----- 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