As many of us know the term or label Shaman has become a loaded subject, a humpty dumpty word, and a term clouded with so many personal definitions and political associations that to utilize the word is an invitation to an extremely difficult discourse. I have mentioned before the need to revisit the original etymology of the word shaman and work from there. If we closely examine the word we see that it means “ one who knows” and as I pointed out previously here and the back yard shamanry page, it would seem that the distinction is that a shaman is one who knows about the animist cosmology of their people... at least enough to be called one who knows about it!
I have been finding more and more in my dialogs with others, as well as in my thinking and writing that this loaded term may be too difficult to work with any more. It was borrowed from the Tungus people and utilized by colonialism to describe something much to vast to go under one categorized anthropological label. The very vague nature of the term has allowed it to be specific and warped by the motives of individuals that do not always carry the clearest of intentions either.
So what do we do know? What would be and adequate shift in our terminology that no longer carries with it the clouded much debated qualities this term has come to hold? Even the use of the term shamanry as apposed to shamanism, though still a helpful clarification is still such a loaded coinage that it does not allow us to communicate clearly still. Not to mention that many traditional indigenous animists have brought up their grievance with the use of the word in labeling their own cultural practices.
My proposal is simple, and straight forward allowing clarity as well as a much needed opening line to discussing the importance of animism recognition today. The shift I think we require in describing that which has been labeled “shaman” in the past is to center the term itself in animism again. The terms Animist healer or Animist visionary healer, or animist spiritual leader, depending on the context of the relational dynamic a community has with their spiritual practitioners seems to work to create more clarity over all.
Working with this terminology instead of “shaman” helps in several ways. For one it redirects our attention to animism the origin point of what has been called erroneously “shasmanism”, it communicates clearly what we mean instead of working with a vague and cloudy definition that up to as many interpretations in today’s spiritual and academic circles as there are wasps in a wasp nest. It allows people to begin to see the relationship between people and place between being a healer and being an animist ie. having a relationship with nature for the purpose of healing. It also lets go of the potential for cultural appropriation and allows for people to discover their own unique ways of relating as a healer and as an animist.
Making a shift in our language helps make a shift in our understanding as well as our perception and behavior. It is my hope and has been along with the bioregional animism project that this shift occur so that the real strength of animist healing can really come forth in the world in new yet very ancient ways. In ways that are integrated in relationships with place, spirit and community. Essentially when one is communicating to another that they are an animist healer or that they are participating in an animist healing ceremony ect. they are telling some one that they are participating in a healing ceremony that revolves around a relational ontology. That they are participating in a relationship with spirit, with place, with community both human and other than human for the well being of not just themselves but that spirit, that place, and those people, both human and other than human.
It is my hope that in perpetuating this shift we will see practices evolve out of the armchair of the neo-shamaic counselors office space but into the permacultured gardens of communities that work with the land and cultivate not only fruits but intimate communicative relationships that create abundance, health and the ability to thrive, while keeping to our values as animist people.
How many times have we heard "our people have no shamans", the term plastic shaman used, "I am a shamanic cousnelor.", "The term shaman is a cultural appropriation.", "No one would call themselves a shaman." " A shaman does this but not that.", and more? It would seem wiser to point out that if one is a animist healer that one is just that with out borrowing the word of another people or utilizing a term that has lost its way from its original etymology.
Time will tell if this catches on... it is my prayer that it does!
This is the point I was trying to get too with the last videos of Rojo, I had never heard of this work before it really fills in the blanks! Wonderful! I believe gift culture may very well be the only way we as animists can interact... its integral to animism in so many ways!
Originally posted on reality sandwitch This article is a adapted from the introduction to the upcoming book Sacred Economics. The purpose of the book is to make money and human economy as sacred as everything else in the universe. RS Backstage members will be able to ask Charles questions directly about this material during a call this Wednesday, February 4th.
Today we associate money with the profane, and for good reason. If anything is sacred in this world, it is surely not money. Money seems to be the enemy of all our better instincts, as is clear every time the thought "I can't afford to" blocks an impulse toward kindness or generosity. Money seems to be the enemy of beauty, as the disparaging term "a sellout" demonstrates. Money seems to be the enemy of every worthy social and political reform, as corporate power steers legislation toward the aggrandizement of its own profits. Money seems to be destroying the earth, as we pillage the oceans, the forests, the soil, and every species to feed a greed that knows no end.
From at least the time that Jesus threw the moneychangers from the temple, we have sensed that there is something unholy about money. When a politician seeks money instead of the public good, we call him corrupt. Adjectives like "dirty" and "filthy" naturally describe money. Monks are supposed to have little to do with it: "You cannot serve God and Mammon."
At the same time, no one can deny that money has a mysterious, magical quality as well, the power to alter human behavior and coordinate human activity. From ancient times thinkers have marveled at the ability of a mere mark to confer this power upon a disk of metal or slip of paper. Unfortunately, looking at the world around us, it is hard to avoid concluding that the magic of money is an evil magic.
Obviously, if we are to make money into something sacred, nothing less than a wholesale revolution in money will suffice, a transformation of its essential nature. It is not merely our attitudes about money that must change, as some self-help gurus and "prosperity programming" teachers would have us believe; rather, we will create a new kind of money that embodies and reinforces our changed attitudes. Sacred Economics describes this new money and the new economy that will coalesce around it. It also explores the metamorphosis in human identity that is both a cause and a result of the transformation of money. The changed attitudes of which I speak go all the way to the core of what it is to be human: they include our understanding of the purpose of life, humanity's role on the planet, the relationship of the individual to the human and natural community; even what it is to be an individual, a self. This should not be surprising, since we experience money (and property) as an extension of our selves; hence the possessive pronoun "mine" to describe it, the same pronoun we use to identify our arms and heads. My money, my car, my hand, my liver. Consider as well the sense of violation we feel when we are robbed or "ripped off," as if part of our very selves had been taken.
A transformation from profanity to sacredness in money, something so deep a part of our identity, something so central to the workings of the world, would have profound effects indeed. But what does it mean for money, or anything else for that matter, to be sacred? It is in a crucial sense the opposite of what sacred has come to mean. For several thousand years, increasingly, the concepts of sacred, holy, and divine have referred to something separate from nature, the world, and the flesh. Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence. As divinity separated from nature, so also it became unholy to involve oneself too deeply in the affairs of the world. The human being changed from a living soul to a mere receptacle of spirit, a profane envelope for a sacred soul, culminating in the Cartesian mote of consciousness observing the world but not participating in it, and the Newtonian watchmaker God doing the same. To be divine was to be supernatural, non-material. If God participated in the world at all, it was through miracles -- divine intercessions violating or superseding nature's laws.
Yet, paradoxically, this separate, abstract thing called spirit is supposed to be what animates the world. Ask the religious person what has changed when a person dies, and she will say the soul has left the body. Ask her who makes the rain fall and the wind blow, and she will say it is God. To be sure, Galileo and Newton appeared to have removed God from these everyday workings of the world, explaining it instead as the clockwork of a vast machine of impersonal force and mass, but even they still needed the Clockmaker to wind it up in the beginning, to imbue the universe with the potential energy that has run it ever since. This conception is still with us today as the Big Bang, a primordial event that is the source of the "negative entropy" that allows movement and life. In any case, our culture's notion of spirit is that of something separate and non-worldly, that yet can miraculously intervene in material affairs, and that even animates and directs them in some mysterious way.
It is hugely ironic and hugely significant that the one thing on the planet most closely resembling the forgoing conception of the divine is money! It is an invisible, immortal force that surrounds and steers all things, omnipotent and limitless, an "invisible hand" that, it is said, makes the world go 'round. Yet, money today is an abstraction, at most symbols on a piece of paper, but usually mere bits in a computer. It exists in a realm far removed from materiality. In that realm, it is exempt from nature's most important laws, for it does not decay and return to the soil as all other things do, but is rather preserved, changeless, in its vaults and computer files, even growing with time thanks to interest. It bears the properties of eternal preservation and everlasting increase, both of which are profoundly unnatural. The natural substance that comes closest to these properties is gold, which does not rust, tarnish, or decay. Early on, gold was therefore used both as money and as a metaphor for the divine soul, that which is incorruptible and changeless.
Money's divine property of abstraction, of disconnection from the real world of things, reached its extreme in the early years of the 21st century as the financial economy lost its mooring in the real economy and took on a life of its own. The vast fortunes of Wall Street were unconnected to any material production, seeming to exist in a separate realm.
Looking down from Olympian heights, the financiers called themselves "masters of the universe," channeling the power of the god they served to bring fortune or ruin upon the masses, to literally move mountains, raze forests, change the course of rivers, cause the rise and fall of nations. But money soon proved to be a capricious god. As I write these words, it seems that the increasingly frantic rituals that the financial priesthood uses to placate the god money are in vain. Like the clergy of a dying religion, they exhort their followers to greater sacrifices while blaming their misfortunes either on sin (greedy bankers, irresponsible consumers) or on the mysterious whims of God (the financial markets). Soon, perhaps, we will blame the priests themselves.
What we call deflation, an earlier culture might have called, "God abandoning the world." Money is disappearing, and with it a third property of spirit, the animating force of the human realm. At this writing, all over the world machines stand idle. Factories have ground to a halt, construction equipment sits derelict in the yard. Yet all the human and material inputs to operate them still exist. There is still fuel, there are still raw materials, and there are still human beings in abundance who know how to operate the machines. It is rather something immaterial, that animating spirit, which has fled. What has fled is money. That is the only thing missing, so insubstantial (in the form of electrons in computers) that it can hardly be said to exist at all, yet so powerful that without it, human productivity grinds to a halt. It is as if God had forsaken the world. Even beyond the mechanical realm, we can see the demotivating effects of lack of money. Consider the stereotype of the unemployed man, nearly broke, slouched in front of the TV in his undershirt, drinking a beer, hardly able to rise from his chair. Money, it seems, animates people as well as machines. Without it we are dispirited.
We do not realize that our concept of the divine has attracted to it a god that fits that concept, and given it sovereignty over the earth. By divorcing the soul from the flesh, spirit from matter, and God from nature, we have installed a ruling power that is soulless, alienating, ungodly and unnatural. So when I speak of making money sacred, I am not invoking a supernatural agency to infuse sacredness into the inert, mundane objects of nature. I am rather reaching back to an earlier time, a time before the divorce of matter and spirit, when sacredness was endemic to all things.
My understanding of sacredness is secondary to my feeling of sacredness, or to put it better, to the feeling of being in the presence of the sacred. I cannot define that feeling, nor need I define it, because I am sure that you have felt it as well. In the presence of the sacred, we are moved to the very core of our being, we feel reverence and awe, humility and amazement, and a profound sense of gratitude. Even though, intellectually, I know that I am in the presence of the sacred all the time, only rarely do I actually feel its fullness. When I do, I feel like I have returned to a home that was always there and to a truth that has always existed. It can happen when I observe an insect or a plant, hear a symphony of birdsongs or frog calls, feel mud between my toes, gaze upon an object beautifully made, apprehend the impossibly coordinated complexity of a cell or an ecosystem, witness a synchronicity or symbol in my life, watch happy children at play, am touched by a work of genius. Extraordinary though these experiences are, they are in no sense separate from the rest of life. Indeed, their power comes from the glimpse they give of a realer world, a sacred world that underlies and interpenetrates our own.
What is this "home that was always there, this truth that has always existed"? It is the truth of the unity or the connectedness of all things, and the feeling is that of participating in something far greater than oneself, yet which also is oneself. In ecology, this is the principle of interdependence: that all beings depend for their survival on the web of other beings that surrounds them, ultimately extending out to encompass the entire planet. The extinction of any species diminishes our own wholeness, our own health, our own selves: something of our very being is lost. We can feel this sense of loss directly, as an emotion, as well as indirectly through the multiplying health crises of our time. This book will draw from ecology to help describe a sacred economy. For example, in the planetary ecosystem there is no such thing as waste: the waste of one creature is the food of another, creating a sacred gift circle. For an economy to be sacred, it must be the same.
If the sacred is the gateway to the underlying unity of all things, it is equally a gateway to the uniqueness and specialness of each thing. A sacred object is one-of-a-kind; it carries a unique essence that cannot be reduced to a set of generic qualities. That is why reductionistic science seems to rob the world of its sacredness, since everything becomes one or another combination of a handful of generic building blocks. This conception mirrors our economic system, itself consisting mainly of standardized, generic commodities, job descriptions, processes, data, inputs and outputs and, most generic of all, money, the ultimate abstraction. In earlier times it was not so. Tribal peoples saw each being not primarily as a member of a category, but as a unique enspirited individual. Even rocks, clouds, and apparently identical drops of water were thought to be sentient, unique beings. The products of the human hand were unique as well, bearing through their distinguishing irregularities the signature of the maker. Here was the link between the two qualities of the sacred, connectedness and uniqueness: in their uniqueness, objects retain the mark of their origin, their place in the great matrix of being, their dependency on the rest of creation for their existence.
In this book I will describe a vision of a money system and an economy that is sacred. In other words, I will describe an economy that is no longer separate, in fact or in perception, from the natural matrix that underlies it. I will describe a reunion of the long-sundered realms of human and nature. The human economy will no longer be something separate from nature; it will be an extension of nature that obeys all of its laws and bears all of its beauty, wholeness, and enchantment.
Within every institution of our civilization, no matter how ugly or corrupt, there is the germ of something beautiful: the same note at a higher octave. Money is no exception: its original purpose is simply to connect human gifts with human needs, so that we might all live in greater abundance. How instead money has come to generate scarcity rather than abundance, competition rather than sharing, is one of the threads of this book. Yet despite what it has become, in that original beauty of money we can catch a glimpse of what will one day make it sacred again. We intuitively recognize the exchange of gifts as a sacred occasion, which is why we instinctively make a ceremony out of gift-giving. Sacred money, then, will be a medium of gifting, a means to recreate the gift economy of a hunter-gatherer or village society on a planetary level. A sacred economy will be an economy of the Gift. Sacred Economics describes this future and also maps out a practical way to get there. Long ago I grew tired of reading books that criticized some aspect of our society without offering a positive alternative. Then, I grew tired of books that offered a positive alternative that seemed impossible to reach: "We must reduce carbon emissions by 90%." Then I grew tired of books that offered a plausible means of reaching it, that did not describe what I, personally, could do to create it. Sacred Economics operates on all four levels: it offers a fundamental analysis of what has gone wrong with money; it describes a more beautiful world based on a different kind of money and economy; it explains the collective actions necessary to create that world and the means by which these actions can come about; and it explores the personal dimensions of the world-transformation, the change in identity and being that I call "living in the Gift."
The economic crisis we face today is just one of many crises that are converging upon us all at once: crises in energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, and the environment. My previous book, The Ascent of Humanity, traced the origin of each to a common root, millennia old, that I call Separation. Their convergence is a birth crisis, in which we are expelled from the old world into the new. Unavoidably, these crises invade our personal lives, our world falls apart, and we too are born into a new world, a new identity. This is why so many people sense a spiritual dimension to the planetary crisis.
I dedicate all of my work to the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible. I say our "hearts", because our minds tell us it is not possible. Our minds doubt that things will ever be much different than experience has taught us. You may, as you read the forgoing encomium to a sacred economy, have felt a wave of cynicism, contempt, or despair. You might have felt an urge to dismiss my words as hopelessly idealistic. Indeed, I myself was tempted to tone down my description, to make it more plausible, more responsible, more in line with our low expectations for what life and the world can be. But such an attenuation would not have been the truth. I will, using the tools of the mind, speak what is in my heart. In my heart I know that an economy and society this beautiful is possible for us to create, and indeed, that anything less than that is unworthy of us. Are we so broken, that we would aspire to anything less than a sacred world?
Cruising around online I found this video series by Brooke Medicine Eagles group. I have not really been a fan of Brooke Medicine Eagle, and she has gotten quite a bit of flack over the years by Native Americans as a cultural appropriator ect... but as the old saying goes judge people by their deeds, their actions, (unless your into the ol non-judgment thing) and in keeping that in mind I can't help but apriciate that though these folks have gotten some flack as new agey folks selling native ways, they are walking their talk. These people are living animism. Check it out, grain of salt an all that... but they are doing some good stuff. This ecovillage series that they are going to be doing is pretty interesting too.
My fiance especially loved the scene about the gypsy wagons...
We are working on a New Project which is the creation of an Eco-Village from the ground up. We will be creating REALITY based/ Internet/TV show which will take 8-10 young people who come togeather for a year to build an ecovillage.
Check out BraveNewEarth.com and Ecohood.info and use the contact us link to make contact with us if your interested in supporting such a venture.
Hey LLB,
After reading your post I went out to the garden I have here at home with the intention of communing. It's a beauty garden, just to have beautiful plants growing here for myself, my wife and the other folks at this little apartment building overlooking the water in Queen Anne.
I've been moving some plants out of the way of oncoming construction and had more to move and save from losing them to a bull dozer, which is an uncaring and rude device. I asked the devas to please accept that I was moving the plants to a new home around the corner, and one with better soil and shade for them, ( azaleas ) because the full sun was keeping them to hot and dry. I got an immediate feeling in response and translated the feeling into words that seemed to fit it. It was very bouncy and talkative in a quick cadence and had a definite sense of how I should proceed. I went with the feeling and translation and did some things I've never done before. I let them pick what plant to transplant and found them very specific, like, "this one first, no no no not that one, this one"! OK I thought, that one, and then staying open to it asked about how to dig it up, not with words out loud, but in an inner voice, and got an immediate response, ........ "like this" and saw they wanted it done a certain way. So I did that and was carrying the plant in a container down to the new place, inviting them along when they said "hurry hurry hurry", and I thought what for, and they said, "no one likes their roots exposed for very long", and I thought about how I never even thought about that before or how it might feel to the plant.
Down at the new spot I was looking for where it should go and they said "no no no, over here", and were insistent that it go just where they wanted it. Ok......., I thought, you started this, so just keep honoring what your feeling, and I dug a hole where they wanted it and was adding some water to it, when the said, "that's enough, that's enough", and I asked why, and they said, 'look, you just get the roots covered and we'll find our way to water". While digging the hole for it I came across a worm because it's good rich soil, and they said, "no no no", as I went to move the worm, and said "put it on the side of the hole just there", which I did and started to cover with dirt, but they said "no just wait" and I thought to myself that this was getting out of hand. These chatty, insistent and highly specific instructions were not how I'm accustomed to gardening, and they said "you'll see why". So I continued with the hole and continued finding worms, which they insisted needed to be put all together in that one spot, and not just dumped there, and they had to be in contact with each other, touching each other. So here I am making a little pile of worms and then placing the azalea in the hole while being cajoled by voice/feelings to hurry up. When the azalea was in place they had me put the worms, who seemed to be waiting patiently, in a specific spot and cover them with a very light amount of soil, less than I would have thought good for the worms, but apparently exactly what was the right amount according to the chatter bug devas.
They were very clear that certain vines should be keep out, and vigorously removed, it's some kind of morning glory, (which is a monster to deal with) and that others should be left alone. As I went to remove a big dandelion they had a fit. "No no no"!
"Ok already", I thought, as I realized how many I'd pulled up this year and tried to hide the thought away.
I was gardening for hours and thought to myself that I can never go back to how I used t do it. I'm sure this sounds like a bit of a Disney cartoon, but that's also what it felt like to me at the time, like I'd unstopped my ears, and gardening was going to be good, but annoyingly noisy for awhile to come. I'm telling you this straight, not making it up, and it feels a bit heavy while it was certainly fun also. Geeze, it feels like everything is going to be different. I mean I'm happy about it, but feel kind of bad about all the years I've been doing it my way for my happiness, and not realizing it's not just about me alone, but the brothers and sisters in green and gold have feelings too.
I'm in relationship with several sacred plant medicines, and maybe this shouldn't be such a surprise, but it is. Not that it happened, but that it was so clear, and highly specific. Just like some people I know, who like there eggs just so, and placed just so, and only half a glass of orange juice please and not the blue tea cups with the green tea thank you very much.
I wouldn't kid about this, because my relationships are where I try to live out my spiritual ideals, and so this new one is going to need care and attention the way the others do.
All because some guy I've never met reminded me to open up to it. Yikes, and thanks LLB.
Quite a few years ago...
A good friend came up to me, and said..." Brother we need to do ceremony, I'm trying to get off heroin. I bought a bag today and I don't want to do it."
I needed some work as well... it was a good idea...
So we went to my home and lit some candles in the tipi and had a ceremony... we took a very strong, and special medicine, that gave very powerful insight and vision, that opened up communication in ways that was unspeakable...
My life was changed by what went on in that tent... I had never seen nor experienced anything like it before in my life... and I cannot talk about all that went on in that huge tent. But we nearly lifted it off the ground...
We felt well and went to go give offerings down from my house at the killing tree... an old growth fir with an eagles nest on top of it... the tree is littered around its base with the eagles kills...
We go and give offerings there and respect the world tree and spirit of all that is...
You have to walk through a clear cut to get to the killing tree... all of my spiritual family goes to this tree and prays... its been a way I have helped started for us... and its become tradition...
I was very hungry on the walk over... we had worked harder then I had in a while in ceremony... but we were fasting, and we had not broken the fast yet...
I felt my stomach growling as I walked through the new understory... I felt my will, a pull from the gut...
I relaxed and allowed that feeling to take over, I could see all around me at dusk in this clear cut, this place full of life force renewing the land, full of spirit... I could see all of the energy around us, the life force, the chi, the prana, the pnuema, spirit, shakti, mind, consciousness, the land, the spirit of the land and sky, the great mystery... and many other words what I saw/am... moving in patterns filled with patterns and potential... I saw it moving... I opened up and allowed it to move me... I felt total instinct take over... a bird was in a tree and spirit moved me to it... it was not I that was hungry but the whole land and the land would give me what I needed because it was me, I was it... all of my instincts were just an antenna for one being, the whole, the totality, that like me knows its self from its locality between two eyes but can know itself as the whole, and like me knows its self as the land I was walking on, feeling hungry on.... and this land, this larger me said in that moment through the experience of being moved... if you got your self in shape enough, and allowed the whole to work through you enough in this way the bird would be in your hand and then your gut...
I turned to my Friend and told him what had happened...
He was walking behind me wearing my jacket and hat, filled with medicine and a sense of wellness... and he said... "I never want... I have all that I need... I experience this all the time..." I looked at my jacket and my hat... and his large eyes... and said.. yeah including a nice jacket a head full of medicine and a good hat... we both got a good laugh from that...
We went down to the tree and before we payed our respect...
We layed down on the forest floor and looked up into the canopy filled sky of dusk and felt the earth move through us...
A raccoon walked up to us, raccoon being a sort of totem for our little band of people...and gave us his love and blessing... standing right next to our heads chattering in raccoon speak at us... we felt we had been generously gifted allot that night and thanked raccoon for his blessing and he walked away.
We circled clock wise the tree and picked up bones and beaks and feathers and felt our hands moved to place them in the tree... this is how we learned to be people... we felt our bodies moved by the whole, starting with where we are standing, and we felt the whole speak its prayers through us as us... we felt our bodies moved to roll tobacco and we were moved to light and smoke the tobacco and our bodies were moved to face all six directions... and this is how we learned to relate to the killing tree and to life... It was not an idea or a learned thing, it was spirit moving our bodies and hearts... we blew tobacco to the six directions and to the tree and the eagle on top of the tree and we took our tobacco and we gave offerings of the tobacco to the tree blowing on it with our breath as we were moved to do... literally moved... our minds our hearts our intentions our feelings our bodies thoughts... all antennas for this remote control being played with by the great mystery by the one mind, the one animating spirit we all share, the one soul... and we blew tobacco on each other said thank you gave each other hugs and broke our fast, by going to the nearest dumpster and getting eggs from it, as our totem would.
It was from this work and many other ceremonies and experiences like this that bioregional animism first came to be... It was events such as these that started this fire...
Thank you heron...
where ever you are...
Feel free to just use this as an inspiration art wise, and make your own with your own bioregional animist artistic expression, and if so please do send it too me and we will post them on the blog as well as the forum.
With thanks to our first contribution from LanSing
"We are told that we have no roots, but it simply isn't true. We are not rootless, but uprooted--our roots torn from the soil as we struggled to keep up with our restless, roving parents or broke out on our own. They themselves responded to an ancestral instinct they didn't understand, an inherited compulsion to search out the means of survival in specific, cyclic migrations. Fueled by culturally impressed dissatisfaction, we find fault in what is near and seek out the strange, losing affection for each thing as the shine of its newness wears off. We often pull away from any "base" instincts that seem to counter our civilized protocol or suggest a different pace or lifestyle. We jerk away from whatever seems to "hold us down," "ground" us, or threaten us with stillness. But we are not rootless. Our roots dangle out the bottoms of our skirts and trousers, as we drag them behind us through unfamiliar streets and hallways. If we really focused on it we might still feel them, the way an amputee experiences the sensation of a limb long after its surgical removal. We may have been severed from the body-earth, but our roots still protrude, grasp at the ground at our feet wherever we are, seek out with their probing tips the stability and nourishment nothing else can provide.
We are told that to develop this relationship with place, to be or to become indigenous, requires us to be born in the same watershed where we will one day die. Some scholars of these issues claim it takes generation after generation in the same spot before a people can claim a right to be there. While generational overlap undoubtedly deepens one's sense of connection through a history/herstory of place, I assert that the sole precluding requirement for that relationship of belonging we call "native" is the individual's deepest experiencing of place, their giving back to place, and promising themselves to place. This relationship I call home, like any relationship, is a reciprocal sharing requiring the involvement and approval of both the person and the place. To put it most simply, being "native"--"belonging"--means both gifting to and being accepted by the spirits of the land. Such acceptance requires attention and time, but it is ours to find."
please read the rest of Jesses wonderful work here... http://www.haven.net/deep/council/hardin.htm as well as see his work on his web page here.. http://www.animacenter.org/jessewolfhardinw.html
"We continue to be people of the water. We are of the bays, inlets, and streams. Our lives depend on the stewardship we extend to all the earth, and the resources given to us from the creator."
"Our old ways are mostly memories, but our ideas march to their beat."
-Squaxin tribal elders.
“If all wisdom was acquired without, it might be politic to make our culture cosmopolitan. But I believe our best wisdom does not come from without, but arises in the soul and is an emanation of the earth-spirit, a voice speaking directly to us as dwellers in the land.” ~The Interpreters, By Irish author, AE.
"To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves."~ Mahatma Gandhi
"We do not come into this world, but out of it, like leaves from a tree" ~ Alan Watts
"If we surrender to earth's intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees."~ Rainer Marie Rilke
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