“We are the Elder Brothers. We have not forgotten the old ways. How could I say that we do not know how to dance? We still know how to dance. We have forgotten nothing. We know how to call the rain. If it rains too hard we know how to stop it. We call the summer. We know how to bless the world and make it flourish.”
Alana Ereira, The Elder Brother's Warning, 1992 |
"The interdependency of humankind, the relevance of relationship, the sacredness of creation is ancient, ancient wisdom. Economic development, more than any single issue, is the battle line between two competing world views. Tribal people's fundamental value was sustainability, and they conducted their livelihoods in ways that sustained resources and limited inequalities in their society. What made traditional economies so radically different and so very fundamentally dangerous to Western economies were the traditional principles of prosperity of Creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed, of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights, and of sustainability versus growth."
Rebecca Adamson, Cherokee, Founder and President |
“The life you experience is a divine exploration, in and through the physical, of the power of infinite creativity. And experience cannot be had without imperfection. Imperfection is absolutely necessary to experience. The problem facing mankind today is that the degree of imperfection has gone far beyond a healthy polarity. This is due primarily to ignorance of what we truly are- immortal spiritual beings- and what the purpose of creation is- God transforming infinite potential into actual experience through us and all other living things.”
Bernard Haisch |
Chief Dan George was a chief of the Tsleil-Wanutuh Nation, a Coast Salish band whose Indian reservation is on Burrard Inlet of North Vancouver, British Columbia. He was an actor, a poet, and a writer. These words were written by Chief Dan George, first appearing in the North Shore Free Press on March 1, 1972
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I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses. My grandfather’s house was eighty feet long. It was called a smokehouse, and it stood down by the beach along the inlet. All my grandfather’s sons and their families lived in this dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated by blankets made of bull rush weeds, but one open fire in the middle served the cooking needs of all. In houses like these, throughout the tribe, people learned to live with one another; learned to respect the rights of one another. And children shared the thoughts of the adult world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins who loved them and did not threaten them. My father was born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people and be at home with them.
And beyond this acceptance of one another, there was a deep respect for everything in nature that surrounded them. My father loved the earth and all its creatures. The earth was his second mother. The earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am…and the way to thank this great spirit was to use his gifts with respect. I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up the Indian River and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the early morning…I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly moaned…”Thank you, thank you.” It left a deep impression on my young mind. And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.” “My son,” he said, “The Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of it.”
This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one, I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the things I see around me. I see people living in smokehouses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew. But the people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them. It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in past wars, and it at this very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill than it does on education and welfare to help and develop. It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates and fights his brothers but even attacks nature and abuses her. I see my white brothers going about blotting out nature from his cities. I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of mother earth as though she were a monster, who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poison in the waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; and he chokes the air with deadly fumes.
My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all. Perhaps he only loves the things that are outside and beyond him. And this is, of course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he will love none of it. Man must love fully or he will become the lowest of the animals. It is the power to love that makes him the greatest of them all…for he alone of all animals is capable of love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love, our self-esteem weakens. Without it, our courage fails. Without love, we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead, we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves.
You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it, we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us…there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us…I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing. I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did prize friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds walls and walls promote distrust. My culture lived in a big family community, and from infancy, people learned to live with others. My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions, in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people. The Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.
Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken something from your culture…I wish you had taken something from our culture…for there were some beautiful and good things in it.
Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you — with a genuine love that forgives and forgets…a love that gives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach…with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance.
This is brotherhood…anything less is not worthy of the name.
I have spoken.
And beyond this acceptance of one another, there was a deep respect for everything in nature that surrounded them. My father loved the earth and all its creatures. The earth was his second mother. The earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am…and the way to thank this great spirit was to use his gifts with respect. I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up the Indian River and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the early morning…I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly moaned…”Thank you, thank you.” It left a deep impression on my young mind. And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.” “My son,” he said, “The Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of it.”
This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one, I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the things I see around me. I see people living in smokehouses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew. But the people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them. It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in past wars, and it at this very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill than it does on education and welfare to help and develop. It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates and fights his brothers but even attacks nature and abuses her. I see my white brothers going about blotting out nature from his cities. I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of mother earth as though she were a monster, who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poison in the waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; and he chokes the air with deadly fumes.
My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all. Perhaps he only loves the things that are outside and beyond him. And this is, of course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he will love none of it. Man must love fully or he will become the lowest of the animals. It is the power to love that makes him the greatest of them all…for he alone of all animals is capable of love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love, our self-esteem weakens. Without it, our courage fails. Without love, we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead, we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves.
You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it, we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us…there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us…I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing. I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did prize friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds walls and walls promote distrust. My culture lived in a big family community, and from infancy, people learned to live with others. My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions, in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people. The Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.
Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken something from your culture…I wish you had taken something from our culture…for there were some beautiful and good things in it.
Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you — with a genuine love that forgives and forgets…a love that gives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach…with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance.
This is brotherhood…anything less is not worthy of the name.
I have spoken.
"As indigenous wisdom has been transmitted to me over the years, I've come to experience it as original human wisdom. It is intended to live on and evolve as we evolve, not be set aside or considered as 'other'. When we take a deep look at what the elders of all the lineages know, and their skills in thriving in all ways, we actually find an incredibly sophisticated mastery of all the energies and system-based interactions that produce and maintain life. We find the original versions of physics, biology, biochemistry, neurophysiology, sociology – all of it really. I believe the best way we can bring western and indigenous knowledge together is first, for us to become connected energetically to nature again – become part of the whole again. And second, to stop comparing one thing to another, and instead learn to recognize the source of what we know and have and can create."
Marti Spiegelman
Marti Spiegelman
"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. ‘Interbeing’ is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix ‘inter’ with the verb ‘to be,’ we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in the sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can see that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here — time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this paper. That is why I think the word interbe should be in the dictionary. ‘To be’ is to interbe. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper would be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of ‘non-paper’ elements. And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine, and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it."
Thich Nhat Hanh (1988: 3–5)The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajñaparamita Sutra
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can see that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here — time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this paper. That is why I think the word interbe should be in the dictionary. ‘To be’ is to interbe. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper would be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of ‘non-paper’ elements. And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine, and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it."
Thich Nhat Hanh (1988: 3–5)The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajñaparamita Sutra
"Life on Earth is possible due to the presence of the four sacred elements: fire, water, air and earth. All beings are the reflection of those elements; we, as humans, are too the reflection of those elements. The flora and fauna can be present in the world due to the conjunction of the sacred elements. Plants and animals can grow thanks to the their presence and in conjunction with other celestial bodies. For human beings and other creatures life is also the interrelated energy projected in the material, mental and spiritual dimensions. Matter, thoughts and interconnected energy unite in trilogy.
The purpose and meaning of life is interconnection and transcendence of all beings, including Mother Earth. As human beings, our presence on Earth is for the care of life. Also we need to take care of the body, thoughts and the spirit in interconnection with other beings. As human beings we need to take care about what we eat, think and act. We need to control our ego and let our good feelings flourish. To accomplish transcendence we need to be interconnected with the divine creation and also think beautifully, not about Mother Earth but with Mother Earth and all her forms of life. Caring for life begins with acknowledging and honoring the sacred elements, elements that give life." Mindahi Bastida Muñoz, 2018 |
“It is our nature to be free and it is our nature to express that freedom, spontaneously and without hesitation, through song, and dance, and painting, and poetry and prayer. In the same way that the universe gives birth to uncountable shapes, forms, colors and beings in a grand panoply of flowing, changing manifestation, we too, are of the nature to give birth to myriad forms of expression.
In the same way that birds sing, and lions roar, and prairie dogs dance, and cicadas chant, and water sculpts rock, and sunsets paint the sky, we, too, are of the nature to sing, and roar, and dance, and chant, and sculpt, and paint. And we are also of the nature to pray– to give thanks and reverence to this Creation that we are an inextricable part of as witnesses and participants." Nina Wise |
Ojibwa prayer
Grandparent God Look at our brokenness. We know that in all creation Only the human family Has strayed from the Sacred Way. We know that we are the ones Who are divided And we are the ones Who must come back together To walk in the Sacred Way. Grandparent God Sacred One, Teach us love, compassion, and honor That we may heal the earth And heal each other. |
"So far we have used mostly thinking to elucidate some key features of an animistic science of the Earth, but such a science cannot be complete without contributions from our sensing, intuition and feeling. As animistic scientists, we bring the four functions together through sensory experience, visualisation and contemplation. We go into the woods and immerse ourselves experientially in the semiotic communicative web of our animate Earth. We realise that everything is language – the call of the birds as much as the sounds and sights of the wind in the trees (David Abrams, 1997).
Then, sitting on a boulder perhaps, we use Goethe’s approach to turn inwards, using our scientific knowledge to carefully build up a step by step visualisation – like that of a plant growing from a seed – of Gaia’s long evolutionary journey. We see the planet coalescing from a disc of gas some four and half thousand million years ago, we see her crust solidifying and see her global ocean, some three and half thousand million years ago suddenly populated by green photosynthesising bacteria. We see the first continents appearing some two and a half thousand million years ago and witness the birth of the long-term carbon cycle as the first bacteria on land begin the weathering of silicate rocks. We sense oxygen slowly building up in the atmosphere, and we experience the huge explosion of multicellular life some 600 million years ago that quickened Gaia’s intelligence, making her ever more adroit at regulating her temperature. Then, if we are lucky, we might be granted a powerful intuitive experience of being Gaia’ed – of the palpable sacred reality of the huge, round sentient personhood (beyond concepts – beyond description) of our breathing, turning world in whom we deeply and joyfully participate. Once again we witness the return of hermeticists’ animating spirits of the world in a manner consistent with modern science relevant for our times. With this comes a spontaneous ethical feeling of wanting to act to benefit all beings who inhabit the Earth – from rocks to humans – an ethics in which we feel that all beings have intrinsic value simply because they exist (Naess 1990). We have come home to Gaia, and now, with this inspiration, we can get down to the work of finding our peaceful and rightful place within her turning lustrous body."
Stephan Harding (2015) published in: Graham Harvey, editor; The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (Acumen Handbooks); Routledge