Why bioregional animism?

WHY BIOREGIONAL ANIMISM?

WHY BIOREGIONAL ANIMISM?
Bioregional Animism came to me after years of working with shaman"ism" as a spiritual practice and way of healing and growing.
After many peak experiences and attempts to find my way, I was shown that the earth and the physical world can provide a way of learning and growing that is focused on integration, centeredness and grounding your lessons. Shaman"ism" was something I had always been interested in but it never made a lot of sense until I had started working with a South American healer, who was very focused on plant teacher medicine as well as the eagle and the condor prophecy. I started to see how to work with the earth and sky, but I was frustrated by learning from a tradition that was out side of my daily experience as being an expression of the ecosystem I lived within, the condor the harpy eagle, the jaguar, the speaking vine and leaves of the Amazon, these were not a part of my daily life. I wanted to learn from the land I lived as one with right here and now. The Amazonian ways were a good introduction on how to do this, as were the North American long dance ceremonies that my teacher brought from his teacher in New Mexico.
I eventually started to focus just on the land under my feet and the sky directly above me. I began to develop relationships with my bioregion and during ceremonies with the plant teachers many lessons started to emerge the term bioregional animism came to me.

I had never read any books on bioregionalism but I had begun a very intuitive discourse with the bioregion I lived within and started developing what I called finding shamanism in your back yard, a sort of DYI tradition, a new animist cosmology based on direct relationships with the land you live within and the sky you swim in.

When I did read Kirkpatrick sales book dwellers within the earth I was shocked as to how much alike the messages I was receiving were to his work and the basic ideals of bioregionalism. Though I was a bit saddened to find that there was little spiritual basis for the work, the animism was absent.

The definition of bioregionalism is this...
The belief that social organization and environmental policies should be based on the bioregion rather than on a region determined by political or economic boundaries.
The basic definition of animism is this... 1. The belief in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects and phenomena.
2. The belief in the existence of spiritual beings that are separable or separate from bodies. 3. The hypothesis holding that an immaterial force animates the universe.
The new animism however is slightly different.... as seen here in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

"The new animism:

In an article entitled "Revisiting Animism"; Nurit Bird-David builds on the work of Irving Hallowell by discussing the animist world view and life way of the Nayaka of India. Hallowell had learnt from the Ojibwa of southern central Canada that the humans are only one kind of 'person' among many. There are also 'rock persons', 'eagle persons' and so on. Hallowell and Bird-David discuss the ways in which particular indigenous cultures know how to relate to particular persons (individuals or groups). There is no need to talk of metaphysics or impute non-empirical 'beliefs' in discussing animism. What is required is an openness to consider that humans are neither separate from the world nor distinct from other kinds of being in most significant ways. The new animism also makes considerably more sense of attempts to understand 'totemism' as an understanding that humans are not only closely related to other humans but also to particular animals, plants, etc. It also helps by providing a term for the communities among whom shamans work: they are animists not 'shamanists'. Shamans are employed among animist communities to engage or mediate with other-than-human persons in situations that would be fraught or dangerous for un-initiated, untrained or non-skillful people. The -ism of 'animism' should not suggest an overly systematic approach (but this is true of the lived reality of most religious people), but it is preferable to the term shamanism which has led many commentators to construct an elaborate system out of the everyday practices of animists and those they employ to engage with other-than-human persons. The new animism is most fully discussed in a recent book by Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World. But it is also significant in the 'animist realist' novels now being written among many indigenous communities worldwide. The term 'animist realism' was coined by Harry Garuba, a Nigerian scholar of literature, in comparison with 'magical realism' that describes works such as Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

Though it is said that " There is no need to talk of metaphysics or impute non-empirical 'beliefs' in discussing animism." it is still important to acknowledge the transpersonal dimensions of animist thought, the transrational relationships animist people have with all that is, and the polyphasic world view of animist people. The belief is spirit as it is interpreted by modern scholars is erroneous, animist do not have belief systems so much as methods for having direct relationships with what has been described as spirits. The new animism has done a wonderful job in helping modern man to see that we are one with our environment and that we are not the top of the totem pole, all beings are persons, but in some ways it has ignored the spirit of animism. It is my opinion that through the mere act of relating to an other than human person we discover spirit.
And so the old definition of animism still applies yet I am thankful for the grounded perspective on the new animism.
So why have I combined bioregionalism with animism? Why bioregional animism? Instead of just animism....Or the new animism. Just as a reminder really. To put it just real simply, it’s just a reminder. So many of us that seek out shaman"ism" are really trying to find that direct relationship with spirit and with the earth. Many of us just really want to become animists not shamans. But we have been transplanted out of our ancestoral lands or colonised by people of other bioregions and we are no longer know what it means to be native to a place as Freya Mathews points out. We no longer have traditions and ways of knowing and being that reflect this feeling and act of being native. We go and find other natives that can help us often times just really missing the point, following the messages of the spirit of another land, a land that we are not native to. By this I do not mean that if we are Europeans or our ancestors are Europeans we can only be native to that place, by native I mean we live as one with the land we call home, be saying native I mean belonging to the land that feeds you and houses you, the land your body is composed of.
So I placed bioregional in front of animism as a reminder to those that are seeking and trying to find a way to become native again that the lessons in life they are seeking are in their home, in their bioregion, in their backyard, not some far off exotic place nor is the wisdom they seek to come from another culture. The knowledge and wisdom of animist people, the cosmologies of animist people, and the healing and spiritual lore of shamans comes from a deep intimate relationship with the land or bioregion that these people live within.

If you take a look at what the new animism is saying, which is really just a clearer look at old animism from a western perspective, you see that wee are surrounded by other than human persons, that we can establish relationships with, that wee can learn from, persons that in all actuality NEED US to establish relationships with them, to commune with them, to ally ourselves with them and co-create with them.
If you want to learn about healing and divination ask the teachers that animist peoples have asked for millions of years the spirit of the land and sky and all of the other than human persons that share the land and sky with you, if you want to learn how to live in harmony with the land and sky and all of the other than human persons you live with, ask them. Don't ask those that live some where else ask the locals! Find your own way create your own relationships do it with a community of friends and family. Bring all of the other than human persons in your bioregion into your concept of family and friends, through developing a relationship with them you find out rather quickly that your already related, interconnected or one.

A lot of people want to relate to their world in the way that other animist peoples do. This has caused a lot of resentment from other native people, native people that feel we are missing the point. It’s not about how another relates to spirit, to life, to wellness, to the bioregion that you live within, to other than human persons; it’s the way that YOU RELATE. YOU need to develop your own relationships and through those relationships new cultures will natural emerge, new ways, even new languages, arts customs, all though the cultivation of co-creative relationships with what's in our back yard.
So bioregional animism is nothing new it’s just a new way of saying something that's been around for a real long time. But I think it’s important to say it. To be reminded that animism and shamanism doesn't come from some place that is other, it comes from a direct relationship between you and your back yard, you and your bioregion....
Very few people are saying this right now, with the exception of native elders who are trying to remind us that we are missing the point when we adopt another's traditions. Most teachers of shamanism aren't teaching this point of view, they skip the entire process of becoming an animist or a native and go straight to the power, the healing, and the mystery. They forget that shamans are healers and diviners employed by animist people with preexisting cosmologies developed by first hand experiences with their land and sky, or bioregion as I simply put it.
bioregional animism addresses this and attempts to inspire us to develop a bioregional animist cosmology from first hand personal relationships with the land and its people through the act of communing with the land and sky and the other than human people that are expressions of the land and sky, just like you.
* A note on how I’ve spelled shaman"ism" here in this article...
There is an arguement that there is no real shamanism to speak, a shaman is a role that is generated within an animist culture, like a priest is a role in a christian religion, and psychotherapist is a role in western secular culture. There is no psychotherapistism, or Priestism. There is on the other hand Animism which shamans emerge from. There is no real shaman with out an animist community and cosmology to give birth to this role. So in the article the “ism” is hyphenated to show that the “ism” behind shaman”ism” has changed to the point that it directs us to understand where shamans come from how they are formed and that they are not independent of a regional ecology, and a regional social system. References-
Harvey, Graham. 2005. Animism: Respecting the Living World (London: Hurst and co.; New York: Columbia University Press; Adelaide: Wakefield Press). Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision, Kirkpatrick Sale, Random House, 1985. ISBN 0-8203-2205-9 (University of Georgia Press, 2000).