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Millennial Twins: An Essay into Time and Place (PDF)

Millennial Twins

An Essay into Time and Place

Jürgen W. Kremer

© 2000

3383 Princeton Drive

 

Santa Rosa, CA 95405

 

jkremer@sonic.net

[Published in a slightly different version in ReVision, vol. 22, number 3, pp.29-43.
Use section numbers 1 through 48 for reference.]

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As storyteller I wonder at times what it would be like to be handed a story that has been taken care of across the generations. And now, during these days tinged with millennianism, to take care of it myself, and then to pass it on to the next generations using the best of my memory abilities, and the most beautiful words I have been taught; thus telling a story which has emerged over the generations from a particular place, from observing the beings that live there, from feeding on them and making offerings in exchange; thus taking care of a story that has a certain wholeness, even though it undoubtedly has changed with each storyteller giving his or her best; and even though such wholeness can at best be transitory only – in the telling at the right moment on the right occasion.

I have not been given such a story.

I have been given storysherds. That is all I have been given to take care of. Storysherds.

The broken pot in the museum becomes “false” when curators add to what they have found during the excavation. Adding the missing pieces would mean dishonoring its maker; but more importantly, it would be dishonoring the history of its breakage. Yet, it is possible to imagine that remaking the pot might not result in such dishonor. For it to be honorable it would have to be done right. Pueblo Indians recycle potsherds by grinding them to powder, making them part of the matrix for a new pot. Or the missing pieces would have to be found, one way or the other. Maybe then the entire pot can be made new. (1)

As caretaker of storysherds I am obliged to honor the sherds at hand, not to add to them willfully by giving in to my desire for wholeness. Wholeness cannot be willed. It takes the kind of imagination that arises from time and place. I will need all my skills. I need the patience of listening and seeing whether wholeness will emerge.

The millennium is not my story, yet I am part of it. My ancestors, for reasons only partly apparent to me, came to deal with their understanding of reality primarily in linear segments and fragments. The count that defines the millennium reflects this. And it is truly but a storysherd. Or a confrontation with the uneven edges of the pot’s breakage lines.

I am not of the land where I am writing this, yet I live on it and I am becoming part of it. This is where I have settled. My ancestors are of the European lands; there they and I grew up, yet nothing but storysherds have been passed on to me from those centuries of being in particular places. Taking care of my storysherds may make it possible to re-imagine the stories from which they broke away. In order to do so in a sacred way means caring for the sherds first and foremost; taking the risk of picking up the sherds. In renewing a vessel I not only need to visualize its pattern as whole and complete, but I need to give particular attention to the points of breakage, the patterns of the broken lines. This is my obligation as storyteller. Maybe then, later, I can make one story new. And, to be sure, it won’t be the story my ancestors handed down to me. But it will.

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[P30] To make stories of sherds is pre-eminently a modern endeavor, in a sense. Modernity has created so many sherds. The sherds gathered here are largely from twin stories.

So, this is a twin story, in a way.

It is the story of twin pines: The Native American tuwa, and its twin, the “digger” pine, pinus sabiniana of European perception. It is the story of particular movements in our galaxy, and the twin story of the end of the second millennium, and the beginning of the third. It is the story of a pair of twins – one afflicted by blindness, the other paralyzed – in search of their healing ceremony. It is the story of two brothers, one following instructions he has been given while the other one has yet to remember how he was and is to be. There are more twins, more pairings, masculine and feminine, male and female, that appear as I sort the sherds. The twins on the poles, one on each. And then there is Odysseus, and Odysseus Redux, for example. Sherds for a story.

This is also a story about two ways to make words, and to be made by words. Two stories colliding – one aware of the collision, the other barely noticing. One twin out of balance, split off, masculinized. Thus the balance of the other twin is affected. The balance between things is disturbed. Their internal balance is disturbed. For there to be balance the story needs to be made whole. This is a story of imbalance and imposition, and a story of healing imbalance.

These are the storysherds I have found as the millennium ends. I have gathered them in the place where I have settled in order to make sense of time and place. I am seeking for an integrity that can only exist when I am fully present to the movements of time and history as they arise where I sit. When I am fully present to all the beings around me.

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Words are what make us distinctly human. But more than that: in words lie our greatest power; we are most powerful through words. Words describe, they can invoke, deny, remember, identify, disidentify. Words help us see, they guide us in what we rely on as our reality. Not having words is forgetting. When we forget a word or name then the peril of that moment may translate into annoyance or fear.

To tell a story in the proper way, to hear a story told in the proper way – this is very old and sacred business, and it is very good. At that moment when we are drawn into the element of language, we are as intensely alive as we can be; we create and we are created. … Our stories explain us, justify us, sustain us, humble us, and forgive us. And sometimes they injure and destroy us. Make no mistake, we are at risk in the presence of words. (Momaday 1997. 169)

Words originate from a matrix of place and time, from landscape, myth, and history. Even our distance from such sources places us and times us. Imagination and creativity thus have ancient ties to realms so much contested in our contemporary understandings. This is a quality of imagination alien to most of the narcissistic and willful acts that are taken for creativity in contemporary dominant culture.

We are at risk in the presence of words. Getting a story wrong can be very dangerous. Getting it right requires all our imagination and creativity. And presence to whence words arise: place and time, landscape and history. Sacred business. Even, and maybe especially, as far as the millennium is concerned. It requires the precision of sacred work as personal imagination is held by the awareness of its sources. Will is in the discipline, the intention of presence, not the willfulness of individual acts.

What I take from this is that making millenarian words without being present to their origins in land and time puts me at risk. I have no intention to do so. This is why I am telling the story in the way I do. This is why the sherds are gathered in this pattern.

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The millennium is a precisely arbitrary moment, as Gould (1997) extensively and delightfully reminds us. Whichever way we look at it, arbitrariness remains as its most striking feature. As possible celebratory event of the Christian church it should already have been celebrated, given that Jesus was born 4BCE or earlier. Numerically the second millennium concludes only at the end of the year 2000, putting the beginning of the third millennium CE at 2001; this is how past turns of centuries, and even, predominantly, the one millennium of the current count have been celebrated. As arbitrary count, mostly disconnected from Christian eschatological thinking, it seems to deserve the same level of observance and excitement as the odometer of my trusty old car turning from 99,999 to 100,000 miles. Albeit rather brief, it was an exciting moment. And then, of course, this is a very European count. The Hebrew, Moslem, Mayan, Persian, Chinese, and other calendars give numbers for the same date that clearly do not suggest any millennianism.

The associated concept of Y2K, resulting from the same arbitrary count, gives rise to concerns that are, to a certain degree, clearly identifiable as technological and electronic problems. Y2K has become, at least in some circles, associated with apocalyptic thoughts arising from the ever more visible ecocide, relentless economic globalization, and other pathologies of modernity. And it has also given rise to hopes of ending these destructive trends through crisis, collapse. Hopes for the beginning of a phase of balancing and healing.

Interestingly, the millennium (of whichever actual date) and Y2K, are very close to an event that is highly observable and far from arbitrary: Many ancient and indigenous cultures have observed the precession of the equinoxes, maybe for as long as 39,000 years (2). According to various traditions, notably the Mayan, one segment in this cycle is coming to an end (in their case a whole calendar, the so-called Long Count). Of course, popular culture has already celebrated this event well in advance through the musical Hair which hailed the coming of the age of Aquarius.

The phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes occurs because of the wobble of the spinning earth. Every 2,200 years or so a new constellation rises heliacally – right before sunrise – at the vernal equinox. It is an observable astronomical event, and it is also interpreted within the zodiacal system of Western astrology. The observability of the precession should have given it clear scientific appeal, and thus great preference over an arbitrary count based on the mistakenly calculated birth of a religious prophet. Not so. Maybe it is the association with astrology that made it suspicious, maybe it was the vastness of scale.

The reasons for this can be found, so it seems, in the unfolding of a story during this past millennium, a story that has increasingly used words separate from landscape, and separate from natural, observable time. This makes it a dangerous story, especially as it is perpetrated across the threshold of the year 2000, and as it is relentlessly enforced through economic globalization at a time that many indigenous traditions regard as particularly charged with potential.

As indigenous traditions have it, how this charge is used will be determined by how the story is told, for ill or for good. Sacred places, such as the ones aboriginally belonging to the people of Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico can be used for heightened pursuits and celebrations of balance; but they can also be used for the development of nuclear power, as was done on these very lands in Los Alamos. The power is there for use. Good or evil.

Standing in line at the post office I watch the red figures frenetically turning on the digital countdown toward the year 2000. The legend above it reads:

TIME IS

RUNNING OUT

TO THE YEAR 2000

This apparent build-up toward some cataclysmic paroxysm, however, is reassuringly resolved by the means available to philately: “Collect the century in stamps” is the punch line under the frenzied counter.

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There are other punch lines to descriptions of time running out. (3)

The sun turns black, the earth sinks below the sea;
no bright star now shines from the heavens;
flames leap the length of the World Tree
fire strikes against the very sky.

This is one of the potent moments of time change my own Nordic-Germanic traditions have described as ragnarökur in the Eddic texts. It is a fateful time for those who reign. Rök means fate, line of events; ragna from regin, to reign. It is conceived of as moment of renewal; it is a transition during which the outcome is experienced as far from certain – even the gods and goddesses lack reassurances and are filled with anxiety. The poetic language of the seeresses in the Eddic texts captures this transition of the turning of an age with no lack of drama as the next description of the same moment shows:

Then wanes the power.
Hands grow numb.
A swoon assails
the white sword-Áse;[guardian spirit Heimdal]
Unconsciousness reigns
on the midnight breath;
Thought fails
in tired beings.

During Ragnarök we have fimbulvetur, the great winter, the world is set on fire by Surtr, the earth sinks into the ocean because of the violent movements of the Miðgarðr snake, the sun darkens and is eaten by Fenrir, the wolf, the earth shakes, the bridge Bilröst collapses, and the world tree Yggdrasill trembles – yet does not fall.

The words are just as dramatic in the descriptions of the subsequent renewal, as the seeress continues to prophecy:

She sees the earth rising again
out of the waters, green once more;
an eagle flies over rushing waterfalls,
hunting for fish from the craggy heights.

Hrafnagaldr Óðins or Óðin’s Prophetic Ravenchant describes how the new earth Jórunn (the previous earth Iðunn reborn) sits at the root of the tree, not yet awakened at this momentous time. There is a new sun, dóttir sólar, the daughter of the sun (which can also mean a new star, after the old constellation has disappeared at the vernal equinox).

Up rose the gods.
Forth shone the sun.
Northward to Niflheim
night drew away;
Heimdal once more sprang
up upon Bäfrast, [spirit or rainbow bridge]
Mighty clarion-blower
on the mountains of heaven.

The tree, the axis mundi, does not fall during Ragnarök. With the nornir at its roots, the Norse fateful spirits, women, it continues to stand as the measurer of time and fates.

These descriptors from the Old Norse tradition for the time of great change are not unique in tone or imagery. Presumably this is when a new constellation rises at spring equinox. We can find similar language in the Hopi prophecies or the words the Wintu seeress Flora Jones utters below buli phuyuq or way wan buli, a mountain so important that it is at times just referred to as bulit – that particular peak, meaning: Mt. Shasta (in Northern California). For the Native Americans living around Mt. Shasta it is the central balancing spirit in the universe, not a potential ski resort.

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I glance across my writing table and scan the surrounding hills. They were aboriginally peopled by one of the Wintun tribes, the Nomlaki. The pine trees rising individually, mostly, above the rest of the chaparral growth intrigue me. Each is a character of its own, each has apparent personality. Different, visibly unique. The perception of such individuality in the plant world commonly takes greater visual skills than I have acquired. Not so with these pines. Some pines have singular trunks, some have multiple trunks arising from one place like a bunch of flowers held together by raffia. At times a secondary trunk emerges midway to the top. Some trees are grouped in small and very loose stands. Their needle foliage allows me to look through them in many places. Oftentimes they don´t grow straight up, but lean downhill, with the top part on occasion appearing parallel to an imaginary level ground. But level ground does not exist amidst these steep hills.

One twin of these stately twin pines is called “digger” pine in much of the literature, since “Digger Indians” utilized their nuts. (3) In the middle of the last century, first the Indians of the Great Basin, then Native Californians were referred to in such manner, since they did not farm, but subsisted on roots, hunted, and collected seeds. They did not seem to measure up, in the eyes of the explorers, to their perceptions of the Plains and Mississippi Valley Indians. This represents one of the multitude of curious denials of the settlers’ own practices and history, since they regularly dug for roots along their routes. “What is good for an Indian is beneath notice for a white man,” is what many people in the mid-nineteenth century thought. All this notwithstanding the fact that the nut had saved the life of one of the members of the Donner party, for example. There are many ways to write the story of genocide and colonization, plant names seems to be one.

The other twin of these stately pines has many names, for examply towáni and sakky. It comes right behind the acorn in culinary importance, and, among the conifers, it was the most important food-giving plant for the Indians. Where this pine tree grows the Native Californians have their own names for them. Oftentimes the nut has a separate name from the tree, as in Patwin tuwa, the tree, and sanak, the pinenut. Wintu differentiates the unripe (xisi) and ripe pinenut (chati) in this fashion. Other Native Californian names are gapga (Klamath), towáni (Maidu), sakky (South Sierra Miwok), and náyo (Wappo). Hinton suggests that the “digger” pine could be renamed Towani pine or Nayo pine. Names of remembrance, acknowledgment, and presence. Rather than racism.

I manage to crack some of the pinenuts from the hills where I write. They are delicious. I don’t know the Nomlaki name for the nut or the tree. They are no longer around to be asked. Yet, they are present, and maybe one day I can hear their answers.

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Twins are regarded with awe in many cultures. Their special significance has oftentimes the double valence of being potentially dangerous (especially if not treated properly) or beneficial; they were feared and worshipped. The notion that twins come from the union between a mortal and a spirit or god seems widespread. In the Indo-European mythologies they oftentimes seem to be benefactors, healing mortals, protecting people from harm, rescuing seamen, and so on. Some are hero twins, saviors.

Among the Old Norse we find pairs that are not only part of a culture allowing sibling marriage, but that have also a twin air about them. Fjörgyn and Fjörgynn, Nerthus and Njörður, Freyja and Freyr. They also reflect their taste for androgynous qualities, at least in these ancient, Vanir layers of Norse mythology. Even in traditions where both twins are of male gender – as in the Diné, the Mayan, the Hopi, the Aztec traditions – each twin seems to be balanced by the other in terms of qualities; at times they can be meaningfully listed under the heading of feminine and masculine qualities (one tending heavenward, the other earthward; one dark, the other light; one may be good, the other wicked). They need each other for balance and completeness; if one is not present for the task imbalance ensues.

According to Hopi understanding there are serpent brothers or twins – Pöqanghoya and Palöngawhoya – on each of the poles sending vibrations to each other along the earth’s axis. The Twins are instrumental for the rotation and balance of the world.

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The past millennium is rich in historical events. The story is notable for what it tells and doesn’t tell, what is relegated to its margins or subjected to denial and forgetting. So many events recorded are truly remarkable. As are those that have not become part of the story as it is told. But even more than the history actually recorded by European consciousness it is notable for the ways in which it has forged its own story. As the count leading to the upcoming millennium has been shaped by Eurocentered thinking it is fitting to look at the inner workings of this story.

By the year one thousand Christianity dominates Europe. Even the people of such a remote place as Iceland finally convert to Christianity in order to avoid internal and external strife: A goði or chieftain in the north of the island conducts one of the traditional ceremonies, an útiseta, the Old Norse “sitting out” equivalent of the Native American vision fast or “going on the hill.” He comes to the realization that bloodshed would ensue if all of Iceland doesn’t convert to Christianity. He offers the carved spirit images of his tradition to the nearby waterfall, subsequently named Goðafoss, and becomes a Christian.

Since the middle of the millennium we find an increasing prevalence of what we now would call ethnic cleansing. The murderous forces, for large parts Christian church dominated, perpetrated genocide not just on indigenous peoples in other countries, but with oftentimes similar vehemence on the holders of indigenous knowledge within their own boundaries, particular through the persecution of women in the form of witchhunts. Genocide in service of the Eurocentered story is continuing relentlessly planetwide, primarily through the various forms of economic globalization a.k.a. Americanization (the destruction of sustainable economies and the creation of dependency in the name of progress and civilization). While we may be tempted to soften the shock of this process by calling it cultural genocide, it remains genocide as far as the termination of particular cultures and cultural identities are concerned – people are murdered as the indigenous persons they are, even though they may resurrect themselves as persons of Eurocentered minds. Pervasive ecocide and sexism are corollaries to this story.

The dynamics of the story have been discussed in a variety of forms. Marx tried put his finger on these acts of splitting and dissociation through his much criticized theory of commodity exchange. The Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko evokes it in ruthless poetry, describing the relentless death march of excess and imbalance.

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Above me in the night sky Venus in the west is almost straight across from Mars, who is a little south of the east. Last night Venus was right above the waxing crescent moon. Tonight she is straight to the right of the moon, west of it. Across these two nights the bright Venus and the growing moon form a beautiful equilateral sky triangle.

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It is May, 1999, and as I write this essay NATO continues to bomb Kosovo. Ethnic cleansing seems to continue unabated despite all the bombs. Relief for Kosovo seems far away. I nostalgically remember a drive along the Albanian border, and the poverty stricken, albeit unbombed Priština. There is upset in the U.S. about the Serbs’ continuing ethnic cleansing. I read an article. The words “… a grand experiment in ethnic cleansing …” jump out at me.

I am struck by these words.

The paragraph started out as follows:
As a boy Plenty Horses had been sent to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, the boarding school founded in 1879 by Richard Henry Pratt, whose obsession was to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Carlisle was the model upon which an extensive system of boarding schools for Indians was based. The schools were prisons in effect, where Indian children were exposed to brutalities, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, in the interest of converting them to the white man’s way of life. It was a grand experiment in ethnic cleansing and psychological warfare, and it failed. (Momaday 1997, 101-102)

The book does not tell me when the piece was first published; I assume it was probably at least a few years before 1997.

Ethnic cleansing characterizes half the past millennium.

It is so much easier to be righteous about ethnic cleansing elsewhere than to face the continuing history of ethnic cleansing in one’s own country.

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Excess or imbalance could also be used as words to indicate the unfolding trends of the past millennium. Some indigenous cultures would call that evil. Traditional people with special spiritual powers are known to be able not just to work for good, but also to work for evil and imbalance. Before awareness of the medieval European witchhunts had a chance to infuse Native American use of the English language, workers of excess and evil were frequently called “witches” in Indian vernacular, thus assuming the Christian, pejorative use of the term. Silko uses the words witch and witchery in this sense, not as dishonor to the large number of European women practicing their indigenous knowledge, but to signify excess and imbalance. In her words: “Witches crawl into skins of dead animals, but they can do nothing but play around with objects and bodies. Living animals are terrified of witches. They smell the death” (1977, 131). The book Ceremony, the healing story of a mixed blood Native American, was written before their was any significant reassertion of the positive meaning of the word.

Long time agoin the beginning
there were no white people in this world
there was nothing European.
And this world might have gone on like that
except for one thing:
witchery
This world was already complete
even without white people.
There was everything
including witchery.

Then it happened.
These witch people got together. (…)
They all got together for a contest
the way people have baseball tournaments nowadays
except this was a contest
in dark things. (…)

Finally there was only one
who hadn’t shown off charms or powers.
The witch stood in the shadows beyond the fire
and no one ever knew where this witch came from
which tribe
or if it was a woman or a man.
But the important thing was
this witch didn’t show off any dark thunder charcoals
or red ant-hill beads.
This one just told them to listen:
“What I have is a story.”

At first they all laughed
but this witch said
Okay
go ahead
laugh if you want to
but as I tell the story
it will begin to happen.

Set in motion now
set in motion by our witchery
to work for us.

Caves across the ocean
in caves of dark hills
white skin people
like the belly of a fish
covered with hair.

Then they grow away from the earth
then they grow away from the sun
then they grow away from the plants and animals.
They see no life
When they look
they see only objects.
The world is a dead thing for them
the trees and rivers are not alive
the mountains and stones are not alive.
The deer and bear are objects
They see no life.

They fear
They fear the world.
They destroy what they fear.
They fear themselves.

The wind will blow them across the ocean
thousands of them in giant boats
swarming like larvae
out of a crushed ant hill. (…)

Set in motion now
set in motion
To destroy
To kill
objects to work for us
Performing the witchery
for suffering
for torment
for the still-born
the deformed
the sterile
the dead.
Whirling
whirling
whirling
whirling
set in motion now
set in motion.

So the other witches said
“Okay you win; you take the prize,
but what you said just now –
it isn’t so funny
It doesn’t sound so good.
We are doing okay without it
we can get along without that kind of thing.
Take it back.
Call that story back.”

But the witch just shook its head
at the others in their stinking animal skins, fur and feathers.
It’s already turned loose.
It’s already coming.
It can’t be called back.

(Silko 1977, 132-138)

I find hope in this story. Paradoxically, maybe. Recognizing the deadly smell which I also carry makes healing possible. I am part of a culture of death. Deadly as the prize winning story has been, knowing of it as story gives me the opportunity and challenge to tell it differently, to get it right. To heal my self. To heal myself culturally. To turn the story back on itself.

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A coopers hawk circles uttering a singular scream upon completion of each revolution. Gradually ascending it finally disappears westward and upmountain.

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Driving toward my place of writing retreat I parallel the Sacramento River northward. To the right and left of the interstate are rice paddies; the air is filled with insects and numerous low flying airplanes dispense toxic insecticides. I sneeze frequently as my body reacts to the noxious pollutants entering the car. Before the history of the agricultural abuse of this former vernal lake was possible, something else had to occur. It was the prize winning story making its way across what is now called California.

The banks of the Sacramento river, in its whole course through the valley, were studded with Indian villages, the houses of which in the spring, during the day time were red with the salmon the aborigines were curing…. On our return, late in the summer of 1833, we found the valleys depopulated. From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and Slough of the San Joaquin, we did not see more than six or eight live Indians, while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were to be seen under almost every shade tree, near the water, where the uninhabited village had been converted into graveyards. (E.G.Lewis 1880, 49, quoted from Goldschmidt 1978, 342)

Where I go has aboriginal names that are not recorded on any of the AAA maps I have in my car. Sunsunu, Noykewel, Nomlaka, Waltoykewel, Waykewel, Memwaylaka. Tehemet and Paskenti seem to be the only Nomlaki names that have survived in the forms of the county name Tehama and the town name Paskenta. Where I go is aboriginal Nomlaki territory. Here is how the prize winning story played itself out among them:
The malaria epidemic of 1833 was the first serious blow Western civilization struck against the Nomlaki. … There is no evidence of direct contact between Whites and Indians until mid-century … By 1851 settlers began to request that the Indians be segregated from the White population on a reservation. … In 1854 … Thomas J. Henley, established the Nome Lackee Reservation on a tract of 25,000 acres in the foothills of western Tehama County between Elder and Thomes creeks. .. By 1856, with the threat of Indian retaliation dissipated, the settlers became covetous of the “magnificent farm of 25,000 acres” and brought pressure for its abandonment. The Nomlakis and other Sacramento valley Indians were literally herded over the mountain to Round Valley in 1863, the Nome Lackee Reservation having already been taken over by Whites. … After several years a number of Nomlakis returned to settle in the foothills of their old territory. …By this time [1930s] there were but three rancherias left … , with probably no more than a score of households identifying themselves as Nomlaki. (Goldschmidt 1978, 342)

I recap to grasp what I have just read:
1833 Unknown number of Nomlakis killed by malaria epidemic brought in by White settlers.
1850 First direct contact between Nomlaki Indians and Whites.
1851 Segregation of Nomlaki Indians from Whites.
1854 Nome Lackee Reservation established.
1856 Pressures for the termination of Nome Lackee Reservation.
1863 Nomlaki Indians and others herded to Round Valley.
1870s Return of some Nomlaki Indians to their old territory.
1930s Three rancherias with half a dozen Nomlaki households each.
1970s Only scattered descendants are said to survive.

One of the Nomlaki Indians has described the trail of tears to Round Valley, the Nome Cult Reserve, in these words:
They drove them like stock. Indians had to carry their own food. Some of the old people began to give out when they got to the hills. They shot the old people who couldn’t make the trip. They would shoot children who were getting tired. (Margolin 1993, 165)

Before any direct contact the 2,000 plus Nomlaki Indians are severely decimated by disease brought in by White settlers. Within fifteen years of direct contact their indigenous culture is effectively destroyed. Eighty years after direct contact and one hundred years after indirect lethal contact only a few households identify themselves as Nomlaki in their traditional territory. This all began to happen a mere century and a half ago. It continues to be the prize winning story.

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Down from where I sit and write I watch the seasonal creek waxing and waning. Every morning the rill flows, ripples, and glitters in the sun. By afternoon I see nothing but a little wet sand and pebbles in the stream bed across which the tracks of my car tires deepen as I come and go. Butterflies still gather for the remaining moisture.

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Maybe it is impossible to think of the past millennium without interference of the recency effect. But maybe what has happened during this century is a crystallization of what has built over the previous 900 years, and not merely a perceptual distortion. Summarizing the current century Habermas (1998, 73) has pointed to the
horrifying traits of an age that ‘invented’ the gas chamber and total war, governmentally administrated genocide and extermination camps, brain washing, the system of government surveillance and panoptic observation of entire populations. This century ‘produced’ more victims, and resulted in more soldiers killed, more citizens murdered, civilians killed, and minorities expelled, more people tortured, maltreated, starved, and frozen, more political prisoners and refugees than was even imaginable until now. (Transl. J.W.K.)

I notice how I find it increasingly difficult to think about the purported advances Eurocentrism has offered the world. As long as I look at history or the sciences within this story, advances and advantages are visible, despite all the horrors. When I leave the framework of the Eurocentric story even the seemingly most obvious ways in which it has improved on people’s lives end up with a question mark. I notice how many advances have come about in order to address ills wrought by the prize winning story itself; to discern what advantages remain when I don’t take the story for granted is challenging. The story was not inevitable. Its continuation is not inevitable.

Human rights, such an obvious and persuasive example resulting from European intellectual traditions. Yet: to what extent were they drafted in order to address human catastrophes precipitated and perpetrated by the Eurocentric traditions themselves? Historically they were developed in response to atrocities perpetrated as a consequence of actions stemming from Eurocentric thinking. Not as result of enlightened thinking or of debates about cultural ethics. Yet, one could not think about the rights of indigenous peoples or genocide as legal concepts without the idea of human rights. And surely they also address imbalances, evil, and excess created by other cultures than those esconced in the European intellectual milieu.

Or the European enlightenment tradition, and so many scientific discoveries. Surely I don’t want to toss all of it out as I confront the horrors Eurocentrism has wrought; but just as surely the purported and celebrated advantages seem increasingly relative and questionable.

Is it possible to think about their value from a viewpoint outside of or before the prize winning story? How could I do that? Where and how is a healing standpoint possible that allows me to keep its totalizing tendencies at bay?

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Raven flies by many times this morning. I am reading stories by a bear. Over the last few days I have begun reading and re-reading all of N. Scott Momaday’s works. House Made of Dawn. The Ancient Child. So often, as in the following quote, he beautifully speaks something I feel, like in this case about the place where I am sitting and writing. Reading the quote I react to his male language. I assume that he uses the male gender because he speaks primarily of himself.

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. (Momaday 1969, 83)

Momaday’s Kiowa name is Tsoai-ta-lee, Rock Tree Boy. This is in reference to Devil’s Tower in South Dakota, a place sacred to the Kiowas, made famous in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. According to the Kiowa tale it is a tree stump, scarred by bear claws, tsoai-ta. Momaday is a bear. Much of his writing centers upon bear medicine, including the aspects which are difficult and unmanageable. After reading I drive the thirty-odd miles to town, on my way to the San Francisco Bay Area. After driving for a short while I surprise a bear as I turn around a bend on the dirt road. The bear seems young with beautiful brown fur. It turns and races toward the next bend and plunges down the steep hill. I get out of the car and hear it crashing through the brush. I find the tracks of its galloping and leave offerings in them. A redtail hawk circles above.

25

An old story brings my ancestors and the ancestors from peoples of this land together in a way I would not have dared imagine until more recent years. Diné medicine person Hanson Ashley once told me how his ancestral people went on to a migration west in the long ago, crossing the Bering Strait west, and finally meeting up with the people of the European North. They traded knowledge. Maybe this is why I have always been fascinated by the Diné (Navajo) chantway ceremonies, the Nightway in particular. Maybe it is just the beautiful sandpaintings. A number of Diné friends and colleagues have helped me out many times, and I have been privileged to be invited to parts of their ceremonies. One of the stories describing the origin of the Nightway ceremony and the reasons for its use as remedy against neurological sufferings of various kinds is given in the story of the stricken twins (Matthews 1902). As in most of their ceremonies, sandpaintings form an integral part of the proceedings, helping to place the afflicted person at the place of balance, so that they can be re-created with beauty for a long life.

It begins with a statement that I passed by on many of my readings, until its significance finally struck me: This is a story about song. This is not the place to recount the intricacies of this story, which cover almost one hundred pages. The plot pertains to the imbalanced use of our brains, or so it seems to me. Briefly: The twins are born as a result of a relationship between a Diné woman and Talking God. On one of their excursions they enter a cave which collapses on them, presumably because of bad medicine or a curse administered by another one of the holy people. As a result, one is paralyzed and the other blinded. Their human relatives reject them after several attempts at healing, and they wander the lands in search of wholeness. Each time they encounter spirits they have to tell the story of their mishap. And each time the holy people claim they cannot help them. It is an arduous story to read, but also a story of perseverance and final success.

I read the story of the stricken twins not as my own, but as a story that may help me understand the healing my own culture and cultural roots need. And maybe I can even find help for the healing of the genocidal wounds inflicted upon Native American peoples.

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Many people regard the Hopi Indians as the keepers of teachings and prophecies that are of particular significance at these times. Traditional Hopi Elders seem to have become more vocal as their original instructions are increasingly in peril of being forgotten by the Hopi people themselves. Notably, the traditionalists staunchly refusing to join the march of European progress on Indian lands are commonly labeled “the hostiles.”

Their prophetic stories are recorded in sacred tablets and rock carvings retold and reinterpreted by each generation of keepers and Elders. They give testimony to various migrations and the instructions originally given to the people by their creator. While the Hopi prophecies do not give a particular time and outcome for the purification and changes they describe, they do contain markers leading many to believe that the time talked about is now.

Central to the prophecies is the return of Pahana, the Elder White Brother. This return will begin a time of purification and judgment, Nuntungk Talöngvaka, and those who survive will be part of the next world. Survival depends on faithfulness to the original instructions. Pahana will be identified by the return of the missing piece of the sacred tablet that this group of migrants took with them on their journey toward the east. The true White Brother has yet to return.

I cannot help but compare the millennial story to those of the Edda, the stricken twins, and the Hopi story of Pahana. Thoughts about original instructions, song, seeing, and balancing float through my head. I focus on the root of my annoyance with the millennial frenzy: it is the realization that it is an imperial story, or the continuation and celebration of an imperial story. It is a violent imposition of humans not just upon observable time cycles, but just as much upon peoples not of Eurocentric minds, upon lands and waters, upon the air. It is thought gone wild, out of control. Time is reduced to a thin line carrying all kinds of claims to universality. Reduced to a singular line claiming to account for everything. It is the masculinized twin gone haywire, in dire need of its feminine counterpart. Inventing the millennium is a truly postmodern event. It reflects the cynical and disconnected side of its thinking in crystallized form. It is a frivolous story. The count reflects the imposition, it is not a natural count.

The official millennial celebrations are intended to show how far we have come, while, indeed, it is a quantitative measure of the unbounded pathology of the Eurocentric mind. We are tainted by a ghost, the ghost of dissociation and alienation; the other half needs to be reconstituted. The return of the twin. Brother. Sister. The honoring of the feminine. Inner balance.

In the Diné traditions a person tainted by an enemy, by alien presence is said to be sa’a naghái, in a masculine and aggressive mode of being (associated with long life). This is a state of incompleteness, because bik’e hózhó, femaleness and happiness, are missing. Maleness unmediated by femaleness. Masculinization. Both poles are required for harmony and balance (Farella 1984, 170). Internal balance is missing. Rational thought predominates unmediated by other human faculties.

Celebrating the millennium is a reinforcement of linearity, of dissociated thought, of masculinization, of disconnection from natural and observable cycles. Healing the story means balancing ourselves in the holistic stories of place and time. Making whole. Healing the story means engaging in the proper exchanges, those that create balance rather than rapaciously take. Placing ourselves at the center of creation where we are. Remembering. Making ourselves present.

28

Returning from the San Francisco Bay Area I drive again on the interstate through rice paddies, orchards, and olive groves. Interspersed are several wildlife refuges. I daydream of Native American names on the signposts. In some bi- or multilingual countries I have found bilingual signs, at least in areas where the minorities are the majority. I remember the Gaelic and English signs in Eire; and the Sámegiella and Norwegian signs in Finnmarku in the European Arctic North. I imagine not just seeing the town name Winters on the green sign, but also Liwai. Not just Yolo, but also Churup. Grimes together with Palo. Colusa together with Til-til. Paskenta and Paskenti. Bilingual signs have probably been a contentious issue in most places where they exist. They seem impossible in California or elsewhere in the U.S. where the memory of residential schools is largely suppressed, and where bilingualism is quickly experienced as a threat to the “white” ideal of what makes an American. So I imagine for the sake of remembrance, for the sake of a different story, for the sake of completion and balance.

29
I return into the hills of Waltoykewel. Easing the car down the hill and across the seasonal creek I notice that my dome tent doesn’t quite look the same. In fact, it is rather flat. On the way up I had noticed a tall Towani pine that had fallen across the road, and an entire roof that had been blown off a house. I wonder whether there had been high winds during my absence.

I walk around the pancake tent and notice scratch marks. Even some of the cement bags that I had used to secure the tent had been torn open. Nearbey I now notice bags of steer manure ripped open. I walk toward the building and notice clearly visible bear tracks. Parts of the provisional plastic covering have been torn from its sides, with claws marks and muddy swipes identifying the inspector clearly. I take the tent apart to find two flattened mice. The surviving deer mouse scoots downhill.

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At night I sit outside and listen to the wind. It is because of the pine trees that I can follow the movements of the wind spirit. At times nothing stirs where I am, yet I hear the wind rushing through a pine tree 20 yards away, rustling its needles.

Now I hear the wind way far in the distance on top of the next hill; I follow its course as it descends downhill through the individual pines, touching trees spaced wide apart, stirring a pine over here into a whisper, then one to the right. The wind’s breath moves, fingering the needle bunches, brushing them, prompting them to talk, then moves upward toward me, whispering, now moving more toward the left, then toward the right, snaking uphill. Wind brushes my face, and throws my hair into disarray. Wind teaches me about the lay of the land, its movements. Wind spirit.

32

A member of the neighboring Wintu tribe has given beautiful words to the process of learning through intimate relationship with place. The elders “learn the earth’s secrets by quietly observing. It is a secret language called knowledge that releases the spirit from stone and heals by tone of voice and by changing sickness into elements that flow instead of blocking life” (LaPena 1999, 18). This is what it means to follow our original instructions in a particular place and time. “Sacred names, dreams, and visions are images that connect the bearer to the earth; shamans and other tribal healers and visionaries speak the various languages of plants and animals and feel the special dream power to travel backward from familiar times and places” (Vizenor 1981, XVII).

This is what seers, seeresses, healers, shamans, medicine people, and Indian doctors did and do. We are at risk in the presence of words. We are in the presence of awesome power. Getting it right is healing, getting it wrong creates imbalance and excess. To be sure, there isn’t a singular way of getting it right. There are many ways of balance. Getting it right means being and acting from time, place, and history, roots. All relations. Being present.

Words are sacred. Always. Spirit breath. They have power. Always. They create even when we forget their power. Forgetting it often means creating imbalance, since forgetting the sacred breath and wind in words is imbalance.

To be true to a word means being true to its place and time. This is what integrity comes down to. Severing the connection between language and place signifies a lack of integrity. Forgetting or denying or destroying the language of a place is not just murder of people, but it is just as much violence to the plants and animals. Pinkson (1995, 127), based on his initiations into the Huichol tradition, captures this beautifully and accurately:
The original language of the people indigenous to a specific area on Mother Earth’s body grows directly out of the land itself. The vibratory essence of the natural forces in a given area grow upward from the bowels of the land and surrounding elements to form the plant life and vegetation of that area. The indigenous people live, eat, and breathe these natural elements. They die back into them and new generations birth back out again in the passage of generations. The land literally teaches them how to live in harmony with it through this ingestion process. They take it into their bodies. It “speaks” to them. Then it comes out of their mouths as language. They speak the vibrations of that land. Their language and creation myths are embodied vehicles for the wisdom of that place. I could now understand why maintaining the original language of indigenous people is important not just to their survival but to all of humanity. Original languages contain within their vibratory structure the operating rules for how to live in their home territory in a harmonious manner. The indigenous language is a nierica [gateway, JWK] by which to access the intelligence of place. Lose the language and you lose its vital instructions about right relationship.

It helps to know the language of the people of a place, whether human or animal or plant. I strain to listen to the beings in Waltoykewel. I do not know the Nomlaki language. I don’t have access to its vibratory structure which would tell me how to live in balance in these hills. I yearn to learn the language to honor the ancestors of this place. I don’t even know the name for the pine trees around me. All I know is that they were of great importance. Indeed, gathering them was so central, it seems, that there were different terms for the people gathering them, probably in the month of April: I read that dehke is an ordinary tree climber, lala an expert climber. And then there is olhehit, the man, a type of clown it seems, who yells underneath the tree where somebody is loosening the cones on top. But he doesn’t just yell, “he chants a long moaning heeee-e-e-e-e, which starts loud and gradually dies out, then starts afresh” (Goldschmidt 1951, 410). I want to call them hee pines.

Cati, as the neighboring Wintu say, are the obvious and natural trees of life in this area. Eating more pine nuts and studying the Nomlaki language may help me be in greater balance in this place. Bear was important for the Nomlaki. Grizzly bears used to be abundant here, before the 1850’s. It was common to see forty or more in a single day. They wrapped the deceased in a bear hide. Wemal is their name for bear.

The Wintu have a rich vocabulary related to these grand pine trees (Pitkin 1985); their language is closely related to Nomlaki. There are words not just for the green and the ripe nuts, but there is a specific verb for the removal of the pine nuts. I read mimiton hudes pel yewca – they gathered pitch from tree to tree. Then there are terms for pine needles, sugar, pine nuts with beading holes…

And cati nawus or kamilis – the pine nut skirt worn during dances in the ceremonial lodge.

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34

The Diné stricken twins continue their wanderings, and they continue to experience nothing but rejection of their requests for healing. Finally the spirits or holy people realize that they have been fathered by one out of the midst of the holy people. So they decide to give them a break, and begin to conduct a healing ceremony for the blind and paralyzed twins. As they are sitting in the sweat lodge they notice how the healing is starting to take effect. They exclaim with joy: “Oh! younger brother, cried one, I see. Oh! elder brother, cried the other, I move my limbs” (Matthews 1902, 244). At this moment of disregard for the instructions given the twins by the holy people the ceremony abruptly ends. Healing does not occur. They are forced to wander again, because now healing is preconditioned on the right offerings, no longer just their blood relationship to the holy people.

It is this moment of breakage that is repeated many times over. Breaking away from sacred origin, spirit kinship. This disastrous moment in the twins’ quest strikes me as analogous to what seems to happen so much within the spiritual New Age movement: In search of physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness seekers wander this planet. And when they find something they publicly exclaim “Eureka!” and publish a book. Oftentimes forgetting about the obligations stories and ceremonies carry, disregarding the instructions for when to speak. Oftentimes forgetting the necessary offerings and exchanges. Indeed, there is a time and place to speak about all this. It needs to be spoken. But it needs to be spoken in wholeness, in balance. With all that has passed in a particular place. With compassionate ruthlessness. Without it beauty so easily turns to nostalgia and kitsch. Wholeness cannot be made up. Elders cannot be made up. Wholeness arises from following all the lines that come together in each of us. No exceptions to be made. No shortcuts.

35

A lizard is stuck in a cut open one gallon plastic container used for nail storage. I hear the scraping noise of its feet. I come to its rescue and take a close look at its very dark markings. Around one of its eyes it has striking pink blotches. The scales shine light turquoise in some places. The lizard disappears across the threshold, to the outside.

Half an hour later I walk to my writing table in the shaded area I have created. It is about thirty paces away from the building. I recognize the lizard with the pink blotches. It moves toward some chamise bushes. Just as I turn toward my chair I notice something moving very fast across the flat area. I freeze and see a garter snake darting along at lightning speed. The snake grabs the lizard. It bites the snake’s cheek to save its life.

Over the next twenty minutes I observe the snake devouring the pink blotched lizard, head first. Slowly the bulge moves further down the snake’s body.

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37

Jenkyns (1998, 4) comments on the difficulty of celebrating the beginning of a new millennium:
The scale of the anniversary, if we are to take it seriously, is of such magnitude that we do not know how to rise to the occasion. Newspapers and magazines may run surveys of the past year, or the past decade, even of the past century. But the past millennium? The idea is somehow absurd. Similarly, hundreds and thousands of people celebrate the arrival of a new year by getting drunk. How do you mark the arrival of a new millennium? Get very very drunk? As an event the millennium is either too large for us to cope with, or too trivial.
Misguided as the scheduled celebrations appear once we leave the precisely arbitrary count and the story from which it arises, I nonetheless like to think that human beings, past and present, were and are capable of thinking in, contemplating, or grasping time intervals of millennial length and even longer. After all, in terms of the 26,000 years long Great Year it is but about half a small year. Rather short in the big picture. Taking such long views seems to be urgently necessary. Grounding them in observable events rather than the runaway of Eurocentric counting seems equally necessary. As Native Americans would put it, we need to enable ourselves to think and vision seven generations forward and backward. And take responsibility within that scheme. Only then will we be able to discuss and discern which of the advantages and purported advances wrought by the European traditions hold up in the light of some larger view.

All stories have a tendency to be self-affirming, but addictive stories have this tendency to a pathological degree. The Eurocentric story of progress and civilization continues to be told. Whatever the adjustments, the structure remains fundamentally the same. It is the story of addiction to progress. Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous may not be able to help, but they can inspire us to become Eurocentrics or Progressivists Anonymous, or, in the words of Glendinning (1994), we can go into recovery from Western civilization. Understanding the figment of the millennium for what it is can be a first step.

38

Some days have passed now since I began writing this essay. At sunset the moon is no longer toward the west, but much closer to the south. And she is no longer a crescent, but rapidly approaching fullness. Yesterday at dusk the moon was straight above Mars. Tonight she is straight to the left or east of Mars. Another equilateral triangle in the sky. Now toward the southeast. 90 degrees.

Bright Venus and bright Mars continue to face each other across the night sky for some hours after sunset. Their relationship is catalyzed by moon, the waxing process of the nornir, the lines laid out by the spirits of fate. Venus – Mars, Freyja, the great goddess and shaman of the north, and Týr, god of assembly and war, sky god.

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I reflect upon the various twinnings that inspired this millennial essay. The “digger” pine and its Indian twin by many names. The blind and the crippled twin. The Hopi and their Elder Brother, the White Man in possession of one of their prophecy tablets. Fjörgyn and Fjörgynn, Nerthus and Njörður, Freyja and Freyr. The Hopi warrior serpent twins on the poles. The precession of the equinoxes and the millenial count. This count, originally, had everything to do with Jesus as appropriated by the churches, by Christianity. In this understanding it is not a digital countdown, and has nothing to do with anticipated Y2K computer problems. Instead, it has everything to do with prophecy as given in the dramatic millenial descriptions of purification in the book of Revelation 20: 1-15. This prophecy was then interpreted within a particular count that had come afterwards.

So much of what makes us think about the millennium has to do with the Christian Church. Since Christianity was essential for the development of contemporary European thinking there is a rightfulness about this. Christian monotheism transcended the wildly varying local spiritual and religious traditions. This abstracting process resulting in universal claims can be seen as an instrumental step in the subsequent development of Eurocentric sciences. From this process originated a prosylotizing, missionizing agenda, as well as a potent relationship with the imperialistic ideology of the Roman Empire through Constantine’s conversion. All this prefigured and prepared the abstracting and universalizing claims of the sciences, put to practical use during colonization, and, now, globalization. Jesus as revolutionary Jew fighting for egalitarian politics, practicing open commensality (nondiscriminating food sharing as model for society), and healing (that can be interpreted in terms of shamanic traditions), seems to have been forgotten.

On my drives back and forth to Waltoykewel I listen to Homer´s Odyssey. Horkeimer and Adorno (1944) consider it the foundational text of European civilization, a testament to the dialectics of enlightenment, the rise of one-dimensional rationality. Odysseus is a figure central to the story of European cultures. He embodies the ideals of the male European hero. Strength. Beauty. Cunning. A man of exploits who claims credit for the Trojan horse stratagem while, in fact, others had been so inspired (Graves 1955, 330/1). The citizens of the doomed city are tempted to pull the wooden horse inside through the gates, with their own strength. They do this despite what prophecy had told them. I can think of so many Trojan horses: The horse of the Indo-Europeans; the coke; the refrigerator.; the VCR; video cassettes bringing images of middle class life into remote regions of Mother Earth. European and American culture is spreading everywhere, the progress virus is highly contagious and creates addictions. I think of the Trojan horses of economic development, Americanization as globalization. But I think also of the rise of human rights, the spread of feminism and education. Of course, this is primarily European style education.

And still, 4,000 or so children die every day. 80% of the wealth in the hands of 20% of the world population. Odysseus in the Trojan horse. The coke bottle is the Trojan horse of Americanization. I think about Odysseus’ wandering. He sets sail at the millennium, embarks on a journey home at the end of his colonial exploits. Departs from the trophies installed as Hollywood images. I imagine Odysseus Redux traveling to all the places of White Man’s conquests. A different journey home. Now it is the end of the colonial enterprise. He gets stranded in various places. Has to collect what he has left behind, the virus. The projections of his own “primitive mentality” onto native peoples. Gathers all the stuff he has left behind. He collects the images of progress. Images of primitivism. Images disparaging others as he disparages his own ancestral roots. Indigenous roots. Odysseus Redux. Odysseus healing.

41

The seasonal creek has now dried up. It only runs underground. No more rill resurfacing periodically during the night. The butterflies still alight on the places holding residual moisture. I read in a German news magazine that corn plants have been genetically altered to carry poison in order to kill insects eating them. The poison is also spread through corn pollen. Thus it is killing monarch butterflies and other insects not eating corn, but living near corn fields. Scientists warn against overreactions to this situation.

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The beginning date of the Mayan Long Count calendar is August 11, 3114BCE. It ends on December 21, 2012CE. (5) A crucial date within the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. The beginning of a new Great Year. On that day the winter solstice sun conjuncts the crossing point of the galactic equator and the ecliptic. The Mayans called this area the Sacred Tree. This is a very rare event occurring once in several thousands of years. The Mayan calendar takes the precession of the equinoxes into account. It is able to predict this particular astronomical event. This is the moment of creation as described in the Popul Vuh. The hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque have to travel down the road of Xibalba for the sake of balance and renewal. This dark road is located at that place in the milky way where it has been obscured by interstellar dusk.

This particular area of the sky seems to have similar significance in Old Norse mythology. (6) It is associated with Urðarbrunnur, the well of memory, the fount from which the female spirits of fate lift the clay of renewal and fertility. It is located at the root of the tree of life. It is the place where the earth spirit to be reborn, Jórunn, appears. The beginning of a new Great Year, the beginning of a new cycle.

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The story of the stricken twins begins by informing us that “this is a story about song.” Singing and visionary seeing are closely related processes. In order for the Norse völvas of old to see and speak prophecy, varðlokkur, spirit songs, had to be chanted. Song and chant seem important in most every ceremony I know of. Chanted words, syllables, phonemes are the most important ones as they arise most directly from the spirit of place and time. Thus we are at greatest risk in the presence of words thus uttered.

The stricken twin story is about song. The twins are rejected twenty-one times. Each time they have to tell their story. After a number of rejections they are given a healing. And they utter words when silence was called for. They had disregarded the danger they were in. Oblivious to the risk they speak the miracle that is occurring. Through their folly they break the charm. They get sent away while being told that healing now can only occur if they make the appropriate offerings, bring the right gifts. The stricken twins leave. They weep and express their sorrow first in meaningless syllables, then in words. The spirits take note as they hear the words:

From meadows green where ponds are scattered
From there we come.
Bereft of limbs, one bears another.
From there we come.
Bereft of eyes, one bears another.
From there we come.
By ponds where healing herbs are growing,
From there we come.
With these your limbs you shall recover.
From there we come.
With these your eyes you shall recover.
From there we come.
(Matthews 1902, 245)

The ye’i, the spirits or holy people of the Diné, take pity on them, and help them to acquire the necessary offerings. This then, finally, leads to their healing. Twenty-one times the twins have told their stories, wandering all over their native lands.

The Nomlaki olhehit chants under the pine tree a moaning heeee-e-e-e-e as the important nuts are gathered for life. The pine nuts are not simply to be gathered, they are to be spoken to in a sacred manner. Not only because the sizable cones might hit the person underneath. The person underneath is not hurt because the tree’s need for conversation is honored. The olhehit knows the chant that nurtures the tree.

The twins told their story twenty-one times before receiving healing. They roamed their native lands from one spirit place to the next, back and forth. How many times will we have to tell the European story until there is healing? Until it is not a “witchery” story? Until we can turn the story back?

From the perspective of the pine tree and the ye’i and the dísir, the guardian spirits of the Old Norse people, we are traveling as paralyzed and blind people; we no longer know how to move with place, we no longer know how to see time. We have yet to make the right offerings.

I imagine the story of the relationship between the Diné and the European settlers being told, and retold, and retold. Until it is complete, until it has wholeness. I imagine then the sharing of ancestral stories. And I imagine European settlers making offerings to the Diné. It is not that we don’t know what to do. It is that we don’t do it.

Indigenous Elders have provided us with instructions that, at least, constitute a beginning point. Identifying the place of beginning is simple:
And so it is that when one doesn’t know the traditions one has nothing to light one’s way. It is as though one lived with a covering on one’s eyes, as if one lived being deaf and blind. Yet when one knows the traditions, one has vision to see…all the way to where the land meets the ocean. It’s as though one’s vision becomes as good as that. (Grey Mustache in Farella 1984, 24)
However, following the instructions arising from this beginning place is not simple.

We need to go through the arduous process of telling the story until we get it right. Gathering the storysherds. The story of the millennium is one of imbalance. It is not even right on its own Eurocentric terms. It is a precisely arbitrary moment. To give it power through words is to fuel imbalance and excess. It is getting it wrong. It means putting ourselves at risk. It means furthering the imbalance of masculinization, paying attention to one twin only. Inside and outside.

Healing comes on the wind brushing through those twin pines by multiple names – tuwa, gapga, towáni, sakky, náyo… Listening carefully we may be able to make the stories whole again. Turn the story around. Maybe then, one day, we can chant about excess and imbalance:

Whirling darkness
started its journey
with its witchery
and
its witchery
has returned upon it.

Its witchery
has returned
into its belly.

Its own witchery
has returned
all around it.

Whirling darkness
has come back on itself.
It keeps all its witchery
to itself.

It doesn’t open its eyes
with its witchery.

It has stiffened
with the effects of its own witchery.

Its is dead for now.
Its is dead for now.
Its is dead for now.
Its is dead for now.
(Silko 1977, 260-261)

It is not time yet. It is not dead. Excess and imbalance are continuing. There is much healing work to be done.

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The dictum that we need to remember history in order to avoid reproducing it proves insufficient in these millennial times. We need to remember ourselves as natural history, we need to remember ourselves as land, as stars, we need to remember our stories, we need to remember ourselves as plants and as rocks. Such memory can heal us from participation in an arbitrary count foisted upon ourselves and others. It may heal us all the way to the roots of our origins.

And then we may see, then we may hear, and all our relations may assist us. Our grievous sounds may turn to song, and song may help see and heal.

It just may help us pay attention.

After the fighting, Black Kettle’s sister, Mah-wis-sa, implored Custer to leave the Cheyennes in peace. Custer reports that she approached him with a young woman, perhaps seventeen years old, and placed the girl’s hands in his. Then she proceeded to speak solemnly in her own language, words which Custer took to be a kind of benediction, with appropriate manners and gestures. When the formalities seemed to come to a close, Mah-wis-sa looked reverently to the skies and at the same time drew her hands slowly down over the faces of Custer and the girl. At this point Custer was moved to ask Romeo, his interpreter, what was going on. Romeo replied that Custer and the young woman had just been married to each other.

It is said that Mah-wis-sa told Custer that if he ever again made war on the Cheyennes, he would die. When he was killed at the Little Bighorn, Cheyenne women pierced his eardrums with awls, so that he might hear in the afterlife; he had failed to hear the warning given him at the Washita. (Momaday 1997, 93)

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I walk into the computer store. On the shelf I see rows of CD-Rom packages entitled Civilization. The subtitle reads: The Will to Power. It is a strategic game.

48

The major portions of this essay were written during the month of May, 1999.

Footnotes

(1) The inspiration for the use of the word “storysherd” came from Scarberry-Garcia’s (1990) book on N. Scott Momaday; her text also provided some useful contextual information.
(2) As Finch (1991), following Massey (1907), suggests for the ancient Kemites.
(3) The four Eddic quotes in this section 8 are from: The first stanza from Terry (1990, 7), the second from Titchenell (1985, 267/8); the third from Terry op. cit., the fourth from Titchenell op. cit.
(4) Many of the descriptions as well as the quote in section 10 are from Hinton (1994); additional information is based on Heizer (1974) and Pitkin (1985).
(5) This discussion is based on Freidel, Schele & Parker (1993), Jenkins (1994), and Tedlock (1985).
(6) The following is based on Jonsson’s (1990) interpretation of the Eddic texts.

References

Farella, J. R. 1984. The main stalk. Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press.
Finch, C. S. 1991. Echoes of the Old Darkland. Decatur, GA: Khenti.
Freidel, D., L. Schele, and J Parker. 1993. Maya Cosmos. NY: Morrow.
Glendinning, C. 1994. My name is Chellis & I’m in recovery from Western civilization. Boston: Shambhala.
Gould, S. J. 1997. Questioning the millennium. NY: Harmony.
Graves, R. 1955. The Greek Myths: 2. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Habermas, J. 1998. Die postnationale Konstellation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Heizer, R. F. 1974. They were only diggers. Ramona: Ballena.
Hinton, L. 1994. Flutes of fire. Berkeley: Heyday.
Horkheimer, M., and T. W. Adorno. 1944. Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of enlightenment]. NY: Social Studies Association.
Jenkins, J. M. 1994. The how and why of the Mayan end date in 2012 A.D. Dec94-Jan95, Mountain Astrologer, read on website.
Jenkyns, R. 1998. Review of Questioning the millennium. The New York Review of Books, vol. xlv, #9, 4-7.
Jonsson, B. 1990. Star myths of the Vikings. Swan River, Manitoba: Jonsson.
Margolin, M. 1993. The way we lived. Berkeley: Heyday.
Massey, G. 1907. Ancient Egypt in the light of the world. Baltimore: Black Classic.
Matthew, W. 1902. The Night Chant, a Navaho ceremony. NY: Knickerbocker.
Momaday, N. S. 1997. The man made of words. NY: St. Martin’s.
Pinkson, T. 1995. Flowers of Wiricuta. Mill Valley: Wakan.
Pitkin, H. 1985. Wintu dictionary. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Silko, L. M. 1977. Ceremony. NY: Penguin.
Tedlock, D. 1985. Popol Vuh. NY: Touchstone.
Terry, P. 1990. Poem of the Elder Edda. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Tichtenell, E.-B. 1985. The masks of Odin. Pasadena: Theosophical University Press.
Vizenor, G. 1981. Earthdivers: tribal narratives on mixed descent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

 

Chilkoot Cultural Camp (PDF)

Chilkoot Cultural Camp: A Tlingit heritage is passed…

By Dan Henry

“All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.”

When Chief Sealth (Seattle) of the Duwamish tribe wrote these words over a hundred years ago, he meant to explain to President Franklin Pierce the close-knit bond between Native people and the earth. Hew was also trying to point out that all people must live with the ways of nature if we are to live at all. Despite the fast-paced highly technological world we live in today, there are still a few who hold on to this premise as the key to our future.

Here in the Haines area we are fortunate enough to be called home for people who are still concerned with the welfare of the children of future generations, of the earth from which we draw our livelihood. This three-part series will explore the people and ideas that have been drawn together at the Chilkoot Indian Cultural Camp to assure our children’s children that a long-established heritage will not be forgotten.

Five weeks ago, the camp site on the Chilkoot River consisted only of a smokehouse in a clearing in the berry bushes. A few young people had been brought to help clear the land further and start erecting tents in anticipation of the upcoming session. Chilkoot Indian Association president Roy Clayton stood among the busy youngsters to supervise their activities. He seemed eager to tell about the forthcoming cultural event.

“We want to teach young people the old style of Tlingit living,” Clayton emphasized. “we want to revive the cultural heritage.”

Clayton pointed out the ways that the program had shown growth. The number of teachers, volunteers, and participants was expected to rise from last year’s trial camp. “People want to come out here and work for nothing,” he said. “They just want the kids to learn.”

The enthusiasm generated from the pilot program last year had been enough to raise funds for a bigger program this summer. Clayton elaborated: “The kids really loved it. They went right to the legislature for more money.”

The response was positive. This year’s camp will operate on funds from the summer youth training program, the State Council for the Arts, Older Alaskans Commission, Johnson O’Malley grants, and private contributions. The money is used to create facilities and pay the way for a number of Tlingit elders to pass their knowledge along to the youngsters.

One of the local elders, Chilkoot chief Austin Hammond, is the source of inspiration for the popular summer program. Through his vision for the future, Native and non-Native people have organized into a strong, enthusiastic force. Hammond described the meager beginnings: “Three years ago I put up a smokehouse for the fish. Then someone asked me, why don’t you have a children’s camp so they can learn how to put some dried fish up? I said that I don’t know how I’m going to get the money. Just that smokehouse, it cost me over $3,000. It was my own money.”

Hammond’s concern for the cultural heritage did not end with the question of funds. Assistance from other concerned citizens, such as Julie Folta, helped make enough money available to start the camp.

The vision has continued to see the program grow and touch many people in the community and the state. Hammond emphasized his concern for personal growth among the students and the physical expansion of the camp facilities. “My father’s side, they talked with me and they say, ‘This place we’re going to call Sockeye Point. So they give it to us and we own the whole place up to the Glory Hole. But now the state holds the ground. Sealaska holds the ground. That’s why I can’t get a regular house here. You see the tent—they told me if you build a house, you’ve got to take it down. But I would like to have this ground back for the grandchildren that you see. I want to get the whole place not for myself, but for the other ones; they’re going to grow. My children, they’ll have children—that’s why I’m working on it.”

Some of the unique aspects of the cultural camp are the diversity of educational offerings and the variety of students who have come to learn the culture. Each of the elders specialize in an area that they know best to pass along to the children. The curriculum includes storytelling, beading, survival, cooking, carving, and musical skills such as singing, drumming, and dancing.

The diversity of participants is what keeps the program running. Austin Hammond stressed the positive differences in the camp. “All of these different trees around us, they’re all together. That’s the way I feel about the white children, colored children, whatever they are, they all have to learn the culture. Our white brothers, we are learning what they learn. They teach us, why not teach them? We can get together all as one. What we need, they can help us.”

Even the Tlingit teachers have come from diverse backgrounds to assure the students of a broad cultural knowledge. Hammond tells the stories of the Raven clan while Ed and Cecelia Kunz have been invited to explain the ways of the Eagle clan. “I can’t talk about the Eagle’s side,” Hammond explained. “Just the Raven side is what I can talk about. The Tlingit don’t want to tell the other’s stories. All the other villages can come here. The land they’ve got to know, so I told them when they get back home, when you see your grandfather tell him to tell you about the land so it wouldn’t be lost.

Camp director Matilda Jackson has been instrumental in organizing the teachers for the various skill classes. Her staff includes beaders Lillian Hammond, Anne Keener, Louise Light, counselors Tom Jimmy, Jr. and Diane Light, master carver Nathan Jackson and his assistant George Lewis, survival instructor Archie Klaney, storytellers Austin Hammond, Ed and Cecelia Kunz, Helen King for fish preparation, Rachel Johnson for singing and drumming, and Elsie Hughes for general food preparation.

Two sessions of the cultural camp have already taken place in July. The last 10-day camp, involving 10-17-year-olds, began on Monday, August 6. “Anyone is welcome to come out,” Roy Clayton stressed. “They are invited to volunteer or just watch.”

This article is first in a series dealing with the Chilkoot Indian Cultural Camp. The second segment will deal with the teachings of the elders and the third will focus on the response from students and their parents.

Chilkoot Indian Cultural Camp: Let the Elders Speak

Part two in a three-part series.

By Dan Henry

There is a story behind every timeworn face. The story involves not only the history of a single person, but includes the legends, attitudes, and lifestyle of an entire race of people. The elders who have gathered at the Chilkoot Indian Cultural Camp have dedicated their time and energy to “protecting a heritage.”

Their hope lies in the children. Native cultures such as the Tlingit have relied for countless generations on the oral tradition to preserve the ways of life. For the last century, however, the presence of non-Natives in this part of Southeast Alaska disturbed ways that cultural knowledge was passed along. Euro-American lifestyle, religion, and language stifled the Tlingit ways of life. The culture became a shadow of what it had once been.

Three years ago Chilkoot chief Austin Hammond envisioned a camp setting where traditional Tlingit lifestyle would be taught to youngsters. Last summer, a pilot program was attempted. The success of the camp can be measured in the enthusiasm felt by the young and old people involved. Many of the children lobbied the state legislature for further support. These and other efforts by a growing circle of friends resulted in a full-scale program this year to preserve time-tempered traditions.

The Chilkoot Indian Cultural Camp, which just concluded after a month of activities, featured customary Tlingit skills like beadwork, singing, dancing, drum-making, survival techniques, carving, food preparation, and storytelling. Elders from all over Southeast gathered to pass along their understandings to Native and non-Native young people.

Rachel (Dixie) Johnson is a local craftsperson who has dedicated much of her summer to teaching musical skills at the camp. She found that while the students at first appeared shy or stand-offish about singing and dancing, they warmed up to the ideas when they discovered their own personal involvement in the Tlingit heritage.

“What a difference in the children’s attitude toward their culture from when they first came today,” Dixie marveled. “Before, there was no interest whatsoever in what their clan was, but after they learn the clan song, you know they wanted to know which one they could come out to dance to because they didn’t know what they were. We’re digging in and trying to find what they are so they’ll know and have a little pride in themselves.”

Tlingit custom maintains that members of the tribe belong to different clans based on bloodline. Early in each camp session the elders at Chilkoot helped to identify what clans the children belong to by tracing family lineage.

“They’re different stories altogether, depending on different clans,” explained the song master. Like we have Eagles, then under the Eagles we have Wolf, Bear, and they all have a story behind how they got their clan. Most of them know what clan they belong to, but it’s hard today because of all the intermarriages where they’re not supposed to, like a Raven and a Raven, or an Eagle and an Eagle. We feel that if a Raven married a Raven then they are marrying their own bloodline. I tell them their histories through song.”

Music is a vital part of the learning experience, claimed Dixie. It pulls the group together, creates a bond among young and old, Native and non-Native. Dixie described a few occasions behind the songs that are commonly performed.

“We have the warm-up song that is done before you ever come out in front of people. These weren’t performances, like the ones you give in front of tourists, these were given when you’re consoling the opposite clan. There might have been a death in the family, or maybe you’re helping them rejoice at a new birth in the clan. Or maybe there was a wedding.”

As is common with all the elders’ teachings, there is a story behind each one of the songs or dances. Virtually all of the skills are intricately woven into a long-standing history that provides depth and reason behind the activities.

“We have what we call an entrance song,” Dixie began. “We call these trade songs because they arrived by trade. They used to take trips into the interior. Austin Hammond’s great uncle had taken a trek into the interior and on the way back hurt his foot so he couldn’t walk and rather than endanger his nephews’ lives he told them to go on ahead and leave him. He taught the nephews the songs he had traded and those are the songs we use.

“Some of our songs have Tsimshian. We didn’t know this until we sang in Ketchikan and they asked us where we got it, but we didn’t know what people they were traded from. And then they told us it was Tsimshian.”

A feeling of interconnectedness pervades all of the activities described by the elders. The recent arrival of Tlingit oral tradition has caused the Native people to scrutinize their historic past to find out their own identities. Often they find strong similarities between the past and their present chosen path.

“I love this,” Dixie exclaimed. “I didn’t know that my dad had been a songleader too. Then somebody from Sitka came up and told me. He said I didn’t just get this haphazardly, but my dad was one too. Now I have two songleaders—my sons.”

One distinction of the Chilkoot camp is the feeling of family between the elders and the children. Indeed many of the youngsters are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of their insturctors. However, the elders are cautious not to play favorites, and stress the notion of togetherness as the tread that binds them as a much larger family unit. Elder Lillian Hammond is enthusiastic about the opportunity to unify young people by teaching a common history.

“I think it’s wonderful to have this chance to pass our knowledge down to our grandchildren,” the beading instructor said. One thing I wanted to say, we’re trying to teach our kids in school—some of them whites, half-breeds, whatever—but we’re all together now. A long time ago white people did not like our Native people, now we marry white people. We’re all mixed.”

Hammond joins many of the other elders in her belief that language helps to bind the children together. Although a 10-day camp is hardly enough time to fully learn the Tlingit tongue, applicable words are incorporated into the daily lessons.

“It’s funny,” Lillian noted, “our Native kids grew up learning to speak teh white language and they don’t start the Native Language, so now it’s harder to teach them. In my beadwork class I teach them how to say thread, needle, bead, things like that. I tell them to say it so they can tell others what they are learning in our language. It’s funny how the kids will sing the Tlingit songs. they know how to say it, how to sing it, but they don’t even know what it means.”

Lillian expressed a common concern among many of the elders: support within the community for teaching traditional Indian ways. She noted that while many visitors had come out to observe the camp, the many needs of the group—including that of future expansion—were up in the air because of uncertain funding.

“This is a community affair,” Lillian said. “We’re all mixed in. The town should help us with food for this camp. People should think about donating something. The other day Julie (Folta) brought some ice cream—she paid for it—and one of the kids said, ‘Hey we’re going to have white man food.’”

In addition to food for thought, the camp must also meet the children’s needs for physical nourishment. The Chilkoot camp focused on providing many traditional foods as a major part of the diet. The meals often included salmon and salmon roe, halibut, and wild berries.

Helen King spent much of her time showing students how to prepare salmon in a number of ways. Frank and Elsie Hughes also invested a large part of their time as the cooks for the camp. Frank Hughes, who worked full time as a volunteer, described the effort invested into providing meals for the camp.

“We put in 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week for these kids,” Hughes noted. “Things that everybody else takes for granted are things that we don’t have here and it’s necessary that we don’t have it. This way we can get a taste of what primitive living was. We’re not actually primitive cooks, but we’re trying to give them the food of the land.”

Although the campers have met with limited success catching the fish, people have been generous in their donations. Klukwan resident and survival instructor Archie Klaney caught most of the fish himself for use at the camp. Even passing visitors have contributed to procuring food and supplying various services.

Hughes recalled a man who stopped by for two weeks to build a fish wheel for the camp. “He had to move on, but said, ‘When I come back if you haven’t done anything with it I’ll help you put it up.’”

Hughes was quick to point out that the camp experience was a two-way street; the elders often learned as much as did the students.

“The staff is learning moods and attitudes of children, which is important. You can’t always get out of a kid what you want. We have to stand back and say ‘Hey, slow down a little bit and try a different angle; maybe we can get in through the back door if we can’t get in through the front door.’”

The teaching staff at the camp agreed that there are many ways to approach the students. After several weeks of living with the young people, the elders began to recognize differences in learning styles and attitudes.

Wood carver George Lewis believes that much of the teaching was a matter of getting past “interferences.”

“It’s pretty hard sometimes to get past that child’s fantasy,” he said. “They have a certain imagination that you have to play with. But you can get past that. The whole thing is similarities in language and also interferences. Once you get past the interference with, say, a Japanese child, or a Tlingit or a Haida, some don’t seem to respond like our white brother. But actually they’re listening to you. We found out they learn fastest through their eyes.”

Woodcarving skills particularly apply to Lewis’ theory on learning. He found that straight lecture did not work as well as did “hands on” experience.

“The kids are growing with respect,” Lewis said. “They’re growing with their patience. Some of them wanted to handle the sharp knives right away. As a consequence, two or three people got cut the first week. Those who got cut have learned a lot more than those who haven’t.”

Wayne Price, a form Haines resident now living in Angoon, also senses the growth and enthusiasm of his students. Since many of the young people are from urban centers such as Juneau, Sitka and Fairbanks, Price feels that it is important to “get them in tune” with traditional methods.

“All this young energy going to traditional use is pretty nice,” he admits. “It’s enjoyable just witnessing what these kids are accomplishing. I had one group here that was carving away while a bunch of kids were beating the drums and singing Indian songs at the same time. It feels real good.”

Though relatively young, Price was asked to teach carving because of his broad background in the field. He learned much of the trade from teachers like Leo Jacobs and John Hagen at Alaska Indian Arts, Inc. in Haines. The carver is now working on an extensive project in Wrangell to restore the historic Chief Shakes house. The work includes creating six new totem poles for the house. Price said that the Chilkoot camp was a good break.

“The kids are great,” he noted, “I told them I’d be back next year. They really catch on—look at the work. It’s fabulous. The whole idea of the camp is a real good thing. Kids really don’t get exposed to this anywhere else.”

Another vital aspect of traditional training involves basic outdoor survival. Archie Klaney worked extensively to give the students a broad background in Native woodsmanship, including firestarting, edible plants, primitive shelters, and orienteering.

Klaney related an example of how to find your way out of the woods. “I took the kids out in the woods. It was cloudy. We went in big circles, then I said, ‘Which way to camp?’ The children were all quiet, then one speaks up. ‘Say, I know the way back to camp.’ Then Julie says, ‘You do, eh? Which way?’ The little girl pointed right towards camp. Then Julie says, ‘How do you know?’ ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I listen to Mr. Archie and I hear that waterfall so we’ll go that way.’ That made my day. I told them if you can’t see the mountain in the clouds, listen for the waterfall.”

The concept of effective listening plays a necessary role at the camp. The elders are concerned about the accuracy of the children’s memory once the camp has ended. After all, the legends of their people have already been altered through the course of time. Chilkoot chief and storyteller Austin Hammond explained the importance of listening carefully to cultural history.

“The children, they’ve got to listen,” Hammond said. “Some of the younger ones don’t listen, but you’ve got to tell them what’s going to happen. My grandfather used to tell me stories. One night he told me a story. I was nine years old. the next night he said, ‘Tell me the story I told you.’ I got to shaking, sweating. Then my grandfather turned me around and said, ‘Grandson, if you don’t tell me that story, you’re not going to learn. You have to tell me. From where it ends I can start talking again.’”

Hammond feels that it is necessary to tie the various skills together with stories of the the ancestors. No single class is more important than the other; they all tell the story of a cultural experience that is much wider than that of a single person. The camp setting provides context in which the old ways may be continued, just as the knowledge was passed down for centuries.

Frank Hughes summarized the feelings expressed by many of the elders as they reflected on their experience. Looking back on the camp, he noted that the outstanding lesson is “trying to show love to my fellow man and to the kids, to the staff. I’m not doing this for money, it’s got to be for love.”

(This article is the second section of a three-part feature which is intended to describe the structure of the Chilkoot Cultural Camp, the teachings of the elders, and reflections on the experience by teachers, students, and parents.)

Chilkoot Heritage: Camp prepares for future

By Dan Henry

As we measure human history, it was not long ago that the headwater site along the Chilkoot River was home for an active healthy tribe of Tlingit Indians. These were the Chilkoot people, a subculture that had lived for centuries in harmony with the salmon, bear and eagles at the place where clear water flows out of Chilkoot Lake.

According to Austin Hammond, contemporary leader of the Chilkoot people, one year a sickness came through the settlement. Many members of the tribe were killed by the mysterious illness. A few survivors went to see the Wife, who might know of the medicine with which to combat the scourge. She said, “I don’t want them to catch any more of my sickness. I will call all the skeletons to go up there on the mountain.”

The dead were then all taken to the high ridge on the east side of the river, where their bones supposedly remain today. Hammond added that “there’s no grass on the graves. Since that time you will hear no owls here.”

If one stands on the road near the old village site and looks across the river toward the steep cliffs, it is not hard to make out the form of a large eye silhouetted in the rock. “That’s where the eye of the woman is since we’ve had our people killed,” Hammond concluded.

Visions of Heritage

The eye on the cliff reminds the Chilkoot descendants of their place of cultural birth, of their heritage. For the past two summers, the ancient site has been used again for the purpose of breathing life into the near-forgotten traditions of the Tlingit people. The Chilkoot Indian Cultural Camp comes from a vision belonging to Hammond, and subsequently many others, that the “old ways” not be lost by the crush of modern society.

The camp, which attracted Native and non-Native youngsters from all over the state, ran for five weeks in July and August this year. Last year’s pilot program offered a 10-day session. Next season, the camp staff hopes to see the program touch even a broader cross-section of young people for a longer period of time.

Camp director Matilda Lewis noted that “some of (this summer’s) kids were wanting us to reserve them some space for next year. They kept saying, ‘we want to come back.’”

Diverse Groups

The summer camp brought together many Native elders, craftpersons, and a diverse group of volunteers to teach the traditional ways to children. The lessons included a broad spectrum of Native skills from woodcarving to storytelling. Campers were placed into a live-in situation so that they might be able to absorb as much of the culture as possible with a minimum of outside distraction. For many of the children it was necessary to start teaching from the most basic level.

One of the primary organizers, Julie Folta, explained that “there were some kids for whom this was just an introduction. We had to teach them what clan they belonged to. There were a few who didn’t even know who their grandparents were.”

The program was geared for young people from varied backgrounds. The staff felt that the traditions were important for anyone to learn, no matter what their ethnic heritage. “We don’t just take Tlingit kids,” Folta emphasized. “We take everybody; they will grow together.”

Two-Way Learning

As the staff reflected on the summer’s work, a number of successes became apparent. Most of the teachers expressed great satisfaction with the enthusiasm and interest shown by their students. Organizers of the camp also felt strongly that the learning process had been two-way, affecting the teachers at least as much as the students.

Matilda Lewis was frank with her side of the learning: “To me this was on-the-job training. We all learned. Those working next year will know better what to do after this.” She added that even more help will be required as the program expands. “Next year we will need a lot of local help,” she said. “Next year we will also need food and lumber donations.”

Julie Folta considered a major success to be the “teaching of the traditional Tlingit way of thinking. The Tlingit way of problem-solving is important. With the bear, for example (see August 9, 1984 issue). All the things that happened helped us realize the interrelationships that always exist. The problems we dealt with revived an interest in the old wisdom.”

Austin Hammond felt that the outcome of the Chilkoot camp could be measured by the level of interest he perceived in the students. He noted that many had worked hard carving totems, sewing beadwork for headbands, or simply understanding how to effectively use a knife. Overall, Hammond observed that “the camp was a lot better this year than last. Some of the kids who went back on the ferry didn’t want to go. They kept singing the songs we had taught them, singing them over and over.”

Hammond stressed the importance of spirituality as a permeating theme throughout the teachings of the elders. This aspect of traditional understandings became apparent in his particular class: storytelling.

“The story of our people from here is connected with the Bible,” Hammond explained. “We have to believe in God—the only thing we’ve learned from Raven is what we already knew. My grandfather used to say ‘don’t get on top of people, stay under them.’ The Bible id under the Tlingit story.”

Community Effort

The camp staff came to understand through their experience the necessity of working together as a community. A primary concern expressed by the workers was that more citizedns of Haines and Klukwan needed to get involved. The number of visitors to the camp averaged “about a dozen,” daily, with passing tourists accounting for the majority. Many donations are needed to keep the program on its feet next year, but the life of the camp depends most of all on basic community support and appreciation.

Matilda Lewis remarked that she thought that the “tourists often seemed more interested than the locals.” Julie Folta summarized the general feeling by noting that “most of all, people just need to come out to see what’s happening.”

Parental Concern

The Chilkoot staff’s message that comes through again and again is the unique opportunity to learn about an original culture from those who have lived it. Sonny Cropley, a Native man who took his two young boys from Sitka to experience the camp, maintained that this was one of his last opportunities to pass along a heritage that even he had never quite understood. Like many of the staff members, he too sensed the urgency of Hammond’s vision.

“I am second removed from the culture, my boys are third removed, and we are feeling now that it is important to understand the heritage,” Cropley said. “My sons are caught in a crossfier. All the continuing culture after us will not be a lived culture, but a learned culture.”

The Chilkoot camp, he felt, was an appropriate means to reverse the trend away from living the culture.”

The aboriginal settlement that once flanked the shores of the Chilkoot River will never be duplicated. That part of the culture has been tucked away in the memories of a few surviving descendants. Because of a vision, however, those recollections will be shared with a younger generation so the pride of understandiing one’s heritage might continue to live. So these children will teach woodcarving to anothe generation. So the children will know the sonfgs of the ancients. So they will be able to tell the story of the Wife’s eye in the cliffs above the Chilkoot River.

[Articles from Chilkat Valley News August 9, 16, & 30, 1984]

Haines Respiritualization Meeting, May 17, 18, 19, 1985 (PDF)

Original Transcription

Haines Respiritualization Meeting

May 17, 18, 19, 1985

Persons attending: Donald Peter, Anchorage; Dr. Pam Colorado-Morrison, Juneau; Eber Hampton, Boston; Bella and Simon Francis, Ft. Yukon; Jonathan Solomon, Ft. Yukon; Howard Luke, Fairbanks; Paul Olin, Galena; Blake Jones, Hydaburg; Matilda Lewis, Haines; Austin Hammond, Haines; Helen Andon, Anchorage

Guests: Doug Patterson, Juneau; Tommie Jimmie Jr., Haines; Mr. and Mrs. Peter Charles Johnson Sr., Haines; Dr. James Matthews, Fairbanks

May 17, 1985

Meeting begins with prayer by Austin Hammond

Our Father we are looking up to you this morning as we gather here as a family. We need your help, what we will say and what we need, we are asking you to give it to us. The word we use for each other that we could learn from each other, so we are here together. So pour thy blessing upon us and be with us. That I ask in Jesus name. Amen.

Pam: This is our third meeting, and final meeting of the task force. We have some nice things planned for this meeting. Austin is going to see to it that we can get out to the Chilkoot camp site while we are here. It is a really nice day, so it would be good if we could try to get out there this afternoon. Blake Jones is here from Massett, B.C. and he has brought a really good tape with him. He has helped set up and run the ReDiscovery program down there. It is a survival camp and it has been going since 1978. He is here to offer his help in any way that he can for those of us who are trying to get camps going and also to share his tape with us. It is really well made. I think we have (Ha-sha-goon) here too. It is Austin Hammond’s tape. It gives us the background on what happened before this camp got set up. We probably want to spend some time talking about where everybody is with their camps, how far along we are, and what the plans are for the future. We are supposed to have a guest drop in today, Dr. Matthews who is with the University of Alaska, Cooperative Extension. He is the director of the whole thing. He has been hearing a lot about these task force meetings and a lot about the spirit camps. So he should be by sometime today. The final thing before we break up, Don and I would like to talk with everyone here about a meeting we are getting ready to go to next week regarding the future of these camps, and maybe some funding and support. That’s about it, what I have taht needs to be discussed. Do you have anything else, Don?

Don: I appreciate you all coming down here. Some of you came a long ways. I’m kinda excited, and not excited about going to Paris next week, but I think we need to set down some facts about how to deal with those people. Maybe we can do that this afternoon like Pam said. Dr. Matthews, who sits on my policy board for my office, is coming down this afternoon. We are saying this will be our last and final task force meeting, but I doubt it. I see us getting together 2-3 times a year. I think this group gives us a lot of strength and setting down our objectives and goals for the respiritualization project. I keep telling Pam that we keep getting calls all the time from people who are interested in this project. I feel that something will come out of it. I look at 1991 as a last chance for Alaska Native people. I think we need to work with our own people to set their minds on who they are so they can deal with these different issues that are coming up, to determine their destination. In 1991, we will be the same as anybody in the State, hopefully. The resolution that AFN is taking to Washington D.C. to get some amendments on the land claims act, that will open the land claim act up to everybody. Anybody that wants something to do with Alaska, the different societies, organizations, they all want to put their two cents in there. It is possible, if they open up the land claim act that it might go on for another 10-20 years, but we don’t know that. I guess you don’t know at the AFN special convention, Ft. Yukon was probably the only one that voted against all the amendments. The people had a meeting up there and they said they want to take their chances and leave it like that. They are trying to get some education to deal with those 1991 issues. To deal with the issues, we need education. A lot of our people are getting that, becoming attorneys, and entering different fields where we need them at. We also need something from down here to work on these different issues and I think that is what we are getting at with these spirit camps. A lot of things are falling into place, like Pam said. There are probably some monies available from BIA and we have some monies available too. This is a start. It will be interesting to see what happens in Paris next week when we meet with UNESCO. Maybe they will have their checkbooks open, I don’t know. Also, I was talking to Gary King, from the Kellogg Foundation. They have been pretty good to us. They have been supporting our project for the past 2-3 years, with 2-3 million dollars. He told me that if we go to Paris and it really doesn’t work out, he actually said they have an open checkbook for us. They give out about 450 million dollars a year in grants and funds to especially to projects like this. I think the last thing, like Pam said, the weather is pretty nice so maybe we can go to the Chilkoot camp. We have a couple of hours to get some of our feeling across and talk about what we need to talk about.

Matilda: At our last meeting in Ft. Yukon, we talked about a helping hand, and the times we have mentioned that you might be able to help us. I think right now our main concern is our building. Next month our cultural program starts and we still haven’t move our building. We just never seemed to get the money from somewhere to help us move it. It will be the quarters for the young people.

Don: Well, Pam and I have been talking about that and we think we will be able to come up with some things. We will work on it.

Pam: Woody was saying today he was going (we wrote a proposal for subsistence and one of the items was to cover that for sure) to add two additions to Raven———-, with luck we should know about that in a couple days. If not, then Don will see what he can do, but it has to be done fast.

Don: That was Dr. Matthews who just drove up. His wife is with him, he will bring her in and introduce her and then she is going out shopping. But he wants to sit in and see what is going on. He makes a lot of the monetary decisions for my office so he is pretty vital.

You know, the Cooperative Extension Service, for the last couple years has spent more in the State of Alaska than they have ever done in their existence. I give credit to few organizations for doing that. They work with everything in the villages from gardening to tanning to developing educational curriculum. The legislature is looking at them as a vital entity in the State and it is developing the whole State. That’s why Dr. Matthews is here, he is interested, he is not a nosy white man.

Introduction of Dr. Matthews and Barbara Matthews, and the task force members.

Don: Dr. Matthews is interested in things like this with Alaska Natives and that is the reason I asked him to come down.

Pam: I wanted this morning to look at Blake’s tape.

Blake: The equipment is still coming down. Tome went to get it. The paper I have here is about the program in B.C. on the ReDiscovery project, so we will have a copy for each of you take back with you. After we see the video, you can read up on this. It is good to have this paper, if you are going to get a copy of the video. It tells what our camp is all about.

We started this camp in 78, in Massett because we found that we were having a lot of trouble with juvenile delinquents in the court house. We started off with, every two weeks we would have six kids out with three guides. Now our camp has expanded and we have six guides, two cooks, and maybe 3 or 4 volunteers every two weeks and we have 14 kids out there. Plus we have about 3 or 4 elders fly out to our camp and spend 4 or 5 days with the kids. They talk about the old villages around where our camp is set up. They teach them basket weaving and some of the old guys would talk about the carvings and old petroglyphs that we have around the old village sites. Since we started this program, like I said, our court rate, 40% of the list was juveniles. But since we started our program our court rate went from 40% to 18%. So we dropped it to half for juvenile delinquents in our village. Besides having this summer program, we have a follow-up program in the winter in the youth center. That includes all the elders of the village teaching them button blanket making, carving, there are some wood carvers and some of the guys carve in argillite, and basketweaving. We also use the elder’s homes when we get fish and stuff, we show them how to preserve the food. The way that works is, what our kids do in the village is, half of what we can up or preserve for winter, half will stay with the ReDiscovery program and the other half will be distributed in the village to the elders that can’t go out and get the stuff themselves. We have a big list in the office of the elders and we will distribute it out. It is hard to describe the program until after we see the tape, but out at the camp it is a wilderness survival camp and cultural heritage. What we are trying to do is bring back the heritage that the elders used to have. We are getting it back slowly into our village now. We teach kids how to survive. We tell them when the tides out, your table is set. When we first talk about it, they don’t understand but after 3-4 days with us they finally get to see what we mean the tides out, your table is set, because there is so much food out there. Plus in the forest there is so much stuff that they can pick and use for food, and build shelter out of driftwood on the beach. A couple of you read this article yesterday. The camp we have has a few simple basic rules that we use. We tell the kids what you kill, you have to eat. At our camp, we tell them that if you need any building materials, don’t cut any live trees down. Go down the beach and take the driftwood up and start building your campsite out of that. Instead of cutting live trees, even cutting the branches down, we don’t cut anything up. We try to keep our camp as natural as possible. On this program, we have a 35-mile hike down the west coast. The funny thing about this hike is that, our Armed Forces people did this hike one way, 17 miles for them. They were carrying a small day pack, a canteen of water and trail mix. It took them 3 days to do that hike. When they got back into Massett they wrote up a report for the government and they said this hike is not recommended for amateurs. Since we started doing that hike, we have 4 hikes down the coast every year, on the whole thing we have never had an accident on the hike. In our camp the only thing we had was a twisted knee in the 7 years we have been operating out there. The Attorney General and Social Service agency has given us a number one rating for summer camp and for helping out with the younger people. The social services use us in the summer. If they are going to put someone in a foster home and they don’t have a home right away, they refer the to our program and the kid will come with us for two weeks. It give the social service time to find a new home for them. If they can’t find a home, they ask us if we can keep them for another session, and we say —Sure, no problem, we will keep them for another session. It is for both Native and non-Native, this camp we have. Since the Armed Forces moved in we have a lot of their kids come out. When the Armed Forces first moved to Massett, we had a lot of trouble trying to adjust to them and them trying to adjust to us. We could feel the prejudice between the Armed Forces and the Natives in the community. But now that we have this program, we go up to the Armed Forces when they get new people into the village and we talk to them about our summer camp and about the people in the village, orientate them to living in a small town, how to act around us. If we say “Hi” to them, to stop and talk or something. Before we started doing that, when we used to say “Hi” to them they would just walk away with their nose up in the air. We finally started getting mad at them and told them—We’re here, and we have been here longer than you so don’t try to pull that high and mighty stuff on us. For awhile there were a lot of fights between the Armed Forces and the Natives. But now that we started orientating them, some of the people have been coming to our camp as volunteers.

Don: I think one good point that Blake was talking about is that the spirit camps have to include everybody. You know we have to work with groups here in Alaska, it doesn’t matter if they are white, blue, green or yellow. When 1991 gets here, they will work with us. We even have a couple Outside Indians here to work with!!, or Dr. Matthews!

Paul: Ever since I went to the meeting in Ft. Yukon, I have been thinking about how can we start one over there in Galena or Ruby. Yesterday when I was getting on the plane, I heard one of my friends tried to shoot himself, and he shot his arm off. Two weeks before that I had another friend who shot himself. It is a problem, to me it is a problem. To the elderly people, it just tears the hell our of them, the suicide. I am very much interested in Blake’s tape. There has to be a way to help these troubled individuals.

Don: It is good to hear about different aspects of camps around the state and around the country. The good thing about it is we can use it for our own camps. We have to realize when 1991 comes, those kids will be 21-25 years old, leaders.

Blake: What we found in our program is that for the staff and participant ratio is 2 participants for 1 staff member. You find with that ratio that you have more personal contact with the kids. We divide them up in groups, there will be a junior guide and a senior guide with four kids. When we do it that way, by the end of the two week session, there is such an attachment between the youth and yourself as a guide. They will come to you and talk about problems they have in town. You have been out in camp, but you also know what has been going on in town. You can take them aside and talk to them. There is one part in our program. We call it the Wanagun Spot, what we do is, every morning after breakfast, we give the kids pen and paper and tell them to go out there and find a nice quiet spot and stay there for 15-20 minutes by yourself. Write down your thoughts or even make a drawing of the spot you picked. We make them do that every day and then we look at it and get some of their stuff written down and use it in newspaper articles and magazine articles. On the last day we make them do it, we give them a pen and paper and an envelope. We say—Write down your thoughts or make a drawing, seal it in the envelope and put your name and address on there, figure out where you will be two years from now. In two years we will mail you what you wrote. What we try to do is not have too many kids come back every summer. There are so many different youths on the islands, we try to get them to go one year and take one or two years off and then come back. We found that it seems to work real good. We get new kids every summer. I have seen some of our staff, senior guides, that big macho ones in camp who are looking after them all, but when it is time to leave, I have seen those big macho senior guides with tears in their eyes because the kids are leaving. They grow so attached to each other in the camp. After that, when you get back into Massett, we’re out all summer, an d the mail is stacked in the office from kids who have been in the program.

Austin: Since I came from Ft. Yukon, I have been going to that elders meetings that we have in Juneau. The time when I came back I went to the Governor’s Mansion. I think you all know that they gave me the honor for what I am doing. We had it the Governor’s Mansion and then the ANB Hall, same thing. All this what we try to do for the children, I tried to explain, not only for this camp I am working for. I work in Juneau at the school with Julie Folta. She is teaching the small children. This is what I was talking about. Something we have to think about for the children. They need to learn what we know. The paper on the wall, my grandfather’s name on it: Jim David and Joe Whiskers. They are the ones who told me stories. They talk to me about the time coming, when they call on me. Grandson, sit by me. The story we been telling you since you were 9 years  old, I want you to pass it on to your children and your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, they have to know it. If you don’t tell that story with the children, when you die, everything is going to die, what we are telling you. So pass it on, so they could learn it. This is what I am doing in Juneau, when I am talking to the teachers over there in a meeting. I told them, I need your help, you are teaching my grandchildren. What I have to say. I told them how the Tlingit work together. When I was sitting there, like what Don has here (tape recorder) put it down. And I don’t have nothing. I am just talking. How they train me through my grandfathers when they teach me what to do. That’s when they tell me about the little baby, you are going to have children. You have to talk to them. I got all girls. So what they tell me, I talk to them. When you talking to the newborn baby, just leave it in your arm and talk to them, before you drink water, before you wash your mouth, just talk—You are going to be a girl, you will become a woman, a married woman, you will have children. You have to listen to whoever is talking to you. This is what they tell me, even the boys side—You will be a man when you grow up. You will learn how to work for your children. All this, what they tell me, it is inside of our heads, it is stuck like glue. When that little baby listen, it stays there, everything what we say. Anytime when you start talking, everything is going to come out in front of you, like the tape when it starts talking. That’s the way it is. That is the reason why we have to talk to our baby, newborn baby, so it will stay inside the brain, what we try to teach. So this is what they do with me. I didn’t write it down. I didn’t go to school. I am just learning from what we are doing with each other. I never used to talk English. When I am working, I am learning. It stays with me, what they tell me. This is what I am doing with the children. The way I put it out in front of the teacher. These trees we see all around us, the roots are together. Spruce, hemlock, pine tree, birch, everything. What is growing under, some berries, salmonberries, raspberries, everything that is growing has roots. All the roots stays together. Then the grass grows and the flower grows. Right now you see the trees that are coming out now, just like a newborn baby they start growing and coming out. Our grandchildren now, they are just like a flower growing under the trees. Anyplace where you look there are different colors. When I opened the camp here, they asked me—What are you going to do, just the Tlingit, you are going to teach them? I told the—No, that is for everybody. From Hoonah, they told me I am crazy. I told them maybe I am crazy. We used to be crazy ourselves. We used to fight with our white brothers. Now we adopt them, different colors. My son was married with white girl. My daughter was married with a white. Some of them are married with the Filipinos. They are all different colors. This is what the flower is. All different colors, what is growing. This is the children, they are growing as the grass and the flower. They are newborn babies, they have to learn.

When I was talking there, the teachers were listening. This is what I want my grandchildren to learn, everyone of them. Like what I mention, all these different trees; we are all in the family. The trees have a life like we are, anything that is growing has a life, even the grass. My grandfather used to tell me—This grass growing, it is nothing to you, but to us, there is something in there that will help us. Any sickness that we get we will pick it out what will help us. So you have to respect it, just like you respect the one sitting next to you. All the flowers, the trees, you have to respect. Before you drop, you have to talk to that tree. Where you are going to drop it, you have to put something there, so it won’t break. Then you talk to the tree—I have a bed for you now, to lay down on it. Just to help us out, lay down on it. We need you. When it drops, it don’t break. Some people don’t do it, they just drop it. If they drop it on a rock, it will break. They have a spirit just like we do. This is what I am teaching at the school. All the salmon, all the seal, all the animal on the mountains, they are like us. So I told them—God create us in this world. Different place where we stay, we have to work to take care of it. If we go someplace, like I went to Arizona, they have the flat country. They have all different kinds of animals to take care of. This is the reason why I really started this place, I have to tell my grandchildren all what we have on the mountain.

There is a story about mountain goats. He (a man) got stuck on the mountain. He was chasing the mountain goat. Where it went there was a little trail. He followed it. There were a thousand feet to fall and that man got stuck. He just start shaking. He said the mountain goat has to go back. The mountain goat is eating it and he picked it out and give it to that man who was stuck there. So he start eating it. The man was stuck there. To him where he got stuck, it just flattened out for him. He has to stand up and the mountain goat has to go back with him until they get in a safe place. The mountain goat walked, and he didn’t kill it. So this is the story we have to learn together with our white brothers, whoever they are. We have to respect everything, like that tree when you are going to drop it. After you kill the bear, you can’t just take the knife out and skin it there where the sand is or the mud. The spirit is always watching you. This is what they are telling me. Stand behind you from that bear. If you fix it, put the branches and roll it and put another on the other place. When you are cutting the meat, you have to put something there again. When the spirit goes back, like us sitting here if somebody comes through the door—How did they treat you. Well, they treat me nice, the way I was laying down. They put some bed under me. The way they put everything there. Then they tell it, now you hear that, you go to that man. But if we don’t take care of it, if he tells we don’t take care of it right, then they will tell it—don’t go there. This is the reason why we got lots of killing from hunting, if we don’t take care of it. So this is what I have been teaching to the children, even our village. Tell the story about where you are born, what you know about the village, let them know it. I hear brothers talking about 1991, what they are going to do. Now the ones growing, if we don’t tell the story, like what I am saying now, if the time comes, if they need it, what they going to bring it up if we don’t tell the story about our land. I got a box there, there is a Chilkoot blanket in there. It is not writing like this. The Raven show us how to put it on. That is our history that I have there. We learn it from the Raven. This is what we have to teach the children. Our land, now that blanket I was talking about. That is a Chilkoot story on it. If I bring it out, if you see it. I don’t know if you can tell me the story on it. But we know it. Because we don’t tell you the story  you can’t learn it until I tell the story with you, then you know it. I got quite a few of them in there.

So it is good to talk about the camp, about where he is teaching. Now this mountain I was talking about, the mountain goat. Some man is going to come up to teach the kids how to go up on the mountain. This is what we need in Alaska. You can see how high the mountains are, with the snow. This is what I was talking about, the mountain goat. Mountain goat they call them, but they don’t stay in the mountain in the winter time. They have to come down to the shelter, under the tree. I went hunting over there. That is when I see a place where the mountain goat gets together like we are. There is a lake there. They could see the sign of the mountain goat, the way they have been sitting around the lake. They get together, they are learning what we are learning.

tape 1, side 2

Austin: Brown bear, big ears. They could hear when we are talking about them. If I say something bad about the brown bear, I am not going to go very far. They will get after me. All these things what I try to tell. They know it. They are learning more. Even the fish. A long time ago, we used to use linen driftnet. Now we use nylon, all different colors. Now if I put linen in there, I wouldn’t catch any fish. They already know it. Our people used to live with the fish for one year under water. How many white people live with fish for one year? This young man, when he came back to his hometown, he became a Shaman. He is the one who told us how the salmon live. We know all the animals, all the fish, how they live. So this is what I was telling the white people when I go to the meetings. So they listen to me. We were talking about our subsistence. Right now, today, I was supposed to be with the Governor, but for this meeting, I have to come over. But I told Woody Morrison about it, my feeling, and he will be there. What we need to learn together, like what I said, there are all different kinds of flowers growing. Our people, our children, grandchildren, they are going to grow together. They have to know the feeling with each other when they are growing together. My grandfather used to tell me that story, I know it. They call me all in Juneau—Grandpa, even here in town. A little girl came to me, a white girl—Grandpa, you have to sit by me. This is what I am doing. I don’t want to push anybody out. I want them to be in, to work together. So we are here, and we have to learn from each other. That is what I want to talk about. Thank you.

Simon: I never been to school. I was raised out in the woods. At that time there was no school. But today I have a carpentry job, a good job. I like to learn at this meeting. I like to help people from other villages. We need help, a lot of people need help. A lot of teachers need help. We do things that look hard, it’s hard for us, because we don’ t know, but not hard because we find a lot of good things. From this meeting, a lot of things are going on stronger. We need peace. Maybe, someday someone will come in and thank you for helping. That way we learn. Since the Ft. Yukon meeting, I think about it. I like to help my people. My wife feels the same way too. When I was raised out in the woods, a lot of times my father went fishing and hunting every day. What my father catch we eat everyday, fish or meat or rabbit. We never see that kind of life nowadays. It is so easy. A lot of kids just don’t know, they need help today. I am glad I came on this trip. I feel good this morning. The weather is so nice. I hope God be with us. Thank you.

Howard: It is like Austin was saying. It is a good thing. That is what I am doing too. There is a story behind everything. Like the birds. Just like the dance, you know the twist. Everybody figure the twist came from the white people, but it didn’t. That is what I tell people. I work in the schools in Fairbanks. I don’t care who they are, I am willing to teach them. Some of the kids ask if I get paid for this. Some I do get paid, some I don’t. They are honest about it too. I tell them right from the bottom, I don’t leave nothing out. I go right straight through, how I learn and what I learn from people. I learn quite a bit from you people, how you are talking. I was here last summer and I learned quite a bit. Everywhere I go, someone has my work. Everywhere I work, I leave my work. Like these things here, the fishwheel and snowshoes. I leave my work. This way they remember, and they say—Where did that come from and they say—Oh, Howard Luke made that for me. Therefore they can follow it, they can see how it is made. Now that I am trying to do now, I have one kid to teach this summer. I am going to take him all over with me and I am going to teach him how to cut birch and how to bend it. I am going to tell him stories and tape it. He is from here, he is Tlingit, but he is going to talk mine. That is what I want. He wants to learn. A lot of people want to learn, but they just don’t know how to go right. It’s just like the drinking problem. I had my problem. I go around too, and tell people and talk to them about how it was done. I go over to the University once in awhile and talk to people about how it was done. What I say, I say—Nobody can help you, it is just on your own. You got to take it on your own. that is what I did. I just went out on my own. I was losing my friends. The only time I had friends was when I had money. My mother told me—Now is the time you better step forward. I won’t be living with you all the time. What I taught you, you got to pass it on. Pass it on to your nephew, to everybody. So that is what I would like to do. I work mostly around Fairbanks, but next winter, I will be travelling around to most of the schools. Whoever wants me to work in the schools, I will work there. That is what I will be doing. I would like to take that kid with me, but he has to go to school. In 1991 these kids, the younger generation, some of them won’t be able to speak for themselves. So I want to try to tell them to teach the young generation. Where I work, they listen. Last year there was a Spirit Days in Anchorage. I talked, I made everybody make speech. Nobody said nothing. I talk everywhere I go. So I said—Everywhere I go, I always talk to young people. People said—Oh, the young generation, they don’t listen. It’s not what I’m saying—they are listening. After I got through talking a young girl got up and said we are listening. We will use what you are telling us. It is a good thing too. These things you got to carry on. I tell a lot of my people that too. In Minto and Nenana, that is practically my hometown. I try to tell them that. I told one old man down there. He said—I try to, but they don’t listen to me. I tell him they are listening, but they aren’t going to tell you right away. He said—I learned the hard way so they have to learn the way I learned. I said, It’s not the way to look at it. I was brought up poor. My mother was the one that taught me all this stuff. How to cut birch, and all of that. I hunt for old people and they teach me how to do these things—when the moose is going to lay down. I tell the young kids that too. It is a good thing, so these things will carry on just like the dances and stuff like that. Some of them up there, it seems like they don’t want to carry it on. This year is the first year I am going to miss that meeting in Holy Cross. I wanted to go down there, but I don’t think I can make it. That is what I bring up at the meetings. I talk about these things. Some of them say they are going to start one down in Minto, last spring. They have a school everynight, but they don’t have a survival camp or nothing. If I start my camp around there, I don’t know where I am going to get, I guess most of the kids will come from Fairbanks, but I want to get them from all over. That way they will learn. I want to get a kid who knows how to do these things, so they could carry on. This kid that I am going to teach, that is what he will be doing too. Seems like he is going to catch on right away, the way he act. I know it will be good for them. That’s about all I got to say.

Dr. Matthews: I have listened and read the report of your earlier meetings and talked to a lot of people over the years and you have a very eloquent statement of concerns and trying to figure out how best to do something about it and striking on some way that makes a lot of sense such as the camp ideas where people can learn things and pass on traditions. It is a way of doing it that makes a lot of sense. It is one way and there needs to be, I think, lots of other ways like Austin was saying, getting more into the schools so that different settings for the stories so that young people could be exposed to different ways to do things. Not only in the schools, but university settings too so that there will be a broad understanding of some of the concerns. I think trying to figure out how best to put an educational setting together, I think the way you are doing it here is a good start. How to bring it about and extend into other structures is a real challenge. I’m interested in seeing how that will all come together. I think the next step is to bring people from those kind of structures into the sessions. I know, Don, we have talked about that. It is very, very important to move slowly and steadily I guess. I like the idea you had for camp, the results you have with young people by giving them positive experiences.

Break.

Don: The information we can talk about, what we need for our trip.

Pam: This afternoon, or tonight, I want to talk to you folks and get your ideas. When we go to Paris, one of the things they want to discuss with us is how do we know that what we are doing is working, how can we tell other people, in other parts of the globe, who are indigenous people trying to face the same situation with forced rapid change and problems with alcohol and drug abuse. They want to know what we are doing, and how we know what we are doing is working. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. I have some ideas, but I would really like to have a discussion about it. That is the main thing on my mind for this evening as far as getting us ready to go overseas. Two years ago, two women from Ketchikan went over the United Nations office. They were from the Health Systems Agency in Ketchikan I had worked with them on other projects. It sort of threw them the way I got to know Don and how we came to form this support team and task force. Well, the women went to Paris and met with people at UNESCO and started talking about the idea of a cultural spirit camp. At that time, there were two officers within UNESCO who were really interested in this idea. They said they would like us to submit a proposal last fall. Of course, we weren’t even a task at that time, it was too soon for us. Now we are a task force, we are pulled together, but in the meantime something happened. The President of the United States pulled the United States out of UNESCO. So the meeting that we are having in Paris is called a informal meeting because that is political protocol. In reality we are meeting with a fairly high-level person there. They moved us up one level from last year in who we are talking with. Instead of calling it a formal meeting it is called an informal meeting. Maybe we just break even on that, I don’t really understand.

I think it will be good after we see this tape, we can get an idea of how after seven years a camp operation looks. tomorrow, we need to hit hard on what people are doing and what the status of all the camps are.

Dr. Matthews: One of the things I was thinking about while you were talking, and also listening to Howard is that camp is a real learning setting for Indian people, traditionally. In another perspective a camp is more of a recreation activity. How can we best describe camp as a very high potential learning kind of a situation so it means what we are trying to do with it. What I have heard from listening to Don talk about it, it seemed like a very interesting idea, but I didn’t really appreciate the significance of it.

Jonathan: Nobody does. You are learning by just being there. It doesn’t have to be an organized camp. Even if you go on the Yukon River and go to any fish camp it becomes a spiritual camp when three people speak their own language. Of course, when three people speak their own language, the Indian spirit is there.

Pam: It occurred to me last night that when we have been talking about camp, we have talked as though they all have to look the same way. Originally, when we were discussing this, we never imagined that every place that had a spirit camp would all be the same. Howard, when we were in Ft. Yukon, you talked about taking 2 or 3 young people as apprentices. That i a kind of a camp too. And what Jonathan was saying about dropping people off at fish camp, they don’t have to be formal, organized camps. It seems that the conversations we have been having are carrying us this way. I don’t want to close the door to other ideas especially since each community will have to come up with what will work best. That is the only thing I was thinking we have to cover in the next day and a half. Do you have anything that you would like to see added into our discussion?

Don: I would like Eber to speak about some of the the things we heard this morning from Austin and Howard and Simon and Blake.

Eber: I was telling Don when I was listening to people talk this morning it seemed like I heard different strengths and different approaches in different places that are all necessary and valuable. When I was listening to Austin, I heard that the stories are strong teaching stories. They teach values, identity, the basics of teaching a person how to live. Because our ethics or our values or the choices we make—whether to sell the land or not to sell the land, or to fish in one way or to fish in a different way—those things are not just in our minds, but also with our feelings. How we feel about the animal stories, or the land. So I heard that coming through on the stories and then when I was listening to Blake, I heard a different way of teaching. He was talking about the experiences, and the students writing a letter to themselves to read two years late. It seems like there was a different kind of survival skills that he was talking about. They were survival skills not just for wilderness, but survival skills for living in non-native society as well. When Howard was talking, I heard the Native technology, Native skills, Native arts and crafts—how we actually do these things. It seemed like for a cultural camp that all of those three were a necessary part of that for the learning. That is what I was thinking about when various people were talking. I was also remembering something about how do you get the camp manager. Or how do you find the right manager for the camp, how do you get the teachers, and the right staff. That seems very important. What Dr. Matthews was saying—how do you teach the teachers, or how do you get into the school. There needs to be some way of, maybe in the places where there is a camp going now and it is working well, maybe to bring in a few people to be teacher trainees or camp manager trainees. They could have the experience of actually seeing how it is done in a way that works.

Matilda: I think it is like what I said in Ft. Yukon. We had the same questions—where do we find all these people to teach the children. In looking at our own people we found that we didn’t have to look far. We found out our own people had a talent that they could offer. We found a survival skills consultant, a silver carver, a wood carver, a drum maker, a storyteller. We got a Raven and a Eagle storyteller on a volunteer basis. All the teachers we needed we found among our own people. So we have the ability to teach the young people ourselves. After all, the idea is to pass on to them what our parents taught us. I was just trying to imagine in my mind the kind of camp that Massett, ReDiscovery camp has. I still can’t untangle it in my mind yet, but in my mind I can see a camp. It is hard for me to visualize. I would almost have to go there and spend two weeks. I am camp manager here and I am still learning. That is the only way our people can be teachers now as far as taking it upon themselves to help the young people. Everyone here has an ability that some of us don’t have. I think it has been good for us to use our own people because in turn, it helps them too because they are helping Indian people. At lot of times, most of out teachers were senior citizens. When you get that old, and they feel they have nothing to do, they are put on a shelf. Well, that is not so because their mind is so full of ideas and things that they can pass on to the young people. I sure would like to go to the ReDiscovery camp. I learn more by seeing.

Jonathan: I agree with her. You can go to any village in interior Alaska and the resources you need for a camp is walking down the street. If an Athabascan woman can’t run a camp with 12 children, she is not an Athabascan woman!

Viewing of ReDiscovery Video Tape

Austin: Story about the dream.

Come out by the table there. We will find out why you are here. He doesn’t have anything in his hand. So he let me sit on the corner like this. In the middle he put his hand. He is talking in his own words. I don’t understand what he is saying. Then he turned around. there is nothing against you, what you are doing to help the people. So there is nothing that you are doing wrong. I woke up and I told my wife. When I fall asleep again, he came to me again, that man, a second time. He told me—Now this time you go up on that big table there. For sure we will find out. So I got up there, same thing he was doing. Everything was on that big table. It was full, there were a lot of people sitting around it. He was putting his hand on it. He came to me again. For sure there is nothing against you. All that is on this table belongs to you, whatever you want to do. So I have to stand up and pass it around. This is the reason I am not afraid of doing all this here. When I woke up I told my wife again about the dreams. When I got through, the last one, when I fall asleep, the same man came to me. This time he told me to go on the platform up there. We will give you something that you could go with it. So he came with a big box, square and high. You take this and look for the manager and the coach and give it to him. So I went and I keep asking—Do you know where the manager and the coach is? He is way over there. I keep walking. All the people are around. When I keep asking, they told me—Well, they are standing there. So I bring that box to them. They told me, they sent me with this box, to give it to you. I don’t know what’s in it. I give it to them, they opened it. There was a little piece of paper in there and they read it to me. Then they turn it over to me. When they opened the box and took that out, it is a catcher’s glove. It is all gold and shiny. The man who put it on told me, anyplace we are we are going through the whole States. Your name is going to be all over the world. What you give it to us. That is what they told me. This is the reason why I am not afraid to fix this one (video tape). I talked to my dancers and song leader about what we have to do. So this is what we got on the tape. That is why I send it all around. Some people buy it. So the children could see what we are doing here. So they will show you what I am talking about. That is the Chilkoot. That is what we fix about it, we talk about the subsistence, our landmarks. When we go up there, I will show you the other one since the flood. What lies there. It is there, up on top the mountain. I could show you that one.

Viewing of Austin Hammond’s Tape

Don: Films like this is really helpful for us to understand people from around the state, how they live and what they are asking for. I appreciate something like this. It gives us a better insight while we are down here and when we go out to Chilkoot camp. It helps us to understand things like this. It’s the same way people in Elutna are doing, and people losing their land in the North Slope due to oil. I wish we could do something like this for all the different areas around the State. I know that Dr. Matthews appreciates this. Being a non-native and a outsider!

Science and Third World Issues (PDF)

Dr. Shigeru “Sam” Kounosu, Japanese theoretical physicist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge, worked with notable figures such as Robert Oppenheimer. In his candid letters and lecture drafts, Dr. Kounosu explores possible connections between physics and native science, one of the first scientists of western training to do so.

For International Discussion Group

(Draft II. Jan.22, ’90.)

What “Science” got to do with the Third World Issues?

Problem Solving, Discourse, Learning and Enoblement.

Let us try Word Association Game. What is the first thing that comes to your mind in hearing these two words; “Science” and “Third World”?

It may be “Scientific-Technological Aid to the Third World”. We see the Third World Nations are sadly lacking in Science. So send “Science” to Africa, Asia, or Latin America? But how can we send “Science”? Do we mean text books on science? Information or data? Instruments? Medical supply? New variety crop seeds?

They have something to do with Science, but that is not quite the same as “Science”. “Science” is a mental entity and cannot be packaged and shipped off. So we send scientists? That is ok as a short term measure. But, in the long run, it may become a neo-colonialist domination of these nations under intellectual supervision of our scientists. That does not “empower” people in Science, but rather make them more dependent.

Science are often said to be Objective and Materialistic. But Science used in producing material objects and appreciated by consumers is in the Minds of people who make these things. Viewed from producer’s side, Science as a “Power/Ability of Thinking” is more to do with Imaginations, Adventure, Dream than Material Objects.

Beyond that we can think of Science as “Power/Ability to Reason” (i.e. Theoretical sense of Science) which has nothing to do with material objects. Moreover, “World Citizens” are interested in development of the “Power/Ability to Understand” which is one step higher Science than the Power/Ability to Reason.

(It may be of interest to you to look back how the word/concept of “Citizen” emerged in our History. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others talked of distinction of “Citizen” from Slaves, Subjects of Master/Rulers. Citizens have certain Powers and Sovereign Will They were talking of political issues, but we could think of meaning of “Citizenship” in Science. Are we not mere passive consumers in Science, and hence slaves?]

For emergency situations, material aid is necessary. But “Development” is aimed at eliminating the need of “Aid”. In that sense, we have to think of Third World Issues in terms of Empowerment at least, if not in terms of Mutual Understanding. And in this, the consumer sense of Science is inappropriate. The Dependency is the problem. We have to think of ways to foster Third World Science, which is not dependent on our Science (EuroAmerican Science).

“Scientific Colonialism” in our mind has to be eliminated first of all.

Well, some think of inviting students from former colonial countries into Canadian universities and make them scientists that these countries need. We are doing that to some extent.

But then we might think of “Brain Drain” from poor countries to wealthy countries like Canada and the U.S. The third world countries not only have very small number of scientists, but they “export” a large number of scientists to the “First World”. In the U.S., some 1/3 of graduate students in Science and Engineering are from foreign nations. Some do go home after receiving degrees, but the most of them do not, for a simple reason that they cannot find job in home countries.

For that matter, I can tell you that the majority of Physicists of my age or above in the U.S. wer born in midwestern states, such as North and South Dakota. They were sons of famers in the “Dust Bowl”. They became PhD. physicists and moved to Cities at eastern sea coasts and in California. They did not go back to their home states. The economics dictates where scientists go.

Some of you might ask why we do not start “Science Transfer” by doing Science Education right in the Third World nations. The First World nations could donate money for facilities, teachers, library materials, and scientific information. Although, Science (and Technological) Education is 3 to 4 times expensive per student relative to the ordinary Education, UNESCO, for example, see it imperative and would welcome that. I myself once went on a CIDA mission to an African country. I taught Mathematical Theory of System Control to 3 Master and 2 Ph D. program students in a university. I can tell you what it was like.

It does not work. The reason is a bit complicated, but I think it is important that we understand this — that is; if we care about the Third World Issues beyond the level of donating money for Emergency Relief operations.

2. We are looking at problems of long term Development, which takes different level of thinking.  Unfortunately, we do not really think about Development, but rather think of “Rescuing” operations. Pardon me to say this, but even World Citizens Centre directs its appeal to “Pity” on, if not “Guilt” for “Unfortunate Poor People”. The appeal comes with “shocking news” about extreme poverty, deprivation, oppression and tragedy. In that sense, World Citizen’s Centre is a Philanthropic Organization, which is beautiful. But in usual sense, “Philanthropy” is understood as a matter of feeling. And from that point of view, the Third World Issue has nothing to do with Science. Science is perceived as a “cold hearted” intellectual exercise that some intellectual elite, specialists do.

[Incidentally, the number of professional scientists in the world today is about a million or so, and 90% or more is in the “First World” countries.

However, this number depends on how we define who are to be called “scientists”. We shall have to discuss this problem. But, you note that if we identify “Science” to be what these professional scientists are doing, it amounts to be an activity of a very small number of specialized people. It is like 2 in 10,000 people, and the rest of people have nothing much to do with Science.

If people could not care less about science, that is entirely natural.

Of course, this is a misperception. But the existence of the misperception is related to the essence of the issue of Development. It is not enough to say it is wrong. We have to discuss and learn how the misperception is created and find ways to correct it.]

Naturally, people feel they have nothing to do with Science even in their daily life in Canada, let alone seeing its relevance to people of the Third World countries.

[Dr. Hellen Cardicott said “Science is and Intellectual Masturbation”, when she came to Lethbridge to give a lecture. Dr. Cardicott was not too far off the mark in characterizing what we today identify as “Science”. But I think it not so harmless as she characterized it.

perhaps, it is more accurate to say “the Science today is Bureaucratization of human intelligence”. It can be powerful like a huge machine for the service to the Power. But for the service to people, it is totally inoperable machine. Many individual scientists have humanitarian ideals and good intentions, just as bureaucrats as individuals do. But as long as the system is unchanged, it is almost futile to try any thing within. Individuals might do some spectacular good, but they then will be promoted out of reach of people, and the system remain intact. They may change office space arrangements — such as “open space concept” —. But the Inhumanity of the system has only increased, every time it moved to new office building. Likewise, the remoteness of Science from Humanity has only increased, every time new specialization was added to Science and research grant money increased.]

I do not deny the beauty and importance of Humanitarian concerns and Moral feeling. They are starters. Without that, nothing can be done. But, they are the Gates, through which we come to learn something more than the atrocious living condition in the Third World countries. I think of this process of “Learning On” to be the essence of “Science”. This is critically important point, in my view.

Pity, Sympathy, Concern, Empathy, Interest, Benevolence, Love, Care, are important. I think they are essential and beautiful. But a critical question is “Are we Learning?”

Putting it bluntly, are we not patronizing — no doubt without intending to be so? We think we are fortunate enough to be in some position to help these people in the Third World. That is true. But then, are we not thinking as if we are “Teachers” who know, able to think better, and to tell these people what to do. We want to Teach our superior knowledge to those who are not as knowledgeable and smart as we are. It does not often occur to us that even Teachers have to Learn.

I admit we university professors are worse. We think we are so superior in knowing things that we need not Learn for teaching — we do research just for getting salary increment and personal prestige. In teaching we have a funny notion inherited from good old days. Old fashioned teachers apparently felt that they could not show any sign of Learning in front of their students, because that means lack of “authority” in their part. This attitude came from “teaching” in Religious institutions. In my  view, one cannot do Science in such an attitude. I hope today they are extinct in science education in elementary and secondary schools. But it certainly persists in universities, where professors pretend to know everything and have nothing more to learn, particularly in science teaching. I think “Teaching” as such is the opposite of Science.

For that reason and others, I think Science ought not be taught, but ought to be Discoursed. Discourse is Learning in a group of people, by a community. It has to be Participatory and mutual.

I think when Brandt Report called for “North-South Dialogue”, it meant Discourse. But people might have taken “Dialogue” to mean just talking or negotiating. The report implied, but did not stress “Learning” sufficiently clear. Of course, people connected to World Citizen centre got the meaning right. If so, saying that “Both Development and Science is Learning” is not strange to you. Perhaps, some of you had word association among “Development, Science, Learning” instantly. But if I may say so, association of Science/Development and Discourse is not quite easy and there are “good reasons” for that.

For one thing, in ordinary word usages, “Development” means Economic Growth, such as making factories to make things for export. and Science means Knowledge — that “Dead Knowledge” printed in text books which we are forced to memorize for no rhyme nor reason. The common usages of these words represent what we actually do with these things. That we begun to disagree with the common word usages signifies that we have come to feeling the problems.

But having problems is the starting point of Science and Development. For Science and Development are Problem Solving. We cannot have one without the other — I think of analogy to Love Affairs; relations that are not somewhat problematic is not really Love Affair. They have to be somewhat imperfect. The humbleness to acknowledge imperfections and vulnerability is the sign of Science, as opposed to Religious Teaching. To say “I know”  is a characteristic of Religion. To say “I do not know’ is the distinguishing mark of Science. Religions cannot be wrong. Science has to be fallible and open to change. For this reason, if we get every thing too easy, intellectually or otherwise, we are in trouble.

Human beings who do not know come together and do Science, and they do so because they have problems. Those who have no problem would not waste time for it, though there is an intrinsic sense of pleasure in meeting with people, regardless of its excuse. The “come together” (i.e, Participation) makes the Discourse. It has to do with process of knowing, but Knowledge is not Discourse hence not Science. In this sense, A.A. meetings are doing real Science. What Scott Peck is describing as “Wonderful Experiences” in Different Drum are “Discourses” and “Science” in a verb sense.

[As to this sense of Science, I wrote a story “Raven The First Native Scientist”. My “Requiem for Chester Heavy Runner Jr.” also written for what I think “Science” out to be. I do not know whether I was correct as to Native Science or not, but that is my way of trying things out. Copies enclosed.]

In the above sense “Science” is “Human Development” in a communal/social scale. Some economists have talked about this in terms of “Infra-Structure” to Economy. Phrases like “Human Investment” has been used to talk about this in Developmental Economics. But, vocational education of individual ability for market competition was still a strong overtone to Economists’ talks. Economic cannot easily change its metaphysics of utilitarian rationality. A few economists pointed out a need of Paradigm Shift in that science, but there is little sign that a new Paradigm is emerging. [*1]

Likewise, social thinkers have started to talk of “Human Development” — needed in the First World Nations. Jane J. Mansbridge in Beyond Adversary Democracy wrote;

“A few philosophers have recently sounded the alarm against the increasingly self-interested focus of public life. They call for a return to preadversary conceptions of the common good, lllll and to relations of fellowship and community.”

[Basic Books 1980. p. 302. JC423 M353 U.L. Lib.]

That is “Development” is not just a problem in the Third World Nations, but it is a problem for the people in the First World Nations; i.e., us.

The “Human Science” has a task of constructing an alternative metaphysics which is humane, environmentally healthy and capable of providing basis for non-adversary human/social relations. That is why I talk of Love, Care, Grace, etc., though they are not considered in European Science today. However, in the 18th century, thinkers such as Rousseau, Hume, Mills, or even Hobbes did think of them to be proper subject of Science. Adam Smith was a professor of Moral Philosophy and he meant he was doing a Science. Of course, their Science established Utilitarian Rationality. That was equivalent to the establishment of Newtonian Physics. What we have to do is equivalent of constructing Relativity or Quantum Theory, alternatives to Newtonian Mechanics.

[*1. As to “Paradigm Shift” see; Drew Westen. Self and Society. Cambridge U. Press 1985.

BF698.9 C8 W47 U.L.Lib.

He talks of 4 Phases in changes of “Culture” (Collective Mind/Science of society) as well as in changes of individual mind (psyche, intelligence, self-concept). Interestingly, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Wm. Blake’s Four Zoas, etc, also exhibit the same “4 Phases” of change.

“Human Science” has been in existence, but so far, not recognized as “Science”. These books contain interesting “clues”, here and there. That is why I make mention of them to you.]

3. The “Wonderful Experience” stories make us to ask a harder question for ourselves — that is, if we do not wish to be “Couch Potato” spectators of Science, deluding ourselves in psychological identification with our intellectual or spiritual hero/heroines, like we do with Wayne Gretzky. What is stopping us from Discoursing=Developing=Sciencing for ourselves?

To be sure, some of us may be so conceited to see no problem like common people, and may complain that there is no problem to science with. In such a case, I would recommend to put oneself in the position of program coordinator for World Citizen’s Centre. That will guarantee t o provide as many problems as one wish, in terms of relating to people or getting them interested in Third World Issues. Or we can say to Yuppies that if they need “Quality Time” for their mental health, they can do that in discoursing on the Third World problems. If they do not have time and be deprived of “Quality Time” as such, that is a problem for them to science with.

But I think most people are fortunate enough to have problems. Rather we deny the problem and resist learning. We are like Alcoholics, intoxicating in our pride of being far above these “miserable poor ignorant people” in the Third World and protecting it by an elaborate network of delusions, deceits. “Support Network” is a popular cliche nowadays. But we have it, in terms of legitimizing and maintaining our “comfortable feeling” about our affluent consumer life style. It is a Network of Narcissism. Of course, beneath our smugness is a Fear. We feel we have a lot to lose, if we do anything to change the system. We do not wish to fall off from our “respectable” position in the Network. So we compete like in a Hell, which give rise to Yuppy life style that we all suffer. In actual matter of fact, the feeling of Powerlessness, Meaninglessness, Lovelessness, bitter cynicism, nihilism are widespread among us like epidemics. We are so afraid that we cannot admit and face our problems.

Our basic mental posture is that of Defense. Whereas “Learning” (Discourse, Science) is an openness, hence vulnerability to unknowns. One does not know what troubles one gets in, when involvement get to be “intimate”. So, we avoid that. We can learn about that problem—if there is nothing else. And it so happens that that is the same Problem as that of Development. If we cannot do Human Development, we cannot do Social Development either — or rather the two are “co-comitmental” and “Discourse” deals with both.

However, to discourse on the problems of Discourse we need something a bit more than Philanthropy. World Citizen’s Centre used to call itself a “Learning Centre”, and The Learning is the Science. But it appears that Learning Centre has had difficulties. I actually do not know enough to say this, but my impression is that Learning part of the Centre has not been easy. In terms of getting people engaged in Learning, the Centre is struggling — to put it politely. AndI would like to know what the difficulty is. I suspect it has something in common with Third World Development problems.

To argue for my contention, let me cite problems in Third World Development. Even in a very narrow technological science we do find reports of problems. Here, I cite a fiction from Mother Jones magazine [Oct 89.: “Doctor Kamikaze” by Ayi Kwei Armah. p 34-38, 46., see copy.]. It is a story of a native woman who try to do “Developing work” but shifted out of the country to a high UN office. I think fiction is based on real experience and treat it as such. (the reason why it cannot be published in the form of factual report itself is an indication of the problem that we are concerned about.)

The trouble with Dr. Kamikaze was that she did not have local participation strong enough to overcome the politics that sabotage the Development project — local politicians pocketed the Aid money and the President of the nation could not do anything much about it, because he was dependent on the “old-boy support network”.

It was a problem of Human Relation. She did not learn about Human Relations in her WEstern Education. Her Scientific (technical) Rationality was not functional in the situation. The story is sympathetic to Dr. Kamikaze and talks of the corruption of local politicians. But the story did not suggest she had paid much effort in Discoursing with local peasants either, nor did she appear to have cared to learn anything much about petty politics of the nation, other than got angry at it. It does look that this high minded lady, with Ph D from European University, descended upon local situation with an air of superiority, just like foreign scientists from UN Development Agency or CIDA would have done. Local people did not obey her command, and she get angry.

Her anger is quite justified. But “Good Will” and “Desire for Betterment” were there. the President and officials around her was rather “Kind” to her. In fact they admired her attitude of “No Bull Shit”. But “Science” was lacking. Problem was there, and everybody knew the problem. But “Problem Solving” (=science) was not there. I do not mean “Political Science”, “Social Science”, “Psycho-Science” that universities teach. I mean real Science of Discourse.

[We ought to note that the inefficiency of “corrupt petty politics” is comparable to the inefficiency of Bureaucracy. Inefficiency is not a peculiarity of “backward countries”. We have it around us, if we ourselves are not part of it.

In addition it ought to be pointed out that “Careerism” exists in any agency, and the poison fo careerism is just the same as that of corrupt petty politics. Self-interests (or self-preservation0 must take the priority over anything else, even in the career in Development Agencies. Since nobody cares about you, it is entirely justified and rational for you to look after your self-interest. Even humanitarian project becomes the means to feather one’s own nest. It is legal and rational in the Utilitarian sense, but no different in principle from the corrupted petty politics.]

Another thing we ought to note is that knowing some fantasy fictions like Black Hole sounds “Scientific” and has Academic respectability. But knowing how humans interact in intimate senses does not look like “intellectual” thing to do. It may not be “rational” nor “reasonable”. It is a favorite subject the “Pop-psychology”. But, no high paid profession so far had anything to do with human relations in the intimate sense — except perhaps “psychotherapy”, but it only deal with “pathological cases” at individualistic basis, not “normal” people in normal life at communal/social basis. Therefore Universities did not see any profit in offering a “science” for it. By the same reason, “Development” is not a subject that universities deal with, other than as a part of Political Science, Economics etc, which concern only with Utilitarian values.

Moreover, the science of human relations may have to do with Morality, Justice, Peace, or even Grace. That sounds very opposite of what we think of “Science” or “knowledge”. Our “knowledge” is mainly concerned with Power and Utility — how to exploit nature and to control/manipulate people for utilitarian purposes, in a metaphor with Newtonian Mechanics , not “wishy-washy stuffs” like Love, Care, Respect, Grace.

4. Now, suppose one tries to do Human Science, including Love, Care, Respect, Grace, in addition to Power. I am thinking of doing Science in the sense “Raven The First Native Scientist” did. In our European Cultural norm, that is a strange thing to try. One will quickly find a wall of silence, indifference, contempt, rejection. It is rare in our life style that even two people engage in discourse with earnestness. We can argue and debate in a competition, if any of us want to “make a point”. But that is in “Adversary Competition”, not in “Participatory Learning” and hence not “Science” in Raven’s sense.

This is not, however, because people are ignorant nor because they are “nasty”. It comes from much deeper roots than what we can see on the surface. For one thing, whoever try to do stuffs like “Human Development” becomes an alienated “Outsider” by a mere fact of trying odd stuffs that ordinary people would not do. In a sense, one who tries is between the world of “what is of the reality” and the world of “what can be of human community”. He or she is trying to build a Bridge between the two worlds. That means, she or he does not belong to neither one.

That is, Discourse id a Bridge, sensitive, but transient, unstable. One becomes vulnerable in that sensitivity. The position is similar to Natives in city ghettos, Native Youths adapted by Non’Native families, and worst all “Half Breeds”. In their suffering, they are doing the Bridging, not in an intellectual sense, but by their body and soul. We need to appreciate this precarious position.

I would recommend for people interested in “Human Science” to read what Paula Gunn Allen talked about “Outsider” in The Sacred Hoop, or Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony, etc.

I am trying to tell you that the being “Outsider” is common to you who attempt to Bridge two Worlds, or two Cultures and those who live in pain at the margins of society. This commonness is the precious element — Natives would say “Medicine” — that has the power of transforming the both. If there can be anything like Understanding between people, between Cultures, between the First and the Third World, this is the Medicine. That is the basis on which empowerment, ennoblement, spiritual liberation, and perhaps even grace develop.

If one is not willing to be an “Outsider”, she or he would stay in the smugness of the conventional life, or of performing bureaucratic routines. It is a voluntary servitude (Neitzsche called it “slave” life, Fromm called it “Escape from Freedom”). That one feels pain and outrage in such a life is a blessing, for the pain and outrage give one needed energy, spiritual incentive to “Science” the system as such. Human Science is not for “Power” that stands above, commands and moves society, but rather for (powerless) Love/Respect of people in “marginality” and for ennobling oneself by ennobling people involved. According to Simon de Beauvoir, Sartre after a life long struggle with “Being and Nothingness” (Cartesian Hell) finally reached to an idea of “Participation”. But Sartre did not elaborate the idea to a level of Discourse. I think what Human Science, Human Development, has to do is to go on doing what Sartre failed.

Of course, people might resent that, for they do have repressed pain and outrage and having a hard time denying them. The “Bridge Builders” are disturbing their “Peace of Mind” — as Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor eloquently pointed out to returned Jesus. I am not a Christian, and certainly do not advocate “Jesus Delusion” to anybody. But being an alienated “Outsider” is similar to that. One get to be one, not by choice, but by “circumstance” or “karma”. If your are born with sensitive mind, that is your misfortune. But as much as you cannot shut your sensitivity off, you might just as well to make the best use of your “brain defect”. You are Human Scientist, not because you have a superior intelligence, but because you are “victim”. At least to think like that let one to avoid patronizing attitude and get on with Discourse. If you find at the end that you are truly noble person, that is one way of ennoblement.

However, I suspect that most anybody has problems in one sense or another. We should not be deceived by the appearances that people put up in defense or in vain pride. You look into Yuppie life style to find a lot of problems. People who appear to be “successful” or “powerful” also have problems. It is not just alcoholics, nor poor people in Third World countries, that have problems. If any thing we are the ones who are handicapped by our unwillingness to acknowledge our problems, so that we lag behind in science.

At any rate, if I do talk about Science, Development, Morality, Spirituality, etc, it is not because I know anything better, but because I too am an “Outsider”, in Limbo, in Purgatory, on Bridge (Buddhist metaphor) by different reasons. It is more of cry or appeal than “knowledge claim”.

(S.K.)

Native Geometry: Letter, 11 December 1987 (PDF)

Dr. Shigeru “Sam” Kounosu, Japanese theoretical physicist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge, worked with notable figures such as Robert Oppenheimer. In his candid letters and lecture drafts, Dr. Kounosu explores possible connections between physics and native science, one of the first scientists of western training to do so.

Dec. 11, 87.

Dear Pam

You say you wish to pursue Native Math. If so, how about looking into “Native Geometry”? The book: Native Mathematics talks only of Number Systems and a little bit of Astronomy. Frankly, that is disappointing. Native Geometry is better. I explain why I think so.

Geometry includes Space Perception, How to deal with Motions, Fields, Relations, hidden, visible, and imagined. It also includes Time Dimension, future, past or side ways. It deal with Order, Disorder, and Nebulous. In short, it is a Cosmology, but relevant to practical life on the ground.

And a “Culture” always come with an implicit, but a fundamental Geometry. [Jung Thesis]. For example, ancient Greeks included “Geometry” as one of 9 Muses, along with Love Songs, Tragedy, Comedy, etc. It was a part of Wisdom of Goddess Sophia. And the Goddess of Wisdom was a representation of the “Collective Intelligence” of the ancient Greeks.

Native Culture also had a Geometry. It is just that you do not give a proper recognition to it. Most Europeans do not recognize the Geometry in their subconscious either. The only exception is Jung, but he did not go too far.

Greek Geometry was also a “Practical Art” for artisans. It was the first “Practical Philosophy” in helping people how to organize thinking and guide social scale actions. [Actions, involving more than few people and lasting for a duration beyond what individuals can manage by “reacting to immediate situation”, require a Vision which constitute a “Collective Will”. The Vision is a Geometry.] It was the first disciplined social scale exercise in Imaginations. It was also the first “Science” ever to be systematized in a Logical Structure. The Structure was built in order to have a basis for social scale communication. Naturally, it became the Mother of European Science. If I exaggerate a bit, the implicit Geometry, as the Pattern of Imagination, was the “Mind” of the Civilization.

Newton learned Euclid Geometry, through Descartes’ analytical method — which Angels taught Descartes in dream — and Projective Geometry from an Architect friend. This Architect was older than Newton, but perhaps he was the only friend Newton ever had. Incidentally, his school did not teach Geometry. Newton went to school, probably because he wanted to become a Theologian, not a scientist. Geometry was just a fun. Yet, his Mechanics was based on a Geometry and the “Language of Differential Calculus”. He wrote somewhere that, in writing Principia, he wanted to emulate Euclid. Euclid invented, aside from the Geometry, the prototype for Scientific Stylism.

From a modern view, what Newton did was simple addition of Time to Euclid Geometry. The reason Mechanics became stucked with Motions of Objects is that Euclid Geometry was Geometry of “Points and Lines”. Geometry of “Fields” has not been developed until Einstein’s time, some 250 years after. Michael Faraday had a vision of Fields, but there was no Geometry then to “Verbalize” the vision.

Einstein barely managed with the little he knew of Geometry. His patron teacher, Prof. Minkowsky, taught him Geometry, but apparently Einstein was a poor student. Minkowsky was the one who admitted Einstein into the University by bending the admission rules. A story is that Minkowsky got mad at delinquent Albert and said to him “I do not wish to see you, never ever.” [If I come to teach you Geometry, I might have to say the same thing to you. You know not everybody can be patient and nice like Mouse Woman.]

But, it turned out that Einstein revived academic interests in Geometry, which was an obscure subject that nobody really cared about in the 19th century. Minkowsky got famous, because of Einstein. Now, the market value of Geometry is down again. Nowadays, high schools hardly offer Geometry. Universities seldom offer courses in Geometry, except in a few special places like Princeton. [Harvard has never been good at Geometry.] Number Mathematics is a lot more popular. The reason, I suspect, is that Geometry is Visual and closer to Art. Intellectual snobism in Universities in general , and Mathematicians in particular, looks down on Geometry as “Unpure”. It uses “Intuitions”, “Perceptions”, “Creative Imagination”, “Images”, “Gestalt”, “Metaphors”, etc. none of which is acceptable to the “Pride of Logical Rigor” of the Mathematicians today.

Yet, the entire Physics can be looked at as “Applied Geometry”. All “verbalizations” of observed phenomena, if they are approaching the level of physics, are implicitly Geometrical. This can also be said for Economics, Social Theories, Psychology. Geometry is the bridge between Observation (Imagination included) and Verbalization. Geometry, therefore, has Hermenuetical elements — that is, if one cares to look at how Geometry use Language.

Whether you know it or not, your talk on Ghii Lii is a talk on Geometry. Your Tree Vision is a Geometry. It is different from the European one, in that it is a “Field Geometry”. Euclid Geometry was a “Geometry of Points and Lines”. You have at least Einstein’s level of Geometry already, surpassing Euclid-Descartes-Newton.

[It is my task to convince you that you started a fantastic thing. By uttering wards like “Native Science”, you opened Pandora’s Box. You probably did not mean anything. But “Bears” are around, and overheard that. Because, the word mean something, you get into all kinds of Shits, including ones from me. If you knew what you were talking about, you would not have dared to utter the word. Europeans have a nice expression for that. They say “Where angels fear to step, fools trot.”]

There is one important thing about Field Geometry which you’d better know. The kind of Mathematics that is needed in Field Geometry does not depend on Numbers — called Topology — but numbers can be used. And Differential Geometry (Geometry of Manifolds) is the standard tool today.

You might ask how anyone can do Differential Calculus without “Quantifying” by measurements. That is an Euclidian prejudice. Just because Euclid Geometry needed measured quantities such as “Distance” and showed off its “Numerical Accuracy” as if that is the “Proof” of it being Accurate Science, it does not mean that Science cannot be done by without “Accurate Number Measure”. In fact, fantastic mathematical acrobatics in formula manipulation etc. can be demonstrated without anything to do with “Accurate Numbers”. Topology is a “Fuzzy Science”, and the “fuzziness” requires a lot more sophisticated thinking than “accurate number mathematics” needs.

If you are thinking of Social-Human Science, the “Fuzzics” that is emerging from Geometry is an ideal tool. This goes against the fundamental Paradigm of European Social Science today. But, it can liberate one from the much worshiped Numbers in Social science today — or from the European Science as practiced by the majority today.

Needless to say it is difficult. Time and time again, even those who do Geometry fall back to Euclid Number Thinking. That includes Einstein himself. When one does not have numerical values, one loses confidence. Or one feels that people would not understand Geometry, therefore they sink into Silence. Since Geometry is repressed into silence, people do not learn it. The community remain ignorant. That makes communication more difficult. So one dares not talk about it. We have a Vicious Circle.

Now, I have a vested interest in Native Science, because I see there a possibility of Field Geometry. I need you to tell the Geometry. You are the poor victim. You have been receiving shits from me, because of that. On the top of it, I am now asking you to look into Native Geometry. That is a bad deal!

I know women over 30 are on “down hill” and cannot learn nothing much new. For that matter, men are no better after 20. (I learned that the only way to get you interested is to make you angry. So I am trying the trick.)

Besides, I know being a mother is a full time occupation. Add 1/3 for being a wife, however a bad wife you are. Then add another 1/3 for being a teacher, even if you are a poor one at that. And whatever else you do? You have probably 200% excuse for not doing anything beyond.

[One day, I was watching a girl with her little brother coming onto the bus I was in. She must be age 7 or 8. I saw a determined tension on her face to look after her brother who may be 5 or so. She let her brother put changes into fare box. Her attention was just like a “Mother” would have had in doing the same. The word “Responsibility” is not quite right for that. I do not know what that can be called. But I got impressed by her greatly. Somehow, she learned it from someone somewhere. I wondered if school education could do anything like it. In comparison to that, stuffs like Geometry is trivial. However, I have nothing better to offer you.]

But then, why do you utter words like Native Science? I take it that you meant it. You would not like me to patronize on your weakness. But you have no idea how to make it real, doing it in the present condition of life.

But, perhaps, there is no harm in trying, even if you cannot hack it. So I make you an offer of making inputs from that side. It is from European Science, but a little better shit than Newton-Euclid ones. Raven would not hesitate to take advantage of whatever available for the means.

However, as to Native side, I do not know anything. that should give you ample opportunity to hit me back. We can be even at that. And more importantly, I tell you that unless you speak out, you learn nothing, and I learn nothing from you. You see a lot of people who are defending their Pride with thick armor, not realizing the self-imposed armor is a prison, the “Box”. Children learn a lot quick, because they are not defensive. They say what they think, right or wrong. And they can accept things, because they are not worried about their vulnerability.

I am thinking of “Learning by and for Community”, as a new strategy replacing “Ego Knowledge”. That calls for “childishness” in learning. However, in this, I do see a difficulty.

Namely, Natives have great deal of concern about their Dignity. It has a good reason, for if they lose their Dignity, they are finished. That is why Elders talk of Tradition, or The Old Way of Doing things. But learning is a Creation. And Creation means Death of the Old. To learn something is not “addition” like putting money in banks. It require a structural change, which means dying and “borning”. Sensitivity that required for Creative thinking is inherently “Unstable” , if not Catastrophic. In that Creativity is the Arch-enemy of Constancy.

I am also aware that “Environmental Conservation”, “Peace”, “Harmony”, “Steady State Economy” etc. come with in metaphors of Constancy. But you note that what a Big Change is needed to achieve any one of these ideals. And here Hopi Philosophy is correct in saying that nothing is constant. Hopi Prophecy is for catastrophic changes. It may be more of the “Traditional” Spirit to be “radical” than fixated in an illusionary Constancy on surface.

This ought not be taken to be disrespect of Elders, nor disregard of Native Culture. I think the respect has to do with learning of the Original Meaning and Creatively Applying it to the changing situations. It takes more profound understanding of the Ancient Spirit and Creativity to live in the present difficulties than just following formalities as routines. I talked of Speaking Up, but I am not ignorant of the value of Silence. Silence can be louder than any big noise. Besides, “speaking” has to be matched with “listening”. As to how to work out these balances, we have to think about it further.

Maybe, this problem of Tradition and Radical Creation holds the key that we need. To reject someone, something in contempt is too easy. To understand something we do not like in respect requires learning of the level we try to achieve. The problem is a gift. It is interesting to note that you Ghii Lii story came out in a context of you talking of “Going back to the Source”. We all get very much impressed by your lecture. Now, it is your turn to listen to what you said, and get impressed by its profound meaning.

In a sense, the real test of “Validity” on Geometry or on any other Theories, Philosophies or Teaching, is whether or not it helps us to deal with such problems. Castaneda’s story, or D.Bohm’s Theory is “Valid” in so far as they help people in troubles. If not, it matters little if real Don Juan existed or not. I think Geometry — i.e. Vision — does help. I am not a magician, nor a guru. But can I make you interested in Native Geometry?

Yours

Sam K.

Remembrance: An Intercultural Mental Health Process (PDF)

Remembrance, An Intercultural Mental Health Process

by Pam Colorado

Mental Health is a European, western derived construct which, in the context of colonialism, has been imposed upon Native peoples. thus one could question the health of “mental Helth”. I propose that it is possible and timely to create processes and models of mental health which are intercultural and have, as their first order of business, the healing of mental health practitioners…myself included!

Issues of mental health and culture are central to my life. I am a traditional Oneida woman, married to a Hawaiian, Kuhuna Kalai Wa’a and Kii, that is, a man who has the Huna or secret knowledge of how to carve traditional ocean going canoes and images. We live on the island of Maui where I commute to California to teach in the Traditional Knowledge Program—a doctoral program for tribal people worldwide. I am also of French ancestry and travelled to France during my early twenties to make peace with the conflict I felt as a mixed blood person.

In twenty years of activism my model of mental health practice evolved from a largely clinical social work/community organizing focus (with a few cultural touches) to an almost completely cultural, spiritual practice that drew on western psychology when necessary. Although reluctant to draw on extra cultural approaches,I found psychology and its terminology to be helpful in dealing with deadly colonial wounds, notably alcoholism. Counselling methods also became a bridge to the western and professional world and to assimilated parts of my personality. In fact, western counselling helped me to decolonize and to embrace my true cultural identity.

But joining Native and western approaches to mental health has always made me uncomfortable. First of all, there are no guidelines or mutually established ethics to govern the linking. Second, the concept of mental health is inextricably bound up in relationships of domination and power. Prior to the invasion of North America there wasn’t even a concept of mental health! Native cultures sought and were an expression of grounded lives lived in balance and intimate communication with all living beings. third, western practitioners’ denial of the power dynamics between Natives and westerners emotionally charge the counselling process. Fourth, whether we like it or not, there is no part of Native life that has not been violated or desecrated. As a result, we carry enormous and undifferentiated anxieties and pain; often we swing back and forth between western and Native behavior without conscious choice. Finally, as my genetics suggest, there is no escaping the obvious fact that American Indians and Euramericans (with their mental health practices) share a land and a reality. We must address the intercultural mental health conundrum and transform it into something good.

Recently, I worked with a French American person whose wife had suffered with terminal cancer for ore than two years. I began the work in my usual way, as a cultural person who used western concepts to communicate and engage. Four months later, when the work was complete, I had been taught a way of doing Native mental health in the western world; moreover, a westerner had entered my Native paradigm and healed aspects of my life. I refer to the process as remembrance and share some of it with you now.

A stormy twilight sky holds the ocean in an indigo embrace. Moving smoothly through the cold spring ocean, I hesitate for a moment, questioning the wisdom of a swim so late in the day. Hawaiian elders warn against this. As I realise I am alone in the water, a sense of vulnerability rises; I do not recall how I got here. I want to return to shore but am powerless to move. The growing density of the night time sky is matched by a sense of growing danger in the water. Suddenly, I am aware of an enormous and awesome presence—Mano! The shark1

My reaction is instantaneous. Rolling over on my back I lie suspended in the water and I wait. Mano is one of the most powerful animal spirits in Hawaiian cosmology. The shark empowers priests, healers and intellectuals; it is an Aumakua, the head of a major clan system and it is Mano that accompanied and protected the first Polynesian voyagers to settle the Hawaiian islands. Lying motionless is the only act of reverence available to me. I can feel him approaching from my right; swift and smooth. He transverses the length of my body, as if appraising me. Death may be imminent. I am afraid. I am hopeful. The shark turns and heads directly towards me. Bright blue lines of electricity stream from either side of his head. Reaching my still body, he races beneath me, around me, wrapping me in blue lines of vivifying intelligence and power. Then he is gone.

I awake, shaking and weeping with joy. Gathering up my medicine bag, I pull on some clothes and head to Launiopoko Beach to make an offering of thanks. Pulling Indian tobacco from its pouch, I call to Mano. Laying a gift of tobacco in the water, I wait. Was it a true dream? A few moments pass, doubt begins to enter my mind. Just then a movement about fifty feet off to the left catches my eye. It is a shark fin, standing nearly one foot out of the water. This must be a great animal. As quickly as it moves towards me, it turns and disappears from sight.

As I drive home, I wonder at the beauty and power of Native ways. The feelings that went through me when I saw the shark acknowledge the offering! I wonder what the meaning of this experience is and what is expected of me. A few days later, a stranger stops by our house to look at Hawaiian art work. It is Mr. Robert Requin (Mr. R), an elderly gentleman of enormous wealth and great political repute.

It is not usual to greet someone of Mr. R’s standing, so I paid attention to what happened. As he entered our house, he went almost directly to the scale model canoe, “Lele O Ke Kolea”, the canoe that brought the first Hawaiians here. As I approached Mr. R to welcome him a spiritual presence, nearly palpable, filled the room. My traditional training enabled me to see it my western mind interpreted it as a crucial bonding. I was shocked because I had never had such a moment with a non Native person.

Any traditional Native person will tell you that ordinary reality is not real at all. This world is spiritual and beings of great power, like Mano, move through the veil of our conscious minds. Like Creator, Mano touches us. It is only an instant but in that moment we experience something timeless and real—our own truth. Truth, according to Native thought is meant to be lived. When a dream comes, work of transformative nature is sure to follow. Because the work is spiritual and difficult, it is important to interpret the direction of the dream accurately.

In the weeks that followed, I struggled for understanding and direction. I spoke to another traditional person who responded, “A strange thought just came to me—your visitor is Mano!” The truth of the message was so strong, it took my breath.

Identifying the Mano as the spiritual protector and power of my visitor, gave me a beginning point for determining how we were related. For a few days, I struggled trying to remember anything I heard or knew of the relationship between Mano and the Thunderers—my clan. The answer came in the middle of the night when I awoke thinking of a petroglyph from the Northwest Coast (where I learned the process of deciphering the ancient language).

On a large rock, located in the tideline, is a carving of the Shark and Thunderbird, held together by a huge lizard—the protector of water and change of consciousness. This 15,000-year-old carving is predictive of transformative learning—of movement into a higher integration of knowledge which will be sensory or predictive. The Lizard also implies genealogy or ancestral communication. In a western sense we might say I had determined an archetypal relationship. I understood that this was a powerful connection but I lacked a course, or even a next step of action.

One day, during a phone conversation with Mr. R, we discussed our French family histories. Realising that our ancestors had arrived in the New World about the same time, I decided to check my family tree, a lengthy document. Turning to a random page, I glanced down and discovered that a man from my family and a woman from his had married in 1560; furthermore, this couple moved to the New World and became the progenitors of both his family line and mine! This confused me. If I had found a mutual Indian ancestor, I would know what to do or who to contact. I was in for a surprise.

Mr. R had purchased a number of traditional Hawaiian art pieces of my husband’s and had asked me to bless them. I readily agreed, until I turned to do it and discovered the purchases included Lei o Mano—weapons of war constructed of sharks teeth and a wood that women do not touch! How do I, as a woman, pray over weapons of death? Is this proper? Do I have the authority? These questions took several days and the pieces were to be delivered the next day. Finally, I understood the next step.

Moving the weapons into the sunshine, I made my prayer but something didn’t feel complete. So, I meditated some more and realized that I needed to do a night ceremony as well.

That night on the lanai, the spirits spoke in unmistakable messages. Mr. R’s wife had survived because two, vainglorious physicians, eager to win the respect and approval of her wealthy husband, had used extraordinary means to keep the woman alive. She had been tortured. I knew it because for a brief moment the spirits made me feel what she had suffered; it was agony. I was told that her end would come soon and I was given several other pieces of information for Mr. R.

When I came in from my prayers, I was shaking with fear. I knew I had to tell Mr. R but I doubted myself. What if I was wrong? What if I had misinterpreted something? And I questioned my right to even tell someone such news. Nevertheless, the following morning while burning sage, I called Mr. R and shared, as gently as I could, all of what had transpired. To my amazement, he nearly wept with relief. In the next few weeks, everything happened just as I had been told. I was stunned at my self doubts and with the power of these old ways.

I was also pleased that ancient Native ways could help Mr. R—in fact, even seeming to complement his devout Catholicism. But two weeks after his wife’s death I learned that my sister was alcoholic and suicidal. Thee generations of family addiction came crashing down on me. All my work in healing did not seem to stop the destruction and death in my own family. I was terrified.

Another dream came to me. This dream revealed the origins of the family addiction problem. It rested in an event that happened in France nearly 700 years ago—an event that Mr. R’s family shared. I awoke from the dream, it was near midnight. Heading directly for the closet, I rummaged around until I found my baptism candle (although raised traditionally, I had also been baptised Catholic, perhaps to cover all the bases!) I took the candle out to my rock altar and then stopped. I didn’t know where to put it. How could I respect these two ways and still bring them together? Desperate for my sisters life, I finally placed it on the lower right hand corner. Then I began my prayer, in my Indian way, explaining what I was trying to do and why. I asked permission to proceed. It seemed okay, so I picked up the candle, stuck it in the damp tropical earth, and lit it. I wasn’t sure how to pray. I tried all the Latin prayers I could remember but nothing felt genuine. Then I tried it the Indian way, by calling to the ancestors. Suddenly, the sultry, leeward night was hit with a cold wind from the North. It came down on me so hard and fast, I had to cup the flame to keep it from going out. I was scared. I knew I had pinpointed the cause and I knew I needed help.

The next morning, I called Mr. R and asked him to help in the tradition of his French Catholic religion. He agreed and for the next three days he prayed for us.

About a week later, Mr. R and I spoke. I thanked him and told him the astonishing news. My huge French-Indian family had finally acknowledged the problem of addiction in our family and was preparing for a family intervention for my sister. He was not surprised because he had felt a peace come over him the first night of his prayers. We both wept and laughed on the phone. Who would ever have guessed the combined power of a Pagan and a Catholic!

I used to think that darkness was evil but an Elder once told me, that darkness is safety, security, like the womb. In the darkness we are all one; separations cannot be seen. Perhaps this is the Huna, or inner secret Hawaiians know. For Mr. R and I to heal required great risks and trust. We both stepped into our shadow many times but we were not alone. At night, in a dream, the shark spirit came to give me the power to do the healing work. Although I doubted myself, I still went to the beach and made a thanksgiving offer. A real shark came proving the truth of the dream as well as the value of facing self doubt.

Mr. R knew of the terrible things his culture has done and continues to do to Native people, but he stepped through that history when he asked for my help.

I entered the shadow again when I turned to my French genealogy; used my candle and asked Mr. R for his help. It was difficult to do. Yet, the evil visited on my family—the multigenerational alcoholism derived from and depended upon the continuing hatred and divisiveness of Catholic and tribal people.

Most likely I will never see Mr. R again, but in the dark moment we shared, a beautiful healing emanated. Two people—from vastly different political, socioeconomic backgrounds, one traditional Indian, the other Catholic—joined using western psychological language and simple loving prayers particular to our own cultures. We healed. Nothing happened, yet everything changed.

First Reading, Vol. 13, No. 3, Sept 95 ESPC

Inowendiwin: Peace and Honor Going Back and Forth Between Us (PDF)

Inowendiwin

Peace and Honor Going Back and Forth Between Us

Pamela Colorado

The American Indian Movement is a nation of people concerned with life and continuity. The goal and the philosophical basis of this American Indian world view is Pimadaziwin which means life lived in the Good Way, or life lived to its fullest. This connotes responsibility, joy, and liveliness; it is an objective as well as subjective state of being.

This Spirit Way has neither beginning nor end and is often referred to as “the Life of the People”. Successive generations are born and choose to enter the Good Way or not. In the past most Indian people lived this way as a matter of fact. And the very tangible and beautiful outcomeof those choices can be seen in the Black Hills of Dakota, the Red Earth heartland Okalhoma, and in the wooded glens of New England called Wampanoag.

While there are many other such places in America today, the people who live with and care for these places are uniformly a people no one believes in. Yet this was not always so. Images of free Redmen and a Promised Land called many people to our shores. These strangers, experiencing the results of Pimadaziwin, called this land a virgin wilderness which, by definition necessitated taming through civilization and progress.

Under the rubric of civilization/progress, it is estimated that nearly twenty-four million Indian people were exterminated. And this figure does not include the population decimated by disease before Columbus. For example, Jennings demonstrates, in his book The Invasion of America, that nearly half of the Indian population of the Eastern Seaboard died prior to 1492 as a result of earlier contacts, i.e. the Vikings.

These early European “contacts” escalated into full scale invasion. And the Good Way of Life, became distorted. Pushed, marched, tortured, and exterminated, Indians began to resist. But this resistance did not come easily to a people committed to life. Ward Churchill, Native American activist and writer, notes:

There is no historical record of any war between the tribes and the U.S. which was initiated by the Indians. Each known outbreak of open warfare was predicated upon documentable invasion of defined (or definable) Indian lands by U.S. citizenry. The defensive nature of Indian participation in these wars is thus clear. Logically, they should thus be termed, “settlers’ wars” or, more accurately, “wars of conquest”.

Thinking, now, of Indian resistance, a picture of the Little Bighorn comes to mind. I visited this place in 1981. It was summer and it was dawn. My husband and I scarcely spoke, and when we did, it was in whispers. Feeling what it was, to walk on earth, where our Holy Men and Spirit Warriors put aside peace and decided to kill — for the People, for the children, for the natural world. And I recall thinking how painful it must have been for those people to make such a choice. For the Old Ones know that it takes four generations to heal from a time of killing.

Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Gall, and Dull Knife, I was stepping in their footsteps. The green rolling hill sloped down to the river. A gentle wind blew early morning mist on our faces. Int eh stillness were the voices. And the voices spoke of love for the land, for the People.

Dots of white stone markers, nudged their way up the hill, mutely testifying to the valor of the man called Custer, and all those who fell beside him that day of Red Paint Dust…. The Old People tell us of the Medicine that day—how everyone knew it was going to be a time of death, that no one of the White skinned would breathe after sunset. They speak of the preparation, of the purifying Sweatbaths, of the Holy Men offering the Sacred Pipe, and they speak of how it was done. And the Great Silence afterwards, which stands today, next to a marble marker dedicated to the members of the cavalry… standing there, on lands of Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapahoe. They do not speak of Sand Creek or Washita Bend.

Now two tourists arrive and question the military bungling that led to this slaughter—of the Seventh Cavalry. And they ask us, isn’t it nice that there is this monument? I  ad silent now too, for another reason.

Thinking of another time. In the snow, without food, old people, women, and children…Warriors gone…follow the aged Chief Big Foot to safety. They are Ghost Dancers. They are dancing their death but they do not know it. Facing starvation they see in their prayer, songs, and dance a Way to live, to stay vital to keep the Way of the People. And they understand that the holocaust visited upon the Land and People will end in a whirlwind of destruction for the invaders.

But they do not know they are dancing on land that holds gold. And they do not know that the cavalry is eager to kill and even now encircles the few ragged tepees on this bitter cold December night in 1890. And they do not know they will awaken to screaming, bloody massacre. They do not know these things. But if they did know, they would still dance, pray, and sing. For this is the Great Law of Peace.

And despite this horror, something good happened. You see, the Ghost Dance had opened up channels of friendship among diverse tribes and had taught the lesson of regional unity. Now, survivors continued to travel, and they began to pray in the manner of the Southwest tribes through the Peyote Way. By 1910, Peyote had spread north through the Dakotas and west.

The strength in this movement did not go unnoticed. Christian reformists, who wer the policy makers for Indian affairs from 1900 to 1940, met at their annual conference at Lake Mohonk, New York. The theme of the 1914 meeting was the “menace of Peyote”. The reformists labeled Peyote “a dangerous drug” and referred to its practitioners as “mescal fiends.” For nearly twenty years, these policy makers attempted to outlaw the Peyote Way. While they did not scucceed in creating law to that effect, they did inspire the Bureau of Indian Affairs to administratively outlaw the practice of traditional healing ways. In 1921, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs issueed Circular 1665 to all Indian agents. This law not only affected Peyote, but all the remaingin spiritual and healing ways, especially the Sun Dance, which is a renewal ceremony and involves giving things away as part of the sacrifice. The Circular read:

The Sun Dances and all similar dances and so called religious ceremonies are considered Indian Offenses…and corrective penalties are provided. I regard such restrictions as applicable to any dance which involves…the reckless giving away of property…in all such instances the regulations should be enforced.

In this manner, the massacre of traditional spiritual ways, became institutionalized. But even this did not succeed for the movement went underground; it did not die.

And in 1973, the American Indian Movement, which was five years old, organized the first four-day Sun Dance since 1927, at the Lakota Sioux, Rosebud reservation, in South Dakota. Six months later, a group of Sioux women requested a meeting with AIM and traditional chiefs. AIM leader Dennis Banks recalls:

These women only asked that the spirit, the fighting spirit return so that there would be no reason for Indian people to drink themselves to death, so that there’d be no reason for Indian youngsters to be slashing their wrists.

One by one the Chiefs stood up and their names will come before you…Names like Fools Crow and Crow Dog, names like Catches…names like Kills Enemy, Iron Cloud…We’d reached a point in history where we could not tolerate that kind of abuse andy longer where these women, these parents, these mothers who couldn’t tolerate the mistreatment that goes on, on the reservations any longer they could not see another Indian youngster die. They could not see another Indian man meet death, whether he was in Chicago or Nebraska or Buffalo Gap.

Then one of the Chiefs said: Go ahead and do it, go to Wounded Knee. You can’t get in the BIA office and the tribal office, so take your brothers from the American Indian Movement and go to Wounded Knee and make your stand there…

And we did stand. For 71 days, Indians held the FBI, the U.S. Army, and hundreds of local and state “law” officials at bay. And when the occupation ended, the entire world and all of the Indian country knew, that the People were standing again. And the People continued to stand, for the organizing and sustaining force of AIM was “spirit, land, and people”. The regionalism of the Ghost Dance had now transformed into an international unity of Peyote, Sweatlodge, and Pipe. By 1981 there were 19 Sun Dances held! Sweatlodges stood in Massachusetts and Alaska. Naturally the spiritual unity meant political strength.

In 1974 AIM founded the International Indian Treaty Council which carried Indian issues to the United Nations and to other nations struggling under foreign domination and corruption. IN 1976 AIM “caravaned” to the Custer battlefield, in Montana, to protest the bicentennial celebration honoring Custer. The list of AIM achievements is long, nearly as long as the list of legal actions against the members of AIM. By 1981 nearly all AIM leaders had been imprisoned and the FBI admitted openly that it had used terrorist tactics against the American Indian Movement (Durham, “Columbus Day”). Russell Means, perhaps the best known Indian activist, would be beaten, stabbed, and shot.

It was generally assumed that AIM was dead; that the Indian movement was over. But, fortunately, this was only a superficial observation. For the movement has merely transformed again to the spiritual basis from which it derives. And Indians, hundreds, from North, Central, and South America, are now meeting every year on sacred lands of the Black Hills and Oklahoma. Spiritual elders such as Philip Deere, experienced in international politics as well as healing ways, speak to the People about critical issues like colonialism and survival of humanity through Pimadaziwin.

Old people speaking this way teach us the power that we have. They remind us that outr 191 treaties with the U.S. government put us in a strong position in the international community—because treaties are the universal language of coexistence in the world today. But they also caution us, for we should not expect a country like the U.S. “to recoil in shame at the exposure of its misdeeds”.

But we do have another power, a power that comes with the understanding that we are related to the Great Mystery through the waters, fire, wind, and sacred Mother Earth. And through this knowledge, we are free, knowing that life renews when we live in balance. This is the single most liberating aspect of our traditional beliefs. Life renews. There is no scarcity, except that created by artificial boundaries drawn by those who seek profit. And we understand that balance means that all the Great Directions, Black, Yellow, Red, White, and Self, must work in spirit with the Earth. The Indian has always trusted this and lived it.

In fact, tribes were just beginning to form alliances and confederacies, to insure international peace, when the invasion began. For a while growth stopped but we have begun again, many times. Today, the ceremonial elements may be reduced to a bucket of water, a small stack of wood for a fire, our own breath, and a circle of earth fifty feet in diameter. That is all the natureal resources a Peyote ceremony requires. But even this is viewed as too much by our enemies. *

Looking at America, we see rivers burning, people suffering, and the desecration of al living beings. We are told that this is progress, and some of us believe it. We seem committed to a course of destruction. And while we may flirt with death and brush up against it, we cannot commit to it and survive. This is the lesson of the Indian and the land…..Life. We must respect it; for the children and the relations.

*The average annual income of an American Indian is less than $2,000; approximately 30% of all Indian women have been sterilized; three of five Indian children die in the first year after birth; 70% of all Indian people suffer from malnutrition; Indian people are imprisoned ten times more often than whites; and Indian people have lost 45,000 acres of land every year of this century…

You who have assembled here are already committed to the survival of humanity, the Earth and children, or you would not be here. Let us hope, in the Old Way natural to this land, that we can put our minds together and become “one way of thinking—Pimadaziwin”. It is vital, life-giving and joyful; it is natural.

Like the Tibee gee quay, song of the Anishnabeq:

nin a gamoo an

inowendiwin

inowendiwin

nin mino inowendiwin

“Warrior spirits related with peace and honor going back and forth between us.”

It is good to be here, to give voice to the People, to the children, the land…and the spirit of CRAZY HORSE.

Metakuyeayasi

Native Philosophy of Peace (PDF)

Title: Native Philosophy of Peace

Part I. An Introduction to Native Philosophy of Peace

Part II. Speaking Towards Peace: A Native American Way

Pamela Colorado

Lethbridge Extension

Faculty of Social Welfare

University of Calgary

Sam Kounosu

Physics Department

University of Lethbridge

Abstract:

From the time of the invasion by the European Civilization in the 15th century, the history of Native Americans has been a history of violence. The Natives have had to endure and subsist under the genocidal policy of colonial powers that overwhelmed them. And the struggle still continues. Yet, the Natives had a profound Philosophy of Peace and have lived and survived with it. We have a great deal to learn from the Philosophy of the Natives. It also gives us an opportunity to examine “violent” elements in our “Civilization” itself, as well as a way out of it. Since the Native Philosophy of Peace is not the academic kind that can be summarized in a set of propositions but rather is a way of life, we shall not attempt to “describe” it. Here, we shall endeavour to introduce the Philosophy in two ways. In Part I we make a descriptive introduction. In Part II, we narrate the Philosophy in the Native Oral Tradition, aiming at communication at a spiritual level.

Feb. 14, 1987.

An Introduction to the Native Philosophy of Peace

Since the invasion by Europeans in the 15th century, the history of Native eAmerica is a history of violence. Therefore, it may appear almost a contradiction to seek the message of Peace from the Natives. But, because of experiences of violence and facing their own extinction, Natives created urgent messages for Peace and have lived with them and survived by them in desperate situations. We have much to learn from their wisdom that is embedded in their way of life.

The violence which the Natives experienced was not the kind which we consider in the conttext of the “push button” Warfares that our science-technology has made possible nor the Nuclear Arms Race between two Super Powers that the huge bureaucratization of violence has lead us to. And if our concern for Peace is limited to the question of how to prevent Nuclear War from impending upon us, the Spiritual form of the Native message for Peace might appear only remotely relevant to us. However, the very difficulties which we have in reducing the scale of the Arms Race indicates that we have a need to examine if our way of life for itself is a part of the problem. And, in that we may find and gain great wisdom for Peace from Natives who have faced and survived the destructive forces of modern civilization.

To understand and to learn from the Natives, however, it is absolutely necessary that we look back to the history of violence. This is an exercise in dialectics We shall learn Peace by learning about our own violence.

References:

[Vine Deloria, God Is Red, Laurel Book, 1973.

Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America, Univ. of N. Carolina Press, 1975.

Gary B. Nash, Red, White and Black, Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Merrill D. Beal, I Will Fight No More Forever, Univ. of Washington Press, 1963.

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Holt-Rinehart, 1970.]

2. The way Indians were treated in the North American continent was worse than the Apartheid of South Africa today. Outright massacres were carried on even after the Civil War which supposedly liberated Black slaves for humanitarian reasons. One might imagine that for economic growth, the liberated Blacks were useful, whereas “the only good Indians were dead Indians.” And since Natives resisted “Christianity”, the Christian compassion was not applicable to them. They were considered a part of the Wild Nature to be conquered by the Civilization.

The colonialization started with violence. The Spanish came with greed and atrocity in the name of Christian mission to the New World. That part of history is well known, so I shall not talk about that here.

[See Bartolome de las Casa: Brevisima Relacion De La Destruccion De Las Indias, 1552, for the earliest account. In Montaigne’s Essay (1580), the third book, chapter 6, there is a brief remark about the Spanish atrocity.]

The British flowed soon after, with no less violence. According to the few records that are left, British settlers came to the Virginia coast area and found the natives there to be friendly. One report said:

“We were entertained with all love and kindness, and with much bounties, after their manner, as they could possibly devise. We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile, and treason.”

[David Quinn, The Voyagers, 1584-1590; quoted by Gary B. Nash Red, White, and Black.]

But the Britons did not come there simply to live with friendly natives. The competition among empires in Europe to establish and expand colonies had already started. Naturally, soon the initial friendly relation deteriorated and “incidents” were created for “Show of Force”, which became a universal pattern in most colonialization processes elsewhere. I cite only two examples here.

“No conflict occured until the English discovered a silver cup missing and dispatched a punitive expedition to the nearby Indian village. When Indians denied taking the cup, the English decided to make a show of force, burned the village to the ground and destroyed the Indian’s supply of corn.”

[Edmond S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox”, Journal of American History. Vol. 59, 1972, p. 16.]

“Many were burnt in the fort, both men, women and children. Others forced out…which our soldiers received and entertained with the sword. Down fell men, women, and children…Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. Sometimes the case alters; but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”

[John UnderHill, News from America, (1638), London. Quoted by Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1973.]

One notes here that burning villages and destroying crops were already practiced tactics when the British invaded Ireland centuries before that time. Both the Red Army and White Army in the Russian Revolution practiced the same. Hitler used it in W.W. II. Americans did that in Vietnam.

[As to the “metaphor” of Indian War repeated in Vietnam, see Richard Slotkin: The Fatal Environment — The Myth of Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800 – 1890. Atheneum, 1985.]

The idea of “show of force”, or equivalent phrases such as “show who is the boss” appears quite often in the records that were left from the period of colonial time. The British were there with the intent of conquering and domination from the beginning. They needed only slight provocations, if they did not create the excuses. Many stories of Native attacks may well have been fibs constructed, like “the Bay of Tonkin incident” in the Vietnam War.

To be sure, there was romanticizing of Natives as “Noble Savages.” We can read it in poetries of Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, et al.

(see White On Red, ed. N.B. Black. Kennikat Press, 1976.)]

Or see it in paintings by Benjamin West and others. But the romanticizing was in effect a beautifying cover for the colonial conquest. It did not stop physical and cultural genocide. Quite aware of such a sentiment, John Quincy Adams wrote in 1802:

“The Indian right of possession itself stands, with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields; their constructed habitations; a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed to themselves by personal labour, was undoubtedly by the law of nature theirs. But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he accidentally ranges in quest of prey? Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be monopolized by one of ten thousand for whom they were created? Shall the exuberant bosom of the common mother, amply adequate for the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring.”

[Quoted in I Will Fight No More Forever, p. 24.]

The answer to Adam’s rhetorical question was obvious, as we can see in history. The Natives were driven off the land, if not exterminated. They were confined in concentration camps, called “Indian Reserves.” And as the “Progress of Civilization” wanted more and more land, the Natives were forcefully moved again and again to smaller and smaller confinements each time. The metaphor of the “Mother Earth” was Native, not White, nor was it Christian, as we see in the environmental destructions that went on under what was called the “Manifest Destiny.” The rhetoric asked for sharing the gifts of Mother Nature, but the invader came to dominate and rape the Mother. Environmental concern did not emerge until late 1960’s, and collectively speaking, our actions with regard to Acid Rain, Nuclear Wastes, Deforestation, etc., regretably suggest that we have not yet stopped rationalizing our rapist practices.

[see “Metaphysics of Indian Hater” in Herman Melville’s Confidence of Man. 1857. As to hi Moby-Dick, critics pointed out that Melville was writing, in the metaphor of Whale Hunt, on the whole American assault on Nature in the name of Progress.]

We note here that as late as October of the last year, The United Church of Canada has come to Apologize to the Natives for its “policy of cultural genocide”. In an article “Of course we forgive you,” [The Observer, Oct. 1986], Rev. Wilf Dieter narrates:

“I grew up in residential schools…The second year, I remember going back to school. I was crying. My mother was wiping away the tears. Why were my parents sending me away. I guess one of the things I didn’t realize was the law. If she didn’t take me back, the police would come for me.”

This was taking place only a few decades ago in Canada which we think the most peaceful country in the world. What if some agents of a foreign country come in and pass a law to separate Canadian children from parents? Does white majority consider it less than atrocity? Of course, we as the majority “did not know” that we have been practicing the cultural genocide policy, just as the majority of Germans did not know of the infamous concentration camp during W.W. II. The point is that we did not care to know about them. While reading philosophy of Kant or Russell in books, we did not “read” our real philosophy that we practiced and lived in.

3. Today, we may be sufficiently “liberal minded” to say that the colonial practices of the historical past were “mistakes.” But read the rhetorical question of Adams again and see if we have changed our way of thinking. The Capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and the liberal thinkers would say that, “in the inevitable power struggles which bring the progress of the production power”, the “backward” way of the Native life had to be eradicated, although we might try to employ as “humane” means as possible. And socialists and Marxists would agree. The modern intellectuals, left, middle or right, are believers of “progress” in which some unfortunate “backward” portions of humanity will become extinct like Dodo birds.

[see also Ward Churchill, ed. Marxism and Native Americans. South End Press, 1983.]

Christians today would say that the atrocities condoned by the missionaries in the colonial conquest did not represent “True Christianity”, which is presumably based on Love. But, one wonders if the christians clearly distinguish the religion of Love and the religion of Power, and honestly live by the principle of Love, as the Natives have lived by their Spirituality. It appears that the Christians believe more in the Might of Nuclear Weapons and Laser Guns than Love. It is ironical that the presumed anti-christians in the Soviet Union do the same. They both are believers of the same Power.

[However, we pay attention to Liberation Theology.

Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. Orbis Books, 1973.

Bishop Remi De Roo, Cries of Victims – Voice of God. Novals, 1986, etc.

As to links between Christianity and European Civilization, see:

Max Weber, Protestant Ethics and The Spirit of Capitalism.

Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”, American Scientists. March 1967.

Lawrence R. Brown, The Might of the West. Joseph J. Binns Pub., 1963.]

Here I am not talking of the hypocritic morality, but doing purely pragmatic thinking about the consequences and the cost of the European World View. The “Intelligence” of the European tradition is centred around “Power” to dominate people. Our “science” stemmed from the desire to conquer and exploit Nature. Academic and theological knowledge claims are claims of authority and control of thinking. Our official languages are basically the languages of commanding others.

Of course, we know that our competition for power, authority in terms of knowledge claims, etc., is illusionary and for the most part of little significance. Nonetheless, we do use the stylism as a “proper ritual” in academic settings, if we wish to be taken seriously. And, perhaps, the effects/consequences of such a ritual may only be indirect in encouraging the notion of the Conquest of the Wild Nature with Barbaric primitives in it. Our higher Education, which produces elite classes of our society , may or may not be directly responsible for Pollution and Environmental Destruction. If someone argues that the Pollution and Destruction are necessary requirements for the existence of the Elitist System, there would be many objections from the Intellectual elites. They would demand “scientific” proof demonstrating causal mechanisms for the connection. But, in a noncausalistic sense, we are all implicated in the violent history. And if the Nuclear extinction falls upon us, it is we who made it possible, not by default, but by a determined will, a great organized drive and mobilization of intellectual efforts.

4. After all, we do believe in the hierarchical system of Power. In our ordinary language, “Powerless” does mean degradation. We have not reconciled with Love that is powerless. For the North American psyche, it is winning that tells them that they are on “God’s side.” Not fighting tantamounts surrender to the Devil. We say “all men are created equal”, but we are as “equal” as the degree by which we win the competitions. As long as it is legal, and does not offend one’s own “moral feelings”, Might is Right. The only thing that protects one’s safety is, therefore, military superiority. The modern nation-states followed that logic. If one follows the causal-mechanistic thinking which we consider “rational”, there is no other way.

We know SDI would not work, but we do have to keep the illusion of the Superior Power going even at the cost of Trillions of Dollars. Recently, some among us apparently started to worry that the “peace propaganda”, such as The Day After, made us “too soft” and so they produced a counter-propaganda series on T.V. called Amerika to remind people that the Power Principle has to be defended. That is because Power is our religion. If the Power Principle is undermined, the whole social structure of the Western society might collapse.

The only trouble is that the logic of Power has now reached its ultimate in that it can destroy the human race as a whole. That is why some of us are interested in searching for alternatives.

[see also Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point, Bantam Books, 1982.

Morris Bermann, The Reenchantment of the World, Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.]

But there is a problem. If we are to turn around on the way to ultimate power, what would be the alternative? Certainly, going back to the arbitrary dictatorship of the feudal system or the old slave-caste system would not likely secure Peace in any sense. At least, we think, we do have a “civic” sense of peace in the advanced industrial countries. “Democracy”, although perhaps imperfect, seems to correlate with the progress of civilization in the European style. We would say that we cannot go back to the Stone Age, in a metaphor of Indians as wild beasts who lived in inhuman indignity. The Noble Savage metaphor does not work here any more than the romantic metaphor of womanhood works for women’s dignity. But rather, it enforces our fear of going back to Feudalism or Barbarism which we think dictatorial authoritarian. Hence, we would normally not think of the Native Culture as possible instructive material for learning the way to Peace.

5. Surprisingly, however, the Native Americans were not authoritarian. Their communities were organized on the principle  of sharing. The Indians were capable of becoming fierce warriors, but they lived in their communities of Love. They had a strong sense of personal dignity, and honored their liberty, though they were not egocentric Individualists. Nash narrates:

“One aspect of child-rearing on which European and Iroquoian cultures differed was in the attitude toward authority. In Iroquois society the autonomous individual, loyal to the group but independent and aloof rather than submissive, was ideal…

They were trained early in life to think for themselves but act for others…

They were being prepared for an adult society which was not hierarchical, as in the European case, but where individuals lived on a more equalitarian basis, with power more evenly distributed among men and women…”

[Red, White and Black.

See also: Walter B. Miller “Two Concepts of Authority”. American Anthropologist. Vol. 57. 1955, p. 271-289.

What Max Weber described in his study of “Authority” may be peculiar to Europe. We also note that, phrases such as “Show who is the boss” appeared frequently in the expressions of British colonialist to justify atrocities committed against the Natives.

In the context of Peace Research, Wm. Eckhardt’s study showed that the “aggressive” and “authoritarian” personality are correlated.]

It is also known that the principle ideas of Democracy in the American Constitution were influenced by Iroquoian ideals.

[Carol L. Bagley and Jo Ann Ruckman, “Iroquois Contribution to Modern Democracy and Communism.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 7 #2, 1983. p. 53-72.]

6. Iroquois, before their contact with Europeans, had established a “United Nations”. The name “Iroquois” stands for a group of five nations established in the 14th century or earlier: the Mohawks, the Onondaga, the Oneidas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. The philosophy that united these nations was known as “Dekanawideh”, and we can decipher that the basic principle fo the Native “United Nation” was a philosophy of Peace, not the European tradition of “domination by the strongest.”

[Anthony F.C. Wallace, “The Dekanawideh Myth analyzed as the record of a revitalization movement”. Ethnohistory, Vol. 5, 1958.

Wm. N. Fenton Parker On the Iroquois. Book III. Syracuse U. Press, 1968.]

It appears that to the Natives “to know” a philosophy can be nothing short of honestly living by it. Therefore, they left no written “expose” on their philosophy. Nonetheless, we can infer a few glimpses of their philosophy; for example, the Philosophy of “Tree of Peace” has been translated and documented. It is remarkable that the Natives, despite their experiences of violence, had a vision of Peace in which they embraced whiteman within the “Four Roots of the Tree of Peace” that holds the World in love.

The Natives narrated the philosophy of Peace in a form of “prophecy” using a metaphor of a huge tree that protects and provides for all people. Its four roots are said to interconnect and hold the entire World.. They did not see any other possible way to have Peace on Earth, but by love that embraces the whole.

Since Dr. Colorado is to communicate the Peace message in the proper Native way in the following presentation, I shall not elaborate on the Peace Philosophy.

[See also Pamela Colorado, “Inowediwin. Peace and Honor Going Back and Forth Between Us.” Toward Social and Economic Justice, Gil & Gil, Schenkman Publishing Co., 1985.]

I would like to discuss one thing however. In studying the Native Philosophy of Peace, I have come to think that this Philosophy was embedded in a distinct Epistemology from that of traditional Western culture. I shall try explaining, the best I can, the distinct Epistemology that the Natives had.

7. The Natives had an oral tradition and to them “to know” was “to live in” the philosophy, as I mentioned above. They did not have “philosophy” existing only in texts, as in the European case. As a consequence, there existed no written text for their philosophy. Therefore, from our European custom of scholarship being a “book knowledge”, there exists considerable difficulty in researching the Native philosophy. I cannot assert that what I say here is correct. The only thing I can do is to report what I have “guessed” so far in my groping of an hypothesis in hopes of stimulating interest.

We cannot understand “philosophy” here in the sense of technically analyzing written expressions — as lawyers do in technical arguments about the “letter of the law” —, but we have to address “the spirit of the law”, so to speak. and the philosophy has to be deciphered from practice, and inferred from the way of life in the contexts of concrete situations at hand. The western sense of “objective knowledge” alienated from the knower’s own life is absurdity, if not dishonesty to the Natives. That is, Native philosophy was “spiritual” in the sense that it was the inner most thinking of the sovereign soul. And at the same time, the philosophy was “pragmatic” and “existential” in that it did not allow alienation from actual living. It was also akin to the Marxian position, in that “knowing” was “changing the World”. They did not learn “philosophy” as a text, but learned it as “awakening to wisdom”, which is an experience of change in the way of life. “Truth” that does not change one’s way of life is not a Truth, in their philosophy.

Even the Greek work “Truth” (a-letheia) meant “uncover” or “revelation” , refering to the existential experience in learning processes. The authoritarian dogmatism of European religion and academia perverted the active sense to a static sense of “knowledge” that someone could have a “patent” on, stake a claim on, and even could sell on the market. This “objectification’ is a peculiar fetishistic characteristic of the Western Scholarship and Science. It is the Epistemology of Capitalism, although the Communists also believe the same; whereas the natives had a dynamic epistemology.

We talk, in particular in an academic context, in the posture of claiming knowledge, with an implicit assumption that the audiences are hostile and demanding proofs and demonstrations. We are competing in an intellectual market, on an assumption that the adversary system brings the best. This is the assumption of the Free Market and Social Darwinism. Although we have disproved them a long time ago, our stylism has not been changed.

The Natives would much rather think of their statements to be gifts from love. Their discourses are not “power struggles”. Their propositions are “proposals” offered with unilateral commitment by the speakers. They know “giving” is the way of making a community. If the negotiators of Western nations talked in the Native way, we would not have the Arms Race.

We have an intellectual pride in being able to articulate technically on “letters.” But we might look back to see why we have come to do that. Perhaps, we are thinking of our communication as if a battle with a hostile audience and the art of articulation is a defensive shield against expected attack. We also think by articulation that we assert our intellectual superiority, if not attack the other. Do we play such games so often that we come to value the skill? If so, we may be mentally sick in admiring the art of manipulating our letters. To the Natives, it is a puzzle that there can be differences between “letter of law” and “spirit of law.” And they would say it is incomprehensible absurdity, if they were told that the Western Philosophy thrives on technical analyses of “letters” and has little to do with “spirit” or practices in living. They would not understand why we have to be so aggressive even in intellectual games. We analyse violence in Alcoholism as someone else’s problem from an “objective” stance. But, perhaps, we might look at our own tendency to intoxicate in a Power sensation.

We do know that Nuclear War in its scale is not the same as aggression at a personal level. We do have concerns about social structures of violence, but it may be that Nuclear Aggression is a collective consequence of our aggressive drive which manifests even in academic contexts.

And in talking of aggressiveness, we might also pay attention to our attitude of contemptuously looking down at “subjective” experiences in the name of “objectivity” or “value neutrality” of “science”. It might very well have come from our alienated neurotic psyche. I might concede to some theory to an effect that the scientific sense of “knowledge” can only be generated from alienation, enigma or fear, and although the “knowledge” does sometimes “sublimate” the aggression, it leaves residues of fear or hostility which leads us to violence. If so, we have a serious task to change “science” as such for the sake of Peace. And on this point, Native Philosophy appears to be very instructive.

[As to “Science as a destructive element”, see Birgit Brock-Utne. Education For Peace. Pergamon, 1986. This is a feminist critique of science. ]

Philosophy of Peace Education

Philosophy of Peace Education

For 1986 CPREA Conference

S. Kounosu

University of Lethbridge

Title: On Philosophy of Peace Education

Abstract: Peace Education is gaining popularity among educational institutions. However, there are problems particularly in view of the traditional roles the educational systems played for nationalism and their implicit philosophical or even ideological biases which tended to help the making of wars rather than constructing peace. In this paper, some of the problems contained in the traditional philosophy of education are discussed, and a few suggestions are made for a paradigm shift in education. Taking cognizance of the Pedagogy for Oppressed, the Theology of Liberation, and Critical Sociology that emerged in response to the general crisis of the world today, Peace Education is considered as the transformation of intelligence toward the 21st century. The main basis of this paper is a philosophy of communication, intended t be distinct from the traditional philosophy of knowledge.

Introduction

The World today is coming to an extraordinary phase of transformation, which contains both a possibility of Nuclear extinction and a possibility for a great social evolution comparable to Renaissance.

The challenge of Peace Education is to perceive the possibility of the great social evolution and to play the central role in actualizing it. That is, the possibility of Peace has to be perceived and the conditions for Peace have to be constructed. In this sense, Peace Education is evolutionary in aiming at the future which is not “reality” at the present moment. And it is distinct in its logic from that of the traditional sense of education which is concerned with the adaptation to a given set of conditions that exist at a time. Peace education proposes the possible future and intends to make what it proposes. In this, Peace Education has to be “prophetic”, and explicitly  “value loaded”, and it cannot stop at the level of transmitting knowledge of fact as unalterable conditions given. If our intelligence cherished in educational institutions so far is the kind that is fixated on “facts”, Peace Education needs reformulation of the intelligence itself. Peace Education is a learning by the humanity as a whole, and it is to transform the way of learning as well.

That we have come to this phase, however, is not an arbitrary intellectual accident, nor is a utopian imagination. The phase of industrialization and accompanying colonialization appears to have come to the final stage. Limits of the energy-material resources and environmental pollutions can no longer be ignored. The ideology of economy, based on a faith in ever increasing production power, is no longer viable. And the educational system, which has been effective in the industrialization phase, now faces the challenge of finding a new paradigm, even if there were no danger of Nuclear Holocaust.

And Peace Education, even if it is conceived as that which is concerned with preventing Nuclear Holocaust as the immediate task, is inseparable from the education for the social transformation. For the Nuclear War is industrialization of wars, and as such it is a necessary consequence of the powerful paradigm prevalent in the past several centuries. It was not a group of mad politicians and military men that made the Nuclear Bombs, but highly intelligent scientists, engineers, and managers of organizations, who were products of the higher education, that made the bombs and systems of the wars. In that sense the educational system is far from an innocent by-stander of the Nuclear crisis that our civilization faces today. Education was not neutral as to the value system that led the civilization to this stage. And if there can be any possibility of Peace on the Earth, the philosophy of Education itself must be changed, starting with the very pretence that it is value neutral.

Historically, it was industrialization and colonialization that made the school system of education both necessary and possible. The technology for the industrialization, or rather”technologization” required the emergence of educated managers and educated workers. It liberated people, to a degree, from the caste system based on inheritance and kinship. But it created a technical elite class which is more efficient and powerful in operating large-scale social organizations than the social hierarchy of the feudal castes. The school system of education played the major role in the creation of the technical elite class. The industrialization did succeed in expanding production of material goods and provide a bases for higher standards of living than what was possible under the feudal system. The production power made large-scale education possible, and the education made further expansion of the production power possible. It was in a “vicious circle” of positive feedback, just as wars are in the dynamics of escalation. In a Marxist term, that was the “reproduction” circuit of the technocracy. And education was a part of the positive feedback loop of the “reproduction” process.

And the modern nation-states with huge mechanisms of bureaucracy and military forces became possible by the emergence of technical elites. They were the governing mechanism of the modern society, the organizers and managers of productions, the officers of military forces, the inventers and maintenancemen of industrial technology. Educational institutions were organized to produce the elites and workers.

Interestingly, the expanded scale of market with heterogeneous population required a new basis of communication. The “scientific rationality”, newly emerged at the outset of the Industrial Revolution, assumed the role of unifying intellectual authority which religious institutions failed to maintain. Although educational institutions inherited many aspects in practices and philosophy of “teaching” from the religious institutions, they had to adapt to the “scientific rationality” which is the infrastructure of the technological mentality.

The historical process then can be viewed as a stage in development of communication, in addition to the development of production power. The socio-historical impacts of printing technology are well known. The machine itself is not, perhaps, impressive but it made the emergence of printed media possible and created professions associated with it. The technology of printing made standardization of language and hence imposition of uniform thinking possible. Without the technology of printing, the bureaucracy of national government, military organizations, and large business firms, would not have been possible. In turn printed media came as a technology of communication and its mastery became the main concern of the education.

The technology also opened a way to what we know as the Democracy, through its capacity of mass production and mass distribution. But we note that the mass media is also a means of propaganda controlled by technological elites. Although mass media does allow expression of the “people’s voice” and entertains a certain degree of “plurality”, it does require the skill of articulation which acts as a barrier to direct access by the majority of people. It also created separation of “the producer” and “the consumer”. If the media is to be a tool for peace, either the general population has to learn the art of communication or the format of the media has to be changed from that of “the superior in power and knowledge talking to the inferior” to that of “exchanges among the equals”.

That the technology of communication is developed in the form of mass production for mass consumption is also reflected in the way educational institutions conduct their business. the dominant format of communication in educational institutions today is that of issueing command. As A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic (1946) argued, to the mentality of modern intellectuals, even a simple statement of fact is a political act of the speaker commanding the listeners to know the fact asserted. It presupposes ignorance of the listeners to whom the speaker is superior. “Speaking to” is an assertion of power over the listener. In schools, teachers are the ones who speak. And even in our conversations, we are observed to be playing the game of “one-up-manship”. Our negotiations are often in the form of “power struggle between adversaries”, not the form of “consultation” for arriving at cooperation. Our formal education and academic disciplines do not help us much in communication in the sense of “exchanges among equals”. And, it is not surprising then, our national governments are not competent in the communication that would lead to cooperation for eliminating the danger of Nuclear Ar. We are not educated to communicate efficiently, but rather educated to compete in power struggles.

The modern education that emerged in our technocratic age is “rational” to the degree which efficient production of material goods, and more importantly, transmission of commands in large social scales demand. But it is defective in not only its concealment of the implicit political bias, value choices, but also in not educating people to be competent for political and value choices. It failed to provide the skills and develop means of communicating on issues of social cooperation in political and value choices. Science education did provide the skills and means for large social scale agreements as to “objective facts”. I suppose, that is what is so called “Rationality”. But for setting out “purposes of actions” in a large social scale, we have not developed the necessary competence. We not that “purposes” are not “facts”, and as such , they require a different philosophy to deal with.

The traditional philosophies of Education paid little attention to the “philosophy of purpose” and the problems of how to communicate in such contexts. In the historical context, the neglectis understandable. It is the employer who sets the purpose. Workers and technical elites as hired hands are only expected to be competent in carrying on what is commanded by the employer who pays. In that sense, what the majority of the educated population does is “purposeless” and “value neutral”. Modern professionals and workers are slaves to whoever pays them. Only through indirect means, such as consumer market and civil elections, they come to be of some influence. Occasional references to ideals of Democracy and flairs of Revolutionary movements are not sufficient for motivating educational systems to consider problems of purose and value, let alone problems of communication in these regards. Rather, schools are preoccupied with job training. Academic training is thinly disguised professional training to which the “education for good citizen” is subservient. The practices of educational systems are “value nneutral” in that they effectively block developments of competence in the art of communication with respect to social scale purposes. Peace education is inconceivable within “value neutrality”. Peace Education, if there can be any, has to be “political” to the extent it concerns with choices of values in social scales.

Yet, to construct the competence in communication as such requires competent communication. Here we have a problem of a vicious circle in reverse. We have to start a positive feedback loop of an escalating dynamics for Peace Education from where there was only a negative feedback sense for Peace. This is difficult.

One of the difficulties is our rhetoric. For discussion of social scale communication, it is inevitable that we face the complexity of large interactive systems. Yet our usual rhetoric in intellectual discourses is basically that of simple Newtonian Mechanics of talking “an object in motion under a cause.” A linear sequence of such descriptions constitutes our narration, though linguists tell us that comprehensions require awareness of webbed relations. But the rhetoric of simple object mechanics is hardly adequate for talks of complex webs of interactions and inter-relations which make up systems. We note here that it is not so much because we are “ego-centric” that we have troubles transcending individualistic metaphors in our narrations. Rather, it is the simplicity of talking of one object at a time that bind us in the the individualistic metaphor such as saying “Mr. Reagan (or Mr. Kadafi) is the cause of terrorism.” For the effectiveness of communication in large social scales, the simplicity is an important requirement, particularly in relation to the general competence in communication that exists now. However, it is also possible that the competence in communication can be improved. We can see the history of civilization as an evolutionary process of competence in communication, in parallel to the Capitalist-Marxist view of history as a development in material production capacity.

I am proposing here that development of competence in communication to be the aim of Peace Education. And under the general theme of “competence in communication”, I am thinking of those in the following 4 contexts:

i International understanding and cooperation

ii Change of social structures towards more equality and accommodations, away from power relations.

iii Revolution in our sense of “knowing” (epistimology, science, intelligence) towards “learning” which is a form of mutual interactions and as such “communication”. It is dynamic and closer to “performing” — hence “competence”, not “possession of static knowledge”.

iv Managing of communication internal to “psyche” (mind) as a complex system similar to community.

These 4 contexts are distinguished for conceptual conveniences. They are integrated thruough complex dynamics. Peace Education has to deal with the problems of “Integrated understanding” of complex dynamics. “Communication” for itself is an aspect of the synamics of complex systems. Perhaps, “System Dynamics”, not necessarily as “physics”, but a “philosophy”, is included in the program of Peace Education. I do not have enough space in this paper to elaborate on this, but I think it is important that some attempts are made to elucidate “Peace as a Dynamical system”.

And from the complexity of systems, which defies determinism, we may learn that our assertions of “scientific certainty” are often arrogant illusions. As many accidents in systems demonstrate, we do not have the “knowledge” if it means to have a completeness. Rather, we do have to “perform” with an incomplete set of partial information. The operations in such situations, which happen to be the majority of the cases, are more akin to what existential philosophers talked about. Peace education, in my view, must stress this point that we are concerned with practical performances in less than perfect conditions. “Peace”, in that sense, is a verb, and it ought not be imagined as something perfect and static (a noun sense). Peace that we look for is the kind that can be practiced in imperfect conditions. And we are far from “perfect beings”. Rather, we have to “live with problems” and the degree of competence in the “Art of living with problems” is expressed by an adjective “Peace”.

There are certainly many problems if we are to do Peace Education. It is a big challenge. I shall not be able to discuss all the problems, let alone provide the “answers”. I shall touch upon onluy a few problems as starting points of discussion. Besides, I think Peace Education is not for “teaching the answers” to be memorized and recited by students. It is rather learning the way of dealing with problems. That is to say, Peace Education is “learning of ways of learning”. And the learning has to be done by the community as a whole. I approach Peace Education as if it is “Warmongers Anonymous” — in a pun with “Alcoholics Anonymous”. If that is acceptable to this conference, I would like to practice “conferring” here, rather than taking the academic posture of asserting a great truth (as if!).

II. Education and Communication

Faced with the threat of Nuclear Holocaust, and for that matter with many other socila problems, we come to talk of education as a way of solution. But the term “Education” has two distinct meanings. One is that of education of individuals in adapting to existing social conditions, such as professional training. It is for competitions in the job market, and this is what the practices of school systems are mainly concerned with. Another is that of education in the sense of leaning by a society as a whole to change itself. Einstein is often quoted as saying “The Atomic Bomb changed everything except the way of thinking.” He was suggesting that the human race as a whole must change the old way of thinking in order to survive. And for that we think of “education” in the second sense to perform the necessary transformation of the whole human community.

However, “The education for individualistic competition” and “the education as learning of a community to transform” are not necessarily contradictory. That is, provided an autonomous dynamics often referred to as “the Invisible Hand” of the market competition functions well, the individual competitions are expected to bring about learning of the community. The nominative aims of the two senses of education are dialectically related. And there is an intermediate sense of education as the means of nationalistic competition. But there lies a problem. We usually do not make clear distinctions between them, and when “the Invisible Hand” fails to funciton well, the first sense dominant in school systems becomes the opposition to the second sense.

In our history, we might acknowledge that competitions within each nation and among nations brought human race as a whole to closer inter-relations. Although the sacrifices and costswwer very high, even wars could be seen as opening intimate interactions and communication among people. Given the levels of competence in communication at those historical stages, colonial trades and even wars may be recognized as parts of the historical learning process. Taht i, after all empires fell, we are left with an enlarged scale of communication and hopefully we have learned the art of communication in that scale. Today, we have a “World Community” — or we ar about to make one, if we succeed in overcoming the problems of power struggles. We made our lives so interdependent that there is no escape from it, even if the interdependency is about to bring us a disaster. The only way out is to manage the system of interdependency well. And the way to manage the system is the “communication”.

Perhaps, when people come to talk of Education for Peace, they implicitly mean the learning of communication by the world community. I think that possibility is worth a serious exploration and I shall argue a case for it. In order to do so, however, a few explanations about “communication” are necessary.

The view of the world history as a process of learning to communicate — or rather of learning to construct a collective “intelligence” by competent communication, is just an alternative view, parallel with the dominant view of the classical economists (including Marx) who saw the history as an ever enlarging reproduction of material production power. The views need not be in conflict, though they are a pair of dialectical opposites. Only for the sake of making things explicit, I shall stress the opposing aspects, particularly in their implications to the philosophy of education and the issue of war/peace.

The role of communication is to make things explicit in the social scale. In this aspect, communication is concerned with “knowing”, or “discovering” in a social scale. But it is done so as to construct cooperation in that scale. Particularly, in the context of Peace Education, the most important aspect of communication is that of “proposing” actions by the community. As such, communication is “value loaded” and “political”. I suppose from this political naturee of communication, we come to regard “communication” to mean “transmission of commands”, as in such usages as “Communication-Command Centre”, etc. but I shall be talking of “communication” in the sense of mutual affairs, such as “interactions”, “exchanges”, “negotiations”, “consultations”, etc. I regard the communication in the sense of “transmitting commands” as a primitive form, although the most technological theory of communication appears to be preoccupied with communication at this level. The communication at the level of “mutual affair” requires competence in the art. It has to do with “performance” than “knowledge”. Peace education has to be of relevance to this “performance” , not just “knowing what peace is”, but becoming competent in “performing peace”.

The above summarizes my opinion, but there are a few notes to be added.

Needless to say, to make something “explicit” can be concealing what is not said, as in the case of propaganda and implicit censorship. The concealments come because a society cannot talk about and be aware of everything that goes on. There is “political hegemony”, so to speak, as to what is to be communicated to what extent. There exists a certain paradigm at a time in a society that a certain set of things are “of interest” to be talked about and others are not. And the

efficiency of communication favors a certain fixed pattern, often with metaphorical images and metaphysical assumptions, if not ritual symbolisms. Unfamiliar tacts are disadvantaged because they require a longer time and more effort than that along the established patterns, even if there was no prejudice. If there are prejudices, particularly implicit ones, communication would be blocked. In such occasions, we used to appeal to force-violence to break the blockage. In the Nuclear Age, we can no longer afford such an easy way out, but we have to try a highe art of communication. We note education as such has to do with “performance”, not “knowledge”. And in this, a paradigm shift in education is inevitable.

There are natural obstacles in communication and if a society is not competent in the art, it can easily fall into “prejudices”, “superstitions”, etc., by default. It may well be true that many Europeans under the Nazis did not “know” the systematic ethonocide was going on, just as many Americans did not “know” they were killing off Indians even after the Civile War.

I add here that if one view of “thinking” is to be a particular kind of “communication” inside a “brain as a community”, the above role of communication still holds. “To know” is to make explicit in the intellectual sense. We note that our “psyche” does conceal what is going on in our “mind”. Many functions of our brain are not “known” to ourselves. By our “vergaization”, we “know” and “knowledge” as such is very limited even as to what our brains are doing. Consequently, communication at the intellectual (verbalized) level is very limited in its scope and difficult. This is more reason why we need education in the art.

But we can regard knowing operations, such as “Discoveries” of laws of motion, etc. in physics, as “verbalization” of what were not expressed in human languages. The verbalized “laws of Nature” are important to the community, for they can be communicated and provide the basis on which cooperation in the community can be built. That is, intellectual “thinking” is social to taht degree and distinct by its communicability. And the ability of a community to respond to its needs and environment is critically dependent on its competence in communication — to verbalize problems and to allow efficient transmission within.

This is the reason whey we need the second sense of education cited previously. You may understand this by noting that the kind of societies depicted in The Brave New World by A. Huxley, for example, does not give a sense of being “educational” despite being “knoledgeable”, because they do not have efficient communication in the sense of “learning by community”. I suppose our world community at this moment is somewhere in between the ideal learning kind and the extreme non-learning kind.

I have contrasted “materialist view” to communicational (information theoretical) view in the above. This may require some explanations. The “materialist view” of either the right or the left, is the dominant view in our society in the past few centuries, and it constituted the metaphysical foundation for education. And, in the context of considering Peace Education, the “materialists” would think of teaching how many Nuclear Weapons are made of what materials and what material damages are expected from their use, etc. Warning camps are accounted in terms of how many men, tanks, guns, planes, battle ships and carriers. Something physical takes the centre of attention, perhaps simply because it is easier to imagine physical objucts. It does give a feeling of familiarity and concrete immediateness, as terms like “objective”metaphorically suggest.

Perhaps, it is natural for us to pay attention to “objects”. It is like watching “actors” on a theatrical stage. The actors are not the “play”, but we only come to comprehend the play as a whole by tracing what the actors do.

But such a strategy of thinking is too limited to be of help for comprehending complex systems and situations. The complex systems and situations contain “feedback loops” and the “tracing object” type narration-representations is useless for them, if not misleading. We do have to use “abstract” terms such as “force”, “energy”, “time”, etc. in physics for example. The advantage of “materialist” strategy of narration in giving the feeling of “concrete immediateness” and “familiarity” in metaphors, now acts against developments of the art of describing. Without cultivating abstract imaginations, we cannot even do simple physics of mechanical motions, let alone comprehending the dynamics of systems. Modern physics since Newton is not “objective” at all, if people mean “object-likeness” by the term “objective”. In fact, the notion of “objectivity” itself is a highly abstract one and very elusive at that. Nonetheless, the term was useful in the historical context by suggesting a certain “feeling” by the metaphor. It came tbe a mislieading one, only because people forgot that “objectivity” is an abstract metaphorical notion.

In the above, the point about “objective knowledge” is stressed, because there is a well observable trick in media manipulation. That is, government and military officials often come out with impressive sets of numbers — known as the “number game”, to say in effect that people who say something critical of them are “ignorant” but they know the “objective facts”. Tp an extent, ordinary citizens are disadvantaged in terms of “factual information”. Many things discussed in the context of the Arms Race are military secrets. And, even if some information is not secret, it is not easily accessible to ordinary citizens. What are so called “Weapon Experts” come out and try to intimidate and discredit critics.

But other than impressing someone by possessing “knowledge” , the cited numbers, etc. are not important at all. They are cited for “ritualistic effects”. The fact that a guy happens to know exactly what the explosive power of a certain specific type of warhead is, does not make his opinion trustworthy as to military value of the weapon system, strategy or political implications. But the problem is that we have a habit of being impressed by numbers that we have a fear about. We do not listen to people who do have wisdom in their plain talk that we can understand. It is as if we do not trust our own intelligence and we look down on someone whose talk is understandable to us. We respect what we do not understand, perhaps out of fear. In classroom teaching, it is a well known trick to exhibit a big word or a big equation to impress students. Unfortunately, students would not pay attention unless they are threatened a bit. So that such a practice goes on as “educational technique”. I wonder if Peace Education also employs such a trick.

Our ways of communication are multiply layered and we are affected by many factors which we may not be conscious of. Our modes of communication are highly “redundant”. That communication is multi-layered and redundant is actually advantageous in the sense we have several channels to override noises and judge reliability of signals. But that makes our communication very complicated. For example, it is very simple to instruct arithmeatics to a simple computer. But it is very hard to do the same to humans. Humans have advantages in performing complex tasks such as pattern perceptions, or anticipating motions of evading an enemy plane, etc., but not in simple tasks. I imagine, this is because our brain is a very complex system. And the way two or more brains interact through exchanges of symbolic signals, such as series of alphabets, is very fascinating dynamics which we understand very little.

In talking of “communication”, we are talking of very complex systems, situations, or dynamics. The kind of Communication we are concerned in peace education is at least “two way interaction” and it presupposes “loop structure” of feedback to begin with. We may have to learn about system dynamics as such. This would be one agenda in peace education. It is not so much the question of “knowledge”, but the question of “competence” in performing the art. This is another paradigm shift in education, if there is to be peace education. And the only way we can learn the art is to practice it. That is, the peace education has to be on a format which allows and fosters development of “communication”, not just “transmission of knowledge”.

III. From the Pedagogy of Authority to the Pedagogy of Liberation

We know how to teach ourselves to be “good soldiers”, “good inventors of weapons”, “good competitors”, “efficient destroyers of environment”, etc. That is evident in our history. But we have not developed “Education for Peace”. The educational system itself has to learn the way of peace. We do not have ready-made “peace education” but we have to construct one by learning without prior knowledge.

This is paradoxical. One might ask if Peace can be learned at all. However, this paradox is not new. Some 2000 years ago Aristotle heard and recorded the same paradox about learners. His version of the paradox was narrated like the following.

“the learners wish to learn only because they do not know the object of the learninig. But, without knowing what to learn, it is impossible to know how to learn. Hence, it is impossible to learn.”

I imagine the argument was invented by Sophists and they were waiting for people to step into the trap by saying, “Therefore, students should follow the master.” The sophists, although they might be game players, knew better. They would point out the problem of how th master had learned. The paradox is interesting in that the answers to the paradox set philosophy and operational modes of education. Let us see some of the responses to the paradox.

Religious teaching had a neat metaphysical escape from the paradox in that “God”, who is external to the ignorant humanity and knows everything, supposedly teaches. To that extent, a religious institution held a monolithic control over a population; it acted as the authority to arbitrate conflicts among people within the dominion and thereby reduced the frequency of violence. On that merit, religious institutions could have been “peace teachers” to the “ignorant and violent people”. This constitutes a philosophy of teaching.

I shall nickname the above “Pedagogy of Authority”. It is characterized by having some “superior being” teach someone inferior. And we notice in this context that “knowledge” to be taught must be justified as much as it is to be imposed on learners.

To be sure, our educational institutions are by and large “secular”. To the extent the religious institutions in the past were often instigators of “Holy Wars”, the secularization was an improvement. We have learned to live with religious tolerance. However, we have today “Nationalistic Wars” and “Ideological Wars” which resemble religious wars in many aspects. And in educational practices, we have inherited the “Pedagogy of Authority” from religions, despite the secularization.

The idea that an absolute authority act as the peace-teacher and peace-keeper on the basis of power to  suppress undesirables still has a strong influence in our society. In the the present context of the Superpower competition over Nuclear hegemony, the idea that one superior power can be the peace-keeper and hence the achieving of the superior status is desirable for the world peace is apparently popular and the idea is driving the world towards Nuclear Holocaust. Therefore, we need to analyse this philosophy in some more detail.

We note that the authoritarian philosophy of education persists even today, despite the secularization that took place in our history. The modern Nation-States are more efficient in organizing the population under its dominion to fight wars than religious institutions and Feudal kingdoms. In a sense, the Nation-State suppresses small-scale violences and moderate struggles within, but it has the monopoly of violence against people within and against other nations.

There, religious dogma was replaced by the “scientific-technological rationality” which is more competent in providing grounds for social scale consensus. Science-technology is liberating in that it allows a degree of “plurality”, while maintaining an effective control over population. iN that sense, science-technology is the replacement of religion as the authority for the social scale thinking. The philosophical discipline of “epistemology” emerged as an art of justifying the “knowledge” to be imposed by some power authority. Rules of Evidence, Logical Proof, etc., are needed to justify the power implied by “knowledge”. They are the means to subjugate “less intelligent people”. And the metaphorical image of knowledge transmitted from supperior to the inferior persists even in Information Theory in terms of Entropy Law.

In Handbook on Peace Education, edited by C. Wulf and published by International Peace Research Association, in 1974, Haken Wiberg pointed out a “caste distinction” between Peace Researchers and Peace Educators. He observed that Peace researchers as the producers of knowledge assumed a superior position to peace educators who were perceived to be merely the transmitters of the knowledge produced. The reason for this was division  of labours and the specialization strategy of “science”. But it does reflect the authoritarian tendency even in peace researchers to imagine human relations in a metaphor of “from superior to inferior”. Communication is recognized as being of a secondary importance, and the question of integration-synthesis is altogether forgotten. I think this is a manifestation of “technological elitism” that is prevalent in our age, and one obstacle to be overcome in the waty to peace. So let me elaborate on the point further.

In the modern age, the idea that an authority can impose peace upon a barbaric population by force came out in a form of colonialism , as one might read in the poem, “The Whitemen’s Burden”, by R. Kipling, composed 1899 when the U.S. took possession of the Philipines. The “Whitemen” wished peace and went out on a crusade to impose their idea of peace on other people. The method was wars and education.

We can also read the poem as an expression of a philosophy of education which missioned itself to impose “civilization” on the “barbaric” people within a society, as well as ones outside. IN that sense, it was also applied internally to the whitemen’s society. Population had to be pacified and domesticated for the production capacity to grow and commercial enterprises to go on unhampered. Education as such is admittedly more “peaceful” than repression by physical violence and perhaps more “cost effective.” But the psychology of fear was necessary in the maintenance of the ultimate authority which is a disguised violence.

Education as such did not eliminate physical violences but rather it stood on violence. We see even today that “teaching” is still accompanied with “corporal punishment” and it does stress “classroom control” as confinement and restriction of children. The notion that children are “ignorant barbarians” who have to be kept under strict control, if necessary by force, is fading gradually. And perhaps in higher education that is practically extinct. But nonetheless, the authoritarian sense of “teaching” is still prevalent event today. And recent reports from Japan talk of rampant violence in schools. Educators attribute the violence to be the results of stresses in the highly competitive society and the “authoritarian pedagogy” required for the competition. In terms of armaments, Japan is one of the most “peaceful” nations. But in terms of lifestyle and education, Japan is not “peaceful.”

Perhaps, however, the degree in which we dissociate the notion of authority from fear of violence is a measure of internalization and it is also a measure of success in “Education” as such. We no longer need to appeal to violence to get necessary accommodations in ordinary social relations. We know if we fail to be “reasonable” , whatever the level of “reason” we can practice, we would have to use physical forces which are very expensive in termssocial costs as well as in terms of personal safety and property damages. In that sense, we have achieved a degree of Pacification through Education. This has to be acknowledged. But, “pacification” is not “peace”.

We might say, in a large-scale historical view, that we have come a long way towards Peace. We might even congratulate ourselves by saying that only a few more steps to reach the point of no-return on the way to Peace. But a few remaining difficulties, if so perceived, are not the same kind that stem from the general population being ignorant and barbaric. Rather they come from the power structure of our domesticated life that depends on ultimate violence. The “education” which it practices for maintainance of the power structure as such, is then a part of the problem for itself.

If the efficiency of the modern nation-states is less, say not able to organize Nuclear War capacity, we may have had a longer time scale to solve the problem of wars. But, as it is, the efficiency or rather the technical “intelligence” of the Nation States is very hight and we are almost overwhelmed by it. Once triggered, our Nuclear Intelligence can destroy the life systems on the Earth in a matter of a few hours. We must credit our “education” for the achievement of high efficiency in that particular aspect. That is, the Pedagogy of Authority worked successfully in that respect.

Of course, the problem is our dismal failures in other aspects of our social organization. For Peace the authoritarian education would not do. For it was the authoritarian education that taught how to fight wars. Authoritarian posture is no different from the way a Baboon colony establishes who is the Boss, although it does replace small violences among members of the colony by a large one and thereby reduces frequency of violence. The theory that humans ar viciously aggressive “Naked Apes” is wrong in terms of anthropology and biology, but it is correct as a description of our social practices.

I view that the aggression of the scale we practice today is not an innate nature in us, but it is “education” into us. As human communities came to face problems of increasingly large scale social interactions and communication, they have “mis-developed” out of fear and by the appeal of power to secure the safety into the authoritarian direction. It was essentially a “defensive’ strategy, although it came out in “offensive postures”. In this sense, I have a doubt if the fear of Nuclear destruction and death is an adequate basis for peace education. “Defense” and “Offense” may be two faces of the same coin at the depth of psychology, beyond just being propagandist manipulations of the two words. That is, the “authoritarians” may be aggressive because of their paranoic fear. The way out may be found in courageous exploartions which transcend fear and even take risks.

And as to alternatives to the pedagogy of authority, there are interesting hints from “Liberation Theology”. Liberation Theology is interesting, because the religion that invented the “pedagogy of authority” contained in itself antidotes to it. The religion in each ancient community functioned as “the collective intelligence” of the community, and as such it had to contain some elements of practical wisdom for good life. Christianity talks of Love, and it has a particular preoccupation with the “oppressed”. We note that “love” was a practical necessity without whichh the community would have become extinct. Naturally, therefore, it contained Liberation Theology. It was the “establishment” of a power institution that inhibited developments in the domain of Love. That is, the dynamics of love relations in communities had to exist anyhow. It is only in intellectual recognitions that the dynamics was concealed and barred from intellectual communication and thereby being kept ineffective in social-political sense.

Interestingly, the rhetoric of the religious dogma asserting its institutional authority was basically that of “fear tactics” — such as the devils who would attack if one has no defense. Whereas, the stories for Love show no concern with safety nor preoccupation with defense. Love often involves courageous sacrifices of personal safety. If there is danger, then the strategy is to share the danger at one’s risk. I think this psychological dynamics is very important. For, we can compare the rhetoric with that of the Arms Race which requires existence of a “devil”. And, in a contrast, the advocacy of peace which involves risk taking — which thereby become vulnerale to labels like “unrealistic”, “irrational”, “utopian”.

Liberation Theology attempts to liberate itself from the power structure of the traditional religious dogma, in order to “liberate people from the oppression”. It attempts to liberate itslef from fear within as well as fear from outside. And the “liberation within” is educational. If we compare, at this point, Liberation Theology with Liberation Pedagogy —say in the form expressed by Paulo Freier in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum Pub. Co. 1985), we see the messages are the same. The armed struggles by the oppressed people today are just as bloody as the ones in the history, but we note that they are no longer simple ones of “seizing power”. Every one of the struggles stresses the liberation within. And the practices of the revolution are marked by very high recognition of the importance of communication among people in learning. As much as armed struggles are there, somewhat “authoritarian” practices of “Revolutionary Leadership” is still visible. But we can observe that “vertical” metaphor of hierarchical power structure is considerably weakened in the rhetorics of the liberation, and increasingly more appeals for “horizontal” metaphor stressing communication are made in them now.

Peace Education can take hints from Liberation Theology. The philosophy of Peace Education has to liberate itself from the power structure that is leading the human race to ultimate destruction. But it cannot stand on the fear of Nuclear Death. We like to free ourselves from fear of Nuclear Holocaust. For that our philosophy must be free from the Fear, and be able to risk the defenseless position. Here, if we need a slogan, we could make up such as: “When all Defenses go, Peace will come!”

To be sure, within our present notion of “rationality” and “reasonableness”, one cannot ask, let alone compel anybody, to be “defenseless”. Even with the “authority” of being Professors of Peace Study or Peace Researchers, we cannot force the risk on anybody. Unlike theology, we do not teach articles of Faith. We can only suggest the “theology” and discuss it as a possibility among others. But then, not compelling peace on anybody may be consistent with the notion of Peace. We can propose, discuss, consult, and negotiate for practical agreements. That is, we are back to communication.

In reference to the Paradox of Learner cited before, we remind ourselves that we are the Learners. And we are searching the ways of learning peace. We do not have “the answer” in deterministic sense, nor can we start from “the answers” in deductionistic sense. Being liberated, that is being Free, is being vulnerable. We are not safe. We must accept the risk for the sake of peace. In practical terms, however, we are not absolutely Free. That gives us practical things to do, in struggles relative to the problems we have. In that sense, we can propose and try certain hypothesis and learn whether or not they work step by step relative to the problems. That is, the problems are our guides. I have criticized the present practices of education and of the intellectuality in general. But I ought to be thankful that there are problems and contradictions which guide my learning of peace. The “liberation” also comes from within.

Appendix to Chapter III.

It is instructive to reread Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”, for it is not just an expression of colonialism, but also an expression of the dominant paradigm of education in the past and even today. We need to reflect upon the philosophy of education as such and consider if Peace Education  can be on the same philosophy. Therefore I cite the poem here.

The White Man’s Burden

1899

The United States and the Philippine Islands

Take up the White Man’s burden —

Send forth the best ye breed —

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need;

To wait in heavy harness

On flutter fold and wild —

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man’s burden

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain,

To seek another’s profit,

And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

The savage wars of peace —

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper —

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go make them with your living,

And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White Man’s burden —

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard —

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —

‘Why brought ye us from bondage,’

‘Our loved Egyptian night?’

Take up the White Man’e burden —

Ye dare not stoop to less —

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloak your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

Have done with childish days —

The lightly proffered laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom.

The judgement of your peers!

IV. The Problem of Cooperation in Diversity

There will be many problems in Peace Education. I shall discuss only one of them here, in hope that there are many discussions about other problems in this conference and elsewhere. The problem I would like to discuss here is rather “philosophical” in a derogatory sense that it is a somewhat abstract one of cooperation among people with diverse sets of values, ideals, and cultures. However, the problem shows up in various contexts and perhaps it is of some help to discuss it at an abstract level. And it is important because there is a moral-political notion that for a cooperation perfect agreements on everything are needed. And, there is a tendency in teaching practice to insist that there must be, or can be, only one right answer to any problem.

It is perhaps a residue from the monotheistic religions that we are monolithic in thinking. The rhetoric pretending the best tend to be simple and there appears to be popular demand for it. We think strong assertive posture is effective in mass communication. And we teachers tend to feel it necessary for intellectual coherence that one system of thought must be presented as the best, if not as the truth. Of course, we do know for example that theories in physics disagree with each other and they are not absolute truth, yet they are not entirely useless. Even mathematical routines, such as “differentiation” have many different “interpretations”. But we think it to be “pedagogical” necessity to pretend as if what we teach is the best, or the truth. We may be unnecessarily aggressive from our habit in academic competitions. WE may be free from egotism to think we know the best, but there are practical considerations as to avoiding confusions from too many “ifs” and “buts”. For passive audiences, too many competing ideas and theories may be burdensome in that they have to exercise their own thinking. Under the system of divisions of labour, we expect specialized experts to give us the best answer. Even for Peace, we might unconsciously slip into being the “consumers”, rather than being the “producer” of Peace. Being “user friendly” may be a good thing in many technological developments, but there are questions as to whether that is also applicable to peace education We may have to consider if easy consumability is the way of peace education, for that implies peace to be passive rather than active.

Any society, or any “Culture”, as much as it is recognized as a coherent system, it must have a certain set of fundamental agreements. Cooperation among the members of the Culture is necessary for the Culture to survive as a culture. And if the people involved are “thinking beings” at all, they have to share a certain set of “beliefs” or “metaphysical assumptions”. Particularly, if effective communication within a culture is to be carried at the level of linguistic symbols, sharing of a “philosophy” is the precondition for its practicality.

If a society cares at all about its survival, the society, as ones in our history, imposes a philosophy and controls thoughts, by coersion, by rituals, by education, or punishments and rewards. To learn a language is to learn the value system implicit in it. Without being competent in responding and manipulating the value symbolisms, one cannot be a respectable member of the society. Besides it is simple and economical, if we can reduce our thinkings into one uniformal system. Many philosophers apparently tried to construct a grand system of thinking for that purpose, though inevitably they failed. Scientists sought after “One Truth”, until the 19th century — many scientists apparently still believe in “Truth” even today, although it is denied at the formal theoretical level of their discipline. We do value “unity”, “solidarity”, “consensus”, etc. and feel pleasure being among agreeable friends. Those are essential conditions for communication.

However, we have another problem today. That is, we live in a “pluralistic world”. By the developments of world trades, or rather the colonial expansions we come to contact societies with different cultures. Just as it was not practical nor wise to insist one religion over everybody, it is not practical nor wise to insist one culture. technology appears to have unified the humanity in a certain world view, but it created complexity in the interdependency of the living in the modern age and breeded diversity in market activities. The size and extent of social domain absolved into technological controls exponentially multiplies complexities, diversities, and entropy costs.

In addition we have Ideological differences in the Superpower Nuclear confrontation. There, we would say that attempt by one side to achieve “unity” of the world under its hegemony is that main reason of the conflict. And here I remind you that until recently, we thought that “science” transcends all cultural differences and therefore it can unify the world. We now pay some respect to “cultural” elements in science, thanks to writing of Popper, Kuhn, et al. And nowadays we find many books on “Sociology of knowledge” in our libraries which discuss dependancy of “knowledge” and even “reality”, on cultures. At least in practical contexts, we cannot ignore the diversity, even if it is considered to be undesirable. And if we consider diversity to be desirable — I do, but there appears to be people who do not, such as Americans who do not understand why Canadians insist a superficial cultural distinction from that of the U.S. in the face of obvious economic benefits in assimilation with them, — then the problem is more serious.

I shall not argue as to whether or not there can be one agreeable frame for knowledge transcending cultural and ideological differences. But, regardless of the super-metaphysical position as to the possibility of the “unification”, we face the “plurality” and “diversity” of the world community today and have to consider Peace in that context. We need not have perfect agreements on everything, particularly on metaphysical questions. But somehow we have to find a practical set of agreements to live together. And, here lies a problem for Peace Education.

We notice in religions, ideologies, scientific theories and even in geometries, that many controversies are about metaphysical assumptions — such as if two parallel lines meet at infinity or not. In practice, it probably makes little difference if two parallel lines meet at infinity. And it is humanly impossible to reach the “infinity” and actually see the differences. It may offend Christians, but it is very strange for outsiders why Christians insist that the “virgin birth” must be believed in order that the message of love is received. Nonetheless, the “axioms” are very important in the linguistic sense. If we are competent in talking and thinking in different language systems, we may not need to fight about such “ideal assumptions”. But at the moment, we do not have efficient ways of communicating without imposing implicit metaphysics as the common ground.

At any rate Peace Education has to deal with the problem of how to construct cooperations in the world with rich Diversity. Puritanic sentimentality would not do, even though we may be sympathetic to it. At least, we need to consider Tolerance as to the differences, if we fail to understand people who think differently from us. If we are to consider the problems of ideological differences in the context of the Superpower confrontation, we need some ground strong enough to sustain our discussion without going into a fatalistic “relativity” that gives up peace. We are required to be competent in elaborating both positions. We not here that this is not “value neutrality”. Rather, it is full explicit discussion of value systems in which we and others live. We must expose implicit assumptions and values that we stand on, as much as we expose other’s assumptions and values.

It would require critical examinations of out own frame of references on which our “knowledge’ stands. Peace Education cannot be the education that imposes our particular frame of references on our students. That is, the bases of “knowledge” themselves have to be made explicit. Perhaps disciplines such as “Sociology of Knowledge” might appear academic mumbo-jumbos and useless snobism to us. But we do need to know and understand our own “cultural biases”, before talking of others. If we are to teach about the self-imposed blindness in Cold War rhetoric, we need to know if our academic stands might not contain equally ridiculous biases.

And beyond that, Peace Education has to propose ways in which people can construct cooperations without subjugating one group under another. Unfortunately, we do not have “epistemology” to do that yet. Peace Education has to develop the “epistemology” of its own. If Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is of any guide, I imagine the creation of the new epistemology is equivalent to creating a new language, and that would change our mode of communication. We may have to be even poetical in that.

Interestingly, the difficulties with different cultures, ideologies, etc., repeats in smaller scales when we try to cross the boundaries between fragments of science. It was the grand strategy of science, or rather of the modern intellectualism, to fragment thinking into specialties. Presumably there will be integrations after the “Divide and Conquer”, and cross fertilization among specialized knowledge has been tried and even successful in some cases. But it is acknowledged that, by and large, we are not competent at integrations. The majority of practice in various “science” in professional senses is on the strategy of “Divide and Conquer”, and teaching practices follow the same pattern. Peace education, in this respect is exceptional. There is no way that peace education can be a fragmented science. Reports on peace education points out problems of integration — say for a political scientist to understand physics of weapons systems, genetic consequences of nuclear radiation, complexity problems in computer technology, as well as moral philosophies, for example. Peace education carries an extra burden of being a “generalized” intelligence. It is not the teaching of a specialty.

And there we face a problem of learning “second-hand”. It is unreasonable to expect any individual to know everything at the first-hand. We have to rely upon communication from other learners and by imagination we have to digest what is reported. Of course, in practice, people have been doing the second-hand learning. In fact, “science” would be impossible and meaningless, if we deny the second-hand knowledge. But it so happens that the prevalent philosophy of science (knowledge) concentrates its analysis and commentaries on the first-hand knowledge. Such a philosophy of knowledge (epistemology) is totally inadequate for our social practices, besides being dishonest. We depend on each other to know most anything. We do not have direct access to most information that we need to think of the World. Our practical daily life requires that we have to deal with information presented in highly abstract symbolisms at a high speed which hardly leaves chances of deep reflections. In a complex society, therefore, competence in communication if of critical importance.

And in addition, since it must be a communal effort by people of different cultural backgrounds and different ideologies to construct a way of peace, each of us as individual thinkers cannot and ought not attempt constructing the “philosophy of peace” as an individual enterprise. We are dependent on others to make peace. We can only do the construction in consultations and negotiations. If we consider peace learning to be the learning of the human community as a whole, then communication among us is analogous to communication among nerve cells in our brain.

We might think of it, in a metaphor, that peace has to be learned by the “collective intelligence” of the humanity as a whole. If such a metaphor is appropriate, then we partake in a collecive thinking for peace. But in order for us to start consulting and negotiating, we need a practical condition of peace for them to be possible. This is a “vicious circle” in reverse.

However, if people recognize the problems at all, people do have a motive to come to conferences with those involved in the same problems. We are somewhat like Alcoholic Anonymous in this respect. We might call ourselves “Warmongers Anonymous” ! We come to learn because we have problems and those who share the problems can help. The mutual helping is an important aspect of peace that we wish to learn. And the key element of the construction is communication.

In response to the Learners Paradox, we could say that we can learn from problems. To deal with problems is the learning. If any accumulative sense of effect is sought , we can point to the competence in learning. That is, we learn how to learn. Interestingly, one can look at the history of physics, which is a series of mistakes upon mistakes, as a “learning of how to learn”. And to deal with problems is to have “interactions with” them, and as such “learning” is a form of “communication”. I would imagine the same may be said about Peace Learning.

And there have been encouraging signs for emergence of new paradigms of learning. Recently, a Japanese journal published, under the title “Networking of the Youth”, reports of six cases where young people started their own ways of group learning. The reports are impressive in several senses. Firstly, the journal has been reputed as that for “intellectual snobs”, or at least it has traditionally kept “academic respectability”, and has never printed anything of the kind. Those six groups of young people are not “famous”. They are not “academic”, nor have any pretence of intellectual superiority. They are “experimenting” and having “fun” doing things. The journal itself is changing. Secondly, it is impressive in comparison with what radical students in Japan used to do in the 1960-70’s. They no longer maintain “elitist” attitudes and they are open to most anybody who wishes to join. Thirdly, their “networking” is international. They go to the Philippines, North and South Korea, etc. They look for direct contact with people. Fourthly, they are impressive in contrast to the highly competitive and high tech style of life that the majority of Japanese now have come to live. According to the same journal, Japanese school education is the most advanced one in the world technologically, but at the verge of moral bankruptcy aunder the stress of the high technology. The youth are trying to find the way out. They do not have “philosophy” of the academic sense, that is in technical sense, but they do have a philosophy in a practical sense, constructed and growing with experiments/experiences. Fifthly, they are different from the “hippy commune” type of the 1960-70’s in that they are articulate in communication with others, or at least try to be. And most impressive of all, one of the organizers of networks says of himself as being “Careperson” (in English). He apparently  understood what it means to “Care”. One can take pleasure in hearing emergences of new paradigms such as those. It may mean the beginning of the end of school education. But possibilities to Peace Education are visible. I imagine there are many such signs elsewhere, and I like to hear of such experiences.

Perhaps the description above may be confusing, but it is partly because of the nature of the problems. And I think it is very important for Peace Education to include considerations on the problems of learning. I acknowledge the above to be a sketchy outline for a philosophy of peace education. There are needs of discussing what we can do under the specific conditions that we have to operate now and in the foreseeable future. I would like to be apart of the struggles. And I hope, the suggestion of general direction is useful as an educational exercise.

References:

On the Pedagogy of Liberation

P. Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed Continuum, 1985

P. Freire The Politics of Education Bergin & Gravey Pub., 1985

H.A. Giroux “Educators as Transformative Intellectuals”, (Speech given at the Univ. of Lethbridge, 1982).

The pedagogy of liberation has a deep relation to the theology of liberation. See:

G. Guitierrez A Theology of Liberation Orbis Books, 1973

R. De Roo Cries of Victims Voice of God Novalis, 1986.

II. On Peace Education

C. Wulf Handbook on Peace Education International Peace Research Association, 1974.

S. Lee “A Course on the Morality of Nuclear Weapons” Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2, Apr. 1984.

L. M. Grob “Buberian Peace Education in the Mideast” Education Theory, Vol. 35, NO. 4, Fall, 1985.

III. On the Crisis of Technological Society

F. Capra The Turning Point Bantam Books, 1982.

J. Ellul The Technological Society Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.

C. Mitcham (Ed.)  Philosophy and Technology The Free Press, 1972.

IV. On Critical Sociology and Education

P. Connerton (Ed.) Critical Sociology Penguin Books, 1976

J.E. Curtis (Ed.) The Sociology of Knowledge Praeger Pub., 1970.

G. Gurvitch The Social Frameworks of Knowledge Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.

J. B. Thompson Critical Hermeneutics Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981.

M. Murphy “Affective Education: The Future” Toward Century 21st. C.S. Wallia (Ed.) Basic Books, 1970.

E. Hurwitz Jr. (Ed.) Criticism, Conflict, and Change. —Reading in American Education. Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972.

H. Esser (Ed.) Transformation of Knowledge Occasional Paper 44. Mar, 1984. Canadian Commission for UNESCO.

H. A. Giroux “Theories of Reproduction and Resistance in the New Sociology of Education” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 53, p. 257, 1983.

J. Habermas Communication and the Evolution of Society Beacon Press, 1976.

J. Curran “communications, Power, and Social Order” Culture, Society, and the Media M. Gurevitch (Ed.), Methuen, 1982.

V. On Ethical Questions

H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. (Ed.) Morals, Science and Society The Hastings Centre, 1978.

M. Brown (Ed.) The Social Responsibility of the Science The Free Press, 1971.

These references were used, not as the sources of quotations, but as sources of inspiration. I owe to them a great deal as to the “ways of thinking”. This is an acknowledgement of intellectual heritages.

Kumu Kahi, First Beginnings: Astronomy and Ancient Architecture (PDF)

Kumu Kahi

First Beginnings:

Astronomy and Cosmic Architecture in Ancient Hawai’i

by

Francis X. Warther

Kilauea, Kaua’i, Hawai’i, U.S.A.

Karen J. Meech

Institute of Astronomy, University of Hawai’i

Honolulu, O’ahu, Hawai’i, U.S.A.

As presented August 1993 at  the

Fourth “Oxford” International Conference of Archaeoastronomy

August 23-25, 1993

Stara Zagora, Bulgaria

Copyright 7/23/93

Kumu Kahi, First Beginnings:

Astronomy and Cosmic Architecture in Ancient Hawai’i

In this paper we propose to show, evaluate and discuss two types of solar astronomical alignments derived from two separate ancient “chants” that have been preserved through the unwritten memory of the Hula. The hidden meaning (kaona) when resolved gives the instruction for the solar alignments and cosmological purposes in the Hawaiian islands.

These chants, because of their directness and simplicity, would appear to have come from a classic poetic beginning during the formation of a cosmic view adapted to island living. They were also selected for their enormous informational and cultural content which we believe gives an insight of the mind and creative capacity of the ancients.

Later in this paper we will briefly explore this early creative past and outline what we perceive as a master plan designed by the ancient sea chiefs.

The chants belong to a vast collection of oral literature composed for use by Polynesians for many cultural purposes. The Hula, or Dance as reported by Adrienne Kaeppler (1983:8-14), and we paraphrase: has unique, distinguishing characteristics that separate the Hula in Polynesia from the dance in Melanesia and Micronesia. The Hula text or chant was basic, delivered with melody and rhythm, accompanied by a musical instrument and most of the time, with an interpretive “dance” — more a ritual of expressive movement—with strict, formal and stylized movements. The chants incorporated hidden meanings through metaphor and allusion and could be interpreted on more than one level.

Thus Polynesians began with a unique cultural chant-dance form which was developed by Hawaiians to a high art. We believe the word Hula presently meaning “dance,” originally meant “chant,” or “Word.” Old Hulas refer to “The Voice only the Voice” as the necessary action to gain entrance to the Hula School (Halau Hula). The Halau is the long house that enclosed the school of students, so its other meaning was hidden; so you could say, “The place of the hidden word.”

Since the chants we are concerned with here were the sacred, unchanging ones, we will stay within this frame.

The chanted poetry, called mele, had two types: mele oli, poetry not intended for dancing, and mele Hula, poetry meant to be accompanied by stylized dance movement. Teh two chants are mele oli, the sacred ones used for prayers and spiritual meaning: voiced without dance, music by percussion. We want to stress this distinction by quoting Mary Kawena Pukui (P.H.L. 1972:201), the principal Hawaiian authority.

“The hula dancer in training was dedicated to Laka, the hula Goddess. Hula training was a religious matter. Total dedication was needed. The student, man or woman, was kapu, or set apart.”

That is, ritual virginity was mandatory while in the Halau Hula until after graduation. It was, however, not a permanent kapu.

So the chants were conceived within institutional framework, a cultural form unique to Hawai’i and Polynesia, which are further united by one language and culture.

The familiarity of the “Tropics” in astronomy was covered very well in Ethnoastronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the American Tropic, edited by Anthony Aveni and Gary Urton who, with others, were contributors. We only wish to mention what certain aspects of the investigation have shown to be unusual and specifically Hawaiian.

It was David Lewis who pointed out the significance of “place” in the possible cohesion and originality of the art of thought patterns of these renowned navigators. He said Polynesians are the only people who travel and experience living equally on both sides of the equator with named tropic boundary lines. (The Maori of New Zealand behave as if they were still inside the tropics.)

Another art we discussed was the Polynesian ability to visualize island groups of unknown extent as if from above at a great distance, like the Rapa Nui “dream voyage flight.” Lewis contributes this art to the navigators’ facility during a voyage to instantly point to the direction of his home island. Tavake, the last Polynesian navigator, who died in 1970, used this ability.

The balance of two territories about the equator, which is a sewn seam or piko (navel), is like place with two north stars, a mirror image of events in wind current and time; of uphill and downhill; of left and right. We find this an extraordinary place to study; particularly the time reversal, where your calendar of six months summer, six months winter has to be turned 180 degrees when you cross the seam.

In Hawai’i, Kane, June 21 summer solstice, rises in the northeast, and Lono, December 21 winter solstice, rises to the southeast. In the Marquesas below the equator, Lono, winter solstice, stays at its geophysical location and rises in the northeast, and Kane, summer solstice, rises in the southeast. You see, in forming a concept of time, Polynesians had to reverse the months to give meaning to realities they experienced.

From these thoughts and descriptions of the Hawaiians, the Tropic bounded world of the Polynesians was not conceive of as a triangle, but a square approximately fifty (50) degrees on a side. Astronomically, it is a mana (life) space: the only space where the zenith and anti-zenith celestial events peculiar to the Tropic world can occur, and beyond whose boundaries shadow (death) is cast. To say it makes a difference if you believe the zenith event is the primal life force would be an understatement.

With this background we go directly to Chant One.

N. B. Emerson (1909:114) and M. Manu (1899 & Ms.).

Emerson gives no title other than Mele (Song), and says it is a “fragment of folklore.”

Mele: Song:

1 Hiki mai, hiki mai ka La, e. 1 It has come, it has come; lo, the Sun!

2 Aloha wale ka La e kau nei, 2 How I love the Sun that’s on high;

3 Aia malalo o Ka-wai-hoa, 3 Below it swims Ka-wai-hoa,

4 A ka lalo o Kauai, o Lehua. 4 On the slope inclined from Kaua’i to Lehua.

5 A Kauai au, ike i ka pali; 5 On Kauaui met I a pali,

6 A Milo-lii pale ka pali loloa. 6 A beetling cliff that bounds Milo-lii,

7 E kolo ana ka pali o Makua-iki; 7 And climbing up Makua-iki,

8 Kolo o Pu-a, he keiki, 8 Crawling up was Pua, the child,

9 He keiki makua-ole ke uwe nei. 9 An orphan that weeps out its tale.

A brief explanation per line:

[See illustrations, Figures 1 and 2.]

Line 1The sun is rising, east.

2 The sun rises to its zenith.

3 Ka-wai-hoa, a small peak; zenith on a four-year cycle (plus or minus four from July 13,1989).

4 We stand on Ni’ihau island, sun reflected down from Kaua’i island.

5 Look toward Kaua’i; see the cliff.

6 A big cliff that bounds Milo-li’i valley.

7 The sun climbing up the cliff named Makua-iki.

8 Pua is Kane-a-Pua, the “Baby Sun.”

9 Alone, it takes five days to return, or eventually climb the cliff and return on its six- month trip to the south.

This chant and the tradition of when first used comes from Moses Manu (1899 & Ms.) and is given in “Hula,” B. P. Bishop Museum (1980:8,9). It tells the story of the visit to Ni’ihau isaland and Chief Halali’i by the Hula Goddess Kapo’ula-kina’u, or Kapo for short, in which she takes possession of the chief, causing him to chant. Then, turning to her younger sister, Kewelani, Kapo takes possession of her, also. Kewelani proceeds to chant and dance the mele above. This occurs, of course, on a June 21 solstice rise and return date of Kane, principal god of procreation, or the return of Lohiau, the symbolic Kane of the Pele-Hi’iaka Hula cycle.

The cliff Makua-iki, which lies approximately 29 kilometers (18 miles) away, besides being the mountain peak around which the Tropicbirds of Kane circle is also the peak from which Pele’s flaming fire sticks are sailed out over the ocean. This ritual was possibly performed to encourage the return of the summer sun, the source of fire.

There is, we believe, another hidden meaning embedded in this chant: a parallel alignment. If we move one mile north from Kiha-Wahine on Ni’ihau island to another platform called Ka-Uno-ka-Ha, we obtain the June solstice rise against Makana cliff, which is 45 k. (38 m.) away and over Ka-Ulu-a-Paoa heiau with the platform Ke-Ahu-a-Laka. This altar of Laka, Goddess of Hula, the most famous and oldest Halau Hula on Kaua’i island, has been the place for graduation ceremonies in accord with tradition.

We quickly have several interesting things happening: Makana (The Gift) peak towering above Ahu-a-Laka is the other peak from which the fire stick ceremony is performed. This alignment would ritually link the two first Hula platforms on two separate islands in a simultaneous ritual in vast spatial time related to the rising June sun. It is a counter alignment, also, since Ka-Ulu-a-Paoa Heiau on Kaua’i isalnd receives the June solstice sunrise, and from this place you could also clearly observe the December solstice set. This alignment then gives Ni’ihau island a futue, and Kaua’i island, a past. It is an interesting conjecture, and somewhere in the chants we should hear the echo of this alignment.

Before the theory of refraction comes up, note that in Hawai’i on some days before the sun rises or after its setting, the laws of earth curvature seem to be suspended. To illustrate, we have stood at Ka-Ulu-a-Paoa Heiau on Kaua’i and have seen Lehua crater; which “should be” below the horizon, loom up as if it were only 8 k. (5 m.) away instead of the barely visible 45-k. (38-m.) distance it is actually.

This heiau-to-heiau alignment at the time of the June solstice is particularly interesting in that from this selected location the horizon sunrise may be observed only for the five-day standstill, whereas sunrise will not have been seen for at least four months prior to this time. This is because the greater mass of Kaua’i island effectively blocks the sunrise from a Ni’ihau island perspective for 35 degrees out of the 50 degrees total. This design feature makes the standstill of the summer solstice rise a very selective window, indeed.

It is an interesting conjecture that the June 21 solstice rise is a Hula festival of importance, and also a clear example that one of the purposes of the sacred Hula was to record and reveal the ritual cosmic alignments, and including the full cycle of festivals.

Note that the Hula was controlled by goddesses. Starting with Pele, whose red lava line creates the islands, Hi’iaka, younger sister, a seer, prophet and spirit catcher; Haumea, the Mother Goddess of the sea with her world sea tree of life; Laka, principal Goddess of the Hula, whose altar in the halau faces to rising sun and the elder patroness mentioned above, Kapo, “The rich darkness of all possibilities with the red stain.”

Laka and Kapo are a duality: La here is sun and life; Po is eternity and underworld. Both, together, are symbolic of the Ku Kuahu, the upright principal that joins heaven to earth.

When we recognized this chant as astronomical on it kaona (hidden) level, similar references were then recognized in other chants which had lacked the hidden level of translation.

To illustrate this relation, one twenty-seven line chant called Mele Ho’ala (no ka Hula Pele), Emerson (1909:196), ends with the lines:

“Awake, ’tis day, ’tis light;

The sun stands over Wai-hoa,

Afloat on the breast of ocean;

the iwa (Tropicbird) of Leinoai is preening

On the cliff Maka-iki-olea,

On the breast of naked Lehua.

Awake thee! Awake!”

The poetic reference on its kaona level may be read as zenith and rising sun against the cliff.

One of Pele’s brothers, a navigator named Ka-Moho-Ali’i, has a kino lau (body) form of a dark cliff, and Kaua’i island, which has many of these cliffs that plunge into the sea, has Ka-Moho-Ali’i as its first chief and patron. A younger brother named Kane-a-Pua (“Baby Sun”) climbs the cliffs of his older brother; thus “Pua the child” finds a place in chants from the ancient oral tradition such as the first chance cited, line 8. Pua always visits Kaua’i island and his brother where rank on rank of cliffs abound.

The place on Ni’ihau island where Kapo and Kewelani performed this first Hula with its implication of sun alignment looking toward Kaua’i island would appear to be a walled heiau (sacred space) called Kiha-Wahine on a point of land called Pali-Koa’e. This is situated on the western edge of a vast, sun-baked, flat plain of 2,024 hectares (5,000 acres). Pali-Koa’e means “Cliff of the (white) Tropicbird” of Kane (The Sun).

The opening from lines of another chant (Emerson 1909:67) begin,

“Haunt of white tropic-bird and big ruffled owl,

[the cliff on Kaua’i].

Up rises the first-born child of the pali. [cliff]

He climbs, he climbs, he climbs up aloft,

Kaholo-ku-‘iwa, the pali of Ha’i.”

This is interesting for it gives a new name for the cliff and area on Kaua’i island. A facet of the Hawaiian way of naming is that the person or object named may carry many different names, all correct, carefully chosen for inherent meaning, and used at different times or for different purposes because of inherent subtleties. This fits with the oral poetic tradition—the true bardic tradition in Hawai’i—complete with metaphysical level.

Another chant in its last eight lines expresses the rising sun as:

“Love returns to Ni’ihau

To the secret waters of the pa’o’o fish.

The breadfruit fruiting at ground level

And the black stalked sugar cane at Halali’i.

There is Nihoa further back,

A tiny islet in the sea.

The hot sun beats upon the plains.

Turn and face Kaua’i.”

Again, metaphor and allusion mixed with physical alignments. To truly “read” this chant, you must either know the place or be able to project yourself into it by way of the map. You must know the culture, the references, the sun-roundness of a breadfruit and the out-of-place character of it fruiting at ground level; you must know this black-stalked sugar cane, and its properties and uses; relatedly, you must know the nature, also, of the lake of Halali’i, and in which months it disappears, and how this relates to the mentioned cane; you must know the inherent meanings of the lake name, which is the same as the chief possessed by Kapo in Chant One of the Hula.

We give all of these related chants to show the importance given to this specific time and place alignment by the Hawaiian composers of the Hula, the realities and significance of the rising solstice sun and its zenith.

Chant Two describes six setting suns, five from one point.

This comes from Roberts (1926:265 No. 122) Hula ka-la ‘au; oli oli; by Akoni Mika, 1865.

1 “He moku Ka-ula, Nihoa ame Ni’ihau 1 An island is Ka’ula, Nihoa adjoining Ni’ihau

2 I ka ulu la ‘i a ka Waihoa a Kane 2 In the calm rests the water produced by Kane

3 O Kaulana a ka la i Halali’i 3 The sun rests over Halali’i

4 Hala ka la kau ma kua o Lehua 4 And in passing rests over the back of Lehua

5 Kau ka LehuLehu o ke ahiahi 5 Then the dusk of evening begins

6 Moe e no, Kaua’i i luna ka la e 6 Kaua’i goes to sleep while the sun is yet up

7 E o ana no o Lehua i ke kai.” 7 While Lehua is still visible in the sea.

Explanation:

1 Ka’ula island is southwast, Nihoa is northeast.

2 The clam is a west sun space.

3 Halali’i is a wet season lake, and an anciet chief of Ni’ihau island.

4 Lehua’s “back” is to the west.

5 Dusk = sun is setting/has set.

6 Kaua’i is dark while the sun travels on westward.

7 Lehua is not only visible, but measured as by a (sun) path implied in the word, ana, to measure; so it can be understood that you as viewer are standing on Kaua’i observing the four named islands.

Question where you are standing, exactly, in this chanter’s scene, and what solar events you are seeing in the cycle. You are, of course, observing setting suns which are associated with the departing spirits of deceased Hawaiians; so the place to stand will be a leina, a jumping-off place from which to take the leap into the mystic sea of Po into eternity.

[See Figures 3 & 4.]

The procedure is to determine the back-sight from the islands called off, so, starting with Ka’ula island, which is 32 k. (20 m.) southwest of Ni’ihau and about 80.5 k. (50 m.) from west Kaua’i island, we try to measure the December solstice sunset line back to Kaua’i. We put aside Nihoa island as it is not in order. Moving north, Halali’i lake is next, but we suspect it is an anti-zenith, or nadir alignment. Since we do not have yet any observation point for this on Kaua’i, we select Lehua island and center a due west 270 degree equinox set back-sight on Lehua and bring it back to Kaua’i, which intersects with our December solstice line on a 270 degree equinox sunset back-sight on Lehua and bring it back to Kaua’i, which intersects with our December solstice line on a ridge called Kauna-lewa; now we have a “point.”

From these two intersected lines we project out towards Halali’i lake on Ni’ihau island at an estimated 2º02’ to 3º00’ north of 245 degrees. What we discover is that the south mountain range on Ni’ihau prevents moving the nadir line any more north than 248 degrees, and the line does cross Halali’i lake. It is a boxed-in alignment not capable of being moved off Halali’i lake if we were to observe a horizon set of the anti-zenith (nadir) suns.

This quite remarkable fact suggested an ancient astronomer had enjoyed himself with this one. Obviously what was being manipulated was the location of observation point on Kaua’i, and this helped to confirm what we are finding about the structures called heiau, commonly translated as “temples,” but actually denoting sacred space(s), and therefore “points” to stand.

We let this alignment rest for a bit because Nihoa island from the intersection was not on the 295 degree summer solstice set and was not known as a jumping-off place for spirits, so why was it included? Later we ran the anti-zenith lines on the chart for December 2 (90) at 21º52.9’ and the January 11 (90) at 21º52.6’. Amazingly, these two anti-zenith lines intersected the alignment projected over Halali’i lake and to sunset and the face of the cliff as in the chants. We are not quite sure how this had been achieved.

The Nihoa island included in the chant resolved itself by three pieces of information. The first came from Emerson (1917:XXVII) “Pele’s Account to Kamoho-ali’i of the Departure from Kahiki.” Briefly, Pele sails toward the islands with passengers including two brothers. When they stop at Nihoa island, Kane-a-Pua, the “baby sun” we met in Chant One, is landed, then the rest sail away to Lehua islet of Ni’ihau island. Unexplained, the navigator Kamoho-ali’i returns and picks up young Kane-a-Pua, and they return to Ni’ihau to the south.

The next two items are that when Hi’iaka, the prophet Goddess, is on Kaua’i island’s west coast, she chants.

Emerson (1909:258-259, lines 9-13):

“Out there with the floating Sun,

Where cloud forms rest on Ocean’s breast,

Uplifting their forms at Nihoa,

This side the base of Lehua;

There is the water of Kane.”

And the third is Pukui, Elbert, Mo’okini, Place Names of Hawai’i, 1974:165 and 148.

“Nihoa, See Mauloku,” the ancient name.

“Mau-Loku. Leaping place for souls, Nihoa Lit. continuous falling.”

Note that the falling of the soul into havai’i, the opening of the underworld, is a continuous-cyclical-circular motion of returning. So, of course, Kane-a-Pua was let off at Nihoa for five days for the June solstice set period and was picked up later when he could move south; and Nihoa is a leina, leaping place for souls; and the place to stand has to be between Pu’u ka Pele Heiau and Makua-iki alignment on Kaua’i island.

We propose that Nihoa just had to be included to complete all the solar set events: December solstice set; two anti-zenith sets; two equinox sets; and one June solstice set. The six setting suns, then, are referenced in a seven-line chant. Beyond being quite amazing, you wonder how long it took to gain the viewpoint and understanding to set this solar knowledge in language symbols. This is observed from Kauna-lewa ridge, the name of which means “The Square (or Four) Floating” and suggests that the six suns set into four pits in the floating western sea horizon, which is what they actually do.

Halali’i lake gains support as a place for departing souls to pass over or into from the chant referenced previously that mentions “the black-stalked sugar cane of Halali’i.” Checking Pukui & Elbert dictionary (1986:51), we are enlightened by “Halali’i, Ni’ihau, where a famous sugar cane once grew on the sand dunes. This cane was used in ceremonies for remission of sins.”

Kauna-lewa ridge, a high plateau now in sugar cane, started off an investigation into an unknown area. There is not a heiau there, or a recorded one, but the chant highlights a meaning besides “sacred,” i.e. the root word “hei” is “snare,” and “au,” a segment of time; so a good translation that fits is “a structure to mark a place that snares sacred time.” A consultant Kumu Hula (Source Teacher of Hula) said there had to be a chant about Kaunalewa, and one was found. So we will know more about this area in the future.

The accuracy of the alignments was first plotted on charts, then by visual and compass check in the field. On Ni’ihau island, privately owned, this was not possible. By checks at Makua-iki, the cliff splitting the sun was verified, and back checks from Ahu-a-Laka were made for the December solstice sunset. However, this was not considered satisfactory, therefore two Garmin G.P.S. units have been acquired and associate Karen Meech will be conducting surveys that will be possible for even out of line-of-sight alignments, of which there are quite a number overthe 1167-k. (725-m.) length of the twelve islands.

This will remain an ongoing investigation; the prospects opened up are endless and exciting.

As shown, the two main chant examples together—rising sun, settings suns; both oli oli sacred Hula without dance—reveal some astounding information. Both had to be composed by astronomer-navigators who had a thorough knowledge of their islands’ positions even out of sight, but not impossible to locate. We are not dealing with traditional poetic understanding of chants as prayers, name chants, love poems of people and places; instead, we have direct reference to the celestial events that are ritually incorporated and part of the Hawaiian belief systems.

In one nine-line and one seven-line verse we are made aware of past knowledge of all the solstice, equinox and zenith-nadir events of the Tropic world.

What is unique for the history of alignments, generally, is that the astronomer-site planners linked separate islands into a cosmic web, a simultaneous ritual alignment through space in the same time. This suggests a design strategy to create a master plan that would eventually link perhaps all of the islands in a ritual whole. This grouping was first done for the three-island group of Ni’ihau, Kaua’i and O’ahu, according to Kamakau (1964, Vol. 2, 14) and Hawaiian historian of the 1840s. He informs us that the three-island group had one astronomy with the center of learning being located on Kaua’i island at Waimea. Here astronomers called Po’e Kilo Hoku went to make their observations, kilo meaning stargazer or seer, and hoku, star.

Our researches suggest that through chants and tradition a concept of a oneness, a completeness called lokahi keeps recurring, and insistance that the family, the chiefs and the islands are “one” and the search is for a unifying system.

We find evidence of this in the composition of a Pele-Hi’iaka cycle, a chant journey through the islands requiring six months up and six months down. From zenith to nadir is also six months and binds the half year of growth to the half year of harvest.

What also needs thought is the vastness of the sea in which the navigators repeatedly sailed. The island are points, areas of rest, repair, recreation, until it is time to sail again. Haumea’s sea is the navigator’s homeland; the points of land are where family and relation are visited: blood relations are all over Polynesia.

The islands, themselves, are round like women’s breasts with a high mountain pyramid as a point of direction expressed in two ways: makai, seaward, and mauka, mountainward (away from the sea). The navigator is either going or coming. The other direction is around, direction defined by either the right or left shoulder being toward the mountain. The islands are clocks and the rising/setting sun changes position as you move circularly around the island in a constant changing juxtaposition of geological forms. They are unlike any other land form to live in—very different from places on continents.

We promised to discuss two chants of the Hula, but we can say that they endlessly multiply to include the twelve tropic islands of the entire Hawaiian chain: from Necker island or Moku Mana Mana, the “toe of Pele” on the tropic, to the island of Hawai’i with its active volcano of Kilauea, the “head” of the Pele figure. This we will have to leave for other papers to follow.

Finally, there is no question that we must follow the creative mind of the ancient astronomer-navigator. In these investigation, success, if any, is due to this newly-defined Hawaiian multidisciplinary system which all of you have done so much to create and which we call in Hawai’i “Astronomical Architecture,” a planning system founded on the navigators spiderweb of stars.

“Astronomical Architecture” is truly a search for archaic Hawaiian history embedded in the realities of ancient myth. This field of Archaeo-Ethno-Astronomy has opened up and expanded our understanding of the Hawaiian mind by finding reasons for this vast amount of public architecture and what it was used for, and what could have been seen and transacted inside these large ceremonial landscape complexes. We recognized the format as we began investigating from the island pie segments out from the mountaintop to the sea, circling to include the entire island, and as it revolves it includes in its sweep other islands that cross the spokes of the eight pillars of the solar cycle.

The ancients created an all-island ecological whole that was composed in a vast architectural plan. This plan selectively used land forms and structures that captured and dramatized the great cosmic events that they wished to “stop,” to “snare” in time. Thus, through this twelve-island ritual space they expressed their valued and molded tradition and beliefs.

For Hawai’i—all twelve of the islands of Pele—it is a Kumu Kahi, a first beginning into an ancient past, a knowledge still to be uncovered from the layers of literal meaning.

Francis X. Warther

Karen J. Meech

Copyright 7/23/93