“From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying force that flowed in and through all things the flowers of the plains, blowing wind, rocks, trees, birds, animals and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.” (Luther Standing Bear)
We as indigenous people, are entering the seventh generation since contact with Europeans in the New World. For all indigenous people, it has been difficult to survive and endure in the Americas. Nature, as well as the people of the Earth, have suffered. In the New World, stolen resources, extraction, extinction, and theft (in terms of spoils of the land, viruses, technology, and introduction of a currency based economy) have been both our demise and success. Native people have not passively endured the repercussions, like the first shot fired by the American Colonist but have mourned the devastating consequences by suffering alongside and waiting for the day to bring the modern mechanical man out of his demise.
Just like the American Colonist’s shot that was heard around the world, in regard to a republic established by the help of the Eastern Iroquoian Nation on governance and later to become a leading currency based economy super power, the place for indigenous voice that speaks from the margins is now resurfacing across this land. The shot being heard now is a silent arrow being released by tension all across the globe.
It has all been about European banks, capturing lands, extractive development, and establishing corporations that mimic European cities. The spread of colonialism across the world has strengthened the currency based economy to supply the few elite. Consequently, unrest and tension have been created between ethnic groups. Gold and silver extracted from hidden rural areas fueled the printing of paper money and minting of coins as well as the removal of Indigenous communities from their ancient lands making them wards of the nation.
These seven generations have been a painful and jagged pill to swallow watching our values and sacredness of all life fade a little more with each passing generation It is time for our worldview to capture the last remaining minutes before the destruction of Mother Earth and Father Sky. It is the cosmology, indigenous perspective and way of life for which all people are yearning, as well as native people themselves migrating back to ancient spiritual pathways, undressing the urbanization and colonization. Our Indigenous Worldview is needed, now because the Earth and its biology are distraught at the way human beings have tried to conquer and devastate the environment for self indulgence.
The mental constructs, that have become profoundly entrenched in Europeanism are of recent origins, existing far away from the organic mind, or what I call Indigenous Worldview. Modern humans have separated themselves from their environment and have become detached, hence separating the spiritual from the physical. To Indigenous Worldview, reality is an interconnectedness with the land and all living beings and consequently, contains strong ethical and spiritual implications for nature and the balance of earth and sky. All things possess a living soul, or spiritual essence, of experience and feelings. This system, or cosmology, sustain s the Earth in balance and harmony.
The alteration, from the indigenous mindset in European culture towards a society of dominance and mechanical worldview, was set in motion by the development of domesticated agriculture, beginning ten thousand years ago. It means that plants, animals, and other natural phenomena became controllable goods and property, as opposed to sacred beings and entities. Aboriginal cosmology, then, is more than a creation theory about the origin and structure of the world. Rather, it involves a theory of human participation and action an associated value system leading into ethical and spiritual systems. The fine line between plants and animals as sacred beings, as opposed to domesticated items, became blurred, resulting in them being controlled and manipulated by human possession. Now is the time to nurture our spiritual being, to take time to listen, pray, meditate and be at peace with the Great Spirit.
My grandfather once walked me to the edge of a mesa with a grand view of the Zuni Butte s jutting into the distance. We had walked a couple of miles, and though I was very young, he asked me, “Do you know where you came from? And do you know your way back?” If we forget the pathway from where we came, and consume ourselves with existential consumption and superficial existence, we no longer dream deep or make space for sacred journeys. Instead we are consumed by a thin layer of self satisfaction. My grandfather was stirring in me a perspective of who we are as indigenous people and the call of our ethics to live for others and to treat Mother Nature as a provisional agent of love and nurturing Indigenous people have held on to this intelligence unassumingly as it is hidden in our makeup. We are calling back our nature through ceremonies and celebrations to true self and to identity. It is to reimagine ourselves in the context of the dark days upon us and to grieve in partnership with Mother Earth and Father Sky, before it is too late. We can change and we will find that pathway back. The calling forth of our indigenous intelligence to reignite a redemptive and regenerative approach is possible and necessary. We must recreate, recover, reform, and renew ourselves in a transition of justice and imperatives. We now have to reimagine ourselves in the context of Indigenous Worldview to initiate a regenerative approach by using indigenous intelligence by implementing knowledge from our past. Humility is the shoes we must wear as we migrate back to our center.
“Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generation, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the earth the unborn of the future Nation.” – Constitutions of the Five Nations
