost anymore than the
shamanic universe is lost. You can find it written all over
the walls of the Sistine Chapel and I don't believe you can
accurately interpret the Jewish bible if you don't know the ancient
rules of writing that are still embodied in the Hebrew
letters. That is found in the ancient shamanic roots
of the culture of the Habiru as well and reaches all the way to the
Americas.
I'm afraid you've lost me here. IMHO, the shamanic
universe may continue to exist, but if there are no shamen around to
interpret it and make use of it, what's
the point?
You a have been talking to a traditional Didahnvwisgi
(Shaman) for several years Ed. There are two Cherokee
communities with full ceremonial calendars and several smaller language
ones in the New York Metropolitan area. We get a lot of
information as well from the network in Canada. There is a lot
going on as a result of some of the wonderful opportunities your work
facilitated.
I'm sure there are still people, apart from
academics, that may understand the universe in a manner similar to
the understandings of the ancient Aztecs, Mayas, Incas and Cherokees, but
there aren't very many of them, and when they die, there will be even
fewer.
We are not dying off now. We are
growing. My daughter has traditional native friends in
her college in Boston. Give up the vanishing American
myth. Its just that, a myth.
In the past thirty to forty years I've seen a
tremendous resurgence of Native power and culture in Canada.
Take a look at http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/native_claims.htm which deals with the power and political
side. However, I've also seen that to become politically powerful,
Native people have had to use mainstream political, judicial and
bureaucratic methods. I think there's may be a fine line between
using those methods and adopting them in place of earlier ones. To
quote one Yukon Indian leader when asked about traditional land use: "Oh,
we don't do that anymore," which is not to say that many other aspects of
culture have been abandoned or are not being revived and
strengthened.
If, in your reference to the Sistine Chapel, you are saying
that the "shamanic universe", the world beyond the world that we can see,
touch and smell, makes itself manifest through creativity wherever
that occurs, I buy the point.
No, I'm saying that the church was changed in its travels
around the world. It absorbed a king-size amount of Shamanism in its
theology from its connection to Judaism and the Romans brought theirs
along with it not to mention the Mithrians. Shamanism is
the base religion of the world and is built in the senses and aesthetic
discrimination. Shamanism had a lot to do with many of
the early Christian heresies as the church was asked the questions by
the native priests and Priestesses.
Shamanism has always adjusted and grown and accepted.
The individual vision has always been the prime directive for all Shamans
and it is very comfortable with evolution and Darwin and has the ethic of
living in the present while honoring the past. That is why the
Shamanic regime of Kublai was the most religiously tolerant culture to
date on the planet. You can't be converted to
Shamanism. The Creator, Creative, Great Mystery etc. and
your genetics gives you your place in it. It must come
from an individual vision, enlightenment or
birthright. But you can dialogue and pass the "medicine"
around as long as it is honored. Its OK with us that the
Church has so much of our stuff in it. That is why I can read
the walls. On one level you are right about the
artists though. The great Wicasa Wakan John Fire Lame Deer
said that Artists were the Indians of the White world.
Don't think fragment, think whole and fire and water rather than stone.
I see what you are saying now: the church, to be meaningful
to people and to survive, has to give attention to, if not incorporate,
the life-views and practices of people. I saw this in spades
when I attended church in suburban Sao Paulo and Jamaica a few years
ago. Both have a strong African tradition, and that had to be
incorporated into the music, the sermons, and the overall
presentation. It's probable that, ever since the Christian church
left the shores of Europe, its been on the defensive, needing to
accommodate, and needing to incorporate what the people believed. I
recall reading that saints became pseudo-Aztec deities (or the other way
around). It was not always so. For much of history, the church
was on the offensive. I almost gagged in my own church yesterday
when the Minister asked us to read the Nicaean Creed, a piece of
liturgical officialese which nailed down precisely what and how Christians
were expected to believe when Christianity became the religion of Rome in
the fourth century A.D. Knowing something of the times and the
bloodletting and persecutions that went on, I simply could not read
it. I have a book on my shelves by Jules Michelet, the French
historian, which documents how, in medieval Europe, the official church
eradicated all of the large and small dieties of nature that people then
believed in. As Michelet puts it: "Great Pan is
dead!"
But the shamanic universe of Michelangelo was not really the
same as that of Nezahuacoytl or that which inspired the ancient
Hebrews. Or was it?
Yes.
I'd have to think about this one a little
more. Michelangelo and Nezahuacoytl, the poet and philosopher king
of Texcoco, were separated by about 20,000 years of human history and
several millenia of different civilization building. What you seem
to be saying is that there is a common shamanic universe that all creative
people, no matter what their backgrounds, can tap into if they but know
how. I remain to be convinced.
Native American contributions are
found everywhere and should be labeled as such if we got there first and
the rest of the world benefited. I do not claim that Indians
invented the bassoon even though Burl Lane the section leader for the
Chicago Symphony is Indian. But when you eat squash you should
remember it as a product of our deliberate agricultural experiments that
took many generations. The same is true for many things taken
for granted. My complaint is that it seems a European never
tires of taking credit but is not available for giving it. You
give lie to my prejudice. Thanks.
I don't like squash, so no
one will get my vote for it. However, I do like potatos, corn, wild
rice, Arctic char, fresh or dried caribou and muktuk. Again, I'm not
sure I understand your point, but I'm sure that many generations of
thought must have gone into perfecting all of these foods.
You are right about the Arts
in Europe. But don't make the mistake of thinking that
the poor, ragtag elements of the societies that have been abused and
suffered so much under the European heel is all there
is. As they get more prosperous you will see some
very European like mistakes made by Indians as Indians and they would have
made the mistakes without Europeans. On the other hand
you will see the wonderful flowering of methods, ways of thought,
political systems, environmental values and a pedagogy based in aesthetics
and mastery that is totally opposed to 19th century Utilitarian
thought. They took our ideas and grafted them on a tree that
couldn't and can't sustain them. You need a new tree of
life. A new birth. (sorry I couldn't resist the
poke) If I were really just speaking the latest new book
I would flood the list. I have whole library of books by
natives and about our ways that are now being written and
published. Even the secret societies can be found on the
internet.
I'm in agreement on
this. I've already seen some of the mistakes - e.g. the erosion of
traditions of decision making and the beginnings of class systems and
western-type struggles for power among Native groups that had signed land
claims agreements, and the appalling attitudes of children who spoke only
English toward Elders who spoke only the Native language. I've also
seen it go the other way, pride in culture, education in the Native
language, the requirement that all bureaucrats in Nunavut eventually speak
the language, and Elders attending meetings in the interests of the
community to make sure that negotiators were not selling them out.
When I worked in northern Saskatchewan some ten years ago, there were many
references to a medicine person who lived in Ile a La Crosse (sp?) who had
brought about remarkable cures and had a large following. The
Medical Officer for Health for northern Saskatchewan, when asked, did not
deny that the cures, including cases of cancer, were
genuine.
But, to get back to the point
I was making, the huge and very rapid die-off of the population of a place
like Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), one of the largest metropolises anywhere
at the time (and the destruction of Aztec books), must have taken a lot of
knowledge and perspectives down with it. While vestiges of that
knowledge still exist, an enormous amount would have been lost.
The last Great Speaker was
named Chautemoc and it meant spirit descending. The
popular translation was "dragging eagle" a diminutive.
When he refused to tell the place of the royal treasury to Cortez, Cortez
burned off his feet. The man healed and then walked
across Mexico on crutches telling the people that the books would be
burned and that they had to bury them in their minds, teach them to the
children and also to insert them in the Roman Catholic Church until the
time would come when they could be renewed. There was
even a calendar which I am not able to talk about. But there
is a Mexican politician with his name
currently. The beginning story of the Aztecs
was that the nobles came together to create a great fire to give rise to
Tonatiuh the Aztec sun. In order to make the sun rise there
had to be a sacrifice. The most beautiful and wealthiest
noble was elected to give energy to the sun but he went several times to
the fire and didn't have the courage. At which point the
ugliest one jumped in and provided the energy. The wealthy
noble was shamed and jumped in afterwards as a second
thought. Primal stories are metaphors for
societies. It is no accident that the Aztecs took care of the
poor and the ugly for they gave rise to the sun.
I don't deny what
you're saying, but somewhere, long ago, I read a piece of Aztec poetry
that predicted the destruction of Tenochtitlan and the end of Aztec
civilization. The last two lines are all I can remember. They
went: "The city of books, of flowers, will soon be no more." But
perhaps you are right, yet the virgin soil diseases that ravaged Mexico in
the 16th and 17th Centuries probably didn't distinguish between people who
remembered and people who forgot. Both would have
died.
The situation would have been
comparable to having the population of Europe reduced by 90% during the
16th Century and all of Europe's great libraries emptied and
destroyed. Could European culture have survived that?
In the Art and the songs Ed
and in the hearts of the survivors.
Well, you may be
right. Even though officialdom, whether secular or religious, no
longer recognizes the little people of the forests, meadows and fields,
artists and many ordinary people still do. Great Pan may not be dead
after all.
I've valued this
exchange. It's made me think about things I haven't thought about
for awhile.
Regards,
Ed
