Research Library

Water (PDF)

(Excerpt from my master’s thesis titled “Remembering Our Future: The Search For The Salmon ! of Wisdom”, Naropa University – May 2006)

! WATER
!Water. Myfavoriteplacetobe. “She’sinhernaturalhabitat”,mymomwouldsayaboutme

!The Stanislaus River is the first river I fell in love with. When I was a kid, my family would go rafting down the Stanislaus River on overnight rafting/camping trips, along with my mom’s brother Tom and his family, the McCarthy clan. Those were some of our two families most memorable times, with many enchanting stories shared.

!Atafamilyreunionrecently,myUncleTominsistedweshareouroldstories. “Rememberour rafting trips down the Stanislaus River before they dammed it? Remember the cliffs we dove off of into the warm water pools at Rose Creek? Remember how young Mikey was the first to jump off the cliff? Remember Widow Maker rapids? Remember when Mark Dubois chained himself to the rock to protest the building of the New Melones dam? Those were such amazing times!

!Everyone then began recalling and retelling their stories which at one point in time had been part of our family connectivity, our own river that united our families. But, like a lot of American families, we had built many dams in our own family river system, and the stories stopped flowing. That day at our family reunion, we removed some of the dams, and stories flowed freely. Together we had painted a picture of the river, our river, and our hearts were opening, family restoration was taking place. When we had finished talking story about the Stanislaus, I said “This is the work that I want to do. I want to remember the spirit of the river.”

!Today the Stanislaus River is blocked thirteen times by dams on its way from the Sonora Pass in the Sierras to the San Francisco Bay. After a ten-year battle, the last long whitewater stretch was dammed with the New Melones Dam, which was built to supply the agricultural interests in the San Joaquin Valley by the Army Corps of Engineers, and then eventually taken over by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

!My experiences and memories of the Stanislaus River, and my own personal grief as well as my family’s grief when they dammed the river, has had a profound effect on my wanting to become an environmentalist. It was the actual experience with the river that made a difference. The connectivity dug deep into the core of my soul.

!

War Dance (PDF)

Teresa Rae MacColl

(Excerpt from my master’s thesis titled “Remembering Our Future: The Search For The Salmon of Wisdom”, Naropa University – May 2006)

WAR DANCE

 

“What gives the white people the right to come here and kill my people, take our homes away and treat us so badly? Our blood is the same as other human beings. We are people, too. Just because the color of my skin is brown that doesn’t give them more rights than the Creator put down for all people. I’m trying to make the white man see that the sacred spring on Mt Shasta, the herbal medicines, and the spiritual doctoring we use to heal our people are all connected. It is not something that can be separated out. Don’t they know that the Wintu have had religion to stay well all these years before they came to our land? Our children will need our religious ways, our language and sacred places to call themselves Wintu Indians in the future.”     

  • Florence Jones (Pui-lu-le-met),
  • Winnemem’s spiritual and tribal leader61

 

 

When the Shasta Dam was built in 1945, the Shasta Reservoir drowned more than 90% of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s ancestral land. The Winnemem (McCloud River) come from Mount Shasta. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is today proposing to raise the dam again by 19 feet, which would flood many of the remaining Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s sacred sites. On September 8th, 2004, the Tribe performed a War Dance, “Hu’p Chonas”, at Shasta Dam to declare the Tribe’s opposition to the Shasta Dam raise. It was the first war dance performed in over 100 years.62

 

 

We sing to water. The sacred places must be protected. We cannot survive the flooding of our people a second time.

–        Caleen Sisk-Franco

Spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu

 

A mural was created in San Francisco to honor the struggle of the Winnemem Wintu tribe against the raising of Shasta Dam. The unveiling of the mural was in November of 2005. The wall mural depicts Winnemem members at the four-day “War Dance” ceremony that was held at          Shasta Dam in September 2004. The mural is titled “We sing to Water”. Members of the Winnemem Wintu tribe danced in full regalia at the event and talked about their opposition to expanding Lake Shasta. The ceremony was a dedication for the mural and a memorial to Florence Jones, the Winnemem’s spiritual and tribal leader, who died just more than two years ago, Nov. 22, 2003. Her successor is her great-niece, spiritual and tribal leader Caleen Sisk-Franco.

 

We sing to water. We have to give the river a voice. We have to give the fish a voice.”

–        Caleen Sisk-Franco

 

I was blessed with the great fortune of being present for this ceremony, which took place in a narrow alley in the Mission in San Francisco. I almost did not make it because I was hurrying and scurrying to finish the last pieces of my thesis. After attending the dance, I saw that this was what I needed to experience, this was part of the completion of my thesis writing.

Tears came to my eyes immediately, even before the dancers danced, and before the singers sang. I knew that my experience was different than it would have been had I not spent the last two years working with Apela and all the Elders in ritual and ceremony. I was there at Shasta Dam, at Shasta Lake, and in the water with the salmon and the sturgeon. I could “feel” the water, as they sang for water. I was swimming with the salmon, when they sang for the salmon. And I too was a warrior when they danced their War Dance, one who has been called to fight for the waters of the world. My story, in its completion, is now just beginning.

Dreaming with the Ancestors (PDF)

Dreaming with the Ancestors

by Teresa MacColl, MA

International Association for the Study of Dreams

Psiber-Dreaming Conference

September 5, 2008

Dreaming with the Ancestors

by Teresa MacColl, MA

In Irish myth, the Salmon is the oldest and wisest of all the animals, and it was said that any person who ate the Salmon of Wisdom would gain the gift of prophecy… they would be able to see their future. By seeking and working with the Salmon of Wisdom, we can gain an understanding that is rooted deep in the collective awareness of all humanity. By remembering the dreams and stories of our ancestors, we can remember our ancestor’s future, and reclaim a more balanced, holistic, and ecologically sustainable world.

My name is Teresa Rae MacColl, and my tribes are Celtic from Ireland and Scotland, Teutonic, and Anglo-Saxon. I am a graduate of Dr. Apela Colorado’s Indigenous Mind (IM) Master’s Program at Naropa University, where I chose to research my Celtic Indigenous roots or rather my roots chose me that’s how the ancestors work.

When I first met Apela, she called me “Fish Girl” , and she said to me “I’ve waited years for a Fish Person to come along!” I had been working with white sturgeon in the fisheries department at UC Davis at the time, designing fish ladders for the sturgeon. Apela is from Wisconsin and her tribe, the Oneida, have a deep reverential connection to the sturgeon. So Apela too is a “Fish Person”.

After working in the sciences most of my adult life, where one is trained to not talk about or have feelings or emotions connected to the animals they work with, I had finally found a teacher and mentor who I knew loved and cared about fish and ecology in a very deep spiritual, ancestral, and traditional way, and I knew I was on the right path. So began my training as an indigenous scientist.

Indigenous science is a holistic discipline that considers nature to be alive and intelligent. Unlike western science, the data collected from indigenous science are not used to control the forces of nature. Instead, the data shows ways and means of accommodating nature.

Students conduct research using the critical distinctions that indigenous scientists rely upon (please see list below). This research offers a unique opportunity for students to encounter their ancestors and their whole self with the support of mind, body and spirit.

The indigenous scientist is an integral part of the research process and there is a defined process for insuring this integrity.

All of nature is considered to be intelligent and alive, thus and active research partner.

The purpose of indigenous science is to maintain balance

Compared to western time/space notions, indigenous science collapses time and space with the result that our fields of inquiry and participation extend into and overlap with past and present.

Indigenous science is concerned with relationships, we try to understand and complete our relationships with all living things.

Indigenous science is holistic, drawing on all the senses including the spiritual and psychic.

The end point of an indigenous scientific process is a known and recognized place. This point of balance, referred to by my own tribe as the Great Peace, is both peaceful and electrifyingly alive. In the joy of exact balance, creativity occurs, which is why we can think of our way of knowing as a life science.

When we reach the moment/place of balance we do not believe that we have transcended — we say that we are normal! Always we remain embodied in the natural world.

Humor is a critical ingredient of all truth seeking, even in the most powerful rituals. This is true because humor balances gravity.1

Indigenous Mind is a masters program where students study and research their own indigenous tribal ancestors earth-based spiritual traditions within a Western Academic framework.

1Colorado

Students individually and collectively go through a deep decolonization and ancestral remembrance process. This is especially important for those of us who are of European ancestry, who are more removed and disconnected from our indigenous roots, or even having awareness that we have indigenous ancestors. Students spend time with traditional native elders and learn what it means to remember who they are in an indigenous tradition, and make an ancestral journey to the land of their ancestors. The quest is to access earth-based spirituality, remember the traditional ways of ones own genealogical ancestors without appropriating from other cultures, healing both wounded masculine and feminine, maintaining balance, and promoting inter-tribal healing and understanding.

In 1855 Chief Seattle warned the white settlers of America that “when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men”, it would signal “the end of living and the beginning of survival.” Those American settlers had forgotten their own native tradition in favor of a religion that taught man he must “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish in the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen.I.26). This view of the natural environment denied there is any spirit in nature.

Most people of European ancestry believe their culture is rooted in Christianity, and are unaware of the tens of thousands of years of pre-Christian heritage and spirituality preceding the last two millennia of Christian experience. Christianity is relatively recent, and before it was the pre-dominant religion in Western Europe, most people practiced a spirituality that wasn’t expressed in sacred texts, but which arose out of the experience of being sensitive to the land and sky — to the changing seasons, to the power of the hills and rivers, to the mystery of the stars, and the movements of the sun and moon.2

To the ancient Celts, the realms of the Otherworld were in full view all the time, which included the ancestors, the deities, and the sidhe or faeries. In the Scottish Highlands, you find the “two sights” or an da shealladh in Gaelic, also known as the “second sight”, which denotes the capacity to see both the normal waking world (ordinary reality) and the world of spirit and energy that is intertwined and connected to this one. We find the two sights among certain individuals, who are the dream-seers and the vision-seers.3

When St. Patrick came to Ireland in AD 432, he spent nearly 30 years traveling throughout the countryside bringing Christianity to the local people and establishing churches and monastic foundations upon many Druidic sacred sites. He was not the first one to bring Christianity to Ireland, but he was the one to abolish the pagan rites of the Druids at Tara. Supposedly, first he got rid of the snakes, and then he got rid of the dragons. There were no snakes in Ireland. The Celts used the serpent imagery as a symbol of the universal life energy, a positive symbol of the goddess. So this legend of St. Patrick ridding the land of snakes and dragons was about the conversion of the pagan priests and the killing of the goddess, the feminine. St. Patrick also banned different forms of divination as “giving offerings to the demons”, which included the dream-seers and the vision seers.4

2 Carr-Gomm, 4-11.

3 MacEowen, 253

4 Concannon, 150-151.

“Your dreams are your doorways” —

Auntie Poepoe, Hawaiian elder

Much of our post-modern world does not have elders or intact cultures to link the modern and dissociative way of studying our dreams, with the ancient integrated ways of our ancestors. So in the IM program, we are attempting to reclaim what our indigenous ancestors did, and that is to use our dreams as guides, and to connect with our ancestors, and dream tribally.

Students learn how to understand and interpret dream messages from the ancestors and the spiritual world, and are taught by elders how dreams work on multiple levels to impart messages and understandings for today, and simultaneously reconstitute tribal ways. Tools for understanding dreams as guides in the waking world, particularly in their propensity for cross-cultural understanding and healing, are also provided. Dreams are one way the ancestors “speak” to us.

Our ancestors used to dream together as a tribal group, and they would share their collective dreams with the community. As we re-create a tribal dream community, we are able to gather up and perceive patterns and large writ ancestral communications that may come only to a group, and may be too much for a single person, or perhaps the dream is unifying people towards something that involves a group. We can perceive a collective Gestalt.5 In our IM tribal dream community, we collect and record our dreams together in a “dream database”, where we can look at our dreams collectively and track different patterns and themes in relation to the phases and signs of the moon. Working with dreams using indigenous protocol has enabled us to bring back the sacred art of tribal dreaming

5. A structure, configuration, or a pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gestalt).

“It’s time to make your dreams come true.”

-Mr. Hale Makua, Hawaiian elder

IM Dream Data:

Those of us that are the “Dreamers” started dreaming with and for each other or what I like to call “dream weaving”, and the collective dreams give a more informed story of what the dream messages were communicating to us. Ancestral information would come through the dreams of others as well our own individual dreams. Working with the community, one let’s go of their attachment to the dreams, because sometimes we are being “dreamed through”. The other message that comes through is that Mother Earth needs healing, and through our collective dream research we find that our ancestors used this dream information such as this to help maintain balance and harmony.

Below are some examples of storytelling through the dreams, and “dream weaving” with other students, connected to the ancestors and the land of the ancestors. The first dream I had is an example of one of many dreams I had that was connected to someone else, their ancestors, and the land of their ancestors. I was being “dreamed through”, and “seeing” ancestral information for someone else (this is how my Celtic ancestors dreamed, they had dreams of prophecy or the “second sight”) but also there was a message and work for me in the dream. What we are also finding is that we are becoming a global tribal dram community, and that ultimately the dreams and the “work” transcends space and time. For me personally, I know the dreams I have are connected to healing Mother Earth, which is not separate from healing and finding balance in the masculine and feminine within ourselves.

Journey into my Polish Indigenous Mind (PDF)

Journey into my Polish Indigenous Mind

by

Atava Garcia Sweicicki

Thesis

Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Liberal Arts in Creation Spirituality

in the

Graduate Division

of

Naropa University

December 2003

Approved: Dr. Apela Colorado

Project Advisor (Signature)

Approved Marlene De Nardo

Reader (Signature)

In memory of Barbara Kay Dean

September 29, 1942 – October 25, 2003

Dedicated to my family, to Polish ally Nancy Connor, and to the traditional farmers of Poland who fed us and loved us.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Writing in Alignment with My Ancestors 1

Chapter I: Origins and Maps 4

Opening Prayer 5

Discovering Creation Spirituality and Indigenous Mind 8

Indigenous Science 10

Remembrance 12

A Map for Polish Slavic Remembrance: The Story of Baba Yaga 13

Feeding the Doll 18

Listening to the Doll: Intuition and Navigation 19

Cleaning the House: Feng Shui as an Initiatory Rite 20

The Doll Works Magic at Night: Dreamwork and the IM Recovery Process 21

Seeking the Sacred Fire: The Forgotten Medicine of the White Hoop 22

Following Jezi Baba’s Trail: Heeding the Call of my Polish Ancestors 24

Chapter II: Stories from the Polish Land 29

The Dragon and the Lizard 30

Discovering the Polish Dragon 31

The Divine Feminine in Poland: Matka Ziemia, Matka Boze, and Mary Magdalene 35

Matka Ziemia: Moist Mother Earth 35

Marian Pilgrimage 38

Mary Magdalene’s Forgotten Chapel 40

The Teachings of the Forest 44

Recovering What Has Been Lost: Finding My Polish Family 49

Chapter III: Synthesis, Antithesis, and Thesis 53

Weaving 54

Lessons in Antithesis 56

The Historical Shadow 57

The Story Repeats Itself 60

Reenactment 63

Dreamtime: Excavating for What Has Been Lost 65

In the Arms of Jezi Baba: In Honor of My Polish Sister Barbara Dean 69

Notes from the Road: The Un-Conclusion 74

Bibliography 80

Introduction: Writing in alignment with my ancestors

“Knowledge in the traditional world is not a dead collection of facts. It is alive, has spirit, and dwells in specific places. Traditional knowledge comes about through watching and listening, not in the passive way that schools demand, but through direct experience of songs and ceremonies, through the activities of hunting and daily life, from trees and animals, and in dreams and visions. Coming-to-knowing means entering into relationship with the spirits of knowledge, with plants and animals, with beings that animated dreams and visions, and with the spirit of the people.” 1

This thesis is my own personal account of coming-to-knowing in a traditional way. I am telling the story about how I, a woman of Polish descent, came into relationship with the indigenous wisdom of my Polish ancestors. The path I walked in this process was the Master’s of Liberal Arts in Creation Spirituality with a concentration in Indigenous Mind. Creation Spirituality honors the original blessing, or sacred nature, of all of creation. Creation Spirituality weaves together the wisdom of western spirituality, indigenous wisdom and post-modern science.

The Indigenous Mind Concentration is a natural extension of the philosophy of Creation Spirituality. In the Indigenous Mind concentration, each student reconnects with their own ancestral culture or cultures. Guided by world-class indigenous elders, the students in Indigenous Mind gain an understanding of indigenous knowledge that is firmly rooted within their own cultural background.

Like many traditional people worldwide, my Polish ancestors have a rich tradition of stories, legends and folk tales. Many of these stories are encoded with cultural, historical and spiritual information. Rooted in this storytelling tradition, my thesis has emerged as a story that weaves together personal narrative, history, folk traditions, mythology, dreams, and indigenous wisdom. Two short videos from my ancestral journey to Poland accompany my written thesis: “Thank You Mother Poland” is a video collage of scenes from the Polish countryside, set to the music of Polish composer Frederick Chopin. “Mary Magdalene’s Forgotten Chapel” documents my and Barbara Dean’s adventure in which we discovered Saint Mary Magdalene’s abandoned and looted chapel at Kalwaria, Poland.

1.F. David Peat, Lighting the Seventh Fire, The Spiritual Ways, Healing, and Science of the Native American (New York, NY: Birch Lane Press, 1994), 64

Telling one’s personal story has power/relevance in the realm of traditional knowledge, the power of specificity. Kim Johnson, whose doctoral research explored the path of a European American woman recovering her traditional mind, writes:

“Elders and teachers from living traditional cultures have taught me that recovery of the good mind, the mind that is healthy and whole, begins in the specificity of each person’s story,. Generalities only point in the direction of healing, while specificity is the place where healing occurs. I can speak in truth from my own experience.”2

As the stories from my thesis developed, I discovered they naturally grouped themselves into three chapters. The first chapter, “Origins and Maps” gives background information and introduces indigenous science and the ancestral remembrance process. In this chapter, I explore a map of the Polish Slavic remembrance process: the fairy tale story of the fearsome witch Baba Yaga. I explain how BabaYaga’s trail led me to follow the path of my Slavic ancestors and make an ancestral journey to Poland.

The second chapter, “Stories from the Polish Land,” the heart of my thesis, arose from my ancestral journey to Poland. These stories reflect my direct experience with Polish people, Polish land and Polish spirits. I tell the story of my encounter with Smok, the Polish dragon in Krakow. In the section titled “The Divine Feminine in Poland,” I relate my encounters with three of the faces of the Divine feminine in Poland: Matka Ziemia (Moist Mother Earth), Matka Boze (Mother of God), and Saint Mary Magdalene.

2 Kimmy Karen Johnson, “On the Path of the Ancestors: Kinship with Place as a Path or Recovery,” (Doctoral dissertation, The California Institute of Integral Studies, 2001) 31.

The video “Mary Magdalene’s Forgotten Chapel” corresponds to the story I tell here about our pilgrimage to Magdalene’s chapel. In “Teaching of the Forest” I tell the story about an encounter with a Polish elder and forest crone. In the final section of Chapter II, I relate the experience of meeting my own flesh and blood relatives in Poland.

The third and final chapter of my thesis, “Synthesis, Antithesis and Thesis”, includes the stories and reflections about my process of integration and coming-to-knowing. In this chapter I delve into the lessons taught to me by the historical shadow o my Polish ancestors/ and discuss how this shadow continues to play out in my own life. “Reenactment” relates my encounter with my first Polish traditional ceremony. In “Dreamtime” I talk about the ways my dreams have supplied valuable information in the remembrance process. At the end of Chapter III, I give tribute to my dear Polish friend and companion, Barbara Dean, who joined the world of the ancestors on October 25, 2003.

Three is a sacred number to my Polish Slavic ancestors. The number three appears any times in Slavic fairy tales, mythology, folklore, and rituals. By structuring my thesis into three interconnected parts, I am symbolically aligning myself with the wisdom of my ancestors. As I do this, I am weaving together these three parts into one complete story. As Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr writes:

“Since, in the Indian system, all data must be considered, the task is to find the proper pattern of interpretation for the great variety of ordinary and extraordinary experiences we have. Ordinary and extraordinary must come together in one coherent comprehensive storyline.”3

3Vine Deloria, Jr, “If You Think About It, You Will See That It Is True,” Revision, A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation: Indigenous Science (Washington D.C.: Heldref Publications, 1996), 39.

Successful Teaching of Ancestral Tribal Knowledge (PDF)

Apela Colorado PhD, Elder

272-2 Pualai St.

Lahaina, Maui, HI.

96761

17 Feb. ’00

Greetings return to you, Apela, and to the Elders (grandmothers) present, and especially to the loyal members of the TKN, in the love and in the light of the ancestors, The Source of Life.

Aloha Kakou!

I am in awe from yesterdays moving performance of sharing, by your humble, reverent, and loyal students of life; good work Apela! I was especially moved by Martina’s ancestral song of honor and all of the beautiful giveaways and story telling

. Thank you Apela for another beautiful day in paradise. I am greatly honored.

Each of those students in this group is striving to use, digest, and diversify the information into the channels of their mind, body, spirit, complex without distortion. The few whom they will illuminate by sharing their light, are far more than enough reason for the greatest possible effort. To serve one is to serve all.

Therefore to teach/learn or learn/teach, there is nothing else which is of aid in demonstrating the original thought (love) except their very being, and the distortions that come from the un-explained, inarticulate, or mystery-clad being are many.

Thus, to attempt to discern and weave their way through as many group mind/body/spirit distortions as possible among their peoples in the course of their teaching is a very good effort to make. I can speak no more valiantly of their desire to serve.

Again, Mahalo nui loa to the Elders (grandmothers) present, to all the students resonating and radiating to the light of the ancestors, and to those who came to observe the clarity of your teachings of the ancestral Tribal Knowledge.

With the permission of the ancestors, I leave all of you in the love and in the light of the ancestors; rejoicing in the power and the peace braided with the cords of patience revealing the tapestry of:

LOVE ALL THAT YOU SEE,

LIVE ALL THAT YOU FEEL,

KNOW ALL THAT YOU POSSESS.

Respectfully, in Service

Hale Makua

Hono Ele Makua

(Council of Elders)

Study Notes on Social Welfare (PDF)

April 9, 87.

Study notes on Social Welfare. I.

Note I. On Sensuality of Human Relations.

Ref: Gil/Gil Toward Social and Economic Justice (Conference M. 23-25, ’84. Brandeis U.) Schenkman Pub.Co. 1985. HN65 T683.

R.H. Tawney Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Hazell, Watson & Viney, 1926

Karl Polanyi The Great Transformation, Beacon, 1944.

Morris Bermann The Reenchantment of the World, Cornell U press, 1982.

Golo Mann The History of Germany Since 1789, Penguin, 1974 (1968)

That contradictions move the history

“The forced Choice: Making Change vs. Helping People” by Ann Withorn (in Gil/Gil p 3) talks of the history of social welfare in the U.S. The history is a series of struggles among “humanitarians”, “social reformers”, and “bureaucrats”. The struggle shaped what Social Welfare is. As such the “social welfare” is a bundle of contradictions. But one could ask what ever moved in the history without contradictions. Only the lifeless and immobile can be in a perfectly unified harmony and static equilibrium. Motion needs non-equilibrium, which is contradiction in a political language.

Social welfare, in the form we have today, started under Bismarck in the 1880’s (Golo Mann p 375) [The reason for Bismarck to initiate the “Social Insurance” is said to be an election gimick to appease workers and lure them out of the camp of the Social Democrat Party.] And the history of Germany is a bundle of contradictions, in which the history of Socialism is a part. Marx was there with Bismark. And the emergence of Nazi—National Socialist Party—under Hitler was not unrelated to the history of Social Welfare there.

Before that time, European peasants and workers had “communal” mutual-help networks. It was destroyed as a part of “the ancient regime” in the bourgeoise revolution. The term “Fraternity” in the three word slogan of French Revolution disappeared from the Declaration of Human Right 1792. The revolutionaries kept only “Liberty” and “Equality”, and only in individualistic senses.

The Socialism, of both “Utopian” and “Scientific” inclinations, was a response of the dying “community” to the Bourgeoise Modernization which breeded both “Socialization” and “Individualization”. And the modern “Nation-State” emerged with centralized ruling power, atop huge bureaucracy, military, industry, nationwide monetary system, and mass-education. If we count those huge organizations in the side of the “Socialization” process, then the “Individualization” is a retreat of people into small “fox holes” for each under the heavy bombardments by the Socialization Process. This is another contradiction that moved the modern history.

2. Social Welfare as a ruin of communal life

Social Welfare try to regain some aspects of the “commune” of the “ancient regime”. In the “good old days” of the “primitive commune life, people took care of neighbours in troubles. They looked after children in communal co-operation. Foods were shared in many occasions. Enjoyments in life were by and large in the form of communal celebration. Even disputes between man and wife were often “appealed” to the community and settled on street.

We do still use the public forum for marriage ceremony and funeral rite. But we lost the sense of “community” even in them. We think of them as “Private” matter, despite their public display. Whether or not we believe in humanism, liberalism, socialism, or capitalism in our intellectual life, our “feeling” is deeply “individualistic”. That is to say, we lost our roots to the “community”.

People, not too long ago, used to do things for each other on the basis of “human relationship”. Their relationship was “Sensual”. Today, we have replaced it by Money or Power. Although “Humanitarian” sentiments emerged with the Bourgeoise Revolution, with the “rationalism”, and “materialism”, — note that the “humanism” as we know is a new phenomenon in the Modern Age—, it stayed outside the “distance” considered to be “Sensual”. We literally lost “Human Touch”. Even the articles in Gil’s volume keep the cold bourgeoise “distance” from Human Sensuality. Except Pamela Colorado’s article, none of the authors collected in the volume come close enough to talk about the need of “Human touch” in Social Welfare. [see E.T. Hall The Hidden Dimension, for the “distance”]

Human beings are “sensual”. And the very basis of our relationships of any kind is sensuality of ours. Yet, in our social interactions, we do not consider it “rational”, nor “decent” to admit that, in other than “private” contexts. We use the Power of Command, or Exchange of Money for the social transactions.

Even the essay from Feminist point of view (Feminist Thought Structure; by Ruth A. Brandwein) does not touch the “Sensuality” of humans. Nor the article titled “Humans, Nations, and Nature” (by Elise Boulding) touches on what is it that makes “Human Relations”; i.e. Sensuality. Of course, in an academic conference in North America today it is hardly expected any way. [I do sense that Elise Boulding would gladly discuss Sensuality in informal small group discussion. She could even be passionate about it. But in formal academic conferences, it is not “respectable” nor “intellectual” enough to talk about Sensuality.]

But, the existence of a taboo does tell us about the “cultural” context in which thinking and practices in Social Welfare are carried.

3. Sensuality as Hypothesis.

I imagine that good academics would challenge me to demonstrate that the Sensuality is fundamental to human relations. I shall have to attempt that elsewhere. In the meantimes, I mention Reich’s theory of Sensuality (metaphysics of “Orgon”) explained by Morris Bermann in The Reenchantment of the World. [Cornell U. Press 1982] Bermann’s exposition is highly recommended for its reference to the historical dynamics in which “return to sensuality” has become significant and urgent. Also, there are literatures on this subject from Freudian Psychoanalysis — Freud, Fromm, Marcuse, Foucault, et al.

But, once recognized as a “hypothesis” (metaphysics) or even as a “suspicion”, the consideration of Sensuality would have changed the “perspective” and hence the course of the whole discussion. Both issues of “Making Change” (of socio-political-economic-cultural structure) and “Helping People” can be seen as problems of how much Sensuality our society is able to handle and in what forms (ritual formats). We are asked of our competence to handle our need of Sensual touches, in what extent, in what contexts.

Abstract notions like “Social and Economic Justice” are not only more obscure than sensuality but also a means to “rationalization”, i.e. concealment of, the fundamental issue/problem.

Also, I equated “forms” and “ritual formats”. That is, for itself, a deviation from the “rationalistic” rhetoric of the article by Withorn and others. I imagine that many of Social Welfare Experts, Professionals and Researchers are familiar with Social Psychology, Psychoanalysis etc., if not theoreticians in those fields. Many of them read Freud, Marcuse, Foucault, et al., or they themselves have written texts on Sex, Sexuality, Sensuality, etc. Yet, there is no sign in Withorn’s lecture that their knowledge on Human Sensuality is their “working knowledge”.

To be sure, display of knowledge is not the purpose of the conference. Rather, they were discussing serious problems in the field of Social Welfare Works (Ideology, Philosophy, Theory, Strategies, etc.). Hence, the question is; What help considerations of Sensuality would have brought in the discussions?

I shall have to answer that question.

That means no less than a total reconstruction of social theories on the basis of Sensuality—describing political-economical systems and their dynamics in references to Sensuality—. It would be re-animation or reenchantment of political economy. It also has to touch upon phenomena such as Alienation and to articulate on what “Culture” is. [For I am insinuating that “Cultures” are ways of accommodating and controlling Sensuality.]

[An immediate suggestion following from consideration of Sensuality is a strategy of shifting the “agency centered-ness” to “community centered-ness”. That implies a shift to “cultural approach”, from the German style political, economic approach. This require discussions.]

That is my “home work”. In what follows below, I shall give a sketch of a study program.

4. Economy viewed from the need of sensual relations.

Sensuality manifests in various forms. And many of its “symptoms” are disguised and distorted. We also see “pathological” cases, due to lack thereof.

But let us start with a common sense meaning. In our street language, we say “Human Touch” etc., referring to the Sensuality.

In shopping markets, people expect a “smile” from the sales person to whom they come in contact with. They come to a close distance to the sales person. They may exchange a few words incidental to the business transaction. The “human touch” is not considered to be a “necessary” requirement for the transaction, but it is there. And in terms of the business, manipulation of such an “irrational” factor is, in fact very important for the commercial success. The “smile” may well be “professional” and a deception, but nonetheless employed for the effect (affect).

Psychotherapists noted that people in stress or under depression go to shopping as a self-therapy. People seek “human touch”, though their motive may be concealed and the form (ritual) is a disguise. Some of us go to bars and pay for a drink, but the business transaction in fact buy the context in which we can talk with bartender or the other customers there. The drink is rather incidental to our main purpose.

[Question: What significance Sensuality has in Alcoholism? Any Therapeutic significance?]

5. Ambivalence in Sensuality.

That people seek Sensual Relations and at the same time hide the need of Sensual Relation is an important aspect of the Sensuality for itself.

What E.T. Hall talked about in terms of “Space that people keep around them” [in The Hidden Dimension] is one example of “Sensuality Management”. Hall did not explicitly mention Sensuality, but the “Touch” implied in interpersonal space is a neutral way of describing Sensuality allowed within the “ethical standard” in our science-scholarship as a sub-culture.

There is something that make people “Fear”, “Anxious”, while they are drawn to it. They would give all sorts of excuses to disguise their need of Sensual Relations, particularly between and among “macho” men. One can suspect that physical fights and even combats in wars are “disguises” and excuses for them to “touch” each other.

[In this respect, the modern warfares, particularly Nuclear War, are unsatisfactory. They can be fought in “rationalized abstraction”. “Intellectualizations” which represses “physical” aspects of human life leads to such an atrocity. This is an important issue to discuss.]

6. The Capitalism and Sensuality.

The Capitalist system, on one hand, inhibit our Sensual Relations—the “alienated work” is not sensual—. On the other hand, it exploits our need of Sensual Relations in the market. [see Freud. If we read Polany, Tawney, et al, with awareness of Sensuality, we can see that they have touched upon the problems. Max Weber (The Rise of Capitalism and the Spirit of Protestant Ethics) avoided Sensuality. Weber was, perhaps, privately aware of Sensual nature of religions, but refrained saying anything about it. Talk on Sensuality was a taboo.]

The Capitalists may not buy and sell commodities for their Sensual Needs. [As to the Sensual meaning of their sense of “Power”, we shall come to discuss later.] But, outside goods for our physiological survival, we as consumers, buy things for our “psychological” needs, by and large. Of course, the distinction between what are “physical” and what are “psychological” is not clear to us—for we like to disguise, and the commercial interests like us to be as unclear as possible. But, asides academic arguments, such as “psychology” is nothing other than “physiology”, the distinction can be made practical enough for our considerations.

From that, in the sense of Gedanken Experiment, we can imagine to be natives standing at a shore buying beads and trinkets from the European traders. We do not really need the beads and trinkets. We came there by our “curiosity” more than anything else. And the “curiosity” is one of manifestation of our Sensuality. We might make analogy of it to “a girl looking at a boy” and vice versa. The “Trade” is an act of intimacy disguised. We have started “Trade” as “Exchanges of Gifts” which are expressions of affections.

Here, I point out a political ideology of the Classical Economics which talks of “Trade” in terms of “Scarcity”. That is patently false. Trade start with “Surplus”, not from “Scarcity”. In this, even Marx was in the Classical Economics. The ghost of Scarcity came in there because the intellectualization required the “logic of necessity” to go with the “logical necessity” of their stories (theory). In the Age of Rationality, or more precisely in a desire to emulate Newtonian Mechanics, the scholars-scientists-intellectuals, wanted Determinism. And the Determinism was a mirror image of their desire to make “Compelling arguments”. Marx could not escape from this.

[Here comes an entanglement of Sensuality and Power sensation. But I shall have to discuss this later.]

Today, we are not trading like the natives on the shore did. We have introduced a technology called “Money”. Money insulate our Sensuality and brings us to the side of Power relations. Otherwise, we would have difficulties in trading with total strangers, and sometimes even those whom we consider enemies. [Americans can sell wheat to Russians, because of the technology of Money. But on the other hand, the trade may very well be an expression of a repressed “affinity” between two group of people. At least it keep one channel of communication open amidst the intense hostility.]

7. Why cannot admit our Sensuality? Question of Power.

If our “economy” is mainly for Sensual Relations, then why we are having troubles like “unemployment”, “poverty” which required Social Welfare?

Why cannot we just “share” things for the satisfaction of our Sensual needs?

The point is that we do not admit that we are seeking for Sensual Relations. If we did, our Economic System would collapse. We are dependent on the system—welfare profession and welfare researchers would be unemployed, if the system that creates the problems is desolved—. I would not have had an intellectual satisfaction in writing this, if the problem does not exist. [If I wish to be “immortal” in making a theory of Sensual Economy, the problem have to last forever!]

This brings us to the problem of Power.

Power is a substitute for Sensual satisfaction. And it is “safer” in that Power is one-way”, whereas Sensual Relation is “two-way” (mutual) or worse “loss of control”. Relations brings “entanglements”, which we “individualists” do not wish to have. Business transactions are simpler and we feel confident in them to keep a sense of control. But even in businesses, we cannot shut our sensuality off completely, and hence we go into Power channel (“Power Trip”).

So if we wish satisfaction our own without others, we choose Power. Henry Kissinger once remarked that Power is the best Aphrodisiac. And , the Power structures allow us to be “affectionate” with each other without “shame”. We call it “Loyalty”, “Togetherness”, “Team Work”, “Patriotism”, “Fellowship”, “Class Consciousness”, etc.

The way the US marines stick together and care for each other is far more close and emotionally “intense” than that between homosexual men. But, US marines would be very much offended if someone suggest them the “Sensuality” of their relations. Our loyalty to “Profession” is also one example of those. We have internal “Love-Hate”relationship among us, but looked from outsiders we are very “close” in covering for each other. It is well known that people have a great difficulty obtaining a medical doctor to take a stand against another doctor, and it is the same about lawyers, policemen, etc.

If there is not for the Power Structure—which function as “exclusive clubs” for limited membership for each—we would have troubles satisfying our Sensual needs. To be sure, the Power Structures come with Rituals which limit and control the forms and the extent of Sensualness allowed. Orgy parties like wars are allowed in disguises to deny Sensuality. As the white collar workers themselves allude often, business offices of corporations are like “Harems” consisting of intellectual “Prostitutes” . Expressions like “kissing ass” are in part expressions of revulsion, but they are in part accurate descriptions of the Sensuality. The power provides for the excuses and disguises. And in turn, the Power positions satisfy their perverted Sensuality.

8. Sensual Utopia, The “Primitive Commune”.

Let us try another gedanken experiment. Suppose we devised some way of accommodating the human need for Sensual Relations without the disguises. Then, we would not need much of Economic Inequality. We would not need too much concentration of Political Power. Social Welfare would lose much of its case loads, though human relations are complex enough to leave enough problems.

We can concentrate on the tasks of constructing and maintaining “communes”. We would have networks of “soul mates” to replace institutions like churches, universities, professional associations, etc.

Of course, this is an Utopia. Marx would ask us how in a hell we get there without Power Struggles. Sensuality is good and dandy—Marx did not deny it, but being merely contemptious of it—but how anyone can “manage” it? How is it “controlled” and “distributed? It does not involve “money”, but just the same, it does take time and place, energy expenditure, physcial facilities and above all some “mental” engagements.

Or one might worry, if an open acknowledgement of our Sensuality might break the flood gate checking homosexual orgy in social scales. The result might be worse than wars—save all-out Nuclear war. What are we going to do about AIDS? Who is going to do “production works” Material needs may be less and consequently environmental damage may be less, but what would limit the “hedonistic orgy”? Can human body take all that “pleasures”,  without going into insanity?

etc, etc.

I do not know answers to those questions. Except for the “primitive” small communities that anthropologists wrote about, I do not know of practices of “Sensual Society”. In Freudian sense “Society” and “Sensuality” are polar opposites, and cannot be put in the same quotation marks.

H. Marcuse (Eros and Civilization), E. Fromm (The Art of Loving), M. Foucault (The History of Sexuality), Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex) et al. have been talking about these problems.

9. Religions as Controllers of Sensuality

[home work. Jesus and Mary Magdalenas (p.). Kazanzakis Last Temptation of Jesus Christ.]

10. Sensuality in Physical Sciences.

It is, perhaps, a common notion that Physical Sciences are “cut and dry”, having no trace of human feelings, except “pride” and “righteousness”. In such images, “science” is the furthest, among all human engagements, from Sensuality.

people may have read about in newspapers that there are fights among scientists about a plan of constructing a big atom smasher which costs some 6 billion dollars. Some scientists argue that the money can better be spent on other areas of science which does not cost one tenth as much, etc. Then they would have seen that the issue is essentially “political” one, concerning choice among “value feelings” of various group of scientists engaged in different areas.

Today, “science” as such is impossible without a huge money. So the fight is a matter of Life and Death for the scientists involved. And the basis of the fight is their “Subjective Feeling”—firstly about their job security and secondly about the worth of what they are specialized in.

But, perhaps, that is not the public image of “Science”. The majority today might think of Einstein in association with the word “science”. Since the case of Einstein has been well advertised, its popularity is not surprising. However, the worshipers of Einstein may not realize that Einstein is “special”. Not too many scientists are like Einstein, though they might like to pretend so.

Ninety-nine percent of some half million scientists in the world earn their living, just like factory workers, by carrying on routines. Some do computational routines. Some do teaching routines. There are very little opportunity for them to be creative and original like Einstein. In fact, his school record shows that Einstein was a failure in carrying on “scientific routines”.

Nonetheless, Einstein does represent an “Ideal” of what science “should be”. I do not underestimate the importance of Ideals in social psyche. Even if they may be illusions, they do affect the way a society collectively thinks and behaves. The “affect” may be like “betrayal” and worse than if they were not there—say in the case of Jesus, or Marx. They are “Powerful”, good or bad.

Do let me talk about the ideals of “science”, disregarding the majority practices which are quite different, if not shams. And one of well praised characteristics of the Ideal Science is the “Curiosity”.

Of course, pure curiosity like that of boys about female anatomy does not qualify to be “scientific”. We do have certain prejudices, taboos, value sensations, and artificial discriminations about this. But, let us be charitable and say that “The Pure Curiosity” is the well spring of the genuine science.

Now, what about this curiosity? Is it not a part of “Emotion”? Is it not a part of our Irrationality? Why should anyone be curious about the existence of the Fifth Dimension, any more (or any less) than “If God Exist?”, or “What makes Dick ticks?” And what those seekers are doing?

If the seeker is indeed free of our ordinary greed and power thirst, then we might describe the seeker to be “trying to communicate” with the Nature, Universe, etc. And if they description is apt, the motive of the seeker is Sensual Relations with the Mother Nature, Universe, etc. The curiosity that we praise in our ideal is an attempt to have an Intimate Relation with the Nature. It is a form of Sensuality.


Of course, the alienated scientists in the profession do not attempt such a thing. They lost curiosity, if they have not “burned out” already and hardly interested in “science” other than as the means to their incomes. Anyone who examine science texts in schools and universities, would find them to be nothing more than texts for “obedience training”, not fostering “curiosity”. Teachers who encourage children to be curious know that they are handling a delicate matter with Sensuality which requires an acute sensitivity and warm understanding. There is nothing short of “Love of it” does the job. Only because they are aware of the Taboo against saying it “Sensual”, they skirt around saying so. And the regulations, rules, etc. imposed by the “Education System” restricts what they can do in the contexts of “school works”. The likelihood is that the Potential Einsteins are exterminated in the system.

[To be sure, there are practical considerations as to How Many Einstein (or Jesus) our society could possibly stand for. Probably one in a century is already more than it can take. For the case of Jesus, one per two thousand years is already too much. The question is the same as How Much Sensual Relations one can take, without blowing oneself up. One can also say this perhaps for “Spirituality”, “Truth” etc. Just because one was good, the more may not be better. We ought to think about this.]

Draft 10/01/87/.

April 11, 87. p. 12.

Study notes on Social Welfare II.

Note II. Culture Based Networking.

11. Does the awareness of Sensuality make any difference in practices?

We have not done theoretical articulation on Human Sensuality. But, if there would not be practical differences, there is no point in articulating the theory.

Most anybody knows the importance of “Human Touch” and if that is all in the “Sensuality Paradigm”, we are back to where we started. Namely, we started discussion on Social Welfare, because we are unable to provide Human Touch in sufficient scale, due to structural constraints, economic reality, prevalent political ideology, etc. Perceiving humans to be sensual does not help, unless there are practical consequences from the perception. Does the perception suggest any new strategy?

We have one suggestion for a practical strategy stated (made by Colorado) in the section 3. above [p.4]. That was “Cultural Approach”. We shall do a follow-up consideration here to test our idea. Also by discussing practical strategy, we hope to shape a “theory”. This is our way of articulating a theory (idea)—the method of thinking experiment.

In a sense, “Social welfare” was a response to an emergency situation created by the Modernization of “community to society”. The major paradigm of the Modernization was “progress” concerning with technological advances which are collectively called “Civilization”. “Culture” was a forgotten entity, misidentified with and subsumed under “Civilization”. And worse, European prejudice made it “Uniformitarian Ideology”. Modern minds could not see Cultures in other peoples than the one perceived through European Civilization/Technology.

And even if the “modern mind” sensed something “cultural” in a romantic fancy, it was thought of something extra like jewels, perfumes, silk dresses and top hats, pomps and ceremony—that which royalties, aristocrats had and did. “Culture” is perceived as a “luxury”, not essential to practical daily life. It was not a part of the “necessity”. Hence, the “modern mind” could not see peasants, workers having a “culture”, let alone the “primitive natives” in colonies. It used to be said that those poor people were “Deprived of Culture”. Until very recently, the “modern mind” could not recognize “cultures” of various peoples. We today talk even of “sub-cultures”— “drug culture”, “bourgeoise culture”, “peasant culture”. And some of us belatedly became enlightened enough to acknowledge “Native Cultures”, which is a recent phenomenon since 1980.

If “Culture” is not in the working vocabulary of Social Welfare officers and scholars, perhaps it is forgiven. Social Welfare is for “deprived people”, not for “people with culture” which implies luxury.

And for that matter, “Human Touch” etc. were also considered to be luxury. Even philanthropists could not imagine that those “poor wretched people” in deprived life could afford to have “feelings”. Feelings and Emotions were for privileged well-to-do people, such as the Queen in story books who says “We are not amused”. Suppose the “poor wretched” have said “We are not having fun in being poor”, what would have been the reaction of the philanthropists? I would imagine neither Social Welfare workers out there are having fun. We are not amused with the situation. But the feeling of displeasure of the Queen counts. Whereas the feeling of the Poor does not count.

The recipients of the Social Benefits are, by the “definition”, must be in such a deprived state that they cannot possibly have any feeling let alone “Culture”. This is an Axiom.

Besides, in our Money Transaction Ritual, we have a peculiar Myth that those who receive money shall shame themselves to be without human dignity. The ritual of Money Transaction is the evidence for “Prostitution”. During the paid hours, workers are Slaves—ones who sold their souls to the Devil. Giving Money degrades, hence, it is not a Gift but an Insult. Yet, we live by the ritual of Money Transaction. This brings further complications to our situation. Giving Money does not solve the problem.

The “Culture Based Networking” attempts to reinstate human touch in the social dynamics. That have to start by declaring “Humans are Sensual” for a “shock value”. We have to wake up our minds by the shock to see it. And, once recognized, it has to become a declaration of a Human Right. To say “Humans are Sensual” is a declaration the “Every Human being has unalienable Right to be Sensual”. And a “Culture” is the way of accommodating sensual needs of the people in a community. [I acknowledge the above sounds like “Social Engineering for sensual needs”, and hence inadequate. But hopefully the discussions following will correct some of its deficiency.]

Now, how we do the Culture Based Networking?

We cannot dictate what people “ought to feel”. We cannot “design” sensuality of people, as if we design a car or computer. To begin with “being sensual” means not only be aware of one’s own needs, but it means “to feel other’s needs”. One cannot be “sensual” without recognizing other “sensual beings”. It is essential that we go beyond the “being nice to” (charitable) sense of Human touch to the recognition of Sensual Beings, who are capable of their own thinking-feelings. It is a dignified right of their to have their sensual needs. And for that reason, we respect them as worthy companions of Sensual Relationships. By this we transcend the level of “charity”—the level that one might have in “loving pets”.

However, even the children caring for pets, they are sensual to the degree they entertain a feeling that the pets have the very same sort of feelings as they do. This is the Principle of Sensuality; that it is a mutual relationship between “sovereign beings” equally capable of the dignity comparable to the one which can say “we are amused, or not amused” and it has to matter and it does matter. If one deny this respect, the sensuality is killed. We then have a relation with “Objects”.

Another useful example for us is the way poets “feel” (perceive) the Universe. Sensuality is essential in poetry. Call it “metaphor”, “emotional projection”, etc. But without the unity shared in deep feelings, or hurts stem from injuries to that, poetry cannot exist.

[There apparently are some linguistic philosophers who deny the possible existence of “Other Minds”. I suppose from Cartesian Metaphysics, nobody but “I” has the “Mind” and others are moving “Objects”. We shall have to discuss this later.]

And Pam Colorado means a lot deeper root than what I so far discussed in terms of the Dignity and Respect. She talks of Cultures in which people find a natural right of dignity. And she even goes to the Spiritual Realm where all humans may be “soul brother and spiritual sisters”. It came from the Origin of Life in the Universe. I am not capable of addressing to such a depth, I shall have to wait for her to speak.

[She might object this term “sensual”, and insist “Spiritual”. That is too heavy for me to touch from my science background, though I can sense that the Spirituality is at the the base of what I called “sensual”.

My “scientific” objection to her “Spirituality” is that if human race has reached a level of being in which the Spirituality can meaningfully be talked about, there is no need to discuss about mundane things like Social Welfare.

In a sense , we are in a Hell, that is why we talk of sensuality.]

At any rate, Sensual Relations cannot be forced, commanded, nor demanded. It can only be Respected and admired.

Thus, dictatorship is out. We have to “let it happen”.

However, we can take two actions.

Remove obstacles.

Provide better Environment.

We shall have to discuss these actions in the situation and condition we have now and here.

(11/04/87)

[ED: These notes have been transcribed from two original documents and edited for clarity.]

Written in the Stars: Celestial Origin of Maya Creation Myth (PDF)

Written in the Stars

Celestial Origin of Maya Creation Myth

by Richard A. Wertime and Angela M.H. Schuster

The three hearthstones of the Maya creation story are found in the constellation Orion, according to the Quiche Maya of highland Guatemala. They are Alnitak (the southernmost star in Orion’s belt), Saiph, and Rigel. At the center of the triangle formed by these celdestial bodies is the Orion nebula, the mythical hearthfire. According to the myth, First Father, the maize god, was born from the cracked shell of a tortoise, perhaps a Maya constellation within Orion. Teh two piglike peccaries in the eastern part of Leo are a Maya constellation and figure prominently in the creation story. The glyph for star, shown three times, often accompanies depictions of the peccaries in Maya artwork.

Just after sunset on August 12, creation eve, the Milky Way stretches from east to west across the night sky. To the Maya this position of the galaxy represented a great  canoe paddled by gods who take First Father, the maize god, to the place of creation where he is reborn from the cracked shell of a tortoise. The piglike peccaries located in the eastern part of Leo are an important Maya constellation. A late seventh-century vase from the Peten region of Guatemala, below, depicts the paddler gods and First Father after their arrival at the place of creation. Two attendants prepare First Father for his rebirth.

Over the course of countless nights ancient Maya astronomers considered long and hard the movement of the stars and planets. Living in a world without light pollution, these gifted observers beheld a sky that was as limpid as a mountain stream. The nearness and the brightness of the celestial bodies led them to read in their movements significant elements of human history, including the miracle of creation itself.

Scholars have had only a fragmentary understanding of these matters in the past. Now, for the first time, they are beginning to comprehend the intricate connection between Maya creation myth and the movements of the stars. It is a remarkable story being pieced together by a cluster of scholars who have patiently decoded a complex legacy of Maya writings and artworks.

The interconnections between the observable sky and Maya creation myth find expression in surviving Maya codices, in important sacred texts such as the Popol Vuh, in hieroglyphic inscriptions, and in a vast range of artworks—carved bone, ceramics, murals, and sculpture. Says epigrapher Linda Schele, “We used to view Maya iconography as a collection of discrete units. Now there’s a whole pattern to it; all of the parts are related to phenomena that can be observed in the sky by anybody who lives away from the light of the modern world.”

What makes these interconnections particularly exciting is that they are supported by ritual practices and religious beliefs of the modern Maya. There is compelling evidence for strong cultural continuity between the Maya and their modern descendants. Mayan artisans, like their ancient counterparts, express their cosmic vision through almost every conceivable medium: in the patterns of fabrics, in the hearthstones of the traditional household, in the temporary shrines built to invoke the rain gods—shrines whose form mimics the cosmos.

Some of the early pioneers in Maya studies had intimations of what is now being forcefully argued. Herbert Spinden and Sylvanus G. Morley—early students of Maya art, writing, and calendrics—suggested that the Maya creation myth was linked in deep ways to Maya astronomy. In time, however, there was a reaction against such cosmological interpretations. “Astronomy was banned,” recalls Dennis Tedlock, an ethnologist and translator of the Popol Vuh. By the 1950s and 1960s ethnology was also discounted as a reliable source of data. But all this began to change in the 1980s when archaeoastronomy emerged as a new subfield in archaeological studies. “In the New World,” says Anthony Aveni, an archaeoastronomer at Colgate University, “we seem to be developing an anthropology of astronomy rather than a history of astronomy. It deals with the complex relationship between astronomy and politics, economics, and cultural history.”

By Dawn on August 13 the western portion of the Milky Way drops below the southern horizon. The three hearthstones and the tortoise shell from which First Father is reborn appear just east of zenith. According to Maya myth, the canoe bearing the paddler gods (the Milky Way) sinks after delivering First Father to the place of creation. The constellation of the two peccaries appears just west of the Milky Way. First Father’s rebirth from the cracked shell of a tortoise is depicted below on a Classic-period ceramic plate from the northern Peten.

At dawn on February 5 the Milky Way—the Maya World Tree—arches from north to south across the sky. The ecliptic, or path of the sun, moon, planets, and constellations of the zodiac, lies perpendicular to it. According to the Maya creation story, First Father raised the heavens on February 5, 542 days after his rebirth. With this act, he linked Earth to both heaven and the underworld (Xibalba) by erecting a World Tree, whose roots lay deep in the southern sky. A representation of the World Tree appears on the sarcophagus lid of the Emperor Pacal of Palenque, below. In this rendering, the roots of the World Tree are shown as the jaws of a crocodile while the ecliptic is depicted as a double-headed serpent bar crossing the World Tree at right angles.

This past year has seen major breakthroughs in the drawing together of Maya creation myth and astronomy, and in the linking of the work done by epigraphers, art historians, ethnologists, archaeologists, and archaeoastronomers. At the annual Maya Meetings at the University of Texas, Schele proposed a major new synthesis, one that links critical passages from the creation myth of the Popol Vuh to artistic, hieroglyphic, and ethnographic information contributed by a host of colleagues in the field. She argues that the story of Maya creation was mapped in the night sky, that acts critical to the world’s creation in Maya mythology were all elaborately played out in the movements of the Milky Way and a host of constellations including the Big Dipper, Scorpius, Orion, and Gemini.

The Maya story of creation, as written on a stela at the site of Quirigua in highland Guatemala, begins, “On the night of 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u [August 13] …they, the paddler gods, made the image of the three [hearth]stones appear…” According to this account, as interpreted by Schele, with the lighting of the hearth First Father comes into the world, reborn from the shell of a tortoise. Exactly 542 days later [February 5] he raises the sky and creates the World Tree, which takes the form of a vast crocodile at the center of the cosmos. With this act First Father divides earth and sky into eight partitions, sets time in motion by turning the heavens about a central poin, and links the earth to both the heavens and the underworld (Xibalba) with the World Tree, whose roots lay deep in the southern sky. The World Tree, according to Schele and others, takes its form as the Milky Way. As a canoe bearing the paddler gods, it transports First Father to his birthplace. As the road to Xibalba, it conveys the dead to the underworld.

The night of creation begins with the Milky Way/canoe stretching from east to west across the night sky. By dawn on this night, explains Schele, the three hearthstones are at zenith whithin the constellation Orion and are represented by the stars Alnitak (the southernmost in Orion’s belt), Rigel, and Saiph. At the center of the triangle formed by these three celestial bodies is the Orion nebula, alight with the glow of newborn stars—the hearth fire. The hearthstones are once again at zenith at dusk on February 5. During this night, the hearthstones sink toward the west, preceded by the Pleiades, a star cluster in the constellation Taurus that represented to the Maya a handful of maize seeds to be planted in the earth. Around midnight, the seeds bear fruit and the World Tree—the Milky Way—rises in the night sky.

themes in Maya art no doubt originated from celestial observations of this sort. Scholars like Schele note that the ecliptic—the path of the sun, moon, planets, and the constellations of the zodiac—is represented in Maya vase paintings by a double-headed serpent that crosses the World Tree at right angles on the night of creation. When the Milky Way lies in a north-south orientation on creation night, the ecliptic intersects it at similarly precise right angles. The double-headed serpent probably reflects the Maya observation that certain constellations like the zodiac undulate throughout the year, imitating the movement of a serpent.

“It’s like being able to read Genesis in the heavens,” says Schele, “Astronomers use mathematical formulas to describe the movement of the cosmos…the Maya used mythology. The texts carved on Maya vases are not just quaint stories told by an ancient people but rather precise descriptions of how the heavens changed throughout the year.” Some advocates of the new thinking like Barbara and Dennis Tedlock caution against excessive enthusiasm. Says Dennis Tedlock, “When the smoke clears, we’re going to find that some of the astronomy got pushed a bit too far.” He thinks Schele’s interpretation of the Milky Way as the World Tree is very much on target, as is her suggestion that the double-headed serpent depicted in Maya art represents the celestial path of the sun, moon, Venus, and the constellations of the zodiac. But Tedlock remains unconvinced that the Milky Way so clearly doubles as a celestial crocodile (a configuration for which, according to Schele, there are ample Aztec sources) and the canoe that carries the Maize God to the place of creation. Schele’s arguments do confirm what Barbara Tedlock has been suggesting for some time: that the Maya weren’t limited to “horizon-based astronomy”—calculations of celestial motions dependent on the horizon—but had fully mastered star-to-star astronomy, or “relational astronomy” as it is technically known.

Schele and others are also beginning to pay more attention to ethnography. “I think there is a tremendous amount of this ancient heritage that still survive,” she says. “The way in which the modern Maya organize their world is not some hybrid overview inherited from the Spanish; it comes from a very ancient stratum of indigenous thought. The Maya understanding of how the world works has millennia behind it. That may not seem a miracle to us, but for people who have had their history appropriated by others, who have been told that they exist only as a by-product of what the Spanish made them after the Conquest, that’s a bloody miracle!”

One thing is certain. Maya calculations were extremely accurate. In their fables they plotted t he stations of Venus over periods of 104 years or longer. Their almanacs indicated planetary cycles, lunar phases and eclipses, solstices and equinoxes, and a host of celestial motions by which they regulated their lives. Unfortunately, the burning of quantities of Maya literature in 1562 by the Spanish missionary Fray Diego de Landa leaves many questions about the  nature and practice of Maya astronomy unanswered—like how many and which gods were associated with the stars and constellations and how the various planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were tracked.

Perhaps even more important than the recent discoveries is the larger frame of reference that archaeoastronomy is beginning to unfold. Says Schele, “It seems that the interaction of astronomy and mythology was common in other cultures as well. Scholars working in South America have found similar kinds of systems in the Amazon. There may be something like it in Pawnee lore, and perhaps the Hopi have something resembling it. The Maya may have been using a way of thinking about the sky and using it in their mythology that was very ancient indeed. I’m even prepared to accept that much of the cosmology/mythology came straight across the Bering Strait, and that it may be 10,000 or 15,000 years old; it may be 20,000 years old. I think it may be possible that we have tapped into a very ancient stratum of human thought. If it did come across with the first Americans, then we may be in touch with one of the two or three great human intellectual traditions that we as a species have ever evolved, part of the fundamental ‘software’ that all the peoples of the Americas and Asia have utilized.” Schele cautions that proving such an hypothesis will be difficult, maybe impossible. Nonetheless, studies are under way.

The new thinking will no doubt spawn heated debate among archaeologists for years to come. For Mayanist Peter Mathews, the connections now being made between Maya myth and cosmology “open up a whole new world of discovery. We stand on the threshold of something truly new.”

Mediators in a Universal Discourse

by Anthony F. Aveni

Ancient Maya notions about the cosmos were quite different from those to which we subscribe today. They rested on a broader kind of faith; that the everyday human world was intimately related to the natural world and that these two worlds functioned in harmony. The universe was a distinct whole, with all parts intricately laced together, each aspect influencing the others. Nature and culture were one. Sky myths explained the unfolding of history, politics, social relations, and ideas about creation and life after death. The Maya forged links between the sky and just about every phase and component of human activity—what we call astrology. And they celebrated this knowledge not only in texts but also in art, architecture, and sculpture. Their universe was animate—breathing, teeming, vibrant, and interactive. The Maya talked to the stars, listened to the planets. They commended and evoked, restrained and constrained, made incantations, pressed their ears to the oracle. They saw themselves as mediators in a great universal discourse. At stake was the battle between fate and free will, between body and soul.

The Maya were motivated not by a desire to express the workings of nature in terms of inert mathematical equations, but rather by the need to know how to mediate an alliance between knowledge and human action. Today we might attribute a planet’s change of color to an atmospheric effect, a shift in position to a dynamic effect, an alteration in brightness to a distance effect. The Maya would carefully watch the color, brightness, position, and movement of the planets because they believed all of these properties considered together were indices of the power of the gods, whom they hoped to influence through dialogue. Maya cosmic myths like the Popol Vuh may strike us as amusing stories, but behind the planetary, solar, and lunar alliances lie real people asking the kinds of questions we no longer ask of the sky” What is the origin of gender and sex? Where does fertility—or for that matter any power—come from? Where do we go when we die? How can we know the future? Answers to many of their inquiries were framed in the metaphor of visible planetary characteristics and changes: descent and resurrection (particularly for Mercury and Venus), dyadic and triadic bonds (sun, moon, and Venus). No wonder all these concepts were so prevalent in the early sky mythologies that grew up in both Old and New World civilizations, for the planets look the same the world over.

Which came first, the myth or the sky observation? No one can really say, but I think watching the movement of lights in the sky surely must have served as a very early practical timekeeping device, at least for those cultures like the Maya who invested a great deal of effort in looking upward. Naming the phases of the moon for human activities that accompanied them, or associating the course of the sun across the zodiac or the orientation of the Milky Way with seasonal activities—these habits date back into history farther than any document can reach. Marrying the act of telling stories about everyday affairs to witnessing changes in the world of nature would be a logical way both to embellish life and to lend a meaningful structure to time. With the process of storytelling came the expansion into more fundamental and speculative questions: Where did we come from? What will happen to us in the future? Inn some instances, especially in highly structured societies like the Maya, the relationship between people and the sky became formalize through the ruling class. Cosmic myths expanded to extraordinary proportions and so did the temporal cycles that framed them. Scholars may debate where myth and history intersect in the writing they decipher on the Maya stelae, but we can be sure the rhyme and meter of these texts have their origin in the cosmos.

Shamanic Inquiry as Recovery of Indigenous Mind (PDF)

 

 

 

SHAMANIC INQUIRY

 

AS

 

RECOVERY OF INDIGENOUS MIND

 

 

 

Toward an egalitarian

exchange of knowledge

 

Published in:

Schenk & Ch. Rätsch (Eds.), 1999, What is a shaman?,

Journal for Ethnomedicine, special volume 13, 125 – 140.

Berlin: VWB – Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung

[Page numbers inserted below as P125 etc.]

 

 

Jürgen W. Kremer

3383 Princeton Drive

Santa Rosa, CA 95405

jkremer@sonic.net

 

 

[P125] Abstract

 

 

 

 [P126] Dreaming

A few years ago I had a dream which pertains to the issues at hand:

The location of the dream is Hamburg, the town where I grew up in Northern Germany. Sitting on the threshold in the doorway of a pre-war brick house beside my partner I overlook the river Elbe from on high. We are atop the ancient ice age rim of the river, the border of its once miles wide flow, thousands of years ago when reindeer roamed these latitudes. The reindeer now live much farther north, and the river moves in a much more narrow bed; yet it still spreads to considerable widths three hundred or so feet below us, where ferries criss-cross its course and ocean liners enter and leave the harbor. We are not just sitting atop an ancient river bed, but also very close to the old building where I went for Kindergarten shortly after the Second World War. At that time it was a place with a comforting huge tile stove and a garden with plants and trees inviting the imagination of children at play. I realize that there are achaeological excavations in process behind the old Kindergarten. Signs are put up all around it: No trespassing! Stay out! Not to be deterred, I leave my body at the moment of seeing these signs and enter the forbidden grounds. I hover over the ancient ruins which are uncovered thanks to the work of the archaeological team. A round, towerlike structure emerging from the depths of the ground is clearly visible. It appears to extend a good ways into the earth. I understand that this is an ancestral ceremonial structure, as are other similar ones right next to it. The name of the place where this dig into ancient cultural history occurs is Altona[P127] meaning “all-too-near.” Legend has it that an orphan was blindfolded when the burghers of Hamburg wanted to expand their overpopulated city. The idea was to place the new town where the orphan would stumble and fall. But what happened was unexpected. The boy had barely left the city gates, when he stumbled and fell. The attendant burghers exclaimed in surprise that this was all too near, in the local vernacular:  “All to nah!”  – thence the name for this part of the city – Altona. The place where I gain access to the layers below the contemporary city and old ancestral cultural memories is all too close in this dream, right there with my childhood, and fenced in by signs forbidding entry.

 

I wake up bringing with me not only the memory of the dream images, but its self-interpretation at the end. This dream contained an answer to the curiosity and spiritual hunger which I had tried to satisfy since adolescence through the study of native peoples and shamanism in particular.

 

This dream and the image of the abstract at the beginning define my approach to shamanic inquiry. They also point to the cultural struggle of “the west.” The key to shamanic inquiry in the eurocentered context is the remembrance in itself of what it seeks in other peoples – recovering indigenous mind. Cultural history and the prevailing definitions of scientific inquiry make such a project difficult, to say the least. Native American intellectual John Mohawk has put it thus: “I do not want people to adopt Indian rituals because I want people to own their own rituals. I want them to come to ownership out of experiences that are real to them. Then I’ll come and celebrate it with them.”

 

Let me circumlocute this dream by responding to the editors’ request to present my personal interpretation of shamanism. The following statements are purposefully succinct and provocative; they are presented in no particular order or hierarchy. A theorem is the result of something seen (Greek qewrew), whether as mental speculation or at a spectacle or performance. I offer what I have speculated and seen of proceedings shamanic as “conversation pieces” arranged around the dream and the image initially given. This is what I have learned from my work with Native Elders, shamans, medicine people, and noaidis. As such they are my personal contribution to an ancient immanent conversation. This particular conversation disallows artificial splits between the concrete and abstract, between the personal-biographical and the impersonal-general, between transcendent and immanent, etc. It is integral in the profoundest sense of the word. I have presented arguments for my approach elsewhere, references to these publications are inserted behind technical terms or statements warranting explication. Here I am describing my perspective in a personal way. I am doing this with awareness of my maleness, and my mixed Germanic ancestry. I am also quite conscious of my current location in the U.S., and the impact Native American intellectuals and spiritual leaders have had on me. I write for Europeans and people of European descent; others engaged in a eurocentered consciousness process need to see what useful things they may or may not glean from this. I paint black and white, what truly isn’t black and white at all – but all this may be a good starting point for a conversation.

 

 

[P128]

Conversation Piece #1

Shamanism is a construct which mirrors eurocentric thinking.

The Ism of shamanism is the part “made up” or constructed by the early ethnographers and anthropologists serving the abstracting and universalizing pursuit of truth as defined in the western sciences. This definition of science is inherently imperialistic, as it relinquishes its participation in the phenomena in order to grasp and control what is left to be seen after the act of dissociation (1992b). Thus, as shamanism attempts to grasp the desired knowledge it may reflect more of itself in the mirror, than of the native peoples it is interacting with. In this sense the Ism of shamanism is all made up by eurocentric thinking. At this historical juncture I feel an obligation for specific cultural healing to the Tungus ªaman whose exposure to Russian visitors in the 17th century presumably led to the terminology of shamanism (see Voigt, 1984, for a discussions of the etymology and history of the word shaman); had ethnographers written in a similar vein about the yomtas of the Pomo-Miwok people, or the noaidis of the Sámi people, or the volvas of the Norse people, or the hataalis of the Diné people, we now might have the Ism of Yomtism, Noaidism, Volvism, or Hataalism. My interest is in the specificity of the immanent conversation, not just in order to pay hommage to cultural diversity, but to continue and affirm the specific indigenous knowledge (whether ecological, medical, astronomical, or otherwise) which can help us in our times of crisis. The most important questions to ask for any inquirer into matters shamanic is: What is the construction, what is the conversation I am participating in, if I am to inquire into what I am interested in? The Ism is the part where the labors of eurocentric social constructions are most visible, and where the loss of specific understanding of people, places, times, stories, and ceremonies needs to be recovered; the ªaman (or noaidi or yomta) is where the power of individual, cultural, and ecological healing rests through the specificity of the conversation.

 

Conversation Piece #2

Reflection upon and awareness of one’s own cultural viewpoint is a mandatory prerequisite for participation in the conversation.

I view shamanism as a particular aspect of an ancient, immanent conversation which indigenous people all over are continuing to this day (1996b, g, 1997e). This conversation is summarized in the graphic of the abstract. It is defined by its conscious participation in the phenomena (rather than a distancing view of the phenomena; 1992b). People of European descent or people who have entered the eurocentered process of consciousness have split themselves off from this ongoing interaction with place, ancestry, animals, plants, spirit(s), community, story, ceremony, cycles of life, and cycles of the seasons and ages. This dissociation has created a conceptualization of social evolution, in which a major shift has occurred from prehistory to history, from oral traditions to writing civilizations, from the immanent presence of spirit(s) to the transcendence of god(s). In my [P129] analysis, we engage in acts of imperialism – however subtle they may be – as long as we don’t understand our own shamanic and indigenous roots. I find it only legitimate to write about shamanism if what I write is true to my own shamanic tradition (even when and especially when writing about others). We can only be proper participants in shamanic exchange and dialogue if we know who we are as indigenous people. Otherwise we should take our hands off of other cultures. (1996a, 1994a, e).

 

Conversation Piece #3

The inquirer as partner in dialogue.

So, why do inquiry – even shamanic inquiry as recovery of indigenous mind? I can only think of one good reason: To resume an ancient conversation, which has balance as a goal (rather than control and progress), in order to be able to redress the ill effects wrought by an obsession with technological progress, an increase in population, etc. For me to become a partner in dialogue I need to recover my own indigenous roots, not to recreate a past long gone, but to move into the future in a complete, holistic conversation. If this is the context for dialogical inquiry, then there is no privileged access to knowledge nor a privileged preservation of knowledge; “Truth” has become truths or “temporary resolutions” to the issues at hand. As part of such conversation and dialogue it may become apparent that there are certain things to be said, and certain things which we need to be silent about (in our own tradition or in traditions we are exchanging with). (1997e, 1996a, f, 1994d)

 

Conversation Piece #4

If I don’t know who I am as an indigenous person, I should not write about other indigenous people.

Fundamentally, in my book there is no legitimate inquiry about shamanism unless I know who I am as an indigenous person. Of course, as a consequence of knowing that (or parts of that)  the need for inquiry and the nature of inquiry change entirely. If I know who I am as an indigenous or cultural person (however fragmented that understanding may be), then I may be able to relate to other native peoples (peoples still practicing shamanism) as an equal partner in dialogue, rather than arrive as an outsider intent on finding “Truth” (the implicit assumption of the eurocentered paradigm is that this “Truth” then ultimately should also become the tribe’s “Truth” as evolution continues, and the tribe investigated advances on the evolutionary ladder, thus presumably incorporating the “Truth” of self-defined more advanced civilizations). Of course, my guiding interests in shamanic inquiry are bound to change as I understand and remember myself as a person with indigenous roots. As long as we think writing about shamanism is about “them,” we remain unconscious of shamanism in us. (1996a, 1994h)

[P130]

 

Conversation Piece #5

Shamanism is just one aspect of the immanent conversation of native peoples.

For me it is important to keep in mind that what is commonly understood as shamanism is just one aspect of a complex set of cultural practices. (It should be noted that the terms “shaman” and “shamanism” are problematic for many indigenous peoples, Native Americans in particular.) To split the indigenous conversation in such a way that healing endeavors become highlighted serves eurocentered research approaches and their knowledge construction, but distorts what is known by virtue of decontextualization. What appears as unusual, inexplicable or even bizarre through this lense may have entirely different connotations if seen as part of the holistic indigenous conversation. Thus we exaggerate the unusualness of phenomena, ultimately only trivializing it because it is denuded of what it is a natural part of. It splits individual healing from communal or cultural healing, it neglects that individual illness is situated in the context of a process of cultural balancing – history, place, story, ceremony, etc. For me this means that my shamanic inquiry requires that I participate in the entire conversation, and understand healing from that perspectve. “To heal” is etymologically connected with the German heilen, and the indo-european root *kailo-, referring to a state and process of wholeness (“whole” also being related to this root). But “to heal” is also connectect to “holy” (as is heilen to heilig), which gives an ancient root to the reemergent wholistic and transpersonal perspectives on healing. Lincoln (1986, 118) concludes his analysis of “healing” in the indo-european context by stating “that it is not just a damaged body that one restores to wholeness and health, but the very universe itself. … The full extent of such knowledge is now revealed in all its grandeur: the healer must understand and be prepared to manipulate nothing less than the full structure of the cosmos.” For what is stated here regarding the older layers of indo-european thinking we can find analogies in contemporary indigenous traditions, such as the Navajo chantways. (1997h, 1996a, b, g).

 

Conversation Piece #6

Recovery of indigenous mind is the appropriate contemporary definition of shamanism for people of eurocentered consciousness.

Shamanism is commonly defined as the practice of some form of “technology” (including intentional alterations of consciousness) for the benefit of individuals or a community, conducted by practitioners who have been endorsed by this community. It is my contention that the appropriate contemporary practice of shamanism for people ensconced in the eurocentered paradigm is the recovery of their indigenous roots (and this way their own “shamanic” traditions, “shamanic” being a word probably more appropriate for people of Eurasian descent than anybody else). This is the starting point from which all manners of shamanic healing may arise. This then is a healing process on behalf of the individual, family history, history, community; in short, it is the healing of the [P131] dissociative split and the recovery of participation in the phenomena. Physical and psychological healing are a particular aspects of this. Shamanic inquiry becomes recovery of indigenous mind, which becomes the resumption of the ancient, immanent conversation. Ecologist Wolfgang Sachs talks about the necessity to develop the social imagination for sustainability; it is my contention that we can develop such imagination through the restitution of the indigenous consciousness process, where we can inquire about and understand the needs of all participants in a particular place and time. Balance may thus be regained. To presume that any such project of recovery work can arrive within one lifetime at the level of immanent conversation still practiced by contemporary native peoples (even in the face of colonization) would by hubris – recovering the indigenous consciousness process after a prolonged history of dissociation is a multigenerational project.

 

Conversation Piece #7

We need to travel in a way which does not touch “the other” with the virus of progress.

How then are we to travel to other places and do inquiry about shamanic traditions? Maybe we are not to travel there. The minute we cease and desist the “othering” of shamanic cultures we have to question deeply why we are traveling and where we are going. If we aspire to be partners in dialogue, then any conversation requires mutual consent. Additionally, it requires the consent of all participants in the conversation. This means, for example, that I cannot travel without my ancestors. It also means that I need a welcome from the ancestors of where I want to go. Thus it takes an invitation from the partners in dialogue, but it also takes permission from ones own indigenous culture. Dreams are important here. Offerings and conversation with spirit(s) are mandatory. And more. I know that as long as I don’t travel within the framework of this immanent conversation I am bound to infect wherever I go with the virus of dissociation and progress. I can only travel once the other has ceased to be other for me. (See McGrane, 1989 for relevant discussions; Kremer, 1994a).

 

 

Conversation Piece #8

The hunger for shamanism is the denial of the indigenous roots from which eurocentered thinking originated.

The current interest in shamanism reflects more than just a “legitimate research field” (in the scientific view), which is finally receiving some acknowledgement (of course, the legitimacy of this interest is tautologically defined and justified by the scientific paradigm itself). With it comes a cultural hunger created by the loss of indigenous conversations in eurocentered societies. The fascination with exotic other cultures, the nostalgic yearning [P132] for something ideal in the past, or the romantic images of Native Americans riding the plains or retreating into kivas on remote mesas – all this originates from cultural starvation. Of course, there is an incredible amount we can learn from indigenous peoples in general, and shamanism specifically, which may benefit our modernist pathologies, provided this learning occurs in an appropriate context. And, of course, indigenous peoples have never lived in a perfect world, the ideal of balance is always and at best a fleeting achievement. Traditional Hopi stories describing situations where things are out of balance (koyaanisqatsi) are very educational in this regard; see the Hopi Ruin Legends (Lomatuway’ma et al., 1993). Our idealizations are the flip side of evolutionary thinking, and an expression of its shadow. The projection of our hunger onto other cultural traditions is not going to satisfy the emptiness in ourselves. In a sense it is junk food. Being nurtured by our own indigenous traditions and nurturing them in return is what will satisfy and stop idealizations, romanticism, and nostalgia. The research of other cultures and the incorporation of their practices without consent is only legitimate, as long as we act within a dissociative paradigm. Once we regain our own immanent conversation, inquiry and exchange of ceremonial practices need to await guidance from the conversation of all parties involved – ancestors, communities, plants, animals, stars, and all. Or, in the words of Jung: “Shall we be able to put on, like a new suit of clothes, ready-made symbols grown on foreign soil, saturated with foreign blood, spoken in a foreign tongue, nourished by a foreign culture, interwoven with foreign history, and so resemble a beggar who wraps himself in kingly raiment, a king who disguises himself as beggar? No doubt this is possible. Or is there something in ourselves that commands us to go in for no mummeries, but perhaps to sew our garment ourselves?” (1970, 49)

 

 

Converation Piece #9

The cross-cultural differences between indigenous and eurocentered peoples is qualitative, rather than quantitative.

Another way of saying this is: Cross-cultural differences between eurocentered peoples are of the same order, and cross-cultural differences between indigenous peoples are of the same order, but the differences between these two groups are of a different order or quality. I have defined the evolutionary trajectory of the so-called civilizing process as dissociative schismogenesis (1992b, c). This is a run-away pathological process, where the split from one’s origin increases in an addictive dynamic governed by progress ideologies, and where the loss of awareness of one’s root has tremendous power. Phenomena are seen as entirely external, and one’s participation in the phenomena is unconscious. – On the other hand, the immanent conversation of native peoples is aware of its active participation in the creation of the phenomena. The (explicit or implicit) goal of the conversation is not some transcendent state or some evolutionary goal set in the future; the goal is balance within each individual, between individuals, and among all participants of the conversation, balance within the cycles of the different world ages, balance as hunters, [P133] horticulturalists, gatherers or pastoralists, balance as sedentary people or nomads. – This qualitative difference between these two groups of cultures leads to tremendous interactive problems, which remain largely veiled for eurocentric folk. They are the proverbial apples and oranges. The dissociative inquirer can only approach the participative conversation qua dissociative means – resulting in an imperialistic acquisition of knowledge. The participative conversation, because of its values, usually welcomes dissociative inquirers, even when their pathology is apparent (the traditional worldview usually makes such open door policy practically mandatory, and frequently disregards the significant qualitative difference in paradigm, a difference which is also politically highly relevant). The truth generated by this approach (whether in one of the sciences or as new age spiritual practice) is, in final analysis, a validation for the conversation of the dominant paradigm. The indigenous conversation has no need for research other than the ceremonial and spiritual inquiry into what is needed for balancing in a particular place at a specific time in history. To my mind that is more research than most of us can handle. Exchanges with other indigenous cultures are guided by the contents of this conversation. – Wislawa Szymborska’s poem Conversation with a stone describes the distinction I am talking about aptly: ” “You shall not enter,” says the stone. // “You lack the sense of taking part. // No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. // Even sight heightened to become all-seeing // will do you no good without a sense of taking part. // You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be, // only its seed, imagination.” ” – These differences in paradigm can easily be illustrated in the area of physical healing, say with herbs: Within the eurocentered paradigm we pick an herb for its curative properties known to relieve a certain ailment. Herb collection is an entirely different event within an indigenous context. Here, it is a ceremonial event which involves spirit, and, especially, the spirits of the plant to be collected. It is a participatory event with the plant relations which presupposes detailed knowledge, including knowledge of their “language.” It requires knowledge of cycles and preparations necessary for gathering. It means understanding plants like any other intelligent people. This is no longer the collection of an herb, but an engagement and appointment with spirit to help heal. What heals is more than the beneficial chemical ingredient in the herb.

 

Conversation Piece #10

Dialog partners have the historic task of healing the history of projective identification in relation to indigenous peoples.

In relation to indigenous peoples colonialism is always an essential ingredient in the context of exchange, dialogue or research. The euro-centered, well-bounded ego frequently cannot see this deep structure of such encounters, which is present whether talked about or left unspoken or unconscious. It is this ego, which is likely to project from its personality make-up whatever it has dissociated from into its own past or onto indigenous peoples. In fact, projective identification may be the most apt clinical term to point to the [P134] psycho-emotional process eurocentered cultures are engaged in with contemporary indigenous peoples (this term also acknowledges that history is carried and handed down specifically in the process of socialization within each individual). Projective identification means that other people are made to feel the highly conflicted and split off material dominant cultures unconsciously injected into them – so that they feel and experience it as if it is their own. Natives feel the eurocentered dissociation from prehistory, ancestry, nature, etc. as self-hatred (“primitives”) which is destructive to their cultures. Of course, self-hatred as an effect of internalized colonization warrants a much longer statement than I can offer here. Notably, in individual psychotherapy projective identification is known to be a pathological process oftentimes quite resistant to change because of its strongly self-reinforcing nature; this would seem to imply that we can assume strong resistance to the healing of the history of colonialism in the relationship between indigenous and eurocentered cultures. I would think that the retraction of these projections is the first order of business; for this we need a different metaphor than “regression in the service of the ego”, which is appropriate for individual psychotherapy. I suggest that the integration of history and prehistory qua connection with indigenous roots (recovering indigenous mind) is an appropriate terminology. The reintegration of cultural shadow material presupposes the possibility of an ego – the indigenous ego in communal conversation, if you wish – which would be differently constructed than our contemporary ego can easily imagine. The revival of shamanic practices can be an aspect of the resolution of historically determined shadow material – or it may perpetrate the denial further.

 

Conversation Piece #11

Psychologizing spirit(s) misses the mark.

For Europeans and Euroamericans the easiest way – other than by anthropological means – to approach native peoples and their shamanism is probably via psychology, particularly transpersonal pyschology. This seems to be the current moving force within eurocentered societies, where the influence of psychological thinking has increased steadily over the years. Joseph Campbell’s approach to mythology and Jung’s archetypal psychology offer attractive avenues in this regard. While these and others can be extremely helpful for people of euro-centered consciousness, they easily become problematic projections when applied to native peoples. Jung himself had actually quite a good understanding of this when he looked toward alchemy as an earlier tradition in his own background or when he stated: “A spiritual need has produced in our time the “discovery” of psychology.” While various forms of psychology may open the door to the remembrance of an indigenous mind process for people of European descent, even transpersonal psychology is hardly identical with it. It is important to be aware that an archetype is not a spirit. Psychologizing spirit is a way of preserving and affirming eurocentered thinking. Faris (1990, 12) has summarized this succinctly in his discussion of the Jungian interpretations of Navajo traditions: ” Such motions … are still popular and [P135] continue to be attractive to both romantics and humanists who seem interested in fitting Navajo belief into some variety of universal schema – reducing its own rich logic to but variation and fodder for a truth derived from Western arrogances – even if their motivations are to elevate it.” To my mind the prerequisite for writing about shamanism is that spirits are or have been present to the author. Otherwise it seems more appropriate to be silent about a universe only partly seen.

 

Conversation Piece #12

Remembering indigenous roots is medicine.

It seems so much easier to see the “medicine” in a plant, a feather or a stone people lodge (sweat) – and it is so much harder to see the medicine offered by the confrontation with history. The land I live on now is not my ancestral land – it is the ancestral land of the Ramaytush-speaking people of the San Francisco peninsula, the first people of this particular land with a name we still remember, the original keepers of this land. The beauty of the land I live on has suffered from the devastating consequences of technological progress. I live in a society where the destruction of its aboriginal cultures is scarcely acknowledged and is not mourned by the majority of people; living in this society I am in a certain way complicit in the ongoing perpetration of racism and cultural genocide. Yet, I also live in a city which seems to be among the most comfortably and richly multicultural places in the U.S., with less pollution than in many other metropolitan areas. My Germanic ancestry puts me in the gateway of the Shoah. I recall Hitler’s perversions of mythology in the service of genocide; I will never forget the image of the Germanic goddess Nerthus cattle-drawn past Hitler, which I saw in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I recall the aberrations of the Vikings, their vicious slaughters and conquering – another guardian at the threshold. Passing these and more guardians, witnessing what they hold, is to heal old collective wounds as they have been passed down to me as an individual, passed down consciously and unconsciously. These guardians don’t stand at the threshold simply to propagate guilt. The guardians are medicine for the collective shadow of the Western world. They are the medicine of remembrance with all that it entails, be it fear, pain, guilt, anger. Ancestry and stories of origins and homeland have been abused for various ideological purposes, usually right-wing and fascistic. The story of our cultural self-understanding is open-ended, necessarily. The exposure to the medicine of the guardians is mandatory in order to counter chauvinistic or nationalistic abuses. The healing power – for individual as well as collective healing – of the witnessing of history with all its perversions, twists, and contradictions, is a) a prerequisite for anybody of European descent as part of shamanic work, and b) in a profound sense more powerful than any animal bone or feather that one might want to pick up.

[P136]

Boring Things

I am bored with the shifting fashions of shamanic inquiry and New Age appropriations – yesterday the Australian aborigines, now the Siberian tribes. I am bored with the fashions of charismatic figures and the disempowerment of seekers.

 

Exciting Things

I am excited about the possibility of the disappearance of the white man (‘white man’ in the sense of the masculinization of the phenomena through eurocentric consciousness). I am excited about the possibility of resuming ancient forms of knowledge exchange, where we all might mirror each other through the original instructions we all received (while taking care of the teaching circles or instructions from the tree of life). I am excited about developing evolutionary thinking which gets us off the linear trajectory through the remembrance of all of our traditional stories (the cycles of history as evolution). I am excited about the possibility to see the history of our planet spoken in multivocality, which respects not only different traditions, but takes care of each place and time to the best of our ancient understandings for today. I am excited about the possibility of universal connection through specificity of knowledge trade rather than dissociation and abstraction. I am excited about the possibility that the oppositions between cultural relativism and scientism may resolve itself into the universalism of the knowledge exchange among immanent conversations.

 

Shamanic Career

The outline of my “shamanic career” can be given briefly: During adolescence I developed a benign form of cancer, a bone tumor. The surgery and subsequent healing process prevented me from undertaking a journey which I had dreamed of since childhood: I had won a scholarship at my school to visit the northernmost part of Scandinavia – Sápmi – and to go to a place which lived most vividly in my imagination: Girkonjárga (which I knew then only as the Kirkenes of the Norwegian language). Many years later I had an unexpected experience which jolted me out of the life course I was on (the practice of clinical psychology), and – finally – led me to that very place in Sápmi: During an experience – commonly labelled “out of body experience” – I appeared as an agent in what seemed a healing for another person. This embarked me on an exploration of various alternate forms of healing, primarily those called ‘shamanic.’ I spent time with shamans and medicine people from various cultures, including Navajo, Cherokee, Pomo-Miwok, Japanese, Cambodian; I travelled incessantly to the tribes and archaeological sites of the Southwestern U.S. In addition to studying these various traditions I fasted, danced, and sweated. I also explored what various proponents of New Age shamanism had to offer – [P137] some of these people were native, some of them not so native or fake native, all of them were decontextualized in one form or another. As I listened to them and researched their claims the meaning of their decontextualization became increasingly apparent to me. After years of study with and of traditional, non-traditional, and anti-traditional people I realized that I could not be a participant in indigenous endeavors unless I knew who I was as an indigenous person. The work with my Oneida colleague, Dr. Pamela Colorado, was instrumental for this process; her conceptualization of “indigenous science” has impacted much of my work. The realization regarding my own indigenous roots led me to review my relationships with people who had taught me and who I had researched, and resulted in a deep exploration of my Germanic ancestry. I worked through some of the shame and embarassment which had prevented me in the past from looking at the older layers of Nordic history. I finally began taking trips not just back to Germany, but to the last remaining people in Europe living in an indigenous frame of mind, the Saami people of the far north of Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula, the land they call Sápmi or Saami Eatnan. The meetings with the members of PRATEC from Lima, Peru – facilitated by Frederique Apffel-Marglin – were influential in my own conceptualizations of immanent conversation (particularly thanks to conversations with the late Eduardo Grillo). Out of the many Saami people who met with me during my travels the ongoing work with Biret-Máret Kallio is of particular significance for my recovery work and its conceptualizations. […] (See 1997a, c, 1996e for extensive autobiographical material.)

 

Influences

It seems customary to think about influences in terms of books and teachers. For me other storehouses, “libraries”, or “universities” for ancient knowledge have been at least equally significant, namely rock art and archaeological and sacred sites. On the continent where I live the rock knowledge of the Southwestern U.S. (Horse Shoe Canyon, and innumerable other sites), and sacred places like Chaco Canyon, White House Ruin, Spider Rock, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and others have been of tremendous importance for me. In Europe the rock knowledge of sacred sites in Bohuslän, Nämforsen, and Jiebmaluokta in particular, and places like Čeavceageađge have been of particular significance. Early on the work of Stanley Krippner and the contacts he provided were influential. Other than Colorado, Wilkinson, Kallio, and PRATEC the works by Pentekäinen, Valkeapää, Mohawk, Deloria, Churchill, McGrane, Faris deserve particular mention. The many native teachers who have generously shared their knowledge and ceremonies are gratefully acknowledged.

[…]

[P138-140]

References

Churchill, W. (1992). Fantasies of the master race. Monroe, ME: Common Courage.

Churchill, W. (1995). Since predator came. Littleton, CO: Aigis.

Colorado, P. (1988). Bridging native and western science. Convergence, XXI, 2/3, 49-67.

Colorado, P. (1989). “Indian science” from fire and ice. In J. Bruchac (ed.), New voices from the longhouse. New York: Greenfield Review Press.

Colorado, P. (1991). A meeting between brothers. Beshara, 13, Summer 1991, 20-27.

Colorado, P. (1994). Indigenous science and western science – a healing convergence. Presentation at the World Sciences Dialog I. New York City, April 25-27.

Colorado, P. (1996). Indigenous science. ReVision, Vol. 18 (3), 6-10.

Deloria, V. (1993). If you think about it you will see that it is true. Noetic Sciences Review, 27, 62-71.

Deloria, V. (1995). Red earth, white lies. NY: Scribner

Deloria, V. (1996). If you think about it, you will see that it is true. ReVision, 18(3), 37-44.

Dion-Buffalo, Y. & J. Mohawk. (1994). Throughts from an autochtonous center. Cultural Survival, Winter, 33-35.

Faris, J.C. (1990). The nightway. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Jung, C.G. (1970). Psychological reflections. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Quote from collected works 10, 26f.)

Kallio, B.-M. (1996). Noaidi – jemand, der sieht. Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 6(1), 59-77.

Krippner, S. & A. Villoldo. (1976). The realms of healing. Millbrae, CA: Celestial Arts.

Krippner, S. & P. Welch (1992). Spiritual dimensions of healing New York: Irvington.

Krippner, S. (1986). Dreams and the development of a personal mythology. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 7(2-3), 449 – 461.

Krippner, S. (1995). The use of altered conscious states in North and South American Indian shamanic healing rituals. In R. van Quekelberghe & D. Eigner (Eds.), Jahrbuch für transkulturelle Medizin und Psychotherapie. Trance, Besessenheit, Heilrituale und Psychotherapie. Berlin:VWB.

Lincoln, B. (1986). Myth, cosmos, and society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lomatuway’ma, M., L. Lomatuway’ma, S. Namingha & E. Malotki (1993). Kiqötutuwutsi – Hopi ruin legends. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University.

McGrane, B. (1989). Beyond anthropology. NY: Columbia.

Pentkäinen, J. (1984). The Sámi shaman. In M. Hoppál (ed.), Shamanism in Eurasia. Göttingen, Germany: edition herodot.

Szymborska, W. (1995). view with a grain of sand. NY: Harcourt Brace.

Valkeapää, N.-A. (1985). Trekways of the wind. Guovdageaidnu, Norway: DAT.

Valkeapää, N.-A. (1991). Beaivi, Áh_á_an. Guovdageaidnu, Norway: DAT.

Valkeapää, N.-A. (1996). Poems from Trekways of the wind. ReVision, 18(3), 45-48.

Voigt, V. (1984). Shaman – Person or word? In M. Hoppál (ed.), Shamanism in Eurasia (part 1) (13-20). Göttingen, Germany: edition herodot.

Wilkinson, T. (1996). Persephone returns. Berkeley, CA: Pagemill.

 

Publications pertaining to my summary of shamanic inquiry

(1997a) Recovering indigenous mind. ReVision, 19(4).

(1997b). Transforming learning transforming. ReVision, 20(1); see also (1994k).

(1997c). BeFORe Gimbutas. ReVision, 20(1)

(1997d). Introduction to special issue on transformative learning. ReVision, 20(1)

(1997e). Editor of a ReVision issue (vol. 20, #1) on Transformative Learning

(1997f). Editor (with Joseph Prabhu) of a ReVision issue (vol. 19, #4) on Alternative Perspectives on Development

(1997g). Editor of a ReVision issue (vol. 19, #3) on Indigenous Science – Further Contributions.

(1997h) Die Schattenseiten evolutionären Denkens – Ken Wilber als Beispiel (Teil II). Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 6(2).

(1997i). Übersetzung des Artikels Noaidi von Biret-Máret Kallio. Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 6(1), 59-77.

(1996a) The Possibility Of Recovering Indigenous European Perspectives On Native Healing Practices. Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen , 5(2),149-164.

(1996b) The shadow of evolutionary thinking. ReVision, 19(1), 41-48.

(1996c) Lingering shadows. ReVision, 19(2), 43-44.

(1996d) The shadow of evolutionary thinking (enlarged article). In submission for reader edited by Rothberg and Kelly on Ken Wilber and the future of transpersonal inquiry – A spectrum of views.

(1996e) Mind on fire. ReVision, 19(3); at press

(1996f) Introduction to special issue on indigenous science. ReVision, 19(3); at press

(1996g) Die Schattenseiten evolutionären Denkens – Ken Wilber als Beispiel (Teil I). Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 6(1), 41-58.

(1996h). Editor of a ReVision issue (Vol. 18, #3) on Indigenous Science.

(1995a) Evolving into what and for whose purpose?. ReVision, Winter 1996, 18(3),27-36.

(1995b) Introduction: Indigenous science. ReVision, Winter 1996, 18(3), 2-5.

(1994a). Seidr or trance? ReVision, Spring 1994, 16(4), 183-191

(1994b). Trance postures (with Stanley Krippner). ReVision, Spring 1994, 16(4), 173-182.

(1994c). Foreword (with Jean Achterberg). ReVision, Spring 1994, 16(4), 147

(1994d). Shamanic tales of power. In: van Quekelberghe (ed.), Trance, Possession, Healing Rituals, and Psychotherapy / Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy 1994(pp. 153-180). Mainz, Germany: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung.

(1994e). Perspectives on indigenous healing. Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1995, 13-18.

(1994f). Indigenous science for euro-americans, In R. I. Heinze (Ed.),  Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Modes of Healing. Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1994g).Traditional Knowledge Leads to a Ph.D. [Interview with Pamela Colorado and Jürgen Kremer, by Richard Simonelli] Winds of Change 9(4), 43-48.

(1994h). Euro-americans, retribalize! Printed in 1994k

(1994i). On understanding indigenous healing practices. Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 4(1), 3-36. (1995)

(1994j). Practices for the postmodern shaman? In R. I. Heinze (Ed.),  Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Modes of Healing. Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1994k). Looking for Dame Yggdrasil. Red Bluff, CA: Falkenflug Press.

(1993a) The past and future process of mythology, In R. I. Heinze (Ed.),  Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Modes of Healing. Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia. [In press]

(1993b). Co-guest editor (with Jean Achterberg) of a ReVision issue (Vol. 16, #4) on Trance and Healing – Psychology Biology and Culture.

(1992a) Culture and ways of knowing. ReVision, Spring 1992, 14(4), 167. [Foreword]

(1992b). The dark night of the scholar. ReVision, Spring 1992, 14(4), 169-178.

(1992c). Culture and ways of knowing – Part II. ReVision, Summer 1992, 15(1),3. [Foreword]

(1992d). Whither dark night of the scholar? ReVisions, Summer 1992, 15(1), 4-12.

(1992e). Prolegomena shamanica. Red Bluff, CA: Falkenflug Press.

(1992g). Guest editor of two ReVision issues (Vol. 14, #4 and Vol. 15, #1) on Culture and Ways of Knowing

(1992h). Memory Lightning Memory. ReVision, 1992, 15(1), backcover. [Story.]

(1991a). Contemporary shamanism and the evolution of consciousness – Reflections on Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances. Open Eye, 8(3), 4-5,9.

(1990a) Vincent Van Gogh: “Great artist and failure in initiation?”. In R. I. Heinze (Ed.),  Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Modes of Healing (pp. 151-161). Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1990b) Sacred crafts (with Debra White). In R. I. Heinze (Ed.),  Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Modes of Healing (pp. 176-185). Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1989a) The shaman’s body. In R. I. Heinze (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Models of Healing (pp. 375-384). Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1989b) Authentic traditions and their confrontations with Western knowledge. Journal of Navajo Education, Winter 1989, VI, 3-12.

(1988a). Tales of Power. In R. I. Heinze (Ed.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Models of Healing (pp. 31-49). Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1988b). Shamanic tales as ways of personal empowerment. In G. Doore (Ed.), Shaman’s Path: Healing, Personal Growth, and Empowerment (pp. 189-199). Boston, MA: Shambala.

(1988c) Metanoia – Tales of power and epistemological learning. Journal of Learning, 1(1), 28-43.

(1987). The shaman and the epistemologer. In R. I. Heinze (Ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Study of Shamanism And Alternate Models of Healing (pp. 7 – 21). Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia.

(1986). The human science approach as discourse. Saybrook Review, 6,65-105.

 

 

The Shadow of Evolutionary Thinking (PDF)

The Shadow of Evolutionary Thinking

Jürgen W. Kremer

 

This version is a slightly edited compilation of the following publications:

(1998). The shadow of evolutionary thinking. In D. Rothberg & S. Kelly, Ken Wilber in Dialogue (pp. 237-258). Wheaton, Illinois: Quest. (Reprint of 1996)

(1998). Lingering Shadows. In D. Rothberg and S. Kelly, Ken Wilber in Dialogue (391-393). Wheaton, IL: Quest. (Reprint of 1996)

(1997). Probleme mit Ken Wilber’s evolutionären kognitionspsychologischen Annahmen. Teil II. Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 6(2), 132-158.

(1996). Probleme mit Ken Wilber’s evolutionären kognitionspsychologischen Annahmen. Teil I. Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 6(1), 41-58.

(1996). The shadow of evolutionary thinking. ReVision, 19(1), 41-48.

(1996). Lingering shadows. ReVision, 19(2), 43-44.

To all my ancestors!

To all my ancestral relations!

To all my relations!

When I try to fathom what it means to be alive these days in 1996, what my obligation as an individual may be, then I have to be present in a variety of ways. Let me first speak more personally before I explicate my major points in a more theoretical way. I have made an attempt in the style of this paper to reflect my understanding of the indigenous mind process as I am recovering it (see Kremer 1994, 1995a, b, c, 2002). This is why I begin with an honoring, continue with a personal story as an evocation of the recovery of the indigenous mind process identifying the specific place from which I speak, and proceed to a description of indigenous consciousness in a contemporary society. I finish the article with yet more descriptions of the indigenous mind process. In this sense the paper is a compromise between the more common academic writing style (of the middle part of the paper) and indigenous presentations, including my own attempt to speak from a recovered indigenous perspective.

I. RECOVERING MY INDIGENOUS CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS

At the threshold of this coming-to-be-present I encounter a variety of guardians: The land I live on is not my ancestral land – it is the ancestral land of the Ramaytush-speaking people of the San Francisco peninsula, the first people of this particular land with a name we still remember; for the purposes of dealing with the shadow of evolutionary thinking the original keepers of this land. The beauty of the land I live on has suffered from the devastating consequences of technological progress – overpopulation, overbuilding, pollution of the waters, pollution of the air… I live in a society where the destruction of its aboriginal cultures is scarcely acknowledged and is not mourned by the majority of people; living in this society I am in a certain way complicit in the ongoing perpetration of racism and cultural genocide. Yet, I also live in a city which seems to be among the most comfortably and richly multicultural places in the U.S., with less pollution than in many other metropolitan areas.

My Germanic ancestry puts me in the gateway of the Holocaust. I recall Hitler’s perversions of mythology in the service of genocide; I will never forget the image of the Germanic goddess Nerthus cattle-drawn past Hitler, which I saw in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I recall the aberrations of the Vikings, their vicious slaughters and conquering – another guardian at the threshold. Passing these and more guardians, witnessing what they hold, is to heal old collective wounds as they have been passed down to me as an individual, passed down consciously and unconsciously. These guardians don’t stand at the threshold simply to propagate guilt. The guardians are medicine for the collective shadow of the Western world. They are the medicine of remembrance with all that it entails, be it fear, pain, guilt, anger….

Having taken this medicine I see the outlines of an old tree, the tree of the Nordic and Eurasian traditions that is spoken about in a language simultaneously poetic and scientifically precise: At this tree stories are told of the Great Return, the great round of the precession of the equinoxes, the ragnarökir of the past (footnote 1); these stories contain the native scientific star knowledge of my traditions. The spakona and the spamaðr, the women and men seers and healers, travel along this tree across the rainbow bridge, across the milky way – bifrost – to the ancestral souls of the past and future. These seers place those in need of healing at this center of the universe, one of many known to them, to see if they can help the sick find their place of balance. Stories are told at the tree, of ancestors, trade, and migrations. Ceremonies are held to honor the great and the small cycles of the season, to honor the law of balance, of friðr. Community gathers at the tree. I hold ceremony to honor the protective spirits, the dísir, and the máttr og megin or gift which they hold for me; I hold ceremony to find balance and to honor balance. I look at the stars and see the image of a deerlike animal and I look at the rock carvings by the tree and see images of various deer. And I see boats, boats filled with ancestors travelling the skies and travelling the seas. Across the stream three spirits appear. In the rock I see the deer carrying the sun. My conversation which is also a prayer or chant is with all these relations within friðr. I offer amber as I am held by by all these beings and by the guardians.

The only way to reach the tree for somebody like me is to pass the guardians at the threshold and to take the medicine they offer. They offer their painful medicine kindly.

All this helps me understand what my obligation is as I recover ancient memory for the future, today. (For background information on this section see for example: Bonnefoy 1993a & b; Coles, 1990; Crichton, 1976; Davidson 1964, 1988, 1993; Graham-Campbell, Batey, Clarke, Page & Price, 1994; Metzner, 1994; Tacitus, 1967; Titchenell, 1985)

II. NURTURING AND BEING NURTURED – A CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS

The contemporary Andean peoples of Peru have their own way of talking about their obligation. This is how it has been described:

The ayllu is a group of related persons living in a particular place. The ayllu consists not only of a group of related humans but of other beings of that place: the animals, the mountains, streams and rocks and the local deities. The ayllu should therefore not be considered simply a sphere of kinship. Rather one could say that kinship in the Andes extends to the non-human realm.

The conversations held between persons and the other inhabitants of the world are not primarily engaged in for the purpose of “knowing reality.” They are engaged in it as part of the activity of criar y dejarse criar, of nurturing (raising) and letting oneself be nurtured (raised). The verb criar is used to speak of raising children, animals, plants, relationships, etc. It is the activity that fosters the growth and development of any potentiality or generativity. It is a fundamentally mutual or reciprocal activity: as one nurtures one is simultaneously nurtured. The action in the world does not leave the actor untransformed; acting in the world is being in relationship with that world, so the language of conversation is more appropriate than the language of knowledge. There is here no knower and known, no subject and object. Rather there are actors in relationships of mutuality. By acting one transforms not only the world but oneself as well. Therefore it is a fundamentally dynamic world, always moving, always changing, always in flux. There is, as it were, no simple act of knowing as we moderns understand the term for such knowledge-acquiring activity presupposes that there is something to be known, irrespective of who knows it.

This is not to say that conversing with the world does not involve cognitive faculties, it of course does, but that the activity is not primarily and certainly not exclusively a cognitive one. Criar demands not only understanding but love, tenderness, patience. But it is to say that the point of conversation is not the attainment of knowledge through the interrogation of nature, it is rather to generate and regenerate the world and be generated and regenerated by it in the process. (Apffel-Marglin, 1994, p. 9)

III. WILBER´S EVOLUTIONARY THINKING IN THE LIGHT OF AVAILABLE EVIDENCE

The above descriptions of friðr and the knowing and nurturing conversation in the ayllu are illustrations of what can be called rather inadequately ‘the indigenous mind process’ (the reader may consult Valkeapää, 1985 & 1996, for a Saami description of siida life or Colorado, 1988, for an Iroquois description of skanagoah); they are descriptions of an integral way of knowing and being which is difficult to capture in its richness and subleties. They circumscribe my place of analysis and point of departure for dialogue with Ken Wilber’s books.

I am writing this article as somebody who is remembering his indigenous roots without any claim to being native or having shared native experiences of discrimination and colonialism; I grew up as part of the dominant culture in Germany (see Kremer, 1994, 1995a for further discussions of my stance). The endeavor which I call “recovery of indigenous mind” is a process which does not invite romanticism or nostalgia – it is a painful process of remembering back in order to go forward. There is no going back. My way into the future moves through the integration of historical wounds, painful memories and seemingly senseless events in order to work out a future based on ayllu or friðr, based on an ecologically specific notion of balance.

The indigenous mind or consciousness process I am referring to is not based on an essentialist understanding of tribalism or indigenism (footnote 2), but a discourse view in which individuals understand themselves in an ongoing conversation with the surrounding community, in which the local animals, plants, ancestors, and other spirits take as much part as the humans (cf. Apffel Marglin, 1994; Rengifo, 1993; Valladolid, 1995); this conversation is carried on as a part of unfolding one’s own gifts while paying attention to the ceremonial and seasonal cycles as well as the larger astronomical cycles. This is a worldview of total immanence. It is acknowledged that the social construction or conversation in one place is different from other conversations in other places, yet seeing this is to stay grounded in the detailed observations of and conversations with the community and the cycles of the specific place one is in. This is not a mind process where egoic consciousness and transcendence stand in some form of opposition or tension to each other, but where individuals of the permeable, participatory consciousness live with spirits as much part of their community as other human beings or plants. “El mundo es inmanente – the world is immanent” (PRATEC, 1996, 10).

Since the 1977 publication of The Spectrum of ConsciousnessKen Wilber has emerged as one of the most significant and productive transpersonal thinkers. Walsh (1998, p. 33) regards Wilber view as “unique in not only providing a far-reaching vision but also in grounding that vision in contemporary research in fields such as cosmology, biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and ecology.” In 1996 three issues of the journal ReVision, edited by Donald Rothberg and Sean Kelly, critically reviewed Wilber’s work and attempted to engage him in dialogue; the articles were subsequently, together with additional material published in book form as Ken Wilber in Dialogue(1998). The current compilation is based on my contributions to these publications. My primary focus in this article is on Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995a), and Up from Eden (1981). My central question in looking at social evolutionary theories such as Wilber’s is: How do evolutionary theorists deal with contemporary indigenous peoples? Or, to return to my initial descriptions: How would Wilber conceptualize the conversational process of the ayllu in the Andes?

My discussion of Wilber’s more recent work focuses on two major aspects of this broad issue:
1) What is the nature of the indigenous mind process and are Wilber’s descriptions consistent with the available data? My point below is that closer attention to the indigenous consciousness process suggests a different model of history than the eurocentered conceptualizations and cannot be subsumed under stage models without being made invisible. (Discussed below in this section.)
2) If Wilber’s conceptualizations of evolutionary stages imply “losers” (meaning: the so-called ‘lower’ stages and their contemporary “remnants”), then how does his theory deal with this shadow of evolutionary theorizing? The stance which I take is that we can no longer afford to think about evolution of consciousness and so-called civilizations without explicitly addressing the shadow of purported advances. (Discussed below in section IV.)
In addition, I address the following topics:
3) If it is indeed reasonalbe to assume qualitative differences between eurocentered and indigenous discourses, then what are the requirements for the facilitation of dialogues between these two types of discourse? My basic argument is as follows: Dialogues between cultures steeped in a eurocentered worldview and cultures engaged in indigenous consciousness processes have to be conducted in such a fashion as to insure that the voices of both groups have a chance to be heard directly and without intermediaries. (Section V below.)
4) I discuss Wilber’s critical commentary on sections I through IV and VII of this article. (Section VI below.)
5) I conclude this article with a continuation of the indigenous mind process descriptions given at the beginning of this article which suggest alternate conceptualizations of universality, evolution, and knowledge exchange. It is beyond the scope of this article to explicate these alternate conceptualizations fully; all I can do is give the rough outlines and some general parameters. (Section VII below.)

At the root of my concerns is the question of cultural ownership of evolutionary thinking which I have raised in a recent ReVision article (Kremer, 1996), and the call for theorists of human evolution to reflect consciously and explicitly on the cultural biases inherent in their thinking.

Wilber’s model of social evolution is in the tradition of 19th century evolutionary conceptualizations (cf. Winkelman, 1993, 5). Julian Huxley gives a good example of this thinking in the field of biology:
If we accept the doctrine of evolution, we are bound to believe that man has arisen from mammals, terrestrial from aquatic forms, vertebrates from invertebrates, multicellular from unicellular, and in general the larger and the more complex from the smaller and simpler. To the average man it will be indisputable that a man is higher than a worm or a polyp, an insect is higher than a protozoan, even if he cannot exactly define in what resides this highness or lowness of organic types. (Huxley, 1923, 10; quoted from Barlow, 1994)
Of course, if this type of evolutionary thinking is extrapolated into the field of evolution of consciousness and societies, then we can see how the prehistoric peoples of all continents and the contemporary remaining indigenous peoples can be classed as “lower” and the euro-centered as “higher” (even if there are yet higher stages to come). In E.B.Tylor’s words:
Human life may be roughly classified into three great stages, Savage, Barbaric, Civilized, which may be defined as follows. The lowest or savage state is that in which man subsists on wild plants and animals, neither tilling the soil nor domesticating creatures for his food. … Men may be considered to have risen into the next or barbaric state when they take to agriculture. … Lastly, civilized life may be taken as beginning with the art of writing, which, by recording history, law, knowledge, and religion for the service of ages to come, binds together the past and the future in an unbroken chain of intellectual and moral progress. (1881, quoted from Wenke, 1980, 32-33)
Evolutionary thinking concerns itself with the development according to inherent tendencies of anything that may be compared to a living organism (OED). Theories of evolution, whether in the fields of biology, consciousness or culture fundamentally have a mono-causal structure, where things unfold from some point of origin basically in a linear fashion (however complex and multi-dimensional the descriptions of this causal line may be) toward some future or utopian stage which represents the unfoldment of the inherent tendencies, particularly of human beings and their cultures.

Let me give a very brief summary overview of Wilber’s model as it appears to pertain to contemporary indigenous peoples. In Up from Eden (1981), Wilber has delineated dates for stages of the evolution of human consciousness, and he has provided us with updated descriptions since.

— Hominids appear during the uroboric stage which lasted roughly from 3 to 6 million years ago to 200,000 years ago (Wilber, 1981, 28). “Simple sensorimotor intelligence and emotional-sexual drives” are seen as characteristic for the early hominids of this epoch (Wilber, 1983, 240; see also Wilber, 1987, 239 for descriptions of the “archaic”, and 1995a, 153ff.).

— The subsequent typhonic stage lasted roughly from 200,000 years ago to 10,000 B.C.E. (Wilber, 1981, 39 & 87). Here we find “the first symbolic cognitive mode, the primary process, which confuses inside and outside, whole and part, subject and predicate, image and reality” (Wilber, 1983, 240). “Magical thinking” is an important characteristic of the mental process of the typhonic epoch which Wilber describes as follows: “This includes simple images, symbols, and the first rudimentary concepts, or the first and lowest mental productions, which are “magical” in the sense that they display condensation, displacement, “omnipotence of thought,” etc. … The magic realm is the beginning of mind” (1987, 239). He further elaborates that “the mind and the body are still relatively undifferentiated, and thus mental images and symbols are often confused or even identified with the physical events they represent, and consequently mental intentions are believed to be able to ‘magically’ alter the physical world, as in voodoo, exoteric mantra, the fetish, magical ritual, ‘sympathetic magic,’ or magic in general” (1995a, 165).

— The more recent mythic-membership stage lasted from about 12,000 B.C.E. to 2,500 B.C.E., with the high membership period dating from about 4,500 to 1,500 B.C.E. (1981, 87). According to Wilber, “this stage is more advanced than magic, but not yet capable of clear rationality or hypthetico-decuctive reasoning” (1987, 239).

— And the current solar ego stage began about 2,500 B.C.E. (with the low ego period dating from 2,500-500 B.C.E., the middle ego period dating from 500 B.C.E. to 1,500 C.E., and the high ego period dating from 1,500 C.E. to the present; Wilber, 1981, 179-180). Wilber more recently has set the incipient egoic-rational phase at about 500 B.C.E. (1995a, 179). “Egoic rationality and formal-operational logic” (1983, 240) are some of its central characteristics in the individuals of this epoch.

Wilber clarifies (1995a, 172-173) the meaning of his stage descriptions by stating that
these various ‘epochs’ … refer only to the average mode of consciousness achieved at that particular time in evolution – a certain ‘center of gravity’ around which the society as a whole orbited. In any given epoch, some individuals will fall below the norm in their own development, and others will reach quite beyond it. … Thus, in the magical, as I just mentioned, the most advanced mode seems to have been the psychic (embodied in a few genuine shamans or pioneers of yogic awareness); in mythological times the most advanced mode seems to have reached into what is known as the subtle level (embodied in a few genuine saints); and in mental-egoic times the most advanced modes reached into the causal level (embodied in a few genuine sages).
Plotinous and Plato may serve as illustrations for this: They
were situated in an average-mode mythological background worldview (mythic-rational), against which they had to fight (while delicately and unavoidably embracing aspects of it). They spoke from the center of a mythic worldview, even as their own substantive Reason transcended it, and even as their own contemplation transcended Reason; but mythically situated they could not avoid (Wilber, 1995a, 637).

Wilber comments in regard to the contemporary situation that
the majority of individuals in rational societies still settle in somewhere around the mythic-rational, using all the formidable powers of rationality to prop up a particular, divisive, imperialistic mythology and an aggressively fundamentalistic program of systematic intolerance (1995a, 252). The statement “the majority of individuals in rational societies still settle somewhere around the mythic-rational” is somewhat inconsistent with the definition that this is the epoch where “the average mode of consciousness achieved” is the rational mode; this implies that at least fifty per cent of the population is functioning in that mode, particularly if the “high egoic period” is dated to the present. “The majority of individuals in rational societies still settle somewhere around the mythic-rational” suggests more the “low ego period” rather than the time when the next epoch is beginning to emerge, even if only as the low vision-logic period. In any event, Wilber appears to put contemporary eurocentered societies (the modern state) at the rational stage, and he places “the rough beginning of this new emergence (egoic-rational) in the middle of the first millennium BCE … it reaches its fruition with the rise of the modern state, roughly the sixteenth century in Europe” (1995a, 179; similarly on p. 396). All this “brings us up to the present, and the new integration that is struggling to emerge” (1995a, 184), namely “vision-logic.”

Wilber never concerns himself explicitly with the indigenous peoples who remain. He primarily discusses the anthropological construct “shamanism” and “shaman” when elaborating the earlier evolutionary stages. This isolation of shamans and the “shamanic state of consciousness” inappropriately focuses only on certain aspects of the holistic and integral process of indigenous conversation described at the beginning of this article. How this particular lense may be related to some of the problems which I identify in Wilber’s theory should become apparent below. Since contemporary indigenous peoples continue to use ceremonies, for example, in which, according to anthropologists and in Wilber’s valueladen words from above, “mental intentions are believed to be able to ‘magically’ alter the physical world, as in voodoo, exoteric mantra, the fetish, magical ritual, ‘sympathetic magic,’ or magic in general,” (1995a, 165) they could be considered contemporary remnants of the typhonic stage, or at best the mythic stage. In any event, contemporary indigenous peoples still engaged in their traditional cultural practices would not fit Wilber’s various descriptions of the mythic-rational stage or more recent epochs. Nevertheless, as previously quoted, he would concede that some of their authentic spiritual practitioners may be able to reach the psychic or subtle levels.

Wilber is reluctant (1995a, 571) to use anthropological material about contemporary indigenous peoples in order to discuss past evolutionary stages (such as the magic or mythological stages), yet much of the understanding of the past evolutionary stages is based on projection of the anthropological literature of this century into the past (see e.g., Cazeneuve, 1972; or McGrane, 1989). He also does not include the direct voice of indigenous peoples in his discussions of the contemporary situation. (In scanning his approximately 640 references listed in 1995a I found two – Lake and McGaa – where indigenous peoples speak with a voice of their own (problematic as they are to some traditional natives); I was unable to determine during my reading or with the help of the index how these references actually have been used.) I am assuming that this is either because he does not see them as significant for or part of the cutting edge of the evolutionary arc he describes, or that they don’t offer descriptions which illuminate this evolutionary arc. Whatever his reasoning, contemporary indigenous peoples end up de facto as a negligible quantity in his writings. The terms “mythos,” “mythic,” and “tribe” are frequently used in a negative or even cntemptuous sense – indeed, no different from everyday usage in dominant eurocentered discourse; this suggests that racialist thinking is at work (e.g. in 1995a on p. 572 or 582).

The following two illustrations demonstrate graphically the need to question Wilber’s model.

 

The practices of voladores (the flyers) from the Totonac, Nahua, and Huastec natives of the Mexican Gulf Coast [right illustration] is said to be at least 1500 years old. It is sacred to Quetsalcoatl, the Morning Star. It spread from the Gulf Coast to the Aztec Capital Tenochtitlan. It is a ceremonial celebration of a calendrical count that can be traced back to the Olmec culture (1500 to 400 BCE; cf. Hancock, 1995; Markman & Markman, 1992). The rock carving from Bohuslän [left illustration] presently is dated to 1000 to 850 BCE (Coles, 1990) and can be viewed in the context of various descriptions of the Norse tree of life (Yggdrasill) and the contemporary May pole (Brodzky, Danesewich & Johnson, 1977; Gimbutas, 1958; Grimm, 1966). The calendrical and navigational cognitive capacities implied in these images go far beyond what evolutionary theories commonly attribute to humans of these time periods. For example: Wilber sees the “Mexico of the Aztecs and Mayas” at the stage of “mythic membership” (1981, 92). Since the Olmecs preceded these cultures they would have to be regarded either at the stage of mythic membership or the earlier typhonic stage. During the typhonic period “subject and object are undifferentiated, … image and entity are confused, symbol and object are conflated, and thus subject and predicate, whole and part, class and member, are all ‘magically one'”(Wilber, 1981, 49). At the subsequent mythic membership stage “mind is tentatively starting to emerge” (Wilber, 1981, 93, italics in original). In subsequent publications Wilber characterizes this stages as capable of “higher representational thought, but still incapable of formal-operational insight; still anthropomorphic; mixture of logic with previous magic” (Wilber, 1983, 240).

It is somewhat difficult to imagine how people would be capable of crossing the Atlantic one way or the other without having at least mythic-rational consciousness, to stay in Wilber’s frame (unless we invalidate the potential significance of the implied event by calling it chance or accident). Navigational capacities, the art and science of identifying one’s own position and tracking a ship’s course (determination of latitude and longitude), require formal-operational cognitive capacities (cf. Kyselka, 1987, 38-45; Graham-Campbell, Batey, Clarke, Page & Price, 1994, 180/1; or Aveni, 1993, 149ff. for sample descriptions). Formal operational awareness “introduces a new and more abstract understanding of mathematics, logic, and philosophy, but those are all quite secondary to the primary and defining mark of reason: reason is a space of possibilities (italics in original), possibilities not tied to the obvious, the given, the mundane, the profane” (Wilber, 1995a, 231). This description would subsume the possibility to navigate oceans with the help of these capacities. If the Olmec culture is indeed accurately described as “typhonic” or “mythic” in character, then its members should be incapable of the complex mathematics, astromical observations and calendrical calculations the Aztecs and Mayans based their developments on (cf. Hancock, 1995; Aveni, 1980; Closs, 1986). And they should not have possessed the nautical and navigational capacities for the long sea journey from Mexico to Sweden (or Bronze Age people in Southern Sweden should not have been capable of navigating toward what is now called Mexico). Of curse, we could argue that these early navigators were individuals of the typhonic or mythic epochs with a level of personal development that reached significantly beyond the majority of the times. Such an argument would only hold if we do not find too many exceptions to the claims made by Wilber’s theory.

My review of the literature indicates that it is at least questionable to use the “special case argument” (i.e., in these cases especially gifted, highly developed individuals with capacities far beyond the general level of development accomplished these significant achievements). The numerous exceptions to Wilber’s theory deserve at least explicit discussion. The following sampling may serve as illustration for numerous cases in archaeology, anthropology, and mythology that do not seem to fit dominant evolutionary conceptions, including Wilber’s. Winkelman (1990) offered significant objections against the literature used in Up from Eden (1981), yet Wilber has only provided incomplete responses (he claims that his new descriptions and new timelines resolve all these issues and that Winkelman’s relativistic approach is “simplistic and hypocritical;” 1995a, 575).

The following is a brief listing of some examples from past and continuing indigenous cultures, which by all appearances not only require, if they are to be integrated, a fine tuning of Wilber’s theory, but, if taken seriously, a rethinking of the entire model (see Winkelman [1990] for a first extensive list of objections). All these brief descriptions highlight the cognitive aspects of the indigenous mind process in order to show limitations in Wilber’s descriptions and interpretations; the integral nature of this process is implied in each of the examples, but not explicated here. Readers may use their own imagination to see how the various sacred sites mentioned below, for example, represent the indigenous conversation I have described at the beginning of this paper using the examples of friðr and ayllu.

— The first example is the Aztec and Mayan calendars (which can be dated back to the Olmec times) with the calendar of the great pyramid in Chichen Itza as an elaborate example of the thinking and architectural skills of these peoples; we can add to this example Mayan mathematics in general (these civilizations are according to Wilber part of the mythic stage; 1981, 92). All of these instances presuppose cognitive skills which do not fit his descriptions of any of the stages before the rational (Aveni, 1980; Closs, 1986, Men, 1990; Vergara & Güemez, n.d.). How these feats could have been achieved without, for example, hypothetico-deductive cognitive skills is not clear to me.

— The alignments of the pyramids in Teotihuacan (just outside of Mexico City) and the knowledge of the number pi are other examples which do not fit Wilber’s scheme (Aveni, 1980; Hancock, 1995; Stierlin, 1963; Tompkins, 1976); again, according to Wilber, these buildings were erected by a mythic culture, yet the architecture, astronomy, and mathematics embodied in these pyramids require cognitive skills at odds with Wilber’s descriptions of “magical oneness.”

— The Egyptian pyramids, their alignments and architecture, are yet another example of similar feats on a different continent (see, e.g., Bauval & Gilbert, 1994 or Hancock, 1995; see also the recent unpublished research by Hawas, Verner and Dreyer, reported in Anonymous, 1995/6, which pushes the dates for certain accomplishments in the early Egyptian cultures farther back). Wilber considers these Egyptian cultures also at the mythic-membership stage (1981, 92).

— The architecture and alignments of Tiahuanaco in Bolivia (at Lake Titicaca) also don’t fit Wilber’s outline by a long shot; according to persuasive evidence the building of this sacred site can be dated to at least 15,000 B.C.E. (Hancock, 1995).

— The architecture and alignments of Stonehenge, dating to about 3,000 B.C. E., and Newgrange, dating to about 3,200 B.C.E. are European examples which are out of sync with Wilber’s descriptions (Aveni, 1993; Biaggi, 1994; Brennan, 1980, 1983; Burenhult, 1993; Mohen, 1990) in terms of the skills required for the building of these sacred sites.

— Finch (1996, 25) points out that
the Dogon have known (probably for seven hundred years) that Sirius B was a mostly invisible white dwarf that periodically underwent nova explosions which spewed matter (“grains”) into space that ultimately became the stuff from which other heavenly bodies – including our solar system – were made.
This traditional knowledge of an ancient African tribe, which is consistent with the findings of contemporary astronomy, questions definitions of “primitive” and Wilber’s descriptions of the stages prior to the rational (see also Finch, 1991 & 1995; Griaule & Dieterlen, 1986; de Santillana & v. Dechend, 1969).

— We have evidence of very early global travel across the oceans, which again requires cognitive skills not ascribed to peoples of these early stages by Wilber. Examples of such evidence are: (a) the Piri Reis map dating to 1513 which includes an image of the eastern promontory of South America and is
comparable to the most detailed and accurate of nineteenth century maps. It proves that the ancient cartographers who constructed it possessed precise knowledge of the dimensions and shape of the earth, its lands, and its seas (Finch, 1996, 21);
(b) accurately mapped images (Piri Reis, Oronteus Finaeus, Mercator, Buache) of Antarctica before it was covered with the current ice cap (which began to occur beginning around 13,000 B.C.E. and was complete by 4,000 B.C.E.; Hapgood, 1966; Hancock, 1995); (c) the chalice which Hostetter (1991) acquired in Saudi Arabia which led him to the re-discovery of ancient astronomical and navigational knowledge; (d) Mayan, Olmec, and Zapotec (Monte Alban) sculptures and reliefs of individuals found in Mexico which are clearly not Native American, but obviously Chinese, African or European; we have similar evidence from the Moche culture of Peru.

— Gimbutas’ description of early European writing from the 6th millenium on (Gimbutas, 1991, 308ff.; Haarmann, 1990, 70ff.) is also not easily reconciled with the cognitive skills Wilber ascribes to those times in Europe.

— And most recently the rock art of Chauvet thought to be about 30,000 years old (Chauvet, Dechamps & Hillaire, 1995) points to cognitive skills akin to our own.

We could argue in each single instance given in my list above that these feats were accomplished by the most advanced individuals of those times, but this argument to my mind is increasingly difficult to sustain with all the examples given (and this list is not complete). And this argument could hardly be made for the following instances, which represent widespread skills, rather than skills conceivably attributable solely to an elite:

— The cognitive skills required for flintknapping provide an example for the mentations of early hominids. Gowlett (1993, 54/5) gives a detailed analysis of the sophisticated cognitive skills the making of the stone tools of the Oldowan people (in Wilber’s scheme of uroboric times) imply.
The stone-workers knew what was possible, and this implies that they had the whole routine for the tool-making process stored in their heads, somewhat like a computer programme. … Many activities of early man [sic!] which have left traces were co-operative, social ones. Does this then imply the use of language from the time of early tool-making? There is no direct evidence for this, but the sequences of operations involved in toolmaking have parallels in structure with those of producing sentences. (p. 55)
Lewin (1988) suggests that the behavior of early hominids increasingly was governed by complex rules, and that these abstractions seem impossible in the absence of language. “The creation of paintings, carvings, and engravings is surely unthinkable in the absence of language, because such activities represent true abstraction of the mind” (p. 186). These descriptions are a far cry from Wilber’s discussions of the uroboric stage to which this type of tool making is assigned.

— Additionally, Wilber has yet to answer the various points Winkelman (1990) makes regarding evidence for language use among the earliest hominids, the similarities in cognitive capabilities in humans of today and 40,000 – 100,000 years ago, the non-existence of the uroboric stage, and astronomical observations as early as 30-32,000 years ago (see also Aveni, 1993, 23). Marshak (1991) provides extensive discussions and illustrations of the complexity of cognitive processes of paleolithic hominids from 35,000 to 10,000 B.C.E.

All of these examples presuppose complex cognitive processes supposedly unavailable to humans during those time periods. They suggest that a stage model may not be the most appropriate way to take these data into account. Gowlett (1992, 345) suggests
that through the past 30,000 to 40,000 years the brains of modern homo sapiens were similar to our own. Physical and cultural evidence points to lower levels of mental ability and craft skill in the earlier periods. Nevertheless, we may have to concede that the foundations of many basic human skills were laid 1 or even 2 million years ago, rather than at the origins of our own species.
Even Lévy-Bruhl, who wrote extensively about ‘primitive mentality’ stated in his last works that he no longer assumed a structural difference between contemporary Europeans and indigenous humans:
Let us expressly rectify what I believed correct in 1910: there is not a primitive mentality distinguishable from the other by two characteristics which are peculiar to it (mystical and prelogical). There is a mystical mentality which is more marked and more easily observable among ‘primitive peoples’ than in our societies, but is present in every human mind. (Les carnets, 1949, 131-2, quoted from Cazeneuve, 1972, 87)

This seems to lead to what appears like a paradox on the surface: Peoples of these earlier mythic or even typhonic times may indeed have participated in the phenomena, yet they may simultaneously have been capable of cognitive feats requiring skills commonly associated with the much later times of the egoic-rational processes. Mayan architecture, glyphs, mathematics and calendrics may serve as a surviving and continuing illustration (see recently Freidel, Schele & Parker, 1993) that participation in the phenomena and cognitive skills like formal-operational logic are a contradiction in the eyes of the solar ego only.

The pieces of evidence which don’t fit easily with Wilber’s timelines and descriptions lead me to doubt that his model adequately represents contemporary and past indigenous peoples and their mind process. His abstract descriptions and the available data don’t match sufficiently, and if Wilber continues to think that they do, then he is under an obligation to explicate this much more than he has done in response to Winkelman. His descriptions of the”earlier evolutionary stages” render the integral mind and being process of past and present indigenous people invisible in his model and devalue it in these distorted representations.

The rapid developments in the fields of prehistorical research indicate a general trend to date certain cognitive capacities earlier and earlier. This should lead us to be cautious. This trend can be explained not only through previously unavailable evidence but it may also point to research assumptions that hindered the field of prehistorical research: It is possible that a goodly portion of our reconstruction of prehistory is projective in nature. Recent anthropological and archaeological research examples investigating human sacrifice and cannibalism indicate how past evidence had been tainted by its Zeitgeist. Hassler (1992), for example, has concluded that evidence for ritualistic human sacrifice or sacred ritualistic killing among the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples is lacking; he asserts that past discussions are based on eurocentric assumptions, prejudices, and misunderstandings in the communication with indigenous people or that they were based on their deceptive maneuvers. Peter-Röcher (summarized in Anonymous, 1996) developed a similar argument regarding cannibalism in prehistoric Germany. These are two out of a number of examples that should induce utmost caution in our use of descriptions of so-called primitive peoples, past cultures and contemporary indigenous peoples. Wilber, however, believes that “what we call civilization, and what we call human sacrifice, came into being together” (Wilber, 1981, 127). Evidence for cannibalism and human sacrifice, whether among the Hisastsunon (Anasazi), Aztecs, or early Germanic peoples, require complex interpretive maneuvers and special self-reflective awareness of presuppositions (whether idealizing or discriminatory).

IV. THE SHADOW AND PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION

From a native perspective, evolutionary thinking in general has always been problematic because of its (at least implicit) notion of progress toward some better, more complete or more actualized way of being, some outopos (Greek: utopia) or nonexistent place to be realized in the future.
European utopian visions have been used to rationalize a range of criminal behaviors including the enslavement of millions of Africans and the annihilation of entire American Indian peoples as the (sometimes) regrettable but necessary consequence of the construction of some kind of future state of human perfection (Dion-Buffalo & Mohawk, 1994, p. 33).
This statement cannot be taken seriously enough and should be a clear warning signal to pay attention to the shadow of evolutionary thinking. Unless we do so evolutionary thinking will remain misguided and dangerous because there is no reason to assume that it is outside of its history which – at least implicitly – justified cultural and physical genocides. In order to step outside of this intellectual history it is necessary to address explicitly shadow material issues such as the ones Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk mention in their quote. Otherwise whatever is written is at least an unconscious continuation of eurocentered dominance and (cultural) genocide. McGrane (1989) in his critical analysis of the history of “the Other” and anthropology comments that
when the ‘sun’ of civilization dawns on the virgin forest of the Other, instead of nourishing him, it chars and blackens him. … At the very instant they (primitive societies) become known to us they are doomed (108, last sentence quoted from Bastian).
This would mean that one of the most important current historic tasks of eurocentered cultures is to retract its attention and periodic obsession with other cultures and to focus on its own history, including the shadow of its own history.

Wilber talks about the emergence of global market economy and acknowledges that it is “tinged, initially, by remnants of imperialism, which indicated not an excess of reason but a lack of it” (1995a, 178, emphasis added) – an acknowledgment which is far from sufficient given the ways in which the rise of what he considers evolutionarily positive is entwined with rather lethal shadow material. The words genocide, colonialism, imperialism do not show up in the index of the book, and they do not seem to warrant special analysis within his evolutionary scheme. The phrase “tinged, initially, by remnants of imperialism” implies that this is in the past – a denial of the ongoing destruction of native cultures (Bodley, 1982; Berger, 1990); it is also a denial of such continuing imperialism (biocolonialism) as is exemplified by the hunt for certain nutritional plants and plant medicine among native people, which then get patented and resold to the indigenous peoples they were taken from (Abya Yala News, 1994; Mies & Shiva, 1993; Shiva, 1993). Imperialism and colonialism have taken on the mantle of economic development thinking, under which they continue their contemporary expression and continue to have a destructive effect on indigenous peoples (cf. Sachs, 1995 for a history of the term and a critical discussion in terms of sustainability; see also: Pratec, 1993; Parajuli, 1996 for analyses). All of these destructive events are, of course, a result of the increasingly global market economy and the expansiveness of eurocentered ways. While Wilber may label these events pathological within his system, their effect on new emergent and purportedly desirable qualities still needs to be critically reviewed.

Looking at the historical shadow material created by what the dominant discourse of eurocentered cultures calls “evolutionary advances” or “achievements” (Wilber’s rational societies) is not just a question of intellectual honesty or integrity; it is much more a question of doing one’s best to avoid inflation, ethnocentricity, and prejudice. If eurocentered societies are to step out of the continuing history of colonialism, then evolutionary thinking produced by the intellectuals of these societies needs to grapple with the fact that the so-called evolutionary advances have come at a price, and that this price is even now being paid by peoples which can be identified as the “primitive,” “archaic,” “mythic” peoples of contemporary “backward” societies. As Wilber and others would say: these peoples have had their chance, and “they all failed – each in their own special and wonderful and spectacular fashion” (1995a, 243). In evolutionary models, “losers” are inevitable if there is to be evolution, and the winners of today may be the losers of tomorrow. The aura of inevitability is part of the justificatory function of evolutionary thinking. It creates a context in which cultural and physical genocide can easily be understood as a given, ‘unfortunate as that may be.’ The continuation of economic development thinking in relation to so-called Third World countries is part of this genocidal context: The dominant, primarily materialistic, euro-centered standards identify them as inferior societies and cultures, and they are consequently in need of help so that they may join the fold of “developed” countries. This development thinking devalues their own cultural roots and richness destroying communities and killing people in the name of progress.

McGrane (1989) has done an admirably lucid job of tracing the history of the relationship between euro-centered cultures and the Other, the alien, the different – an “archaeology of anthropology,” so to speak. One of his fundamental premises is that “a culture that discovers what is alien to itself simultaneously manifests what it is in itself” (McGrane 1989, 1). He sees anthropology as an endeavor which is “fundamentally involved in the reproduction of Western society… It manifests and highlights that egocentric tendency of our Western mind to identify itself as separate from what it perceives as external to itself” (1989, 5). Wilber’s model, of course, draws on just this anthropological literature. MacGrane’s discussions are also helpful in contextualizing historically the aspects of indigenous lives on which Wilber primarily focuses, i.e. shamanism.

In the Renaissance Christianity came between the European and the non-European; demonology determined that the Other, the fallen, was in need of naming, christening. Trances (and the concomitant healing practices) were seen as a practice which maintained the contact with demons and christianization meant the termination of such evil proceedings; killing or arrests of tribal members during ceremonies, the destruction or confiscation of artifacts (even during recent history, such as potlatch masks in Canada) are a result of this paradigm. During the Enlightenment ignorance was the fundamental coordinate around which the understanding of the Other was constituted: indigenous peoples were living with the errors of superstitution. For example, trances and alternate modes of healing were seen as superstitious practices which could not provide any true help or serve a healthful function. The 17th and 18th century saw the beginning of colonization. The evolutionary thinking of the nineteenth century used the coordinate of time to understand natives as “primitives,” a fossilized developmental stage from the prehistory of European civilizations. Thus trances were conceptualized as contemporary remnants of an outmoded, primitive human potential; their usefulness was superceded by the emergent medical and other sciences. The 19th century saw the height of colonialism and imperialism. It was also the time of in which evolutionary theories were first proposed. MacGrane shows how this notion of the “primitive” is entwined with the idea of progress:
The very identification of and naming of the non-European Other as “primitive,” as “primitive mentality,” as “primitive culture,” presupposed a theory (language) of rational progress, of progress in and by reason (Enlightenment) and/or progress in and by history (nineteenth century). The very possibility of the conception of “primitive” presupposed the prior commitment to a conception of progress. (McGrane, 99)
The notion of progress implies that there is something at least insufficient or even bad in the past and that the good lies in the future.

When we talk about the lamentable and unfortunate price of evolution paid by certain peoples of past and present, but without simultaneously confronting the presumed advances with their own shadow, then we act arrogantly, coldly, and, ultimately, dishonestly. The historical connection between the arising of enlightenment philosophy and colonialism is not just accidental.
Anthropology has been an extremely subtle and spiritual kind of cognitive imperialism, a power-based monologue about alien cultures rather than, and in active avoidance of, a dialogue with them in terms of sovereignty, i.e., the untranslatability and irreducibility of one ‘culture’ to the being and language of the other (McGrane, 1989, 127).
Until we understand the impact of this connection the cultural shadow material will determine what eurocentered cultures are as “rational societies” – to an extent difficult to fathom. Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) have noted how what is suppressed in society inevitably returns through the backdoor – now with increased power.

The U.S. constitution was paid for with the genocide of the Native Americans. The social and economic stability of the colonies rested on the success of pushing the Native Americans out; the possession of the land was necessary for the development of the ideas and allowed the appropriation of native ideas, e.g. during the development of the constitution. What does it mean that the freedom of the early immigrants was achieved at the price of tremendous destruction? What does it say about the civil society that was put in place of the autochthonous cultures which also had elaborate “legal codes”? The best known example is probably the Iroquois confederacy, and its significant impact on the U.S. constitution is largely unacknowledged by the dominant culture (Barreiro, 1992).

In keeping with one brand of rather conventional wisdom, Wilber describes the process of Hawaii becoming a state of the United States of America – its annexation – as follows: “all the basic structures and functions are preserved and taken up in a larger identity, but all the exclusivity structures and functions that existed because of isolation, set-apartness, partialness, exclusiveness, separative agency – these are simply dropped and replaced with a deeper agency that reaches a wider communion” (1995a, 52 [italics in original]; see also p. 245). I doubt that traditionally spiritual Hawaiians (let alone political activists) would agree with this statement as an appropriate abstract principle derived from this specific historical example. Not only is his theoretical statement racist and colonialist when applied to the analysis of actual historical events by virtue of discounting native notions of interconnectedness, history and science (“isolation,” “partialness,” “separative agency”), it also lends itself to the justification of genocide in the the service of the emergence of higher order holons. After all, “each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor(s)” (1995a, 51). Wilber may consider such use of his theories abuse. However, his model adds to a justificatory context which facilitates this kind of thinking in contemporary euro-centered cultures. Such justification happens culturally, when “progress” is accepted as a framework, which then inevitably entails the notion of losers in the service of progress. To my mind the Hawaii illustration of his eighth’s tenet does not hold, and his model would be invalidated if it is based on other examples of a similar nature.

When I analyze other instances which his tenet should cover (and the above quote of his principle) then his model becomes increasingly questionable in the form stated. If we look, for example, at the reality of the relationship between Native American tribes and the dominant society, and apply his abstract statement to the specifics of an ongoing history, then his statement is simply ludicrous. The history of invasion and colonization has destroyed native ceremonies, instituted boarding schools, and used missionary activity as a major avenue to genocide (all these are things which are still happening in the present in one form or another); in the process the reservation system was created. I don’t think it is an adequate theoretical precept to subsume this under “the exclusivity structures and functions that existed because of isolation, set-apartness, partialness, exclusiveness, separative agency – these are simply dropped and replaced with a deeper agency that reaches a wider communion.” Wilber’s statement has a certain compelling logic in its abstractness (and if we agree with the implicit assumptions of progress and universalization as he defines it), but this generality obfuscates the inflated stance hidden in it. This inflation is based on the culturally narcissistic assumption that we have truly understood peoples who live in an entirely different consciousness.

Our current challenge appears to be to develop a quality of thinking that is no longer based on fundamentally mono-causal and linear models (models with roots in 19th century thinking and to which I am referring with the lable “evolutionary thinking”). Nitecki summarizes the current scientific Zeitgeist as follows: “The concept of progress has been all but banned from evolutionary biology as being anthropocentric or at best of limited and ambiguous usefulness” (1988, quoted from Barlow, 1994, 49). It seems necessary to remove notions of progress from our descriptions of the evolution of consciousness and civilizations (indigenous civilizations and others), since it is entirely eurocentered. McGrane states pointedly that “if the rather deeply sedimented, institutionalized belief in ‘progress’ disappeared, the ‘primitive’ would vanish” (1989, 99). The notion of progress is an essential ingredient of Wilber’s system and “the primitives” are alive in his model, even if they are not doing so well.

Alternative models of conceptualizing socio-historical changes in structure and process of consciousness would address directly and with specificity such difficult issues as genocide, colonialism, and imperialism; they would address the ancient spiritual foundations of the European peoples, their ancestries, and their ceremonial practices. Such models would self-consciously restrict themselves to self-reflective acts by people of European heritage in order to understand their history of increasing dissociation, the dominance of the masterful, bounded modern self, and the possibilities to remember and recover integral beingknowing (Kremer, 1994). These would be inquiries aimed at resuming the European conversations analogous to those of the Andean ayllu. Other culture would be invited to dialogues dedicated to the mutual exploration of historical and evolutionary meanings. This would break the pattern of colonial thinking assigning non-Eurocentered cultures their status from the domineering vantage point of Eurocentric discourses.

The assumptions we hold about ourselves as modern, scientific and rational people are at times rather self-righteous – if we take the time to look in the mirror. For example, Wilber states: “The modern solution to this developmental nightmare [that the majority of individuals haven’t made it to the rational stage yet, J. W. K.] is that the rationality structure of the democratic state tolerates magic and mythic subholons…” (1995a, 252) While this statement makes sense on the face of it – the sad fact is that it hasn’t and still isn’t working out this way. I don’t think the traditional hill tribe peoples of Thailand or the Saami people in Sweden or the Wintu people of Northern California (to give just a few examples) have an experience of tolerance. Yes, maybe the rational stage theoretically should afford this tolerance, yet it doesn’t in so many cases and development thinking (“help for the Third World”) is inherently intolerant and destructive of indigenous cultures (Berger, 1990; Bodley, 1982). Is this because there is an inherent problem with the rational stage that makes it so difficult for its members to embody this tolerance or is it just the fact that “the majority of individuals in rational societies will settle in somewhere around the mythic-rational” (Wilber, 1995a, 252), that there isn’t enough rationality? From a native perspective the inherent problem of the so-called rational stage is the notion of progress and the “primitive”.

Wilber recommends “regression in service of higher integration – a regression that allows evolution to move forward more harmoniously by healing and wholing a previously alienated holon.” (1995a, 105) This is a somewhat unfortunate analogy to individual psychological theory, since it presupposes the ego constructed by modernity, an ego – as I have pointed out elsewhere (see Kremer, 1995a) – which is constructed dissociatively (from nature, community, ancestry, – from what I have described as the conversation in the ayllu above). Consequently, this ego is likely to project from its personality make-up into the past whatever it has dissociated from. In fact, projective identification may be the most apt clinical term to point to the psycho-emotional process eurocentered cultures are engaged in with contemporary indigenous peoples (this term also acknowledges that history is carried and handed down specifically in the process of socialization in each individual). Projective identification means that other people are made to feel the highly conflicted and split off material dominant cultures unconsciously injected into them – so that they feel and experience it as if it is their own. Natives feel the eurocentered dissociation from prehistory, ancestry, nature, etc. as self-hatred (“primitives”) which is so destructive to their cultures. Of course, self-hatred as an effect of internalized colonization warrants a much longer statement than I can offer here. Notably, in individual psychotherapy projective identification is known to be a pathological process oftentimes quite resistant to change because of its strongly self-reinforcing nature; this would seem to imply that we can assume strong resistance to the healing of the history of colonialism in the relationship between indigenous and eurocentered cultures. I would think that the retraction of these projections is the first order of business; for this we need a different metaphor than “regression in the service of the ego” (an adequate statement in the psychotherapeutic context, of course). The reintegration of cultural shadow material presupposes the possibility of an ego – the indigenous ego in communal conversation, if you wish – which would be differently constructed than our contemporary ego can easily imagine (see Kremer 1994 for descriptions). (Footnote 3)

We know from individual psychology that the shadow, the aspect of the self that is most troublesome and inimical to the ego-ideal, has a significant impact on the conscious awareness of the individual. Individual psychotherapy is in many ways the process of integration of this shadow material. Just as denial of the personal shadow distorts development of self, denial of the cultural shadow – indigenous peoples past and present – distorts the development of our understanding of history and consciousness. My point is that the evolutionary thinking needs to grapple with the fact that there are not only parts of history which have been denied (that we are or can easily be conscious of), but that there may be parts of history, just as with the individual shadow, which we are not aware of and which we need to struggle to become aware of and integrate. The fundamental question is this one: Is somebody who publishes A brief history of everything (Wilber, 1995b) under an obligation to struggle with the non-mediated voices of contemporary indigenous peoples? Since the Rio Earth Summit, if we venture to take that as a watershed event, this seems to be more necessary than ever (cf. Rogers, 1993). Can Wilber legitimately write A brief history of everything without delving into cultural shadow material? My answer would be that any contemporary author writing on social evolution does have this obligation – unless he wants to continue perpetrating an unfortunate history which created the cultural shadows I am referring to.

V. MINDFUL DECOLONIZATION – RECOVERY OF INDIGENOUS MIND PROCESS

Yvonne Dion-Buffalo and John Mohawk (1994) outline three choices which colonized peoples have in response to cultural colonization.
They can become “good subjects” of the discourse, accepting the rules of law and morals without much question, they can be “bad subjects” arguing that they have been subjected to alien rules but always revolting within the precepts of those rules, or they can be “non-subjects”, acting and thinking around discourses far removed from and unintellegible to the West [EMPHASIS ADDED, J.W.K.]… In a world composed of fewer than a dozen distinct civilizations (including the metropolitan West) plus 3,000 to 5,000 distinct indigenous societies, the range of possible experiences is very great indeed. These are the autochthonous peoples whom such luminaries as Arnold Toynbee wrote entirely out of history. Much of what remains of the range of human potential for creating versions of reality exists in the framework of the arts, stories, oral traditions, music and other cultural manifestations of these peoples. Their lived and dreamed experiences are the world’s richest sources of exploration of the human potential. – Gaining access to these experiences will not be easy. Not only are the voices of these distinct “others” remote, the channels of communication are practically non-existent. Few individuals from tribal societies write novels or history texts (p. 35).

“Non-subject” is a double-edged term: It refers not only to the choice native peoples may make not to be in reaction to their dominant societies, but it also signifies how the non-subjects do not show up in the prevailing discourses, because these don’t have the capacity to make them present (traditionally indigenous peoples are present to each other through the appropriate “legwork”, meaning knowledge exchanges set up in an equitable way). The words “acting and thinking around discourses far removed from and unintellegible to the West ” are of great significance. I have explored the qualitative differences between indigenous consciousness and eurocentered consciousness in my other publications (Kremer, 1995b). To put it simply: the cross-cultural differences between Germans and Italians are not of the same order as those between Italians and Navajos. Cross-cultural differences between cultures engaged in the participatory conversation with the phenomena are of one order, while cross-cultural differences between cultures representing a dissociative mind process are of a different order. Within each of these orders comparisons are easier, while they are very difficult between these two broad classes of cultural consciousness processes. The integral consciousness of indigenous minds and their cognitive capacities fall through the cracks of the eurocentered, anthropological lenses; what they allow us to see ends up as earlier developmental stages in models of the evolution of consciousnes (in models á la Piaget, Wilber, Kohlberg, etc.). As such they are a reflection of the eurocentered minds and their dissociation from their own origins and not an appropriate model to capture the worlds of native peoples. Advocates of stage models claim to be able to capture indigenous consciousness as archaic, typhonic or mythic. As I have tried to illustrate above, this type of conceptualization is a categorical error, inappropriately conflating two worlds: the eurocentered conceptualizations of non-subjects make them appear as “primitives” thus making them part of the dissociative eurocentered universe – a continuation of colonial thinking. Until such time when we as eurocentered people begin to pay attention to this error, our impact on native peoples will continue to be lethal.

Wilber doesn’t do any better than Toynbee. The indigenous peoples and individuals have no voice of their own in his writing. Whatever is said about them is written through the lense of received anthropology – a lense which is part and parcel of colonial history (more recent critical deviations within the field of anthropology notwithstanding). The literature by native people may not be extensive, for the reasons that Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk point out, but it is extensive enough to help us question quite clearly the prevailing discourses on legal, transpersonal, scientific and many other issues (see for example Lyons et al., 1992; Wa & Uukw, 1989; Wub-E-Ke-Niew, 1995).

Wilber quotes Roszak affirmatively (1995a, 571) as saying that “it is always risky to infer from contemporary to prehistory tribal groups.” Of course, this needs to be done thoughtfully. All this is contrary to the stance that other scholars such as Martin have arrived at when he imagines “that the speech and artisanry of modern (i.e., sixteeenth- to twentieth-century) hunting peoples is a close approximation of that mesolithic ancestral model” (1992, 35). Nevertheless, one of the examples from contemporary literature which Wilber gives shows clearly the process how native peoples become non-subject. He uses the “Hopi Rain Dance” (1995a, 128) as an example to discuss the distinction between hermeneutics and structural-functionalism. This discussion, interestingly enough, clearly ends up on the functionalist side: “Whether it is really going to make rain or not, or trying to make rain or not, is quite secondary to our concerns; because what it is really doing is providing an occasion that binds individuals together into the social fabric of the tribe” (1995a, 128/9; emphasis added). Wilber later clarifies that the “really” in this quote is indeed his position, and not just a disinterested discussion of functionalism: “Complex systems of mythology, whatever other functions they might have performed, began to serve first and foremost as a way to unify peoples beyond mere blood lineage” (1995a, 169, emphasis deleted). As other examples in his text show, his interpretation of tribal cultures, here even a contemporary one specifically mentioned by name, gets reduced to the “real meaning” which functionalism provides for him and which fits his general evolutionary scheme. The rest of the Hopi cultural practices, which presumably fall under the category of “magic,” are not considered as real and are relegated to the shadowlands. As long as members of the dominant discourse assume that they can intelligently talk about everything (with the implicit assumption that non-subjects are non-existent and with the corollary assumption that the possibility of non-subjects as defined above is a figment of “retro-romantics” or likeminded folk – as long as this is the case it continues to prepetrate colonialism and imperialism. The direct, unmediated Hopi voice is required in these discussions.

The question of how a non-subject might engage in dialogue with Ken Wilber is a tricky one. The fundamental problem is, of course, that a non-subject does not really have any place within the scheme which Wilber outlines except in the historical past as an evolutionarily earlier occurrence. Non-subjects thus only show up as the projections of the civilized eurocentered mind appearing at the earlier evolutionary stages – rather than as past and contemporary subjects in their own right with a fundamentally different way of knowing and being. The only way to gain or claim a place is to engage in a dialogue on the stage which has been prepared by the grand scheme he and others in the 19th century evolutionary thinking lineage. This means leaving non-subjecthood in order to gain or maintain credibility as an academically honorable conversational partner. This is the trap of colonialism and internalized colonialism. When I am striving to be seen through the eyes of the dominant paradigm – and Wilber is a part of that, different as he may appear on the surface – I am losing my otherness as I am trying to communicate using the forms and conventions which are not mine. Obviously, the style of my paper is an attempt to be respectful of the tremendous amount of work which he has put into his writing, while at the same time engaging in a way that is respectful of who I am. If I were to engage on the stage which he has prepared, then I would violate who I am; and if I don’t then my credibility is questionable in the eyes of the conventional discourse. Given this predicament I am trying to frame the dialogue in a way that more than just a meeting of minds may become possible. If Wilber is interested in dealing with his own indigenous cultures of origin and with contemporary native peoples in a way which is not dismissive, then he needs to seek an avenue of conversation and knowledge sharing which is different from standard academic discourse.

I have described the notion of participatory or shamanic “concourse” as a way of having knowledge exchange based on equity in a framework in which all participants are free to choose participation (Kremer, 1992a & b, 2002). The change from discourse to concourse is intentionally somewhat provocative. In reviewing the etymology of both words it becomes apparent that the embodied running of the Latin currere has become the disembodied movement of the mind in current academic discourse. Currere also connotes the running of waters or the circular movement of wheels. Instead of the antagonistic dis of the critical review of reality models (or truth claims), where scholars and others dispute conclusions reached in relative isolation by moving from premises to consequences, I am suggesting the con of communal, social reality creation (this is based on the presupposition that there is no genuine community without conflict and agonistic moves). Participatory concourse would be a circle where the communal reality creation is reviewed through talking as well as ritualistic embodiment; this circle would have space for silence, stories, humor, theater, dancing and other arts.

If scholars were to engage in participatory concourse, then this would mean that they are resuming an ancient conversation (where in ayllu, friðr, or elsewhere). They would understand that consensus about a particular truth claim is not something which can be achieved by means of the rational mind alone. The knowing of the body, the knowing of the heart, the knowing which comes from states of shifted awareness (including the dialogue with the ancestors) are all valuable processes. Even though every consensus will have to withstand the challenges posed in verbal, rational discourse, the words of resolution will have to withstand the challenges from all other human dimensions of experience – somatic, sexual, emotional and spiritual. Such an embodiment of knowing can heal the various splits, such as between body and mind. Any resolution has to include the explicit, verbal expression of agreement as well as the felt sense of common understanding. Any resolution needs to be open not just to be questioned through the pragmatics of testing propositional truths; it also needs to be open to moral and aesthetic (in the Batesonian sense [1991]) investigations. Somatic knowing and intuition need to see the light of the rational mind, while the mind needs to see the light which is in the body. While it is true that we are always challenged to reflect our resolutions in language, this does not mean that language is the sole arbiter of truth. It is in the open and fluid interaction of the different dimensions of the participatory concourse that we can discover how our resolutions of truth address the alignment issues we are faced with. To deny science is foolish; not to acknowledge its participation in the phenomena (in the Barfieldian sense) is equally dangerous. Participatory concourse allows us to appreciate scientific achievements without denying the body, the heart, sexuality, gender differences and the divine.

I have given this rudimentary description to indicate that there are ways in which qualitatively different paradigms could be with each other and explore each other’s knowledge (which takes more than the written word). All the issues which Wilber discusses are of tremendous consequence for eurocentered cultures and those peoples who are at the butt of their paradigm. I wish there were an occasion to engage about these issues in a setting which is respectful to all sides willing to participate. I hope that such a forum will be created and that discussions, such as in ReVision and Ken Wilber in Dialogue (discussed in the next section) may be the beginning of such participatory concourse (See Edwards, 2002, for a contribution to this debate). This would also allow eurocentered people to focus on our own history, the tribal perversions which we know about in our own past, and come to terms with the dissociation from our own prehistory.

VI. LINGERING SHADOWS

In 1996 a number of authors appreciatively and critically engaged with Wilber’s work in the journal ReVision. Editors Donald Rothberg and Sean Kelly developed a generative format for the discussions they intended to facilitate. After an overview by Donald Rothberg, Roger Walsh, Sean Kelly, Peggy Wright, Michael Zimmerman, Michael Washburn, Stanislav Grof, Jeanne Achterberg, Robert McDermott, and I discussed various aspects of Wilber’s publications; in addition, Rothberg interviewed Jospeh Goldstein, Jack Kornfield and Michel McDonald-Smith. Wilber wrote an extensive reply to these contributions. All authors then briefly replied to Wilber. The final words were written by Wilber and the editors. All these articles were published in ReVision (1996), Vol. 18 #4, Vol. 19#1 and #2. In 1998 this dialogue, together with additional contributions, was published by Quest.

Wilber responded to the critique voiced above in this article in three ways (1996, 31 & 46): 1) Future publications will address my concerns in detail and discussion the shadow of evolutionary thinking; 2) he repeated positions previously published without additional explanations; 3) Wilber assumed that my critical points represent a stance that he himself had taken in his earlier publications. Beyond that I did not find any specific responses to my remarks. Indeed, this appears to be the case in his responses to almost all appraisals of his works in these ReVision issues. In that sense the debate does not resemble particpatory concourse, however, the discussion can be seen as solid preparation for such process.

Gregory Bateson pointed out that lack of response is a significant piece of information (rather than no information). I find Wilber’s responses in this discussion disappointing, primarily because they fall short on engagement with the current writings of the contributors, while they are long on restatements of published positions and engagement with previous publications of some of the contributors. The stance that author X “tends to misrepresent my [Wilber’s] overall model” seems to be the stimulus for extensive restatements instead of a detailed dialogue with the thoughtful reflections offered by the various authors. Of course, a perceived misrepresentation can mean at least three things: a) an actual misrepresentation and distortion of something clearly stated; b) a misrepresentation of something open to interpretation or unclearly or insufficiently stated; c) something perceived or framed as a mispresentation, which is acutally a disagreement based on a correct or at least possible reading of an author’s statements. While I can deeply appreciate an author’s concern with the desire to be represented as accurately as possible in the secondary literature, the experience of misrepresentation could at the same time also occasion an introspective exploration of the possible causes that might contribute to such misunderstandings from the author’s side. The small amount of space dedicated by Wilber to dialogue about significant issues as they are described and identified by the present discussants results in less of a conversation and much more of a series of monologues than I had hoped for. But then: Wilber’s vision-logic, and certainly the indigenous mind process I am talking, about calls in part for a different setting and a different kind of interpersonal exchange than a journal can offer.

It is interesting to notice how Wilber reads McDermott and fails to distinguish between critical disagreements, outspokeness and level confrontation on the one hand and put downs, dismissive commentary and demeaning caricatures on the other hand. (And no response to Zimmerman on this topic.) I heartily agree with Wilber’s advocacy for honest disagreements and outspokeness. Yet: Wilber writes about my article that “I find his [Kremer’s] actual argument rather confused” without either saying what his reading of the argument is or why the argument is confused. An equivalent statement would be “I find Wilber’s actual writing rather dissociated.” Either of these remarks may be true, but they may be stated dismissively or in engaged level dialogue; the latter requires different wording and the creation of context through argument and explication.

One of the central issues around Wilber’s conceptualization of our evolutionary past is his image of peoples of previous historical stages. Stephen Jay Gould, who can hardly be called a “retroromantic,”discusses the nature of many of these assumptions commonly held about prehistoric peoples in a recent article about the Chauvet Cave art: “Old should mean rudimentary – either primitive by greater evolutionary regress toward an apish past or infantile by closer approach to the first steps on our path toward modernity. (…) This equation of the older with more rudimentary both violates the expectations of evolutionary theory when properly construed and has now also been empirically disproved by discoveries at Chauvet Cave and elsewhere. (…) The hypothesis of progressivism in paleolithic art cannot hold” (1996, 17, 72). Gould, of course, also advocates that the notion of progress be removed from evolutionary thinking.

Let me address some more of the specifics in Wilber’s reply to my article: Wilber points to my lack of his discussion of Winkelman’s reviews of his work. However, Wilber’s critique of Winkelman’s approach is quite beside the points which I am trying to make – no need for me to respond to his criticism. To use Wilber’s words: “Alas, you have misread my model.” My model is not one of cultural relativism and Wilber fails to explain how the performative contradiction identified in Winkelman’s work applies to my article. And Wilber has yet to answer to the detailed objections by Winkelman and myself regarding available archaeological and anthropological evidence which challenge his model as a whole (a discussion of cultural relativism, even if valid, is no response to these specific points).

Wilber’s statement about a society’s center of gravity is a restatement of his own published wordings and not a response to the inherent contradictions and unclarity related to Wilber’s work I point out in my article, especially in regards to his contradictory statements about rational societies and the present stage of the majority of its members.

Wilber finds my discussions of the indigenous mind process neither “fair, balanced, [n]or anthropologically representative.” This reminds me of debates around racism where one of the defensive responses to discussions of the Middle Passage is: “Well, African peoples had slaves, too.” Indeed – but it misses the point of engagement with the complicity in racism and colonialism. Naturally, within the euro-centered place where Wilber stands he has to find my discussion unbalanced – which is exactly what my critique addresses.

I find nothing in Wilber’s responses that persuades me that his model is not complicit with the continuation of racism and colonialism, I am sorry to say. The shadow of modernity continues to loom.

No author can be expected to address all the critical issues raised in the ReVision issues, yet Wilber’s selection of topics for his responses is disappointingly non-dialogical. – Wilber’s contributions to the field of transpersonal theory are impressive, yet, vision-logic, to my mind, requires a quality of dialogue about these issues which I have yet to see manifested in his response. The groundwork for the emergence of that possibility may have been laid with these ReVision issues. I am eager to be engaged in a quality of discourse (which I have called participatory concourse) which would do justice to the stage which Wilber sees emerging. His perspective and provocative engagement will be desirable in a context of shared assumptions about the nature of such a critical dialogue.

VII. ALTERNATE FRAMES

Let me return to the beginning of this paper and add some descriptions, which point to alternate frames for history, evolution, and universality through grounding conversations in the astronomical cycles and facilitating universality through equitable knowledge exchange within a consciousness of the same indigenous quality. The constraints of this article don’t allow for the elaboration of these practices of being and knowing, but I will briefly sketch some of the fundamental assumptions. The knowledge exchange between peoples in a dissociated consciousness process and peoples in an integral, non-dissociated consciousness process is likely to be governed by a paradigm of domination (driven by the dissociative process), while knowledge exchanges among peoples in an integral, non-dissociated consciousness process have a greater chance of being equitable. Universality is created in the latter exchanges through the specific understanding of relatedness and the sharing of the specific conversations engaging each other – the ceremonial context of such exchanges supports equity and reaches for global connections and universality in a different way than the process of abstraction. Deloria gives a succinct description of such an indigenous perspective from one of the Native American traditions:
The Plains Indians arranged their knowledge in a circular format – which is to say, there were no ultimate terms or constituents of their universe, only sets of relationships which sought to describe phenomena. No concept could stand alone in the way that time, space, and matter once stood as absolute entities in Western science. All concepts not only had content but were themselves composed of the elements of other ideas to which they were related. Thus it was possible to begin with one idea, thoroughly examine it by relating it to other concepts and arrive back at the starting point with the assurance that a person could properly interpret what constituted the idea and how it might manifest itself in concrete physical experiences. … A list of the most important components of the Indian universe:… The universe is alive … Everything is related …All relationships are historical … Space determines the nature of relationships … Time determines the meaning of relationships. (Deloria, 1996, 40ff.)
Returning to the Andean peoples of Peru we find the following descriptions of the indigenous mind process:
The chacra is the piece of land where the peasant lovingly and respectfully nurtures plants, soil, water, micro-climates and animals. In a broad sense chacra is all that is nurtured, thus the peasants say that the llama is their chacra that walks and whereof wool is harvested. We ourselves are the chacra of the wakas or deities that care for, teach and accompany us. …[There is a] continuous conversation and reciprocation between the relatives with the Andean ayllu, forming an organicity that facilitates the nurturing of the chacra, through practices of mutual help… This help takes place in an atmosphere of fiesta, with joy and always asking permission of the wakas or Andean deities. (Valladolid, 1995, 23 &46)
What happens between the Andean communities of humans, deities and nature is reciprocal dialogue, a relationship which does not assume any distancing and objectification between those dialoguing, but rather an attitude of tenderness and understanding towards the life of the other. Such dialogue does not lead one to a knowledge about the other, but rather to empathize and attune oneself with its mode of being, and in company with that other, to generate and regenerate life. It is a dialogue … that leads [not to knowledge but] to wisdom. (Rengifo, 1993, 168, translation by Apffel-Marglin)

These are descriptions of a process of an immanently present visionary socially constructed being, which is sustained without a need to progress or overcome some insufficient state – conversations are held for balance’ sake. These descriptions are different from Wilber’s definition of vision-logic. Given the space limitations let me just briefly sketch some coordinates. The two quotes and my initial sections above describe the immanent, ongoing conversation with everything, including spirits, which constitutes the community for human beings. Within this framework, if individuals do not know their ancestry, place in the community, the cultural stories, the land they live on, the cycles of the seasons, the stars, etc. – then these persons are lost to who they are, and pathology ensues – these individuals are in need of healing or balancing. These indigenous models, which to my mind require cognitive skills akin to Wilber’s vision-logic, allow for an alternate understanding of time, history, and the variety of cultures; they also allow people to be in participation or conversation while exercising high level rational skills. Part of this conversation is the observation of the precession of the equinoxes and other larger historical cycles. This indigenous conceptualization allows each culture to understand its historic spiritual mission in its own ecological niche, so to speak. It is not just that this type of model is preferable, I would suggest that it has greater accuracy because it is more complete and integral. It facilitates cultural exchange because it establishes equality among prospective partners of knowledge trade and avoids implicit or explicit imperialistic thinking. From this particular perspective Wilber’s evolutionary story is a sad one, because it seems so desperately to seek that place of balance and healing of dissociation – but, sadly, continues to speak from a place of dissociation from parts of the self which indigenous consciousness considers essential for well-being; it continues to perpetrate the splits from participatory or conversational self, shadow and historical roots. As long as there is a trajectory of progress and as long as vision-logic is described without full attention to all aspects of the conversation in the ayllu (Wilber, 1995a, 185), we further the dissociation from the ancient conversation of balance, and Wilber’s grand scheme remains additive holism still in need of further integration.

Much of the current interest in native peoples – especially among New Age folk – is permeated with nostalgia and romanticism. The Hopi Indians of Arizona have been the object of such inappropriate and insufficient understanding. Yet, their history and stories show a complex struggle for balance, which all too frequently ends in kooyanisqatsi or social disarray – with all the gore of killed fellow tribal members, burnt villages, etc. (see M. Lomatuway’ma, L. Lomatuway’ma, Namingha & Malotki [1993] for illustrative stories narrated by Hopi people). I am giving this reminder so that the reader may resist temptations to see my descriptions as amounting to some form of ideal or perfect image of native peoples which can be – maybe nostalgically or romantically – projected into the past. There is nothing ideal about these descriptions in the contemporary sense of the word. The present dialectic of the ideal and the flawed are machinations of contemporary discourse fueled by the shadows of its past; the creation of these figments support its addictive hunger for power and domination. Life is never ideal, it never has been. Human follies and fallacies have always been there. Trading in ideals is the narcissism of the dominant culture. Good-bad, ideal-flawed have always been contextualized, relative, historical. Romanticism and nostalgia are the the reaction to the denial of the presence of indigenous mind and non-subjects in contemporary life; neither know who they are in terms of the indigenous framework which I have just described. Both are lost to the sacred obligation which humans have to all their relations on this planet.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Eduardo Grillo, one of the founding members of PRATEC and their primus inter pares, who unexpectedly passed away on April 23, 1996.

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Footnote 1: The precession of the equinoxes (the westward drift of the vernal equinox through the zodiac) is caused by the wobble of the earth; as a result her axis points to different parts ofo the sky at different times (e.g., while Polaris is the current North Star, Vega will have that position 13,000 years from now). See Kyselka & Lanterman (1976) for a basic overview discussion of this astronomical phenomenon. De Santillana & v. Dechend (1969) have written the fundamental work – from the European perspective – for an interpretation of myths in astronomical terms, demonstrating how the language of ancient stories can be simultaneously poetic and scientifically precise (especially in regards to the example just given in my text).

Footnote 2: Cf. Warrior, 1995 for a discussion of these positions; cf. Vizenor, 1989, 1994a, 1994b for an example of Native American discourse stance.

Footnote 3: Thanks to Betty Bastien for our conversations about internalized colonization which led me to conceptualize the dynamic in terms of projective identification.

 

Reconstructing indigenous consciousness: Preliminary considerations (PDF)

Reconstructing indigenous consciousness –

Preliminary considerations

 

Jürgen W. Kremer, PhD

3383 Princeton Drive

Santa Rosa, CA 95405

jkremer@sonic.net

 

1999

Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen, 8(1), 32-56.

[Page numbers inserted below as P32 etc.]

 

[P32] Introduction

This article addresses issues which do not have a clear domain in eurocentered thinking: they are neither psychology nor anthropology nor philosophy – while touching upon all these domains and using the discourses they offer. These prelimary remarks are intended to lay the groundwork for an indigenous discourse or conversation originating from eurocentered traditions and designed for eurocentered traditions; as such they use the tools offered by these discourses in a self-reflective and critical fashion. This point is crucial: No attempt is made to speak on behalf of indigenous peoples or to interpret their situation or needs or perceived historical trajectory. This contribution focuses on the indigenous roots of eurocentered traditions by way of a self-reflective look at their histories and the contemporary eurocentered situation.

 

My discussion is in contrast to concerns indigenous peoples might have. Issues of indigenous consciousness are quite different for people(s) who either have a living tradition or who have lost connection with their indigenous roots only during very recent times. The common genocidal threat to native peoples is a factor absent from the eurocentered traditions, who represent the colonizing forces. The significantly greater availability of oral traditions, ceremonies, indigenous healing practices, etc. is another difference. The latter point means that issues of indigenous consciousness within eurocentered traditions have to be largely reconstructive because of the multigenerational interruption of any practices resembling a native lifeway (this applies despite the fact that isolated remnants are surviving in various forms).

 

If we reject the option of imitating indigenous practices from other cultures, then we are left with the challenge of working our way through our own historical trajectory in reconstructive efforts to discover what it might mean for eurocentered folk to be present in their indigenous minds. Such endeavor certainly does not and should not preclude the learning from contemporary indigenous peoples – in fact, it is only wise to seek their help. But it means that the alternative to the imitation of existing indigenous traditions is the Wiederaufarbeitung of the historical development which brought us to where we are now – a critical Vergangenheitsbewältigung which also integrates, appreciates, and validates as it attempts to heal that which constitutes pathology from an indigenous perspective.

 

All traditions, whether indigenous or eurocentered, have always changed. However, the nature of change is different in either paradigm: the maintenance of an intact or somewhat intact indigenous discourse or conversation follows the course of a spiral as the circles of greater and lesser completeness move through time. The change in the eurocentered [P33] traditions has been an increasing distance from, denial of, and devaluation of their indigenous roots – the line of progress. Consequently, the critical review of the changes looks different in the latter case and has to confront whatever problems and advancement eurocentered history has wrought. We cannot leap out of our historical situation, we have to work our way through it, embracing the light and embracing the shadow material and the creative energies released in this fashion.

 

The crucial point here is, according to all the native and indigenous people (shamans, medicine people and intellectuals) I have spoken to, that indigenous roots are always recoverable. Indeed, indigenous leaders see such task as a historic necessity in our times. This is where their hope for the resolution of the current crises, particular the ecological crisis, rests. For example, Bob Haozous, Chiricahua Apache, has stated: “Don’t come to Indian people and look for feathers and sweats and medicine men and stuff like that. Go back to your own history and find out who you are so that you can look at yourselves and see how beautiful you are” (1994). Implicit here is an assumption about “original instruction – words about purpose, words rooted in our creation, words that allow the human being an identity beyond the illusion of civilization,” as Native American writer Gabriel Horn puts it (1996). Reconstructing indigenous consciousness is, in a sense, about the remembrance of these original instructions and the indigenous conversation with all beings they guide in a particular place at a particular time. The concern of many of my past publications – as in this one – has been the demonstration that this process can be argued for within the eurocentered framework, not just from an indigenous perspective. While the current piece is an exercise in abstraction, I have also offered a more concrete application discussing the available material in the Old Norse traditions about the Vanir gods or spirits (Bjarnadóttir & Kremer, 1998).

 

Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk (1994) outline three choices which colonized peoples have in response to cultural colonization.

They can become “good subjects” of the discourse, accepting the rules of law and morals without much question, they can be “bad subjects” arguing that they have been subjected to alien rules but always revolting within the precepts of those rules, or they can be “non-subjects”, acting and thinking around discourses far removed from and unintellegible to the West [emphasis added, J.W.K.]… In a world composed of fewer than a dozen distinct civilizations (including the metropolitan West) plus 3,000 to 5,000 distinct indigenous societies, the range of possible experiences is very great indeed. These are the autochthonous peoples whom such luminaries as Arnold Toynbee wrote entirely out of history. Much of what remains of the range of human potential for creating versions of reality exists in the framework of the arts, stories, oral traditions, music and other cultural manifestations of these peoples. Their lived and dreamed experiences are the world’s richest sources of exploration of the human potential. – Gaining access to these experiences will not be easy. Not only are the voices of these distinct “others” remote, the channels of communication are practically non-existent. Few individuals from tribal societies write novels or history texts (p. 35).

[P34] If there are three choices for indigenous peoples, what are the equivalent choices for participants in the eurocentered discourses? The analogous choices would be to be good subjects accepting the given rules, to be bad subjects revolting against the precepts of the given rules (as critics within postmodern philosophy, transpersonal psychology, the new age movement, etc. are doing), or they could become non-subjects and recover a conversation that is not just removed from the current dominant discourses, but that questions their dissociative precepts. The latter choice is, as should be apparent, a difficult one, since it implies the radical deconstruction of the eurocentered individual who we are accustomed to be.

 

The choice of the good or bad subject are choices within eurocentered discourses, choices for the continuity of some form of dissociation from participation in the phenomena. The choice of the non-subject is the choice of the continuation of some form of original participation among indigenous peoples or the choice of recovery of indigenous mind and participation for the eurocentered discourses and for others who have lost connection to their native roots. The non-subject choice is the choice for participation in the phenomena, for a dialogical, nurturing knowledge creation. The current article endeavors to develop some basis for the latter choice.

 

I will present my considerations regarding the reconstructive efforts of indigenous consciousness in eurocentered context in the following fashion:

  • First I will establish a context for my approach in a fashion which is appropriate for indigenous presence.
  • Then I will discuss the nature of participatory consciousness.
  • Thirdly I will describe the historical process of the loss of or dissociation from particpatory consciousness.
  • Then I will highlight the differences between the worlds of participatory presence and the worlds of dissociative presence.
  • And, finally, I will discuss the epistemologies of recovering participation.

 

 

  1. Context

A few years ago I had a dream which pertains to the issues at hand:

The location of the dream is Hamburg, the town where I grew up in Northern Germany. Sitting on the threshold in the doorway of a pre-war brick house beside my partner I overlook the river Elbe from on high. We are atop the ancient ice age rim of the river, the border of its once miles wide flow, thousands of years ago when reindeer roamed these latitudes. The reindeer now live much farther north, and the river moves in a much more narrow bed; yet it still spreads to considerable widths three hundred or so feet below us, where ferries criss-cross its course and ocean liners enter and leave the harbor. We are not just sitting atop an ancient river bed, but also very close to the old building where I went for Kindergarten shortly after the Second World War. At that time it was a place with a [P35] comforting huge tile stove and a garden with plants and trees inviting the imagination of children at play. I realize that there are achaeological excavations in process behind the old Kindergarten. Signs are put up all around it: No trespassing! Stay out! Not to be deterred, I leave my body at the moment of seeing these signs and enter the forbidden grounds. I hover over the ancient ruins which are uncovered thanks to the work of the archaeological team. A round, towerlike structure emerging from the depths of the ground is clearly visible. It appears to extend a good ways into the earth. I understand that this is an ancestral ceremonial structure, as are other similar ones right next to it. The name of the place where this dig into ancient cultural history occurs is Altona – meaning “all-too-near.” Legend has it that an orphan was blindfolded when the burghers of Hamburg wanted to expand their overpopulated city. The idea was to place the new town where the orphan would stumble and fall. But what happened was unexpected. The boy had barely left the city gates, when he stumbled and fell. The attendant burghers exclaimed in surprise that this was all too near, in the local vernacular:  “All to nah!”  – thence the name for this part of the city – Altona. The place where I gain access to the layers below the contemporary city and old ancestral cultural memories is all too close in this dream, right there with my childhood, and fenced in by signs forbidding entry.

 

I wake up bringing with me not only the memory of the dream images, but its self-interpretation at the end. This dream contained an answer to the curiosity and spiritual hunger which I had tried to satisfy since adolescence through the study of native peoples and shamanism in particular.

 

This dream (and its implicit epistemology of recovery) can be seen as a description of my approach to inquiry of matters indigenous or tribal and my reconstructive efforts described below. It also points to the cultural struggle of “the west.” The key to such inquiry in the eurocentered context is the remembrance in itself of what it seeks in other peoples – recovering indigenous mind. Cultural history and the prevailing definitions of scientific inquiry make such a project difficult, to say the least. Native American intellectual Mohawk has stated: “I do not want people to adopt Indian rituals because I want people to own their own rituals. I want them to come to ownership out of experiences that are real to them. Then I’ll come and celebrate it with them” (quoted in Spretnak, 1991) When we extrapolate this statement to the area of ways of knowing (of which ritual is one) then we could say that participants in the eurocentered discourses need to recover and own their shamanic inquiry before natives will engage in and celebrate their ways of knowing with them.

 

 

  1. The epistemology of indigenous conversation or participatory concourse

If reality is not a simple given (since it cannot be accessed directly ) but emerges out of the subject – object interactions of specific, encultured human beings, then we have to conclude that the world we live in is created by us in some fashion. In representing the as-yet-[P36]unrepresented we create what we call reality. This should not lead to the superficial and voluntaristic conclusion that we can create any reality we want as our consensual reality. There are at least two major constraints bearing upon what we can create as reality: 1) There is something ‘out there’ – there is an external reality with which we engage. 2) What we can create and perceive is limited by what our embodiment provides (our sense organs, brain, gender, etc.). The reality we live in is created in interaction with what is ‘out there’, it is a co-creation with the external reality we engage in or are engaged by. We have constraints as specifically embodied-knowledge-seeking beings and these are limited and modified by an external reality. But within these constraints there are many different solutions to the problem of creating a world of phenomena to live in. These solutions are represented in the consensual practices of different cultures, with the embeddedness of knowing in culture and history constituting yet another stratum of constraints.

 

One helpful exposition of this epistemological view has been made by Barfield (1965) in his book Saving the appearances. He criticizes the Enlightenment project by tracing the different ways in which we are engaging in the phenomena throughout different stages of the evolution of consciousness. The term ‘phenomenon’ refers to the sensational and mental construction of the “unrepresented”, Kant’s noumena or Dinge an sich (Reilly, 1971). We always participate in the phenomena, but this participation may be conscious or unconscious, it may be directed by strict or loose ego boundaries, it can be reflected or unreflected. He argues that in the subject – object interaction between human beings and the ‘out there’ (external reality, the unrepresented), we may participate in what we consider phenomena in radically different ways.

 

Barfield distinguishes three major types of participation which are of epistemological relevance: original participation, the loss of or the unconscious participation of modernity, and final participation. The latter term is problematic (how do we know it is final?), and I prefer to call this process of regaining participation in the phenomena “recovery of indigenous mind.”

 

In short, Barfield describes the rise of Western consciousness as the rise of human consciousness from nature leading to high levels of conceptual reasoning and reflections without conscious participation in the phenomena, even with the denial of the involvement in them (cf. Detienne, 1996, for a discussion regarding these changes in archaic Greece). This is also the masculinization of the phenomena. This process can be seen as an explanation why it is so easy to deny nature in human consciousness. This antithetical, dissociative process between human beings and the phenomena has found its acme in the Western enlightenment movement. It is out of the dark night of the masculinized scholar that participation can be regained – not as return to the previous process state, but changed by the historical experiences of the dissociation from the phenomena; this is the recovery of participatory indigenous consciousness. Let me add more detail to these three processes, however, before doing so I would like to clarify that I see this succession of processes as a valid perspective on the history of eurocentered consciousness and its future; but: I do not [P37] assume that these are necessary or inevitable stages or even that these are stages (rather than processes of a different quality); I also do not assume that they do or should apply similarly to peoples not of eurocentered consciousness.

 

In what Barfield calls ‘original participation’ (the interaction with the phenomena in past and present indigenous societies, for example), the embeddedness of human consciousness in nature is experienced and lived in a direct way with very permeable boundaries between self and phenomena. This synthetic type of consciousness allows an experience of our systemic connection with nature. “Original participation is … the sense that there stands behind the phenomena, and on the other side of them from [the human being], a represented, which is of the same nature as [the human being]” (1965, 111, Barfield’s emphasis). Barfield further assumes – mistakenly – that in original participation perception is undifferentiated from the whole, that the participation in the phenomena is unconscious, that there is little reflectiveness, and that thinking occurrs in images rather than concepts; as we will see below, there are many examples of cognitive feats by peoples who were arguably engaged in the process of original participation which contradict these assumptions (which stem from the unfortunate racist assumptions of early anthropological and evolutionary thinkers).

 

Oftentimes this process of original participation is discussed with racist implications which puts it in the pre-historic past of the European peoples and defines contemporary native peoples still engaged in this particpatory process – despite the history of colonialism – as backward and a prehistoric remnant. Let me give some contemporary descriptions of this process and de-mystify it by mentioning some of the accomplishments of peoples who – by all accounts – must have been in a process of original participation at the time.

 

The contemporary Andean peoples of Peru talk about participation in the phenomena as follows:

The ayllu is a group of related persons living in a particular place. The ayllu consists not only of a group of related humans but of other beings of that place: the animals, the mountains, streams and rocks and the local deities. The ayllu should therefore not be considered simply a sphere of kinship. Rather one could say that kinship in the Andes extends to the non-human realm. (Valladolid, 1995)

The conversations held between persons and the other inhabitants of the world are not primarily engaged in for the purpose of “knowing reality”. They are engaged in as part of the activity of criar y dejarse criar, of nurturing (raising) and letting oneself be nurtured (raised). The verb criar is used to speak of raising children, animals, plants, relationships, etc. It is the activity that fosters the growth and development of any potentiality or generativity. It is a fundamentally mutual or reciprocal activity: as one nurtures one is simultaneously nurtured. The action in the world does not leave the actor untransformed; acting in the world is being in relationship with that world, so the language of conversation is more appropriate than the language of knowledge. There is here no knower and known, no subject and object. Rather there are actors in relationships of mutuality. By acting one [P38] transforms not only the world but oneself as well. Therefore it is a fundamentally dynamic world, always moving, always changing, always in flux. There is, as it were, no simple act of knowing as we moderns understand the term, for such knowledge-acquiring activity presupposes that there is something to be known, irrespective of who knows it.

This is not to say that conversing with the world does not involve cognitive faculties, it of course does, but that the activity is not primarily and certainly not exclusively a cognitive one. Criar demands not only understanding but love, tenderness, patience. But it is to say that the point of conversation is not the attainment of knowledge through the interrogation of nature, it is rather to generate and regenerate the world and be generated and regenerated by it in the process. (Apffel-Marglin, 1994, p. 9)

 

These descriptions of the knowing and nurturing conversation in the ayllu are illustrations of the indigenous mind process or original participation. Valkeapää (1985, 1996, no p. #) has given a poetic description of Saami siida life and participation:

How I respect

the old Sámi life

That was true love of nature

where nothing was wasted

where humans were part of nature

 

Not until now have they realized

that the people who lived here

ten thousand years ago

melted to become the Sámi (…)

 

I see our fjells

the places we live

and hear my heart beat

all this is my home

and I carry it

within me

in my heart

I can hear it

when I close my eyes

I can hear it

 

I hear somewhere

deep within me

I hear the ground thunder

from thousands of hooves

I hear the reindeer herd running

or is it the noaidi drum

[P39] and the sacrificial stone

 

Of course, our modern eurocentered mind leads us to looki for words – stories, myths, descriptions, definitions – which evoke participatory conciousness. From an indigenous vantage point such profound “libraries” or records as Stonehenge, Newgrange, the rock carvings of Northern Europe and elsewhere, the Gundestrup cauldron are, in a sense, more accurate and more complete. Creation stories, as the Sámi Mjandasj story, may do something similar. (See also Colorado, 1988, for an Iroquois description of skanagoah, the great peace, the center of the indigenous conversation). This indigenous mind or consciousness process I am referring to here is not an essentialist understanding of tribalism or indigenism, but a discourse view in which individuals understand themselves in an ongoing conversation with the surrounding community, in which the local animals, plants, ancestors, and other spirits are a part (cf. Apffel Marglin, 1994; Rengifo, 1993; Valladolid, 1995); this conversation is carried on as a part of unfolding one’s own gifts while paying attention to the ceremonial and seasonal cycles as well as the larger astronomical cycles. (See Warrior, 1995 for a discussion of these positions; cf. Vizenor, 1989, 1994a, 1994b for an example of Native American discourse stance.) This is a worldview of total immanence which acknowledges that the social construction or conversation in one place is different from other conversations in other places, yet seeing this it stays grounded in the detailed observations of and conversations with animal, plants, and the various cycles of the specific place of conversation. This is not a mind process where egoic consciousness and transcendence stand in some form of opposition or tension to each other, but where individuals of the permeable, participatory consciousness live with spirits as much as part of their community as other human beings or plants. “El mundo es inmanente – the world is immanent” (PRATEC, 1996, 10).

 

These are descriptions of a process of an immanently present visionary socially constructed being, which is sustained without a need to progress to transcendence. They describe the immanent, ongoing conversation with everything, including spirits, which constitutes the community for human beings. Within this framework, if individuals do not know their ancestry, place in the community, the cultural stories, the land they live on, the cycles of the seasons, the stars, etc. – then these persons are lost to who they are, and pathology ensues – these individuals are in need of healing or balancing. These indigenous models allow for an alternate understanding of time, history, and the variety of cultures; they also allow to be in participation or conversation while exercising high level rational skills. Part of this conversation is the observation of the precession of the equinoxes and other larger historical cycles. This indigenous conceptualization allows each culture to understand its historic spiritual mission in its ecology, so to speak. It is not just that this type of model is preferable, I would suggest that it has greater accuracy because it is more complete and integral. It facilitates cultural exchange because it establishes equality among prospective partners of knowledge trade and avoids implicit or explicit imperialistic thinking.

 

[DP40] It is important to remember that the peoples active in participatory consciousness have done things which we can only regard as incredible and major acknowledgements. Whether this is star knowledge, travel, navigation, metallurgy or many other things – the range and depth of cognitive feats is frequently astonishing and difficult to deny despite the force of the continuing prejudices regarding the “primitivism” of early peoples. (I have discussed this issue at greater length in Kremer, 1998a, b; 1997c; 1996b, c, d) All this makes clear that some of Barfield’s assumptions regarding original participation (lack of reflection, unconsciousness, lack of differentiation from whole) are not tenable.

 

Gowlett (1992, 345) suggests

that through the past 30,000 to 40,000 years the brains of modern homo sapiens were similar to our own. Physical and cultural evidence points to lower levels of mental ability and craft skill in the earlier periods. Nevertheless, we may have to concede that the foundations of many basic human skills were laid 1 or even 2 million years ago, rather than at the origins of our own species.

Even Lévy-Bruhl, who wrote extensively about ‘primitive mentality’ stated in his last works that he no longer assumed a structural difference between contemporary Europeans and indigenous humans:

Let us expressly rectify what I believed correct in 1910: there is not a primitive mentality distinguishable from the other by two characteristics which are peculiar to it (mystical and prelogical). There is a mystical mentality which is more marked and more easily observable among ‘primitive peoples’ than in our societies, but is present in every human mind. (Les carnets, 1949, 131-2, quoted from Cazeneuve, 1972, 87)

 

All these points lead to a suggestion of what appears like a paradox on the surface: Peoples engaged in original participation may indeed have participated and continue to participate in the phenomena, yet they may simultaneously have been capable of cognitive feats requiring skills commonly associated in evolutionary thinking with the much later times of the egoic-rational processes. Mayan architecture, glyphs, mathematics and calendrics may serve as a surviving and continuing illustration (see recently Freidel, Schele & Parker, 1993) that participation in the phenomena and cognitive skills like formal-operational logic are a contradiction in the eyes of the dissociated, modernist ego only.

 

 

  1. The loss of participation and the pathology of dissociation

According to Barfield, by the seventeenth century the center of perception and thinking had changed from the phenomena to the self, with the mind moving outward toward the unrepresented and the phenomena (rather than from the phenomena inward) — thus the mind had severed itself from its connection with nature. This second epistemologically [P41] relevant process internalizes meaning and treats the phenomena as existing independently. “… A representation, which is collectively mistaken for an ultimate — ought not to be called a representation. It is an idol. Thus the phenomena themselves are idols, when they are imagined as enjoying independence of human perception, which can in fact only pertain to the unrepresented” (Barfield, 1965, 62). I have termed this process dissociative schismogenesis (Kremer, 1992b) – the progressively and addictively increasing split from participation and one’s origins. give more definition

 

McGrane (1989) has done an admirably lucid job of tracing the history of the relationship between euro-centered cultures and the Other, the alien, the different – an “archaeology of anthropology”, so to speak. His analysis is helpful for understanding the loss of participation in greater detail. One of his fundamental premises is that “a culture that discovers what is alien to itself simultaneously manifests what it is in itself” (McGrane 1989, 1). He sees anthropology as an endeavor which is “fundamentally involved in the reproduction of Western society… It manifests and highlights that egocentric tendency of our Western mind to identify itself as separate from what it perceives as external to itself” (1989, 5). Using McGrane’s conceptualization we can break down the process of loss of participation as follows:

 

  • In the Renaissance Christianity came between the European and the non-European; demonology determined that the Other, the fallen, was in need of naming, christening. Trances (and the concomitant healing practices) were seen as a practice which maintained the contact with demons and christianization meant the termination of such evil proceedings; killing or arrests of tribal members during ceremonies, the destruction or confiscation of artifacts (even during recent history, such as potlatch masks in Canada) are a result of this paradigm. While epistemological questions were certainly part of the philosophical discourse (we can trace them in eurocentered thinking to Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles), epistemology as a separate discipline had yet to arise.

 

  • During the Enlightenment ignorance was the fundamental coordinate around which the understanding of the Other was constituted: indigenous peoples were living with the errors of superstitution. Trances and alternate modes of healing were seen as superstitious practices which could not provide any true help or serve a healthful function. The 17th and 18th century saw the beginning of colonization.

 

  • The evolutionary thinking of the nineteenth century used the coordinate of time to understand natives as “primitives”, a fossilized developmental stage from the prehistory of European civilizations. Thus trances were conceptualized as contemporary remnants of an outmoded, primitive human potential; their usefulness was superceded by the emergent medical and other sciences. The 19th century saw the height of colonialism and imperialism. It is during this time period (in 1856) that the word epistemology was first recorded to label “the theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge” (OED). In Germany the word Erkenntnistheorie began emerging among the Kantians beginning in 1808, to be firmly established by Zeller in 1862 with his Über die Aufgabe und Bedeutung [P42] der Erkenntnistheorie (Klaus & Buhr, 1970). Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk (1994, 33) comment that “the psychological and social foundation of this period of conquest and colonization is found in the ability to coerce the peoples of the world to accept the rules by which European politics and ideologies claimed the power to determine what is legitimate about the human experience.” It is no coincidence that this was also the time in which evolutionary theories were first proposed. Epistemological and evolutionary thinking emerged out of the increasing split from the participation in the phenomena in order to understand and legitimize this dissociative logic of progress: Peoples participating in the phenomena become uncivilized with no possibility to discern truth because of insufficient dissociation. Habermas (1997) makes this point clearly when he discusses the benefits and limitations of Cassirers Theorie der symbolischen Formen (a theory I could have used instead of Barfield’s to discuss the present issues): It is the logic of progress and the process of civilization – Aufklärung – which destroys and needs to destroy the impact of participation in the phenomena. (See Wilber articles for details, Kremer 1998 a, b)

 

Most models of social evolution (such as recently Wilber’s, 1995; cf. Winkelman, 1993, 5) are in the tradition of 19th century evolutionary conceptualizations. Julian Huxley is a good example for this thinking in the field of biology:

If we accept the doctrine of evolution, we are bound to believe that man has arisen from mammals, terrestrial from aquatic forms, vertebrates from invertebrates, multicellular from unicellular, and in general the larger and the more complex from the smaller and simpler. To the average man it will be indisputable that a man is higher than a worm or a polyp, an insect is higher than a protozoan, even if he cannot exactly define in what resides this highness or lowness of organic types. (Huxley, 1923, 10; quoted from Barlow, 1994)

Of course, if this type of evolutionist thinking is extrapolated into the field of evolution of consciousness and societies, then we can see how the prehistoric peoples of all continents and the contemporary remaining indigenous peoples – as McGrane has illustrated – can be classed as “lower” and the euro-centered as “higher” (even if there are yet higher stages to come).

The very identification of and naming of the non-European Other as “primitive,” as “primitive mentality,” as “primitive culture,” presupposed a theory (language) of rational progress, of progress in and by reason (Enlightenment) and/or progress in and by history (nineteenth century). The very possibility of the conception of “primitive” presupposed the prior commitment to a conception of progress. (McGrane, 1989, 99)

The notion of progress implies that there is something at least insufficient or even bad in the past and that the good lies in the future. It is the

powerful ideology of progress that proposes human history as a story of mankind’s inexorable advance toward a more perfect society and projects all changes with few [P43] exceptions as part of this process. The tradition of historical presentation in the West has had a strong tendency to select events in a way that constructs a story supportive of this largely unspoken thesis” (Lyons, in Lyons et al., 1992, 17).

 

From a native perspective, evolutionary thinking has always been problematic:

European utopian visions have been used to rationalize a range of criminal behaviors including the enslavement of millions of Africans and the annihilation of entire American Indian peoples as the (sometimes) regrettable but necessary consequence of the construction of some kind of future state of human perfection (Dion-Buffalo & Mohawk, 1994, p. 33).

This statement cannot be taken seriously enough and should be a clear warning signal to pay attention to the shadow of evolutionary thinking. (I have discussed some of this more extensively in Kremer, 1996b.) Unless we do so evolutionary thinking will remain misguided and dangerous because there is no reason to assume that it is outside of its history which – at least implicitly – justified (cultural) genocides. In order to step outside of that intellectual history it is necessary to address explicitly shadow material issues such as the ones Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk mention in their quote. Otherwise whatever is written is at least an unconscious continuation of eurocentered dominance and (cultural) genocide. McGrane (1989) in his critical analysis of the history of “the Other” and anthropology comments that

when the ‘sun’ of civilization dawns on the virgin forest of the Other, instead of nourishing him, it chars and blackens him. … at the very instant they (primitive societies) become known to us they are doomed (108, last sentence quoted from Bastian).

Or in the word of Lyons (Lyons et al., 1992, 17): “At the moment of contact and conflict peoples are spotlighted briefly and their images are frozen forever in time.” The historical connection between the arising of enlightenment philosophy and colonialism is not just accidental. Using Barfield’s terminology: The appearances had to become idols before Kant could call out Sapere aude! and before the colonisation of native peoples could be “scientifically” justified.

Anthropology has been an extremely subtle and spiritual kind of cognitive imperialism, a power-based monologue about alien cultures rather than, and in active avoidance of, a dialogue with them in terms of sovereignty, i.e., the untranslatability and irreducibility of one ‘culture’ to the being and language of the other (McGrane, 1989, 127).

Until we understand the impact of this connection the cultural shadow material will determine what eurocentered cultures are – to an extent difficult to fathom. As Adorno and Horkheimer have pointed out: that which is repressed inevitably returns through the backdoor – with increased power (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944).  This would mean that one of the most important current historic tasks of eurocentered cultures is to retract its [P44] attention and periodic obsession with other cultures and to focus on its own history, including the shadow of its own history.

 

Postmodernity helps us to think about issues like “tribal” or “indigenous” or “participation” differently, yet it is still “us” thinking “them.” Despite the increasing breakdown of the grand narratives and the increasing multivocality in discourses, postmodernity is but yet another advance within the game of dissociative epistemologies. Even though postmodern epistemologies have split Truth into truths and we can conceive of an increasing number of epistemologies, the politics remain the same: it is eurocentered thinking as the game master, even as the margins increasingly encroach. Postmodernity can easily be interpreted as the yearning to regain participation in the phenomena. The concern with tribal epistemologies is part of this yearning. And historical need.

 

 

  1. The world of participation and the world of dissociation

Before discussing the epistemologies of reconstructing indigenous consciousness it is important to highlight the differences not just in world views, but in worlds between participatory and dissociative consciousness.

 

Barfield’s most important point is that the worlds of participation (whether ‘original’ or recovered) and the worlds of unconscious participation or dissociation are different. It is not just that we see things differently in each of these worlds – but the worlds are  different. We can apply this thinking not just to the different stages of evolution which he presupposes, but also to differences between cultures in general. At times our conversational language even admits that much:”The Navajos live in a totally different world.” Indeed, they do. It is not just that they see the world differently – their world is not ours! The Mt. Taylor we see is not the same as the Tsoodzil  the Navajos see. When we see this mountain while driving along the interstate toward Albuquerque, then we see all its beautiful physicality and sheer massiveness; we may see the snow on the mountaintop and gaze in wonder at the way the mountain rises rapidly from the valley floor. Its size and beauty might inspire awe in us. Traditional Navajos actively participating in their way of life (and not in contact with the Western paradigm) would see the physical mountain also, of course, but they would also be aware of the turquoise color and the blue wind which dwell in this mountain. They would participate in it as the South Mountain which helps to contain the sacred land which provides for them. First Man and First Woman

fastened [the South Mountain] to the earth with a great stone knife, … they adorned it with turquoise, with dark mist, she-rain, and all different kinds of wild animals. On its summit they placed a dish of turquoise; in this they put two eggs of the Bluebird, which they covered with sacred buckskin. … The Boy who Carries One Turquoise and the Girl who Carries One Grain of Corn were put into the mountain to dwell. (Wyman, 1967, unpaginated)

[P45] Seeing the mountain is seeing part of what it means to live in hózhó,  in beauty and balance. This is why soil from this mountain is present in the bundle for their foundational ceremony, the Blessingway. Participating in Tsoodzil is participating in part of the creation story. While our experience of seeing Mt. Taylor is that of seeing something out there, Navajos would participate in Tsoodzil (or Dootl’shii Dziil, meaning turquoise mountain) as a part of themselves necessary for walking in old age on a trail of beauty (sa’a naghái bik’e hózhó).  If we were to imagine a successful recovery of indigenous consciousness, then we could surmise that we would also experience the spirit of the mountain, and that we would enter its beingness in a way which makes it no longer ‘out there’, and we would do this in a way which allows us to be conscious of our movement of boundaries.

 

But what about the concrete, the things we can touch and presumably all agree on? I would argue that the pragmatic, ‘real’ stuff which for which the Western enlightenment paradigm would like to provide agreements is nothing but the least common denominator (arrived at and agreeed to by dissociative perception and conceptual language). In holding a bead of turquoise in our hand we will probably be able to agree with any Navajo on its shape, color, the beauty of its veins, how we might polish it further, how it could be embedded in silver jewelry, how heavy it is, etc. (We would presumably be unable to agree, for exmple, on the question whether this is a semi-precious stone, since it is the most highly prized stone within the Navajo culture.) But what is meeting in such a conversation are two tips of icebergs, overlapping to a minimal degree. Of course, the tips of two icebergs cannot physically overlap — we can only make them overlap by way of lining them up in our perceptual field; the overlap thus created is the least common denominator which the Western enlightenment paradigm pursues. Below the eurocentered tip of the iceberg is the monstrous denial of our participation in the phenomenon ‘turquoise bead’ (which only imagination can recover). Below the Navajo tip of the iceberg is “the grand cosmic scheme of ‘hózhó’ ” and how turquoise ” functions as a lubricant to enhance this scheme or to restore it when it is disrupted… It is special because it is a means of harmonious communion with the other[s] … in the universe” (Witherspoon, 1987, 73-74). Thus we find that the tip of the Navajo iceberg is, in fact, the tip of a mountain, and that this mountain is only submerged for participants in the epistemology of modernity. We could say it is the tip of Tsoodzil. It is also the tip of all the chantways which maintain and restore beauty, happiness, health and harmony. We arrive at our supposed concrete, realistic view of the world at the expense of dissociation. For the Navajo a turquoise bead is a piece of art and as such “not divorced from subsistence, science, philosophy or theology, but is an integral part of both common activities and cosmic schemes” (Witherspoon, 1987, 60). While the tips of icebergs and mountains cannot physically touch at the top, they can touch at the bottom. Below the tips of the least common denominator we find the conscious or unconscious cultural practices which lead to differing participation in the phenomena. Yet  even further below we may enter unitive states of consciousness and find, among the silent spaces, realities where cultures and their peoples touch in ways which are yet to be fully explored (cf. Forman, 1990).

 

 

[P46] 5. Epistemologies of reconstructing indigenous consciousness

Barfield termed third epistemologically relevant process of ‘final participation,’ however, I prefer to talk about it as recovery of indigenous mind or consciousness. It allows us to regain participation and to participate intentionally in the world of phenomena. Barfield looks to Rudolf Steiner, Goethe and the romantic poets for guidance toward the synthesizing process of future participation in the phenomena among eurocentered peoples. He saw them as consciously and actively participating in the construction of the very world itself. Since Barfield overlooks contemporary indigenous peoples, he disregards the help they might have to offer for the recovery of participation. He suggests that the tension between the original participation of our ancestors and the modern Western consciousness can be resolved in the conscious experience of participation through our imaginative and creative faculties. I would add that it can also be resolved through the integration of those aspects of living and knowing from which the eurocentered discourses split themselves off: Ancestry, prehistory, nature, the feminine, etc. “Some say that evolution has now reached a stage at which [the human being] is becoming increasingly responsible for it. … I think the same; but I do not see that responsibility at all as others see it. … I am certain that our responsibility will only be discharged, if at all, not by tinkering with the outside of the world but by changing it, slowly enough no doubt, from the inside” (Barfield, 1979, 92). This internal work is the integration of all those processes which have followed the eurocentered discourse as its shadow.

 

This brings me to the viewpoint from which I am writing this article as somebody who is remembering his indigenous roots without any claim to being native or having shared native experiences of discrimination and colonialism; I grew up as part of the dominant culture in Germany (see Kremer, 1994, 1995 for further discussion of my stance). The endeavor which I call ‘recovery of indigenous mind’ is nothing nostalgic or romantic – it is a painful process of remembering back in order to go forward. There is no going back. There is no innocent or naïve recovery of participation. My way into the future moves through the integration of historical wounds, painful memories and apparently senseless events in order to work out a future based on the conversational model of the Andean ayllu and its European equivalents, based on an ecologically specific notion of balance.

 

At this point it is important to review specifically the epistemological issues relevant for a recovered participatory conversation within eurocentered discourses. I will do so by discussing notions of truth, participatory discourse, and the relationship between the recovered aspects of participatory knowing and being.

 

So what happens to the notion of truth when we allow for the validity of different worlds? If truth is no longer capitalized – does that mean anything is as good as anything else? Is there any way left to speak about things being true, any means of evaluation? Are we thrown into a groundless abyss of endless relativism? If truth is no longer the eternal verity [P47] that science purports to achieve, then it assumes the status of narrative. Then, how do we evaluate narratives of truth, different stories about the phenomena?

 

Instead of talking about truth, a term associated with the certainty and absoluteness as defined by the logocentric worldview, I prefer to talk about the resolution which different worlds provide in their interactions with the phenomena. Von Frantz (1970), in discussing psychological interpretation as a way of telling a story, asserts that we should never presume to have arrived at the truth. In assuming finality in our interpretation we cheat ourselves. Once we have an interpretation which “clicks”, we nevertheless still “crave the renewal that comes from understanding archetypal images” (p. 32). Resolution is never permanent, it is always temporary. The eurocentered notions of truth try to shirk their mantle of impermanence by dissociating from the participation which is its foundation. However, no dissociative state is ever safe from the play, the trickery and the chaotic invasion which ‘the other’ is prone to stage. The subcultures of Western technological societies, wilderness or nature, the feminine, the arts, dreams, the body are among the domains through which ‘the other’ continues to make itself known. Resolution aims at healing breaches, while truth needs anthropocentric dissociation from the phenomena.

 

Habermas (1984) has described five forms of rationality, five ways in which validity claims and their concomitant form of argumentation can be made:

  • The propositional truth or efficacy of teleological actions can be argued in theoretical discourses about cognitive-instrumental expressions; this is the domain with which the scientific, positivistic paradigm concerns itself to the exclusion of the other four dimensions; the positivistic research paradigm can be seen as the examplary mode to dispute propositional truths.
  • The normative rightness of statements can be argued in practical discourses about moral-practical expressions. This is the realm of ethical debates.
  • The comprehensibility or well-formedness of symbolic constructs can be argued in explicative discourses (this would include the ability to engage fellow scholars in dialogue). From this perspective we can dispute how clear, compelling and even evocative the different expressions of our relationship to the phenomena are.
  • The truthfulness or sincerity of expressions can be argued in therapeutic discourses. (Habermas uses the Freudian psychoanalytic discourse as the exemplar.)
  • The adequacy of value standards can be argued in aesthetic discourses.

 

While the positivistic approach to knowledge would like to make us believe that it is only the propositional truth of claims which matters, Habermas’ model implies that each utterance, considered in context, lays claim to acceptability in all the above five ways (Kremer, 1986; Wood, 1985). The five forms of rationality integrated constitute reason. What began with the Western enlightenment movement allowed us to distinguish these five forms of rationality; these distinctions are differences in the knowing process which Kant and others helped us make. Yet, as these distinctions become more significant and absolute, they also become more problematic.

 

[P48] The postmodern condition is the fragmentation and reification of these shimmering facets of reason into separate domains which are only minimally engaged with each other. While the rationality of the propositional truth is cherished throughout scientific inquiry, the other four dimenions of reason are relegated to ‘the other’, to the shadow. In the ordeal of the postmodern dark night the scholar is challenged to integrate what has been thought asunder. We are unresolved in our relationships to wilderness, the feminine, the body, the spiritual – ‘the other’ is what we cannot resolve.

 

Most theories of truth are concerned with the correspondence between what is asserted in scholarly discourse and what is considered ‘out there’, the phenomena. What is the goodness of fit? Habermas (1971) proposes a discourse model of truth to transcend the problems other models have encountered. Here the knower engages in dialogues with the community of knowing subjects in order to determine whether the truth ascertained can be defended in discourse and critique; this would be a dialogue in which we are challenged to engage in all five dimensions of reason. I would ascertain that this consensus model of truth is the only one appropriate for the epistemological approach I am describing and allows us to develop a eurocentered analogue to the Andean conversation in the ayllu. If worlds or realities are understood as intended, then it is no longer meaningful to look at the correspondence between the world described and the phenomena (die Dinge an sich). However, it is meaningful to dispute whether the facts described in the consensual narrative are consistent with the descriptions. Do we actually succeed in making the world which we are purportedly creating qua our narratives? The dark night experience of the scholar is the realization that the world which the epistemology of modernity claims to create is falling apart in the process.

 

It now becomes apparent that the truths consensually agreed upon by an integral use of rationalities can only be temporary and historically grounded resolutions. As cultures and knowledge change, so does truth. What reason accepts as truth is, in fact, the best resolution to a question or problem we can provide at the time. The limits of today’s resolution may only  become apparent tomorrow. Feyerabend (1984) has presented many critical discussions which affirm this point. Gregory (1988) describes at length how physicists invent a physical world. If these arguments are valid, then it will indeed be useful to think about reality in terms of the conversational model suggested by Andean people like Rengifo (1993), Valladolid (1995, 1997), Grillo (PRATEC, 1996), and others.

 

Resolutions which are – at least temporarily – satisfying because what they propose is efficacious, morally defensible, an expression of shared values and comprehensive aesthetics, sincere and beautifully expressed are what make up intentional worlds. We can see the Andean world of the ayllu as just such an intentional world. Or the recovered fridhr community of the Vanir times. Or the siida groups of the Sámi people. These resolutions are not subjectivistic or voluntaristic as long as they engage a community in discourse. (This is not to claim that resolutions which are experienced as satisfying cannot contain distortions related to power structures ). And as long as ancestry, place, history, and ecology are part of the discourse. The Truth with a capital T is the death threat to [P49] resolution. Truth does not allow for the conscious participation in renewal of intentional worlds, because it has to be dissociated from important aspects of reason. In renewing worlds we may strive for better and better resolutions or we may find that the resolutions which constitute our intentional world are quite satisfying and successful (on their own terms!).

 

Obviously, within the model of intentional worlds or community conversation which I have presented the evaluation of truth claims does become problematic. This is a crucial issue for the change in the quality of the eurocentered discourses. Is there any way to look at claims to resolution and to compare them? Is there a way of saying that one intentional world is better, more resolved than another? That the present is better or worse than the past? If we move from the evaluative stance which gives grades for worldviews, then we can begin to look at ways in which we might compare worldviews without consciously or unconsciously annexing them. Such comparison can reasonably only happen within the discourse model of resolutions previously discussed. Comparisons then become dialogical encounters and are then part of an effort to make cultures speak to each other, rather than a quest for a singular model containing all (at the expense of diversity).

 

Conversations about different resolutions or intentional worlds address what I have called alignment issues. When aspects of the participatory conversation are not aligned it means that the participants have dissociated from parts of the conversation. Alignment means that there is an open dialectic or exchange possible between all the different dimensions which make up participatory or indigenous conversations. Resolutions which involve splitting or dissociation are out of alignment, so to speak, and lead to anti-thetical results (with the dissociated parts floating about in the individual and social unconscious); resolutions which avoid splitting and dissociation lead to greater alignment and synthetical resolutions. Obviously, alignment is not a static or mechanical issue, but an issue of the openness of various processes toward each other. The questions of alignment can  be asked within the following domains which pertain to the openness of the participatory conversation:

  • How does a resolution affect the alignment of the different aspects within the human being (i.e., the state of the dialectic between cognition, emotion, the body, the numinous and the sexual, and between the individual understanding of ancestry, history, place, and cycles)? How are these aspects boundaried, how are they valued and how are they made to speak to each other?
  • How does a resolution affect the alignment between human beings? How is the relationship between genders defined? Does it facilitate the establishment of constraint-free and sincere interactions? Does it facilitate interactions which include all aspects of the human being? Do our socio-cultural creations support sincere, mature, and open communications? Does it facilitate the discussion of shadow or deviant aspects of society, history, economy, ancestry, etc.?
  • How does a resolution affect the alignment between human beings and wilderness or nature? In this domain we would raise all the issues which ecologists have begun to address.

[P50] • How does a resolution affect the alignment between different elements of nature (which has become a critical issue only since the the human intervention in our wilderness has proved to be severely destructive)? (cf. Kremer, 1987)

 

It is easy to jump to conclusions about a certain normativeness inherent in the way I am asking these questions about alignments and their domains. However, even the questions, boundaries of domains, terminologies (such as ‘mature’) need to be potentially part of any alignment conversation. Whatever implicit normativeness is or seems to be present can always be raised as an issue for conversation and exploration.

 

I have described the notion of participatory or shamanic “concourse” as a way of having knowledge exchange based on equity in a framework in which all participants are free to choose participation (Kremer, 1992a &b). The change from discourse to concourse is intentionally somewhat provocative. In reviewing the etymology of both words it becomes apparent that the embodied running of the Latin currere has become the disembodied movement of the mind in current academic discourse. Currere also connotes the running of waters or the circular movement of wheels. Instead of the antagonistic dis of the critical review of reality models (or truth claims), where scholars and others dispute conclusions reached in relative isolation by moving from premises to consequences, I am suggesting the con of communal, social reality creation (this is based on the presupposition that there is no genuine community without conflict and agonistic moves). Participatory concourse would be a circle where the communal reality creation is reviewed through talking as well as ritualistic embodiment; this circle would have space for silence, stories, humor, theater, dancing and other arts.

 

The shamanic coming together in a circle is the idealized prototype to which the term ‘shamanic concourse’ alludes. This would be a circle where the communal reality creation is reviewed through talking as well as ritualistic embodiment; this circle would have space for silence, stories, humour, theatre, dancing and other arts. The name ‘shamanic concourse’ seems appropriate as an acknowledgement of the fact that shamans appear to be the primary model of practitioners actively engaged in world creation and world maintainance; these are people who appear to be conscious (although not in the Western sense) of the relationship between knowing and creating and who are constantly engaged in dealing with issues of alignment; they are, frequently, aware of other cultural worlds, respect them and find ways to engage with them without abandoning the world which they are intent on maintaining. For them knowing is a practice of living. Living is the practice of knowing. They seem to have tools which can help us to be more conscious of the knowing process. Bean and Vane point out that “shamans, having control of ‘altered states of consiousness,’ were religious specialists in charge of the relationship between [human beings] and the supernatural…, in effect philosophers” (1978, 662, emphasis added). They can serve as models on how to participate in the phenomena while remaining conscious (in a new way) of that participation.

 

[P51] If scholars were to engage in participatory concourse, then this would mean that they are resuming an ancient conversation – the recovery of their indigenous roots and participatory consciousness. They would understand that consensus about a particular truth claim is not something which can be achieved by means of the rational mind alone. The knowing of the body, the knowing of the heart, the knowing which comes from states of shifted awareness (including the dialogue with the ancestors) are all valuable processes. Storytelling, star observation, conversations with plants, animals and ancestors are equally valuable. Even though every consensus will have to withstand the challenges posed in verbal, rational discourse, the words and stories of resolution will have to withstand the challenges from all other human dimensions of experience – somatic, sexual, emotional and spiritual as well as ancestral, historical and ecological. Such an embodiment of knowing can heal the various splits, such as between body and mind. Any resolution has to include the explicit, verbal expression of agreement as well as the felt sense of common understanding. Any resolution needs to be open not just to be questioned through the pragmatics of testing propositional truths; it also needs to be open to moral and aesthetic (in the Batesonian sense [1991]) investigations. Somatic knowing and intuition need to see the light of the rational mind, while the mind needs to see the light which is in the body. While it is true that we are always challenged to reflect our resolutions in language, this does not mean that language is the sole arbiter of truth. It is in the open and fluid interaction of the different dimensions of the participatory concourse that we can discover how our resolutions of truth address the alignment issues we are faced with. To deny science is foolish; not to acknowledge its participation in the is dangerous (as our current crises illustrate all too vividly). Participatory concourse allows us to appreciate scientific achievements without denying the body, the heart, sexuality, gender differences and the divine, without denying ancestry, place, history, and astronomical cycles.

 

In the Native American ceremony of the rock people lodge (sweat lodge) the medicine person evokes and invokes a world which is different from our consensual Western world. We are specifically engaged on levels which include the feminine, which invoke all aspects of nature, which shift our awareness of the body, and which open and invoke a spiritual dimension normally not present for those initiated in the Western technological worldview. In this process of ritual knowing we participate in the phenomena as they arise in a way different from those of the masculinized Western scholar. The way we are aligned within ourselves, with others and with nature is part of this process of knowing. It is also something we can engage with in participatory concourse to understand and explain its claims to resolution.

 

The model Western enlightenment ceremonial of experimental verification of propositional truth engages the masculinized scholar with the phenomena in a different way. Here the scholar is trained to focus attention on just one aspect of experience and rationality: the mind and truth as defined by a positivistic criterion. It is these operations which define the ground of ordinary reality as seen in societies invested in the Western technological worldview. The resolutions which these operations of knowing provide as a world to live in can be discussed in a participatory concourse engaging all domains of alignment.

 

[P52] Once the Western scholar has been defined as a ritualistic practitioner of world renewal, we can begin to regain consciousness about our participation in the phenomena. The dissociation between the ‘out there’ and the knowing act can be synthetically resolved into the conscious participation in the phenomena. Here scholars are the Western analogue of the shaman. As such they have responsibilities which exceed by far what the positivistic paradigm calls for. The inclusion of the different domains of knowing and alignment might engage the academy consciously with the practice of world renewal. Education then becomes transformative learning and the continuous practice of world renewal. The boundaries between cosmos and psyche are redrawn and redefined. The conscious experience of the world as intentional allows us to participate in change and renewal. The participatory concourse can save us from the aridness of Habermas’ discourse model without throwing us into the postmodern abyss of fragmentation, irresponsibility and cynicism. The epistemological framework I have presented uses participatory concourse in order to review claims to truth and resolution. Such process includes silence, shifts in awareness, the body and the remaining dimensions of ‘the other’, thus modulating language as words and grammar intend worlds.

 

Thus we may reconstruct what indigenous consciousness might be for eurocentered peoples today.

 

Zusammenfassung

Die Dialektik von Bejahung und kritischer Negation eurozentrierter Zugänge zum Wissen wird in diesem Aufsatz in der Möglichkeit einer Affirmation des rekonstruierten indigenen Bewußtseins aufgelöst. Dieser Ansatz wird anfangs mittels eines Traumes vorgestellt, der die im Nachfolgenden dargestellte rekonstruktive Epistemologie enthält – eine indigene Darstellung dieses Wissensansatzes. Partizipatorisches, teilnehmendes Bewußtsein – der Geistesprozeß vergangener und gegenwärtiger indigener Völker – wird dann anhand von Barfields Begriff der ursprünglichen Teilnahme (original participation) diskutiert. Eine kritische Untersuchung seiner Definitionen erlaubt ursprüngliche Teilnahme als wechselseitig ernährendes und bereicherndes Gespräch zwischen allen Gesprächsteilnehmern gegenwärtig zu verstehen. Die Trennung oder Dissoziation von dieser Qualität des teilnehmenden Bewußtseins wird dann in historischer Sicht beschrieben. Der Verfasser betont, daß die Unterschiede zwischen teilnehmendem und dissoziativem Bewußtsein nicht nur einen Unterschied in der Weltsicht darstellen, sondern in deutlich unterschiedlichen Welten oder Realitäten resultieren in denen die Gesprächsteilnehmer leben. Die Schlußabschnitt diskutiert einige Problematiken der Rekonstruktion indigenen Bewußtseins unter Zuhilfenahme einer kritischen Benutzung des Diskursmodells der Wahrheit, das Habermas beschrieben hat; vorgeschlagen wird das Konzept des participatory concourse (teilnehmender oder schamanistischer CONkurs). Verschiedene Dimensionen des alignments, der synthetischen oder nicht-synthetischen, integrierenden oder nicht-integralen Aufeinanderausrichtung, werden als [P53] vielversprechender Ansatz zur Einschätzung von Projekten der Wiedererinnerung und Wiederherstellung indigenen Bewußtseins angesehen. Damit wird die Möglichkeit der Integration und Beibehaltung der Beiträge der Moderne und Postmoderne geschaffen – bei gleichzeitiger Praxis des indigenen, nährenden und bereichernden Gesprächs. Repräsentanten indigener Kulturen betonen die Notwendigkeit, daß sich eurozentrierte Menschen an ihre eigenen indigenen Wurzeln erinnern; der vorliegende Artikel unterstützt diese Vorstellung mit Argumenten, die sich aus den eurozentrierten Diskursen der Moderne und Postmoderne ergeben.

 

Summary

Transcending the dialectic between an affirmation of eurocentered approaches to knowing and their critical denial, this article suggests the affirmation of reconstructing indigenous consciousness as a third way – the indigenous path for eurocentered peoples. This approach is first introduced in an indigenous way by recounting a dream which contains the reconstructive epistemology outlined in the subsequent sections. The nature of participatory consciousness – the mind process of past and present indigenous peoples – is then discussed using Barfield’s term original participation. A critical review of his definitions allows the reframing of original participation as mutually nurturing conversation among all participants. The split or dissociation from this quality of participatory consciousness is then traced in a historical outline. The author subsequently emphasizes that the difference between participatory and dissociative consciousness is not just one of world view or epistemology, but leads conversation partners to live in distinctly different worlds or realities. The final section discusses some of the problematics of reconstructing indigenous consciousness by reviewing Habermas discourse model of truth and suggesting the notion of participatory or shamanic concourse. Various dimensions of alignments are seen as a promising way to assess projects of recovery of indigenous mind thus allowing the retention and integration of the contributions of modernity and postmodernity while engaging in a nurturing indigenous conversation. Native Elders have emphasized the necessity for eurocentered peoples to remember their indigenous roots, and this article supports this notion by using arguments available from eurocentered modern and postmodern discourses.

 

 

 

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