Friday, September 12, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
The Bristlecone: Honoring Our Elders and Ancestors - Elk Whistle (USA)
Bill Neal, known as Elk Whistle, is a performer, recording artist, storyteller, teacher,and director of the Elk Whistle Ensemble. Neal, whose ancestry is Cherokee, plays the plains–style cedar flutes of the Lakota, Kiowa, and Comanche Nations, and the river cane flutes of the Choctaw and the Cherokee.
He was honored in a naming ceremony when the
Tongva Tribe, the original people of the
Greater Los Angeles area, gave him the name,
"Mah–na–che–a–shun," which means “He
Sings With His Heart.” Elk Whistle also sang
for a number of years with the Red Spirit
Singers, a northern traditional powwow drum
group based in Southern California.
The following derives from an impromptu
talk that Elk Whistle was asked to give after
playing flute at the November 2007 Monthly
Sampai at Shumei America's National Center
in Pasadena. The November Sampai is
customarily set aside for honoring elders and
ancestors. The text has been edited for use in
this publication.
"I do not usually speak without my flutes in my hand.
Usually when I speak I tell stories about the songs that the flutes play.
Fifteen years ago, for some reason I was given the gift of playing
these instruments. The flutes that I play come
from a time when the world was still young and
all the living things on the Earth could still understand
each other and could still speak to
each other. When Native People talk about all
the living things on the Earth, we mean the
two–legged, the four–legged, the winged ones of
the air, the dwellers of the water, the creepy–
crawlies, the green things with roots that cling to
the earth, and even the stones of the Earth are
living things with a spirit and a voice and a will.
When I play these flutes, I always hope that
people hear within the voice of the flute that
connection between all other living things in the
circle of life.
The Lakota people of the Northern
Plains have seven sacred ceremonies, and in
all of their ceremonies they use an expression
in their language, which is “mitakuye oyasin.”
“Mitakuye oyasin” roughly translated
means “all my relations.” When they say “all
my relations,” they are talking about every
single living thing in the circle of life. Among
my people and among all Native People, we
talk about the sacred directions. Among my
people, the Cherokee or ‘Tsalagi,’ we talk
about seven sacred directions. The four cardinal
directions, East, South, West, and
North, represent all of creation. The fifth direction
is the Sky above, the sixth direction
is the Earth below, and the seventh direction
is Inside, at the Center.
When Native People talk about
standing at the Center, they mean
that they understand that they have
a hundred percent responsibility
for what they create in the world.
They are a hundred percent responsible
for how they live their
lives. There are things in the
world that we do not have control
over. What we do have control
over is how we behave when
things take place, how we react,
the decisions we make in response
to those things that
happen. The decisions and actions
we take in response to
all these things that occur is
how we create in the world.
Where you are right here,
right now, is the sum total of
every action and every decision
that we have ever made in our
entire lives that has brought us
to this point. We created it that
way. We are all creators, and as
creators, we have a hundred
percent responsibility to
every other living thing
in the circle.
These are things that I am still learning
myself. I am still learning how to live my
life. The flute that I played for you is a very
important flute to me. I always begin with it
and I almost always end with it. It is starting
to get a little battered–looking; it has water
spots on it from being rained on. I had a little
problem with that for a while. When I
would start playing, the wind would start
blowing and it would start raining. One of
my elders, a Kickapoo from Oklahoma, who
has since passed on, was very knowledgeable
in traditional Native People's ways. On
more than one occasion, he took me aside to
explain to me what my responsibility was in
playing these instruments. He told me about
a young man who was playing his flutes and
did not understand the power of the instrument
(because they are not just musical instruments),
and so it rained for six weeks
straight from his playing. The elder told me
to stick to the love songs, because one of the
traditional ways in which they were used
was by young men playing love songs for
young ladies.
I had to tell him that, in order to stay out
of trouble with the flutes, I had to be careful
about playing the love songs because I did not
want my wife to get upset with me. My flute is
starting to look a little battered, but it is the
flute that I used to welcome my
grandson into the world and to help
my elders pass on.
On the mouthpiece of the
flute is a black lump, the
lifeblood, the pitch of the
bristlecone pine tree of California.
Maybe some of you are familiar
with the bristlecones? If you go to
the Sequoia National Park, in the
Visitor's Center there you
hear languages from all over
the world from people who
come to visit those gigantic and
wonderful trees. But the bristlecone
pine is not a gigantic tree like the sequoias.
It is not as tall as the sequoias.
Bristlecone pines grow at ten– to
eleven–thousand foot elevations
in almost pure rock. They grow
in places where the wind blows
so hard and the snow on their
branches is so heavy that the
trees get broken and twisted. So,
they are very small and have
very twisted shapes. But there
is a kind of scientist called a
‘dendrochronologist’ that
is involved in studying
those trees. These scientists have discovered
that the bristlecone pines are the oldest living
things on the face of the Earth. There are
bristlecone pines here in California that are
nine to ten thousand years old, and they are
still growing. They are still putting out new
needles in springtime.
When my wife and I were there, visiting
those grandfather bristlecones, I asked for a
gift. I put a little bit of the lifeblood of one of
those grandfathers on the mouthpiece of my
flute. I hoped that when I played that flute, and
tasted the lifeblood of that grandfather, it
would remind me of something that I thought
I needed to remember. I am a grandfather,
too. I will be 65 on my next birthday. Sometimes,
there are people listening to my words
and my songs who are old enough to be my
grandfather, and yet none of us have been here
very long.
When they teach about the history of this
Earth that we all share in the schools, they
have a chart that goes all the way across the
top of the blackboard from one corner of the
room to the next corner of the room. The history
of the two–leggeds is at the very end of
the chart. And yet in our brief time on this
Earth, we have figured out how to destroy
everything - the water, the soil, the air - each
other - and the Earth itself. So when I play
my flute and I taste the lifeblood of that
grandfather bristlecone, I hope for my
sake that it helps me remember that I need to
live my life in balance. I always hope that it
helps give me a sense of perspective about
what my place is in the circle of all living
things. We owe one hundred percent responsibility
to every other living thing in the
circle. These flutes come from a time when
the world was still young.
Back in the 1960s, the Smithsonian Institution
took a look around in Indian country
to see where this instrument was still
alive. They only found six Indian men in
the entire country who were keeping this
instrument from becoming nothing more
than a museum exhibit. One of those was a
man named 'Doc' Tate Nevaquaya, an elder of
the Comanche people of southern Oklahoma.
The Smithsonian Institution made some
recordings of his music, and the state of
Oklahoma declared him a living treasure
before he passed on. This is an unusual
thing in this country, where most do not
have a tradition of revering our elders. Native
People of North America have always
revered their elders.
Today, after 500 years of living in a society
with a dominant culture that is different
than the Native way, a lot has been lost. Until
1978, there were laws in this country that
kept Native people from their religious ways.
It was only in 1978 and again in the early
1990s that laws were passed to give back to
the Native People the right of religious freedom
that everyone else takes for granted as
citizens of this country. Fortunately for us,
our elders have kept those old ways from
disappearing—the songs, stories, ceremonies,
and dances. We honor them for that,
and our elders mean a lot to us. They are respected
in our community, and we thank
them for what they have done for all of us
who have come later. This flute that I have
been playing today came alive again for a
reason. We are at a crossroads. There is an
old Ojibwe prayer that says, “It is only the two–
leggeds that are broken.”
Here in Southern California, there are
people from all over the world living side by
side, probably more so than anywhere else in
this country. We are all still learning how to
be human beings together. I always hope that
people can hear in the voice of the instruments
a reminder that we are all part of the circle. We believe
the spirits of our ancestors are still here
guiding us, so I am thankful for the opportunity
to be here today, as you honor your
ancestors, as well, and give thanks for that
which has been given to all of us. It is too
easy to forget in the day–to–day struggle to
meet the demands of life how much has
been given to us. Native People sometimes
get caught up in dealing with the hardships
that have been handed to them. But all people,
in one way or another, have hardships.
We have to remember how much has been
given to us. I am thankful that I can do what
I do. I have no musical training, and I did
not start playing until I was 50 years old. I
feel like this gift was given to me for a reason,
and so I do my best to try to live up to
the music in one way or another.
I always hope that people, when they hear
the voice of the flute, will understand what
my words are about."
Editor's note:
The bristlecone tree survives
the environment found at 10,000 to 11,000
feet above sea level, the bitter extremes of cold,
wind, aridity, and exposure to ultraviolet light,
by growing very slowly. This slow growth results
in a very hard wood, so resinous that it is
extremely resistant to decay and disease. A
hero of vegetation, this pine gets tougher as
conditions become harsher. In times of long
draught and cold, the bristlecone dies back,
leaving mostly deadwood and just a thin slip
of living bark to sustain its future life; then,
when more favorable circumstances come, it
grows again.
The highly alkaline soils favored by the
bristlecone, along with the other harsh conditions,
result in little underbrush or ground cover
in the terrain on which it grows, thus eliminating
competition for the scarce nutrients.
Known as the Methuselah Tree, named for
the longest–lived Biblical character, a living
bristlecone has been dated to over 4,900 years
old, making it among the oldest living things on
earth. Ironically, this oldest living bristlecone
discovered so far, the oldest on earth, was cut
down for research purposes—research that
eventually proved the tree's antiquity. When a
bristlecone pine at long last dies, its wood could
be so thick and resistant to weather and pests
that it might survive the elements and stand for
over a thousand more years.
Bristlecones live at high elevations throughout
the Southwest of the United States.
Shumei's English Language Bi-Monthly Magazine
Vol. 275 May/June 2008
Tongva Tribe, the original people of the
Greater Los Angeles area, gave him the name,
"Mah–na–che–a–shun," which means “He
Sings With His Heart.” Elk Whistle also sang
for a number of years with the Red Spirit
Singers, a northern traditional powwow drum
group based in Southern California.
The following derives from an impromptu
talk that Elk Whistle was asked to give after
playing flute at the November 2007 Monthly
Sampai at Shumei America's National Center
in Pasadena. The November Sampai is
customarily set aside for honoring elders and
ancestors. The text has been edited for use in
this publication.
"I do not usually speak without my flutes in my hand.
Usually when I speak I tell stories about the songs that the flutes play.
Fifteen years ago, for some reason I was given the gift of playing
these instruments. The flutes that I play come
from a time when the world was still young and
all the living things on the Earth could still understand
each other and could still speak to
each other. When Native People talk about all
the living things on the Earth, we mean the
two–legged, the four–legged, the winged ones of
the air, the dwellers of the water, the creepy–
crawlies, the green things with roots that cling to
the earth, and even the stones of the Earth are
living things with a spirit and a voice and a will.
When I play these flutes, I always hope that
people hear within the voice of the flute that
connection between all other living things in the
circle of life.
The Lakota people of the Northern
Plains have seven sacred ceremonies, and in
all of their ceremonies they use an expression
in their language, which is “mitakuye oyasin.”
“Mitakuye oyasin” roughly translated
means “all my relations.” When they say “all
my relations,” they are talking about every
single living thing in the circle of life. Among
my people and among all Native People, we
talk about the sacred directions. Among my
people, the Cherokee or ‘Tsalagi,’ we talk
about seven sacred directions. The four cardinal
directions, East, South, West, and
North, represent all of creation. The fifth direction
is the Sky above, the sixth direction
is the Earth below, and the seventh direction
is Inside, at the Center.
When Native People talk about
standing at the Center, they mean
that they understand that they have
a hundred percent responsibility
for what they create in the world.
They are a hundred percent responsible
for how they live their
lives. There are things in the
world that we do not have control
over. What we do have control
over is how we behave when
things take place, how we react,
the decisions we make in response
to those things that
happen. The decisions and actions
we take in response to
all these things that occur is
how we create in the world.
Where you are right here,
right now, is the sum total of
every action and every decision
that we have ever made in our
entire lives that has brought us
to this point. We created it that
way. We are all creators, and as
creators, we have a hundred
percent responsibility to
every other living thing
in the circle.
These are things that I am still learning
myself. I am still learning how to live my
life. The flute that I played for you is a very
important flute to me. I always begin with it
and I almost always end with it. It is starting
to get a little battered–looking; it has water
spots on it from being rained on. I had a little
problem with that for a while. When I
would start playing, the wind would start
blowing and it would start raining. One of
my elders, a Kickapoo from Oklahoma, who
has since passed on, was very knowledgeable
in traditional Native People's ways. On
more than one occasion, he took me aside to
explain to me what my responsibility was in
playing these instruments. He told me about
a young man who was playing his flutes and
did not understand the power of the instrument
(because they are not just musical instruments),
and so it rained for six weeks
straight from his playing. The elder told me
to stick to the love songs, because one of the
traditional ways in which they were used
was by young men playing love songs for
young ladies.
I had to tell him that, in order to stay out
of trouble with the flutes, I had to be careful
about playing the love songs because I did not
want my wife to get upset with me. My flute is
starting to look a little battered, but it is the
flute that I used to welcome my
grandson into the world and to help
my elders pass on.
On the mouthpiece of the
flute is a black lump, the
lifeblood, the pitch of the
bristlecone pine tree of California.
Maybe some of you are familiar
with the bristlecones? If you go to
the Sequoia National Park, in the
Visitor's Center there you
hear languages from all over
the world from people who
come to visit those gigantic and
wonderful trees. But the bristlecone
pine is not a gigantic tree like the sequoias.
It is not as tall as the sequoias.
Bristlecone pines grow at ten– to
eleven–thousand foot elevations
in almost pure rock. They grow
in places where the wind blows
so hard and the snow on their
branches is so heavy that the
trees get broken and twisted. So,
they are very small and have
very twisted shapes. But there
is a kind of scientist called a
‘dendrochronologist’ that
is involved in studying
those trees. These scientists have discovered
that the bristlecone pines are the oldest living
things on the face of the Earth. There are
bristlecone pines here in California that are
nine to ten thousand years old, and they are
still growing. They are still putting out new
needles in springtime.
When my wife and I were there, visiting
those grandfather bristlecones, I asked for a
gift. I put a little bit of the lifeblood of one of
those grandfathers on the mouthpiece of my
flute. I hoped that when I played that flute, and
tasted the lifeblood of that grandfather, it
would remind me of something that I thought
I needed to remember. I am a grandfather,
too. I will be 65 on my next birthday. Sometimes,
there are people listening to my words
and my songs who are old enough to be my
grandfather, and yet none of us have been here
very long.
When they teach about the history of this
Earth that we all share in the schools, they
have a chart that goes all the way across the
top of the blackboard from one corner of the
room to the next corner of the room. The history
of the two–leggeds is at the very end of
the chart. And yet in our brief time on this
Earth, we have figured out how to destroy
everything - the water, the soil, the air - each
other - and the Earth itself. So when I play
my flute and I taste the lifeblood of that
grandfather bristlecone, I hope for my
sake that it helps me remember that I need to
live my life in balance. I always hope that it
helps give me a sense of perspective about
what my place is in the circle of all living
things. We owe one hundred percent responsibility
to every other living thing in the
circle. These flutes come from a time when
the world was still young.
Back in the 1960s, the Smithsonian Institution
took a look around in Indian country
to see where this instrument was still
alive. They only found six Indian men in
the entire country who were keeping this
instrument from becoming nothing more
than a museum exhibit. One of those was a
man named 'Doc' Tate Nevaquaya, an elder of
the Comanche people of southern Oklahoma.
The Smithsonian Institution made some
recordings of his music, and the state of
Oklahoma declared him a living treasure
before he passed on. This is an unusual
thing in this country, where most do not
have a tradition of revering our elders. Native
People of North America have always
revered their elders.
Today, after 500 years of living in a society
with a dominant culture that is different
than the Native way, a lot has been lost. Until
1978, there were laws in this country that
kept Native people from their religious ways.
It was only in 1978 and again in the early
1990s that laws were passed to give back to
the Native People the right of religious freedom
that everyone else takes for granted as
citizens of this country. Fortunately for us,
our elders have kept those old ways from
disappearing—the songs, stories, ceremonies,
and dances. We honor them for that,
and our elders mean a lot to us. They are respected
in our community, and we thank
them for what they have done for all of us
who have come later. This flute that I have
been playing today came alive again for a
reason. We are at a crossroads. There is an
old Ojibwe prayer that says, “It is only the two–
leggeds that are broken.”
Here in Southern California, there are
people from all over the world living side by
side, probably more so than anywhere else in
this country. We are all still learning how to
be human beings together. I always hope that
people can hear in the voice of the instruments
a reminder that we are all part of the circle. We believe
the spirits of our ancestors are still here
guiding us, so I am thankful for the opportunity
to be here today, as you honor your
ancestors, as well, and give thanks for that
which has been given to all of us. It is too
easy to forget in the day–to–day struggle to
meet the demands of life how much has
been given to us. Native People sometimes
get caught up in dealing with the hardships
that have been handed to them. But all people,
in one way or another, have hardships.
We have to remember how much has been
given to us. I am thankful that I can do what
I do. I have no musical training, and I did
not start playing until I was 50 years old. I
feel like this gift was given to me for a reason,
and so I do my best to try to live up to
the music in one way or another.
I always hope that people, when they hear
the voice of the flute, will understand what
my words are about."
Editor's note:
The bristlecone tree survives
the environment found at 10,000 to 11,000
feet above sea level, the bitter extremes of cold,
wind, aridity, and exposure to ultraviolet light,
by growing very slowly. This slow growth results
in a very hard wood, so resinous that it is
extremely resistant to decay and disease. A
hero of vegetation, this pine gets tougher as
conditions become harsher. In times of long
draught and cold, the bristlecone dies back,
leaving mostly deadwood and just a thin slip
of living bark to sustain its future life; then,
when more favorable circumstances come, it
grows again.
The highly alkaline soils favored by the
bristlecone, along with the other harsh conditions,
result in little underbrush or ground cover
in the terrain on which it grows, thus eliminating
competition for the scarce nutrients.
Known as the Methuselah Tree, named for
the longest–lived Biblical character, a living
bristlecone has been dated to over 4,900 years
old, making it among the oldest living things on
earth. Ironically, this oldest living bristlecone
discovered so far, the oldest on earth, was cut
down for research purposes—research that
eventually proved the tree's antiquity. When a
bristlecone pine at long last dies, its wood could
be so thick and resistant to weather and pests
that it might survive the elements and stand for
over a thousand more years.
Bristlecones live at high elevations throughout
the Southwest of the United States.
Shumei's English Language Bi-Monthly Magazine
Vol. 275 May/June 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2014
TAKING CARE OF PEOPLE
A very recent LinkedIn post by Michael Walters Young described "Taking Care of Your People" as the first rule of management. That is a lesson I first learned back in the mid-1970's while working as an assistant to the district silviculturist. In that position, I took on a job that was much-hated by the rank and file, especially by the seasonal firefighters who wanted to get back to work early before fire season started again after having been laid off all winter. The job was tree-planting, grueling stoop labor that went on for about three months, following the snow-melt up the mountains. It had to be done while there was sufficient soil moisture to give the seedlings a chance to get their roots established before the soil dried out. The seedlings were planted on a certain spacing that required the tree planters to move in formation, in unison. The crew followed a boundary such as a road, rock outcrop, or the edge of an area of brush-field that had been cleared with a tractor-mounted brush-rake, ready for planting. There was an appointed lead planter who started first and set the pace, following the boundaries of what might be an entire mountainside. The remainder of the 25-man crew keyed off of the the lead planter, maintaining the specified spacing and moving at the pace set by the lead planter. It was not a popular job. We worked in the rain, the mud, the snow - our hands cracked by the the water and the anti-transpirant in which the seedlings' roots had to be kept until they were put into the ground. The crew members who took the lead position were rotated around until it finally was settled on by two young men who liked to move quickly when they set the pace for the other planters, season after season. They became loyal to me as their supervisor despite the fact that I was very demanding - when seeing someone leaning on their tool to talk to another crew person, I would say to them "If you can't talk and work at the same time, don't talk!" My favorite was "Asses and elbows, gentlemen, asses and elbows!" (When engaged in stoop labor that is what you saw - asses and elbows.) We planted more forest acreage than any previous crews had ever done. Late in the season one spring I caught wind of the news that our district resource management officer had been given a $1,000 performance award for having written a 10-year resource management plan for the district which was not adopted but was considered worthy of recognition. I decided that my two young lead planters deserved as much recognition and so I put in for performance awards for both of them, something which hitherto had never happened for plebeian tree planters/firefighters. They were each awarded $150 with a letter of recognition going into their personnel files. I think some of the management on the district thought that I was overstepping my bounds but I felt that it was legitimate and needed. That was my first lesson in a teaching that was to become more and more important to me. And now I come to my final point. Life is filled with these opportunities - take advantage of them when you see them, not just for subordinates or colleagues, or friends and relations, but for everyone with whom you come into contact in your life. Have you ever thought about what might be called your "circle of compassion"? Who does it include? There is always room for more. Think of it as widening your circle of compassion, not in some pollyanna way, but as a means to reinforce behavior that is worthy of recognition. When enough of us choose to live our lives that way, imagine what the world will become. So I look beyond a rule of management to a more universal law. I need it, you need it, they need it - the world needs it. It is part of what used to be called among the indigenous peoples of North America the "Original Instructions".
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
"Seven Pillars of Wisdom" Concert
For your viewing pleasure, the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom " Concert in which I was honored and privileged to participate. This concert is currently booking tour dates around the world.
http://vimeo.com/84613445
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Playing At The Ranch
I will be performing again for the sound-healing workshops at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, at 11 AM and 4PM starting Monday, February 3rd, through Thursday, February 6th. I will be working with Susana Moore, Director of Contemplative Programs at the Ranch. I love being at the Ranch - the number one destination spa in the world according to readers of "Travel and Leisure" magazine. I am much healthier by the time I leave - even after only a few days.....
https://www.facebook.com/rancholapuerta?ref=ts&fref=ts
Thursday, January 16, 2014
A Letter from the Future - from an older me
'Siyo Bill,
I'm writing to you from the future.
I know this is a little weird, but
it's the only way I could get a message
through to you - and know that you got
it ;)
It's 2024 - which should be just about
10 years out from when you get this
message.
I know that you've done a lot in
your life so far - but I want to tell
you that there is something much bigger
in store for you in the not-too-distant-future...
...the problem is that there a few
things you MUST learn in order to
achieve your destiny... but...
um...
Well, there's no easy way to tell you this.
Ok...
Here goes nothing:
If you don't step up your game in the
next couple of weeks - this future that
I live in...
The one I'm writing to you from...
It won't exist.
Not at all.
If things keep going they way they
are right now - then everything is
doomed.
And when I say everything - I mean
EVERYTHING!
As you progress you're going to
run into some problems.
Some SERIOUS problems.
There are some BIG things in store
for you - but in order to accomplish
them you're going to face your worst
fears...
You're going to go up against obstacles
that you've never imagined...
You MUST persevere.
You MUST stay focused.
You MUST be relentless every day driving
toward your goal - your vision - your
DESTINY!
You are going to be tremendously successful
IF you are relentless - ALWAYS - in everything
you do.
Remember this the next time your spine
quivers...
The next time you consider giving up...
The next time you face a challenge you
aren't up for.
Press on.
Go forth.
If only you have the courage to step
forward and grasp what I've left
behind for you.
You've already taken massive steps
toward your own progress - I understand!
It's time to make
See you in 10 years.
It's going to be incredible
(I hope you make it - for
everyone's sake)
DOHIYI,
Bill
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Ojibwe Prayer - source unknown
Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way
We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk in the Sacred Way
Grandfather,
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion and honor
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.
~ Ojibway Prayer
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
The Map in the Head by David Peat
An expression of the Blackfoot's relationship to a reality of rocks, trees, animals and energies is expressed within what many Native Americans call "a map in the head". This map is a way of knowing where one is in relationship to the land, its history, society and all the living beings of nature. For the Blackfoot this map begins with Napi's body, which is traced out in the landscape in the form of rivers, buttes, hills and valleys. It is also the track left by Napi as he walked across his land. The Map in the Head is songs sung and the stories told around the fire at night. It is the relationship of the Blackfoot people to their world.
The map in the head is a form of knowledge, but knowledge, for the Blackfoot, is no mere collection of facts but something that one grows towards. Knowledge, like a song, is a living being; a being with which one can come into relationship. Coming to knowing is an active dialogue with nature; with the rocks, plants and animals. As one Blackfoot put it, "the plants and animals are our microscopes and laboratories."
Knowledge is relationship and relationship brings with it responsibilities and obligations. Thus it has been put to me that when Western science performs its experiments it is actually conversing with nature and, in this process, telling nature about ourselves. Are we willing to take responsibility for what we say? Each action in the laboratory must be balanced by its reaction somewhere else in the world. When we create order in one place we give birth to disorder in another.
Four Sacred Medicines - ‘Muskiiki’
Monday, January 7, 2013
2nd Annual Eagle and Condor Intertribal Powwow
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, MAY 18 AND 19, 2013 - MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
For the most current information, 'Like' the powwow Facebook page - get there by copying and pasting this link [I can't get blogspot to present it as a live link]: http://www.facebook.com/EagleAndCondorIntertribalPowwow.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Learning About Strength of Spirit (Or, Just One of My Fire-Fightin' War Stories?) - by Bill Neal
"Toughness is in the spirit and soul, not in the muscles." -~ Alex Karras
(For those who don't know, Alex Karras was a professional football player who later became an actor.)
But - here's my story. As a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, I learned that strength of spirit meant much more that physical strength. On one particular fire dispatch, our ranger district in Northern California had already sent out all the standing fire crews, so they scratched together a crew from what they could find on the district, anybody who could pass the step-test and had a red card (fire-job qualifications card). The crew boss and a squad boss were from fire management but I was the other squad boss and, at the time, I was the assistant silviculturist working in timber management. Most of the crew were young and inexperienced, from the Young Adult Conservation Corps, with a professional archeologist too, a young woman.
We spent three weeks going from fire to fire, three total in Southern California - three weeks of 18-hour shifts, getting four hours sleep a night in paper sleeping bags on the ground, without a day off. When we were dispatched to a new fire, the fire command thought we were a fresh crew and sent us out on night-duty to locations that the day crews were being flown into by helicopter. We had to walk in, up 80% slopes (I had a clinometer with me), from Cow Canyon Saddle up Mt. Baldy, and then out again at the end of the shift.
I was carrying an 18-pound chainsaw on my shoulder and a butt-pack full of rations and every kind of snack I could grab in camp. I was wearing a cruiser vest with lots of pockets under my brush coat and all my pockets were stuffed with candy, cookies, cans of juice, etc. Altogether, it was a heavy load. When we got to our assigned area where we were to cut fireline, reinforce the existing line, and put out hotspots, I started handing out the goodies to the crew - they were beginning to be in pretty bad shape by then and just walking in was a huge effort - everyone was falling out. The young archeologist was doing the same thing that I was doing. We were doing what we could to buck up the spirits of the crew - even the crew boss and the other squad boss were starting to lose it. At the time, I was 6'1", maybe 160 pounds, the archeologist was maybe 5'4" - this was in contrast to a muscular young ex-high school football hero on the crew who had started out flexing and strutting in fire camp.
The next night, we were doing structure protection in Icehouse Canyon on Mt. Baldy, up on the roofs of the cabins trying to keep them from burning. Earlier, we had gotten a hot meal at the Ice House Lodge, a beautiful old building with county firemen laying all over the floor sleeping - in the middle of our meal we had to run outside and cut a line around the lodge to keep it from burning (it finally burned to the ground in another fire several years later).
Icehouse Canyon was aptly named - a narrow, steep canyon with a year-round stream of snow-melt run-off - it was cold! It was approaching Thanksgiving by this point so we were freezing but, despite that, we were in the middle of a fire-storm powered by Santa Ana winds with fire blowing everywhere. It was getting pretty miserable. And then the ante went up - the burning vegetation on the steep canyon-sides above us was no longer holding back boulders, allowing them to roll loose - they were bounding and crashing down the canyon-side in the dark, right on top of us, like cannonballs. We could hear them coming but we couldn't see them in the dark until they were already there. We were totally exposed on the rooftops with no way to protect ourselves. That's when the football player started crying.
By that time, it was all that the slight little archeologist and I could do to keep the crew together and functioning. She was mothering everybody, even though she was probably still only in her 20's, and, at 36, I was being Papa Bear. She really did impress me with the strength of her spirit.
It was a life lesson for me in one of those situations that absolutely tests the limits of your endurance, your physical condition, your emotional stamina, and your spirit - one of those "when the chips are down" situations. I was struggling too, but I kept myself going by helping keep the others going. In that situation, what mattered most was not about being male or female, or being big and muscular, or being experienced - what mattered most was the strength of spirit, from whomever it came. It was quite a lesson for me that I will always remember.
(For those who don't know, Alex Karras was a professional football player who later became an actor.)
But - here's my story. As a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, I learned that strength of spirit meant much more that physical strength. On one particular fire dispatch, our ranger district in Northern California had already sent out all the standing fire crews, so they scratched together a crew from what they could find on the district, anybody who could pass the step-test and had a red card (fire-job qualifications card). The crew boss and a squad boss were from fire management but I was the other squad boss and, at the time, I was the assistant silviculturist working in timber management. Most of the crew were young and inexperienced, from the Young Adult Conservation Corps, with a professional archeologist too, a young woman.
We spent three weeks going from fire to fire, three total in Southern California - three weeks of 18-hour shifts, getting four hours sleep a night in paper sleeping bags on the ground, without a day off. When we were dispatched to a new fire, the fire command thought we were a fresh crew and sent us out on night-duty to locations that the day crews were being flown into by helicopter. We had to walk in, up 80% slopes (I had a clinometer with me), from Cow Canyon Saddle up Mt. Baldy, and then out again at the end of the shift.
I was carrying an 18-pound chainsaw on my shoulder and a butt-pack full of rations and every kind of snack I could grab in camp. I was wearing a cruiser vest with lots of pockets under my brush coat and all my pockets were stuffed with candy, cookies, cans of juice, etc. Altogether, it was a heavy load. When we got to our assigned area where we were to cut fireline, reinforce the existing line, and put out hotspots, I started handing out the goodies to the crew - they were beginning to be in pretty bad shape by then and just walking in was a huge effort - everyone was falling out. The young archeologist was doing the same thing that I was doing. We were doing what we could to buck up the spirits of the crew - even the crew boss and the other squad boss were starting to lose it. At the time, I was 6'1", maybe 160 pounds, the archeologist was maybe 5'4" - this was in contrast to a muscular young ex-high school football hero on the crew who had started out flexing and strutting in fire camp.
The next night, we were doing structure protection in Icehouse Canyon on Mt. Baldy, up on the roofs of the cabins trying to keep them from burning. Earlier, we had gotten a hot meal at the Ice House Lodge, a beautiful old building with county firemen laying all over the floor sleeping - in the middle of our meal we had to run outside and cut a line around the lodge to keep it from burning (it finally burned to the ground in another fire several years later).
Icehouse Canyon was aptly named - a narrow, steep canyon with a year-round stream of snow-melt run-off - it was cold! It was approaching Thanksgiving by this point so we were freezing but, despite that, we were in the middle of a fire-storm powered by Santa Ana winds with fire blowing everywhere. It was getting pretty miserable. And then the ante went up - the burning vegetation on the steep canyon-sides above us was no longer holding back boulders, allowing them to roll loose - they were bounding and crashing down the canyon-side in the dark, right on top of us, like cannonballs. We could hear them coming but we couldn't see them in the dark until they were already there. We were totally exposed on the rooftops with no way to protect ourselves. That's when the football player started crying.
By that time, it was all that the slight little archeologist and I could do to keep the crew together and functioning. She was mothering everybody, even though she was probably still only in her 20's, and, at 36, I was being Papa Bear. She really did impress me with the strength of her spirit.
It was a life lesson for me in one of those situations that absolutely tests the limits of your endurance, your physical condition, your emotional stamina, and your spirit - one of those "when the chips are down" situations. I was struggling too, but I kept myself going by helping keep the others going. In that situation, what mattered most was not about being male or female, or being big and muscular, or being experienced - what mattered most was the strength of spirit, from whomever it came. It was quite a lesson for me that I will always remember.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Of Microphones and Warmth
When the "Heart Song" CD was recorded between 1996 and 1998, technology was different than today - there was no Garageband or Amplitube software in iPhones or iPads. Gear was not designed around USB, recording was not as easy or democratic. So, back then - "Heart Song" was recorded and engineered by an ace in the recording industry with "golden ears": Kris Solem of 52nd Street Digital and Future Disc Systems in Los Angeles. Unbelievably, he was able to obtain the use of a Sheffield Labs tube microphone which had a tube preamp built into it, courtesy of Robert Hadley and Doug Sax of the Mastering Lab. Anyone who knows sound equipment, knows if you want warmth in a recording, you gotta use tubes instead of condenser microphones. But a Sheffield Labs microphone? I was told then that those mikes rented for three hundred dollars an hour, used by artists like Barbara Strreisand. Today, it's an extremely rare and sought after microphone. only about a dozen of these mics were made for the industry-changing Sheffield Labs direct-to-disk recordings. This is absolutely one of the finest mics in the world. Two songs, played on a bass flute, were not recorded with the Sheffield Labs microphone - the bass sound distorted too much. So a Neumann was brought in for the bass songs. The Neumann itself is a prized microphone, but not in league of the Sheffield Labs microphone, hand-built and rare. Why was the "Heart Song" CD so graced? Was there something in the music that called for it? Or was it simply the generosity of the will of the universe? Listen to the quality of the recording, mixing and mastering - it is undeniable. Is the quality of the playing equal to the quality of engineering? You have to decide that for yourself when you listen. Downloadeable tracks from the out-of-print "Heart Song" CD are available via PayPal at this link: http://www.facebook.com/WhitePathMusic/WhitePathMusic/app_96687436973. Dohiyi!
- by Bill Neal
- by Bill Neal
Saturday, August 4, 2012
The Making Of An Eagle Staff
Some years ago, when I first started to coordinate powwows, I was told that I needed an eagle staff for the gathering. I asked how that was to happen and was told simply to put out the word that it was needed. A couple of months later, at another gathering, a woman came to me to tell me she had heard I was making an eagle staff. I asked how she had heard that since I had said nothing to anyone - but she offered an eagle feather from a Cherokee elder who had passed over and came back the next day to gift me with it. I told a friend what happened and the friend offered to make the eagle staff for me - just provide the feathers. I called a friend who had gifted me with a feather from his son's headdress after his son was killed in a car accident - I asked permission to put the feather on the staff and he offered me seven more feathers.
That is how the eagle staff came to me that has now graced eight powwows, including the Eagle And Condor Intertribal Powwow, with its medicine. It now has twelve feathers but I have seven more to add to it, gifted to me by a young man at a youth conference for substance abuse prevention at which I had been asked to play. Having just been released from a residential treatment program, he came to me with the seven feathers and said to me that he had been praying about what to do with them - that it came to him that he was supposed to give them to me.
Now, I have two questions in my mind. The first - how is it that things sometimes happen this way and other times not? What is at work when that happens?
The second question, which is troubling to me, is: should I even be speaking of these things here? These are delicate matters and need to be discussed circumspectly and respectfully. There are many, many reasons not to speak of these things in this kind of forum - but now it is done and I do not withdraw it.
Please know that there is so much more to be learned than can ever be shared this way. Any who are really serious about learning these ways must seek it in person from those who know, over time, with the utmost patience, humility and respect for that which is being given.
Now, I have two questions in my mind. The first - how is it that things sometimes happen this way and other times not? What is at work when that happens?
The second question, which is troubling to me, is: should I even be speaking of these things here? These are delicate matters and need to be discussed circumspectly and respectfully. There are many, many reasons not to speak of these things in this kind of forum - but now it is done and I do not withdraw it.
Please know that there is so much more to be learned than can ever be shared this way. Any who are really serious about learning these ways must seek it in person from those who know, over time, with the utmost patience, humility and respect for that which is being given.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Blackfoot Physics and European Minds: David Peat
Abstract
Western science and "European consciousness" is contrasted with that of Indigenous and traditional peoples. The metaphysics of the Blackfoot of North America and this vision of an animate world is examined. It is argued that something similar existed in Europe of the early middle ages but that the secularization of space, time and matter
paved the way for the development of science. A new science may be possible which combines the current power of abstraction and analysis with an "impersonal subjectivity".
Introduction
European consciousness dominates the world. As we move towards the next millennium will this continue to be the case? In this article I explore a radically different world-view, that of the Blackfoot of North America, and ask if their approach to society and the natural world has anything of significance to teach us. Indeed, can the study of alternative ways of thinking give rise to a creative response within own consciousness?
The initial statement of this article requires amplification and qualification. By "European consciousness" I do not mean something confined to a specific geographical location but, rather, a way of thinking and behaving that, while it did happen to develop within Europe, now has an influence across much of the globe. Its seeds were already present in the middle ages and its flowering resulted in the secularizing of time and of space, the rise of science and the proliferation of technology. It transformed a society that had previously existed on trade and barter into the major force for expansion and progress that now dominates the world.
One of the most dramatic products of the Western mind has been its particular approach to science, a discipline that, along with its associated technology, is by no means as objective, neutral and value free as we once believed. Western science expresses an entire metaphysics about the way be relate to the world, society and ourselves. Western science has its triumph yet we are now aware of the hubris connected to its success. To take one example, our technology acts somewhat like a virus which, when it enters a society, transforms its entire structure. Export a sack of seed, a bag of fertilizer or a canister of pesticide to the Third World and one transforms an entire way of life that may have survived, largely unchanged, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
An Animate World
In recent years I have often heard the boast that, for the first time in human history, we all share the same story of creation and that today children all over the world are being taught the same facts about nature. Western science has become the yardstick of truth and, measured against it, the stories and traditions that have sustained ancient cultures are dismissed as myths, superstitions and old wives tales.
But, measured on the scale of the world's civilizations, this "European mind" is comparatively young and its science a mere infant. Go back a millennium and time was experienced as a cycle of renewal. The seasons, the rhythms of daily life and the church's calendar were all in harmony. Space was united with time and its interior was as rich as the yoke of an egg. Aristotle's natural philosophy taught that each body has its natural place; medieval society was a world in which each person was in his or her proper place. Our modern notions of the rights of the individual was far less important than the well being of society as a whole.
In such a world everything was alive; rocks, rivers and trees. Nature was constantly at work and it fell to human beings to act as her midwife. Metals grew in the womb of the earth and the sacred work of the miner and blacksmith brought this labour to completion. In many ways the reality of this world was far larger than the scientific reality we inhabit today.
For a variety of reasons European consciousness began to change. Time, the theologians had argued, belongs to God but now it became secularized though the practice of usury. Banking is about buying time and setting time aside. Inevitably a secularized time led to our modern obsession with growth and progress, prediction and control.
In the twelfth century Aquinas denied that the artifex (miner, blacksmith, sculptor, etc.) is the assistant to nature for, he claimed, while the form of matter may be altered, its essence is untouched. The crafts and arts of humankind had been reduced to the superficial transformation of mere appearance.
In 1438 another influence was added to the developing European mind. With Byzantium under threat from the expansion of the Ottoman empire its Emperor, John Paleologus, along with seven hundred advisors, traveled to Florence in an attempt to gain Pope Eugenius IV's military support. In exchange he offered a resolution of the theological differences between the two churches. The result was that for a time Florence was filled with neo-Platonism and its influence, at the height of the Renaissance, cannot be underestimated.
In the thirteenth century William of Auvergne could write "When you consider the order and magnificence of the universe... you will find it like a most beautiful canticle.. and the wonders and varieties of its creatures to be a symphony of joy and harmony to the very essence. ... The goodness of a substance, and its beauty are the same thing". Likewise Abbot Sugar supervised the rebuilding of the abbey church of St. Denis in order to make the divine manifest within bronze, stone, stained glass, precious metals and jewels.1 Now, in the Renaissance, artists were directing their gaze away from the natural world into one of ideal forms.
Within this melting pot of ideas matter and spirit became fragmented one from the other and a participatory reality was transformed into scientific objectivity. For me the exemplar of this change of consciousness is linear perspective which developed in the earlier part of the Renaissance. Siena is referred to by Italians and a feminine city. Within the paintings of its school time and space are united. The various events of a saint's life are presented in total, like a superimposed comic strip; and while depth in space is certainly indicated it is still possible to see an object from a multiplicity of viewpoints. But, as the Renaissance developed in the more masculine city of Florence, time was abstracted from space and painting was left with the single viewpoint, a frozen world seen though a window. With the device of perspective one longer enters into to painting but views it with an objective eye. Mirroring the metaphysics of the period, nature has been projected away from us and the world is experienced as something external.
The mathematical basis of perspective is called Projective Geometry. This term says it all. One no longer engages directly with an object in its natural, essential form, as something that can be explored and touched, instead it becomes a surface that must be distorted to fit the global logic of mathematical perspective. The rich individualistic inscape of the natural world had given way to a uniform perspectival grid of logic and reason.
How well perspective parallels a science in which nature obeys laws that are, in some metaphysical sense, external to matter's essence. As Bacon argued, these laws are to be discovered by placing nature on the rack, another sort of grid, and tormenting her to reveal her secrets. Descartes and Newton can not be held responsible for our modern world, the seeds of its consciousness were sown long before.
It is only as we reach our own modern age that the perspectival vision of science has been shaken by, for example, quantum theory. Yet artists are always the antennae of society and the foreshocks could be felt when Cezanne restored touch to painting and, in the process, activated time and multiplicity of viewpoint. Never interested in projection Cezanne entered directly into nature, and nature entered into him. "The Landscape becomes reflective, human and thinks itself though me." he wrote, "I make it an object, let it project itself and endure within my painting....I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape, and my painting becomes its objective consciousness." 2
The Modern Mind
The European mind, along with its material and conceptual products, exerts a powerful seductive force on all of us. It would be extremely difficult to live without the products of such a consciousness, nor would most of us we wish to - at least not in an entirely radical fashion. Many have already written of the shadow side to this power; intensive farming, high technology medicine, rapid communications and so on. My own interest in somewhat different. It is to ask if an earlier richness together with a sense of harmony and a balance can be restored to the European mind. It is to ask if an ethical and moral dimension can be added to our science and technology and if supposed objectivity can be tempered through participation.
Is our world destined towards increasing uniformity or can we accommodate alternative view points and metaphysics, each enriching the other? The arts have always been eager for such enrichment, Debussy drew upon Balanese music, Picasso on African masks, and a director like Peter Brooke has explored the world's theatrical traditions. When used in a creative and respectful way these are not acts of cultural appropriation but of cultural renewal. Is something similar possible within our science?
At this point is could be objected that, unlike the arts, science is objective and, from a cultural point of view, value-free. It is for this reason, it is said, that Indigenous and marginalized cultures cannot really co-exist beside industrialized nations and are doomed to extinction. I don't believe this is true. Traditional cultures have enormous power and may, in the end, act to transform or renew our own technological society.
An Alternative Vision
My test case is that of the Blackfoot people, a nation who once occupied an area of the North American plains east of the Rocky Mountains but now today live in reserves in Montana, U.S. and reservations in Alberta, Canada. By tradition they were hunters of buffalo; traveling with their tepis in the summer and wintering along river banks. Their language is a member of the great Algonquin family which runs from the Cheyenne in the central US plains though the Blackfoot and up into northern Canada with Ojibwaj and Cree finally into the Naskapi of Labrador.
My encounter, as a representative of Western science, with the Blackfoot was neither systematic nor anthropological3. It was more an ongoing friendship and a series of discussions about our respective world-views. In turn this led to a number of circles in which Western scientists sat with Blackfoot and other Native American Elders.
The Blackfoot have weathered the extermination of the buffalo and the appropriation of their lands. Anyone past middle age would have experienced the residential schools in which children's heads were shaved, clothing burned, and a prohibition placed upon speaking their mother tongue or praying according to their tradition - physical and sexual abuse was also far from uncommon. Today the Blackfoot have exchanged their horses for cars and pickup trucks. They live in houses instead of tepis and job hunting has replaced the buffalo jump and buffalo wallow. Surrounded by the pressures of North American society they are faced with drug and alcohol problems yet what struck me most during my visits is the way that the old is able to coexist with the new so that, for many Blackfoot, their traditional vision and metaphysics survives untarnished. Clearly the Blackfoot have the extraordinary ability to coexist within two worlds. Yet they taught me that we all possess a similar capacity and buried deep within the European mind lies something that may be able to temper the momentum of our present path. We are all indigenous people, in the sense that each of us is the carrier of a sacred relationship to the natural world and has access to a wider vision of a reality long denied.
Blackfoot Reality
What is the nature of Blackfoot reality? Certainly it is far wider than our own, yet firmly based within the natural world of vibrant, living things. Once our European world saw nature in a similar way, a vision still present in poets like Blake, Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins who perceived the immanence and inscape of the world. Nevertheless our consciousness has narrowed to the extent that matter is separated from spirit and we seek our reality in an imagined elsewhere of abstractions, Platonic realms, mathematical elegance, and physical laws.
The Blackfoot know of no such fragmentation. Not only do they speak with rocks and trees, they are also able to converse with that which remains invisible to us, a world of what could be variously called spirits, or powers, or simply energies. But these forces are not the occupants of a mystical or abstract domain, they remain an essential aspect of the natural, material world. It is not so much that the Blackfoot live in an extended reality but that our own Western vision had become excessively myopic.
This wider reality embraces flux, movement, change and transformation. The creator of the land, Napi (the Old Man), is also its trickster, one who is constantly changing form, traversing boundaries and upsetting preconceptions. For example, what the West takes as the aberration of multiple personality becomes the acceptance that an individual is not a fixed thing but fluid, a being whose multiplicity is reflected in the way a person's name keeps transforming during their life.
How is one to maintain orientation in a universe in which everything is caught up in the river of transformation. How can anything be preserved from change? The answer lies in participation within the flux by means of acts of renewal. Renewal requires an act of sacrifice and it is these sacrifices, these actions of participation, performed each morning when the sun rises, each year at the Sun Dance, which help to maintain the great circle of renewal. Thanks to these acts of renewal time, within the flux, turns on its axis. Seasons follow seasons. Circling time is always the same, yet always different, always renewed.
Acts of renewal reflect the compacts formed in ancient times; negotiated relationships between the ancestors and the energies, or spirits, or keepers of the land. No one believes that a pipe ceremony actually causes the sun to rise. Rather, by renewing their relationships to the dynamics of nature the Blackfoot maintain a harmonious role within the cosmos. Within a balanced cosmos the sun will rise and the seasons follow in their proper harmony.
Personal sacrifice, responsibility, ceremonies and acts of renewal therefore have nothing to do with the world of mechanical causality but are more to do with a relationship to a living cosmos. Although it does not come from the Blackfoot, the story of the rainmaker well illustrates this point:- A rainmaker was called to a region experiencing drought. He arrived and immediately went into the hut provided for him only to emerge several days later as it began to rain. When he was asked how he had made the rain he replied that he had not caused the rain to fall. Rather, when he arrived in the village he discovered everything to be in disharmony. He therefore retired to his hut in order to bring himself back into balance. Once balance had been restored then nature returned to harmony and the rain fell as it naturally should.
Carl Jung chose to term this synchronicity, his "acausal connecting principle".4 It was present earlier in the West in the form of Alchemy in which external material workings and internal transformations mirror each other. This constant movement towards balance and harmony within the flux is the essence of the Blackfoot world.
The Map in the Head
An expression of the Blackfoot's relationship to a reality of rocks, trees, animals and energies is expressed within what many Native Americans call "a map in the head". This map is a way of knowing where one is in relationship to the land, its history, society and all the living beings of nature. For the Blackfoot this map begins with Napi's body, which is traced out in the landscape in the form of rivers, buttes, hills and valleys. It is also the track left by Napi as he walked across his land. The Map in the Head is songs sung and the stories told around the fire at night. It is the relationship of the Blackfoot people to their world.
The map in the head is a form of knowledge, but knowledge, for the Blackfoot, is no mere collection of facts but something that one grows towards. Knowledge, like a song, is a living being; a being with which one can come into relationship. Coming to knowing is an active dialogue with nature; with the rocks, plants and animals. As one Blackfoot put it, "the plants and animals are our microscopes and laboratories."
Knowledge is relationship and relationship brings with it responsibilities and obligations. Thus it has been put to me that when Western science performs its experiments it is actually conversing with nature and, in this process, telling nature about ourselves. Are we willing to take responsibility for what we say? Each action in the laboratory must be balanced by its reaction somewhere else in the world. When we create order in one place we give birth to disorder in another.
Such a point of view should not be entirely alien to our European minds. It was a European, Goethe, who suggested an alternative to the Newtonian method which he saw as a way of gaining knowledge by placing nature in highly artificial situations. By contrast, Goethe sought "an instant worth a thousand, bearing all within itself." 5 His method involved, for example, coming into relationship with plants and contemplating their inner nature. In this fashion Goethe sought to understand the inner nature and meaning of plants.6
While Newtonian science studies particular instances in the hope of generalizing into a law of nature - unity within multiplicity - Goethe studied the multiplicity that arises out of unity. Goethe's notion of the archetype of all plants resonates with Indigenous concept of the Guardians or Keepers of plants and animals. By carrying a piece of bone a Blackfoot comes into direct contact with the Guardian or Keeper of the buffalo.
Healing
Plants have the power to heal. For the Blackfoot the nature of their action cannot be reduced simply to chemical substances or molecules. Healing involves a relationship to the entire plant and this includes its power, energy, spirit, or in Goethe's terms, its archetype.
One can perhaps understand this by analogy to sacred sculpture of, for example, India. Within a ceremony these objects act as windows into the world of the sacred yet are at the same time no more than stone, clay and pigment. Their action is that of a diagram, or map, of the pattern of the sacred. One comes into relationship with the numinous though the catalytic action of the icon. In a similar way the plant and its associated chemicals open into a larger world of energies and healing powers.
There is a related metaphor in Western science. A molecule is not so much an object but a dynamical pattern. At the quantum level it is a pattern of energies which extend into the ground state of the entire cosmos. Absorbed into the body this dynamic energy pattern provokes a range of transformations of the body's biochemical activities. Of course, the analogy can only go so long as Western science continues to fragment matter from ethical values, consciousness and spirit.
It goes without saying that the relationship to the plant world extends into ecological practice, and here I am drawing not upon the Blackfoot but my conversations with the Mohawk. When one hunts for a medicine plant, or for that matter for an animal, one does not pick the first or second one comes upon but always the third. A prayer is first offered that the plant will sacrifice itself and after it has been picked an offering is made to the earth. Returning home the plant is treated in a respectful manner for one is not only dealing with the particular but the universal, the Guardian of the plant, the archetype. In the action of healing with the plant energy may be exchanged but within such a metaphysics whatever is taken must, in some way, be paid back.
Language
The Blackfoot I have met speak of their traditional ways as a science.7Of particular significance is the way this science is enfolded within their language. The language contains the map of the land, the relationships to the energies and spirits of all living thing - the rocks, the trees, the plants, birds, fish and animals. The flux in which they live is perfectly expressed in what could be termed their "process language". European languages have a heavy reliance upon nouns and lend themselves so well to a type of thinking that deals in categories and Aristotelian logic.8 Our physical reality is that of objects in interaction with one another - nouns linked by verbs. This thinking also extends into the abstract and psychological spheres when the world of our experiences, relationships and feelings becomes a collection of objects of thought to be manipulated, generalized, abstracted and acted upon. How eagerly do we build categories and concepts, how literally do we take our "language games", how easily do we become trapped in empty philosophical argument.
While other problems may certainly arise this sort of trap is not present within a language where the verb takes centre stage. Within Blackfoot all is movement, process and transformation. Nouns as objects emerge in a secondary way though the modification of verbs. To them the English language is a straight-jacket which forces their minds into a world of objects, categories and restrictive logic.
Take, as an example, healing. To the Western mind this is a transitive business in which the doctor (noun) acts upon the patient (another noun) to bring about a some change of state. For the Blackfoot healing is a process. This process is itself the primary reality, rather than that of patient and doctor. Healing often involves singing. In this case in speaking about healing the process of the singing is the focus of the linguistic act. Rather than singing being performed by someone, the pure act of singing is taking place - singing is singing itself. It is out of this singing that healing unfolds to reveal the previously sick person.
Again an analogy from contemporary science may help. According to classical physics nature consists of objects in interaction with one another. Observation is an objective business that reveals the world for what it is. Quantum theory, by contrast, stresses that observation is participation and within any act of observation the observer and observed are united in a holistic and unanalyzable way. Observation is a process within which it is no longer possible to speak of the independent existence, or properties of, the observer and observed.
As Neils Bohr pointed out the paradoxes and difficulties of quantum theory arise out of our need to employ ordinary language in our discourse. But this language, be it English or Danish, historically developed in a particular way and within a world of classical objects. We are suspended in this language so that we do not know which way is up and which is down. By contrast, the Blackfoot live in a world that is much closer to that quantum domain, a world of flux, transformation and essential relationship far from that of absolute categories, fixed objects and rigid Aristotelian dualities. Their language perfectly reflects this world.
Harmony and Balance
Knowledge is not partitioned in a holistic world and Blackfoot science is not confined simply to the material. It embraces society and good government. Its norm is balance and harmony. Society is not an artifact built by individuals with rights and freedoms, rather it is a process of renewal, a coherent whole out of which emerge persons with responsibilities and obligations. An individual exists in respect to his or her relationships with society and nature.
Take as an example, Blackfoot justice. What we would term a crime is, to many indigenous people, a disruption of the harmonious working of their society. Rather than approaching this disorder in terms of adversarial trial, proof, guilt and punishment, a circle of elders meet with the aggrieve party and perpetrator. Discussion within this circle is not so much designed to establish the factuality of what has occurred but rather it seeks a way of restoring balance. Thus the perpetrator may asked to suggest some action that would satisfy all parties. Finally, when everyone is again in a balanced relationship the decision is made public.
Indigenous Science
The Blackfoot speak of a science which includes a metaphysics of the reality in which they live, a set of relationships to the natural world, a deep understanding of their immediate environment, and a technology appropriate to their lifestyle. Such a science is common to many other indigenous peoples of the Americas and, indeed, to traditional peoples world-wide.
As the notion of "a Map in the Head" suggests, such a science is not, like our own, of an exclusive objective and global nature but is specific to a people and a place. Perhaps an analogy with cooking may help. The world's great cuisines are each associated with a particular country and region. After having lived in Italy for more than a year I am discovering that there is no such thing as "Italian" cooking but rather a way of cooking that is specific to the meats, fish, vegetables and fruits of a particular region. Even the Tuscan cooking of my particular province is subdivided. Great cooking involves a deep understanding and empathy to the nature of the materials available. It is at the same time a science and a high art that is not easily exportable.
This metaphor applies to the indigenous sciences of North America. The Haida, living on the British Columbia seaboard developed masterpieces of marine engineering: coastal and ocean going canoes, carved out of giant cedar trees. The particular shape and mass of these vessels enables the Haida to move at high speed across the ocean and to sustain long voyages without exhaustion. Another of their sciences, which is shared with other Pacific peoples such as the Maori and Hawaiians is a ways of navigating over long distances using patterns of stars, and observing the pattern of waves and the direction of the wind.
The Algonkin of the Eastern Woodlands are hunters and gathers who must venture for many days from their homes. Their technology enables them to construct a birchbark canoe, using only a curved knife and the materials of the forest, in less than a day. The vessel is strong enough to support a heavy load as it travels though white water rapids, yet light enough to be portaged from river to river.
South of the Algonkin the Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederation are farmers. They employ a biological symbioses by planting the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) together; corn supplying a mechanical support and beans fixing nitrogen to supply nutrients in the earth. Yet eventually land can be farmed out and wild plants over picked. So, in traditional times, the Mohawk would, after two or three generations, abandon their villages and rebuild some distance away, allowing the forest to return to its pristine state. The complexity of their civilization and their negotiations with the energies of the earth is reflected in a language which employs a large number of names referring to relationship.
In so many cases a traditional people, before disruption by European civilization, possessed considerable knowledge of their territory and adapted technologies appropriate to the environment and way of life. For this reasons such people may appear conservative and slow to adapt. But one should remember a maxim employed by some of the indigenous people of North America. In taking a decision one does not so much consider its immediate impacts but the consequences it will have upon the seventh generation to come after. In this respect we should recall a, possibly apocryphal, story that has been related to be by a number of architects. It was found that, after many centuries, the great oak beams in an Oxford college needed replacing. Consultants considered substituting other materials until someone discovered in the college records that at the time of the founding of the college a stand of oaks had been donated with an eye of future replacement. According the story these oaks were now well matured and could be used to renovate the roof.
Conclusions
It is not the intention of this essay to argue that we should abandon the Western world-view and become Blackfoot over night. Rather it is to suggest that it would be useful for us to examine our metaphysics in the light of that of another society. In this way we may come to realize that much of what we take to be inevitable and self-evident is, to a great extent, a social conditioned perception which contains a variety of unexamined assumptions.
There is a great deal to be proud of in our science and technology yet our modern world exhibits much that we now desire to change. Radical change requires a shift in perception and a transformation of consciousness. Maybe there are lessons to be learned from Blackfoot physics as an alternative way of viewing the world.
But could "Blackfoot physics" be applied in Europe, for example? The essential issue is that, unlike in the west, there are no Blackfoot physicists, nor for that matter are their any Blackfoot artists. Rather each person is a generalist, who has come to know the wisdom of the group. This is not to say that there are not people with special healing abilities, or Keepers of Sacred Bundles, or Elders who know many of the Lodge tales, but rather that the traditional ways of the Blackfoot are available to all their people.
Blackfoot science has not fragmented as a particular system of knowledge from the other areas of life. It would be difficult, and probably impossible, to abstract something called Blackfoot Physics from the entire culture and then import in packaged form into a Western laboratory.
It is certainly true that Western science is already extracting certain knowledge from the Indigenous peoples of the world. Most of this involves information about the pharmaceutical powers of rare plants, fungi and the like. Indeed, one of the arguments for delaying the destruction of the world's rain forests and other threatened ecologies is their potential for exploitation for wonder drugs and miracle cures. But, again, this is being done in a fragmentary way. Science removes the plant from its environment and analyses it to discover active ingredients. Once they have been synthesized there is no need to preserve that particular ecology or to attempt to understand the world-view in which that plant was respected and used.
As long as Indigenous science is only employed in this fragmented way it will make little impact on the Western mind. A genuine dialogue can only develop if Western science is willing to extend its horizons and, for example, temper its abstract objectivity with what could perhaps be called an impersonal subjectivity:. Impersonal since it does not rely upon the accidents of personal biography and prejudice, yet subjective because it speaks to our deep relationship to the world, and our objective intuitions about nature.
That subjectivity is antithetical to science because it is believed to involve the distortions of highly personal biographical material is the legacy of Europe's romantic movement. In an earlier age the subject, the artist or musician for example, sought to eliminate the purely personal in their work and become the servant or conduit of what lay beyond. Indeed, personal expression was considered to be in bad taste, a falling from the ideal.
Such art sought to express the numinous, the divine archetype, pure form, call it what you will, in a direct a way as possible by eliminating the idiosyncratically personal. It was a marriage of objectivity and subjectivity, the inner and outer response to archetypes and materials. I am suggesting that something similar may be possible within Western science. The power of its objectivity should be retained while, at the same time, opening the door to an impersonal subjectivity - a more direct connection to the material world, one that is felt, experienced and becomes the object of a trained intuition.
Within the framework of such a science it may be possible to open a dialogue to other traditions and ways of thinking. Such a science could be simultaneously global, in that it seeks universal laws of nature, and local, in that it responds to particular ecologies and social needs and, at the same time, choosing alternative metaphors for its expression.
The philosopher Wittgenstein pointed out that when philosophy believes it is speaking of great truths it is really involved in a variety of language games. This is equally true of science for, no matter how abstract the mathematics, its interpretation and meaning must always be expressed in everyday language. And such language carries with it a great deal of biological and cultural baggage. Language, in which all science must be expressed, is far from being value free.
It could be said that our current way of thinking, our "European minds", has not yet caught up with the deeper meaning of the scientific discoveries of this century. Quantum theory stresses the wholeness of nature and the inadequacy for what could be termed "the Cartesian Order". That is, an order based upon notions of continuous space and time. One of the most significant movements within contemporary science is the search for this new order. In a sense it is a desire to reanimate time, a way of bringing back a truly dynamical time into the heart of physics. But to do this implies an entirely new metaphysics and a change in the way we think about the world.
Such a change is also inherent in the discoveries of chaos theory and non-linear systems. A science seeking certainty, control, predictability and closure has ended up subverting itself. The world, we have learned is far more complex than our attempts to describe it. It contains regions of infinite sensitivity and absolute unpredictability.
As I have argued in this essay, one of the great changes in the European mind was the secularization of time and the projection of nature into some world external to the essence of a human being. It seems to me that within our modern world are the seeds of something entirely different. They are the seeds of a consciousness that, in some ways, may resonate with that of the Blackfoot. It is a consciousness that seeks a deeper and more compassionate relationship with the natural world. One which may replace prediction and control by something more intelligent, more subtle and more and holistic gentle in its action. Above all what is require is a creative response to the modern age. Such a change of consciousness requires an enormous energy, for we are being called upon to dismantle old perceptions and prejudices and leave ourselves open for the operation of the creative.
References
U. Eco, "Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages", Yale U.P., 1986
Joyce Medina, "Cezanne and Modernism: The poetics of painting" SUNY, Albany 1995
F. David Peat, "Blackfoot Physics" 4th Estate, London, 1995.
F. David Peat, "Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind", Bantam Books, NY, 1987
Henri Borthoft "The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way towards a Science of Wholeness". Lindisfarne Press, Hudson, NY 1996
The biologist Brian Goodwin, in a private discussion, told me about a current revival in the Goethean approach. He is working with what could be called objective intuition, an way of inner knowing that, he believes, should coexist with conventional biology, each enriching the other.
In this respect I am reminded to a story from Ancient China. In a time of great political unrest the country's leaders sought the advice of the Confucius. What action should they take to restore harmony. The sage replied that they should first purify the Chinese language and restore it to its original pristine state. In our own times we have become aware of the extent to which the English language has become corrupted in the mouths of some politicians and the military. The language we use is irreducibly linked to our perception of the world.
Alan Ford and F. David Peat, "The Role of Language In Science", Foundations of Physics 8, 1233, (1988)
Western science and "European consciousness" is contrasted with that of Indigenous and traditional peoples. The metaphysics of the Blackfoot of North America and this vision of an animate world is examined. It is argued that something similar existed in Europe of the early middle ages but that the secularization of space, time and matter
paved the way for the development of science. A new science may be possible which combines the current power of abstraction and analysis with an "impersonal subjectivity".
Introduction
European consciousness dominates the world. As we move towards the next millennium will this continue to be the case? In this article I explore a radically different world-view, that of the Blackfoot of North America, and ask if their approach to society and the natural world has anything of significance to teach us. Indeed, can the study of alternative ways of thinking give rise to a creative response within own consciousness?
The initial statement of this article requires amplification and qualification. By "European consciousness" I do not mean something confined to a specific geographical location but, rather, a way of thinking and behaving that, while it did happen to develop within Europe, now has an influence across much of the globe. Its seeds were already present in the middle ages and its flowering resulted in the secularizing of time and of space, the rise of science and the proliferation of technology. It transformed a society that had previously existed on trade and barter into the major force for expansion and progress that now dominates the world.
One of the most dramatic products of the Western mind has been its particular approach to science, a discipline that, along with its associated technology, is by no means as objective, neutral and value free as we once believed. Western science expresses an entire metaphysics about the way be relate to the world, society and ourselves. Western science has its triumph yet we are now aware of the hubris connected to its success. To take one example, our technology acts somewhat like a virus which, when it enters a society, transforms its entire structure. Export a sack of seed, a bag of fertilizer or a canister of pesticide to the Third World and one transforms an entire way of life that may have survived, largely unchanged, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
An Animate World
In recent years I have often heard the boast that, for the first time in human history, we all share the same story of creation and that today children all over the world are being taught the same facts about nature. Western science has become the yardstick of truth and, measured against it, the stories and traditions that have sustained ancient cultures are dismissed as myths, superstitions and old wives tales.
But, measured on the scale of the world's civilizations, this "European mind" is comparatively young and its science a mere infant. Go back a millennium and time was experienced as a cycle of renewal. The seasons, the rhythms of daily life and the church's calendar were all in harmony. Space was united with time and its interior was as rich as the yoke of an egg. Aristotle's natural philosophy taught that each body has its natural place; medieval society was a world in which each person was in his or her proper place. Our modern notions of the rights of the individual was far less important than the well being of society as a whole.
In such a world everything was alive; rocks, rivers and trees. Nature was constantly at work and it fell to human beings to act as her midwife. Metals grew in the womb of the earth and the sacred work of the miner and blacksmith brought this labour to completion. In many ways the reality of this world was far larger than the scientific reality we inhabit today.
For a variety of reasons European consciousness began to change. Time, the theologians had argued, belongs to God but now it became secularized though the practice of usury. Banking is about buying time and setting time aside. Inevitably a secularized time led to our modern obsession with growth and progress, prediction and control.
In the twelfth century Aquinas denied that the artifex (miner, blacksmith, sculptor, etc.) is the assistant to nature for, he claimed, while the form of matter may be altered, its essence is untouched. The crafts and arts of humankind had been reduced to the superficial transformation of mere appearance.
In 1438 another influence was added to the developing European mind. With Byzantium under threat from the expansion of the Ottoman empire its Emperor, John Paleologus, along with seven hundred advisors, traveled to Florence in an attempt to gain Pope Eugenius IV's military support. In exchange he offered a resolution of the theological differences between the two churches. The result was that for a time Florence was filled with neo-Platonism and its influence, at the height of the Renaissance, cannot be underestimated.
In the thirteenth century William of Auvergne could write "When you consider the order and magnificence of the universe... you will find it like a most beautiful canticle.. and the wonders and varieties of its creatures to be a symphony of joy and harmony to the very essence. ... The goodness of a substance, and its beauty are the same thing". Likewise Abbot Sugar supervised the rebuilding of the abbey church of St. Denis in order to make the divine manifest within bronze, stone, stained glass, precious metals and jewels.1 Now, in the Renaissance, artists were directing their gaze away from the natural world into one of ideal forms.
Within this melting pot of ideas matter and spirit became fragmented one from the other and a participatory reality was transformed into scientific objectivity. For me the exemplar of this change of consciousness is linear perspective which developed in the earlier part of the Renaissance. Siena is referred to by Italians and a feminine city. Within the paintings of its school time and space are united. The various events of a saint's life are presented in total, like a superimposed comic strip; and while depth in space is certainly indicated it is still possible to see an object from a multiplicity of viewpoints. But, as the Renaissance developed in the more masculine city of Florence, time was abstracted from space and painting was left with the single viewpoint, a frozen world seen though a window. With the device of perspective one longer enters into to painting but views it with an objective eye. Mirroring the metaphysics of the period, nature has been projected away from us and the world is experienced as something external.
The mathematical basis of perspective is called Projective Geometry. This term says it all. One no longer engages directly with an object in its natural, essential form, as something that can be explored and touched, instead it becomes a surface that must be distorted to fit the global logic of mathematical perspective. The rich individualistic inscape of the natural world had given way to a uniform perspectival grid of logic and reason.
How well perspective parallels a science in which nature obeys laws that are, in some metaphysical sense, external to matter's essence. As Bacon argued, these laws are to be discovered by placing nature on the rack, another sort of grid, and tormenting her to reveal her secrets. Descartes and Newton can not be held responsible for our modern world, the seeds of its consciousness were sown long before.
It is only as we reach our own modern age that the perspectival vision of science has been shaken by, for example, quantum theory. Yet artists are always the antennae of society and the foreshocks could be felt when Cezanne restored touch to painting and, in the process, activated time and multiplicity of viewpoint. Never interested in projection Cezanne entered directly into nature, and nature entered into him. "The Landscape becomes reflective, human and thinks itself though me." he wrote, "I make it an object, let it project itself and endure within my painting....I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape, and my painting becomes its objective consciousness." 2
The Modern Mind
The European mind, along with its material and conceptual products, exerts a powerful seductive force on all of us. It would be extremely difficult to live without the products of such a consciousness, nor would most of us we wish to - at least not in an entirely radical fashion. Many have already written of the shadow side to this power; intensive farming, high technology medicine, rapid communications and so on. My own interest in somewhat different. It is to ask if an earlier richness together with a sense of harmony and a balance can be restored to the European mind. It is to ask if an ethical and moral dimension can be added to our science and technology and if supposed objectivity can be tempered through participation.
Is our world destined towards increasing uniformity or can we accommodate alternative view points and metaphysics, each enriching the other? The arts have always been eager for such enrichment, Debussy drew upon Balanese music, Picasso on African masks, and a director like Peter Brooke has explored the world's theatrical traditions. When used in a creative and respectful way these are not acts of cultural appropriation but of cultural renewal. Is something similar possible within our science?
At this point is could be objected that, unlike the arts, science is objective and, from a cultural point of view, value-free. It is for this reason, it is said, that Indigenous and marginalized cultures cannot really co-exist beside industrialized nations and are doomed to extinction. I don't believe this is true. Traditional cultures have enormous power and may, in the end, act to transform or renew our own technological society.
An Alternative Vision
My test case is that of the Blackfoot people, a nation who once occupied an area of the North American plains east of the Rocky Mountains but now today live in reserves in Montana, U.S. and reservations in Alberta, Canada. By tradition they were hunters of buffalo; traveling with their tepis in the summer and wintering along river banks. Their language is a member of the great Algonquin family which runs from the Cheyenne in the central US plains though the Blackfoot and up into northern Canada with Ojibwaj and Cree finally into the Naskapi of Labrador.
My encounter, as a representative of Western science, with the Blackfoot was neither systematic nor anthropological3. It was more an ongoing friendship and a series of discussions about our respective world-views. In turn this led to a number of circles in which Western scientists sat with Blackfoot and other Native American Elders.
The Blackfoot have weathered the extermination of the buffalo and the appropriation of their lands. Anyone past middle age would have experienced the residential schools in which children's heads were shaved, clothing burned, and a prohibition placed upon speaking their mother tongue or praying according to their tradition - physical and sexual abuse was also far from uncommon. Today the Blackfoot have exchanged their horses for cars and pickup trucks. They live in houses instead of tepis and job hunting has replaced the buffalo jump and buffalo wallow. Surrounded by the pressures of North American society they are faced with drug and alcohol problems yet what struck me most during my visits is the way that the old is able to coexist with the new so that, for many Blackfoot, their traditional vision and metaphysics survives untarnished. Clearly the Blackfoot have the extraordinary ability to coexist within two worlds. Yet they taught me that we all possess a similar capacity and buried deep within the European mind lies something that may be able to temper the momentum of our present path. We are all indigenous people, in the sense that each of us is the carrier of a sacred relationship to the natural world and has access to a wider vision of a reality long denied.
Blackfoot Reality
What is the nature of Blackfoot reality? Certainly it is far wider than our own, yet firmly based within the natural world of vibrant, living things. Once our European world saw nature in a similar way, a vision still present in poets like Blake, Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins who perceived the immanence and inscape of the world. Nevertheless our consciousness has narrowed to the extent that matter is separated from spirit and we seek our reality in an imagined elsewhere of abstractions, Platonic realms, mathematical elegance, and physical laws.
The Blackfoot know of no such fragmentation. Not only do they speak with rocks and trees, they are also able to converse with that which remains invisible to us, a world of what could be variously called spirits, or powers, or simply energies. But these forces are not the occupants of a mystical or abstract domain, they remain an essential aspect of the natural, material world. It is not so much that the Blackfoot live in an extended reality but that our own Western vision had become excessively myopic.
This wider reality embraces flux, movement, change and transformation. The creator of the land, Napi (the Old Man), is also its trickster, one who is constantly changing form, traversing boundaries and upsetting preconceptions. For example, what the West takes as the aberration of multiple personality becomes the acceptance that an individual is not a fixed thing but fluid, a being whose multiplicity is reflected in the way a person's name keeps transforming during their life.
How is one to maintain orientation in a universe in which everything is caught up in the river of transformation. How can anything be preserved from change? The answer lies in participation within the flux by means of acts of renewal. Renewal requires an act of sacrifice and it is these sacrifices, these actions of participation, performed each morning when the sun rises, each year at the Sun Dance, which help to maintain the great circle of renewal. Thanks to these acts of renewal time, within the flux, turns on its axis. Seasons follow seasons. Circling time is always the same, yet always different, always renewed.
Acts of renewal reflect the compacts formed in ancient times; negotiated relationships between the ancestors and the energies, or spirits, or keepers of the land. No one believes that a pipe ceremony actually causes the sun to rise. Rather, by renewing their relationships to the dynamics of nature the Blackfoot maintain a harmonious role within the cosmos. Within a balanced cosmos the sun will rise and the seasons follow in their proper harmony.
Personal sacrifice, responsibility, ceremonies and acts of renewal therefore have nothing to do with the world of mechanical causality but are more to do with a relationship to a living cosmos. Although it does not come from the Blackfoot, the story of the rainmaker well illustrates this point:- A rainmaker was called to a region experiencing drought. He arrived and immediately went into the hut provided for him only to emerge several days later as it began to rain. When he was asked how he had made the rain he replied that he had not caused the rain to fall. Rather, when he arrived in the village he discovered everything to be in disharmony. He therefore retired to his hut in order to bring himself back into balance. Once balance had been restored then nature returned to harmony and the rain fell as it naturally should.
Carl Jung chose to term this synchronicity, his "acausal connecting principle".4 It was present earlier in the West in the form of Alchemy in which external material workings and internal transformations mirror each other. This constant movement towards balance and harmony within the flux is the essence of the Blackfoot world.
The Map in the Head
An expression of the Blackfoot's relationship to a reality of rocks, trees, animals and energies is expressed within what many Native Americans call "a map in the head". This map is a way of knowing where one is in relationship to the land, its history, society and all the living beings of nature. For the Blackfoot this map begins with Napi's body, which is traced out in the landscape in the form of rivers, buttes, hills and valleys. It is also the track left by Napi as he walked across his land. The Map in the Head is songs sung and the stories told around the fire at night. It is the relationship of the Blackfoot people to their world.
The map in the head is a form of knowledge, but knowledge, for the Blackfoot, is no mere collection of facts but something that one grows towards. Knowledge, like a song, is a living being; a being with which one can come into relationship. Coming to knowing is an active dialogue with nature; with the rocks, plants and animals. As one Blackfoot put it, "the plants and animals are our microscopes and laboratories."
Knowledge is relationship and relationship brings with it responsibilities and obligations. Thus it has been put to me that when Western science performs its experiments it is actually conversing with nature and, in this process, telling nature about ourselves. Are we willing to take responsibility for what we say? Each action in the laboratory must be balanced by its reaction somewhere else in the world. When we create order in one place we give birth to disorder in another.
Such a point of view should not be entirely alien to our European minds. It was a European, Goethe, who suggested an alternative to the Newtonian method which he saw as a way of gaining knowledge by placing nature in highly artificial situations. By contrast, Goethe sought "an instant worth a thousand, bearing all within itself." 5 His method involved, for example, coming into relationship with plants and contemplating their inner nature. In this fashion Goethe sought to understand the inner nature and meaning of plants.6
While Newtonian science studies particular instances in the hope of generalizing into a law of nature - unity within multiplicity - Goethe studied the multiplicity that arises out of unity. Goethe's notion of the archetype of all plants resonates with Indigenous concept of the Guardians or Keepers of plants and animals. By carrying a piece of bone a Blackfoot comes into direct contact with the Guardian or Keeper of the buffalo.
Healing
Plants have the power to heal. For the Blackfoot the nature of their action cannot be reduced simply to chemical substances or molecules. Healing involves a relationship to the entire plant and this includes its power, energy, spirit, or in Goethe's terms, its archetype.
One can perhaps understand this by analogy to sacred sculpture of, for example, India. Within a ceremony these objects act as windows into the world of the sacred yet are at the same time no more than stone, clay and pigment. Their action is that of a diagram, or map, of the pattern of the sacred. One comes into relationship with the numinous though the catalytic action of the icon. In a similar way the plant and its associated chemicals open into a larger world of energies and healing powers.
There is a related metaphor in Western science. A molecule is not so much an object but a dynamical pattern. At the quantum level it is a pattern of energies which extend into the ground state of the entire cosmos. Absorbed into the body this dynamic energy pattern provokes a range of transformations of the body's biochemical activities. Of course, the analogy can only go so long as Western science continues to fragment matter from ethical values, consciousness and spirit.
It goes without saying that the relationship to the plant world extends into ecological practice, and here I am drawing not upon the Blackfoot but my conversations with the Mohawk. When one hunts for a medicine plant, or for that matter for an animal, one does not pick the first or second one comes upon but always the third. A prayer is first offered that the plant will sacrifice itself and after it has been picked an offering is made to the earth. Returning home the plant is treated in a respectful manner for one is not only dealing with the particular but the universal, the Guardian of the plant, the archetype. In the action of healing with the plant energy may be exchanged but within such a metaphysics whatever is taken must, in some way, be paid back.
Language
The Blackfoot I have met speak of their traditional ways as a science.7Of particular significance is the way this science is enfolded within their language. The language contains the map of the land, the relationships to the energies and spirits of all living thing - the rocks, the trees, the plants, birds, fish and animals. The flux in which they live is perfectly expressed in what could be termed their "process language". European languages have a heavy reliance upon nouns and lend themselves so well to a type of thinking that deals in categories and Aristotelian logic.8 Our physical reality is that of objects in interaction with one another - nouns linked by verbs. This thinking also extends into the abstract and psychological spheres when the world of our experiences, relationships and feelings becomes a collection of objects of thought to be manipulated, generalized, abstracted and acted upon. How eagerly do we build categories and concepts, how literally do we take our "language games", how easily do we become trapped in empty philosophical argument.
While other problems may certainly arise this sort of trap is not present within a language where the verb takes centre stage. Within Blackfoot all is movement, process and transformation. Nouns as objects emerge in a secondary way though the modification of verbs. To them the English language is a straight-jacket which forces their minds into a world of objects, categories and restrictive logic.
Take, as an example, healing. To the Western mind this is a transitive business in which the doctor (noun) acts upon the patient (another noun) to bring about a some change of state. For the Blackfoot healing is a process. This process is itself the primary reality, rather than that of patient and doctor. Healing often involves singing. In this case in speaking about healing the process of the singing is the focus of the linguistic act. Rather than singing being performed by someone, the pure act of singing is taking place - singing is singing itself. It is out of this singing that healing unfolds to reveal the previously sick person.
Again an analogy from contemporary science may help. According to classical physics nature consists of objects in interaction with one another. Observation is an objective business that reveals the world for what it is. Quantum theory, by contrast, stresses that observation is participation and within any act of observation the observer and observed are united in a holistic and unanalyzable way. Observation is a process within which it is no longer possible to speak of the independent existence, or properties of, the observer and observed.
As Neils Bohr pointed out the paradoxes and difficulties of quantum theory arise out of our need to employ ordinary language in our discourse. But this language, be it English or Danish, historically developed in a particular way and within a world of classical objects. We are suspended in this language so that we do not know which way is up and which is down. By contrast, the Blackfoot live in a world that is much closer to that quantum domain, a world of flux, transformation and essential relationship far from that of absolute categories, fixed objects and rigid Aristotelian dualities. Their language perfectly reflects this world.
Harmony and Balance
Knowledge is not partitioned in a holistic world and Blackfoot science is not confined simply to the material. It embraces society and good government. Its norm is balance and harmony. Society is not an artifact built by individuals with rights and freedoms, rather it is a process of renewal, a coherent whole out of which emerge persons with responsibilities and obligations. An individual exists in respect to his or her relationships with society and nature.
Take as an example, Blackfoot justice. What we would term a crime is, to many indigenous people, a disruption of the harmonious working of their society. Rather than approaching this disorder in terms of adversarial trial, proof, guilt and punishment, a circle of elders meet with the aggrieve party and perpetrator. Discussion within this circle is not so much designed to establish the factuality of what has occurred but rather it seeks a way of restoring balance. Thus the perpetrator may asked to suggest some action that would satisfy all parties. Finally, when everyone is again in a balanced relationship the decision is made public.
Indigenous Science
The Blackfoot speak of a science which includes a metaphysics of the reality in which they live, a set of relationships to the natural world, a deep understanding of their immediate environment, and a technology appropriate to their lifestyle. Such a science is common to many other indigenous peoples of the Americas and, indeed, to traditional peoples world-wide.
As the notion of "a Map in the Head" suggests, such a science is not, like our own, of an exclusive objective and global nature but is specific to a people and a place. Perhaps an analogy with cooking may help. The world's great cuisines are each associated with a particular country and region. After having lived in Italy for more than a year I am discovering that there is no such thing as "Italian" cooking but rather a way of cooking that is specific to the meats, fish, vegetables and fruits of a particular region. Even the Tuscan cooking of my particular province is subdivided. Great cooking involves a deep understanding and empathy to the nature of the materials available. It is at the same time a science and a high art that is not easily exportable.
This metaphor applies to the indigenous sciences of North America. The Haida, living on the British Columbia seaboard developed masterpieces of marine engineering: coastal and ocean going canoes, carved out of giant cedar trees. The particular shape and mass of these vessels enables the Haida to move at high speed across the ocean and to sustain long voyages without exhaustion. Another of their sciences, which is shared with other Pacific peoples such as the Maori and Hawaiians is a ways of navigating over long distances using patterns of stars, and observing the pattern of waves and the direction of the wind.
The Algonkin of the Eastern Woodlands are hunters and gathers who must venture for many days from their homes. Their technology enables them to construct a birchbark canoe, using only a curved knife and the materials of the forest, in less than a day. The vessel is strong enough to support a heavy load as it travels though white water rapids, yet light enough to be portaged from river to river.
South of the Algonkin the Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederation are farmers. They employ a biological symbioses by planting the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) together; corn supplying a mechanical support and beans fixing nitrogen to supply nutrients in the earth. Yet eventually land can be farmed out and wild plants over picked. So, in traditional times, the Mohawk would, after two or three generations, abandon their villages and rebuild some distance away, allowing the forest to return to its pristine state. The complexity of their civilization and their negotiations with the energies of the earth is reflected in a language which employs a large number of names referring to relationship.
In so many cases a traditional people, before disruption by European civilization, possessed considerable knowledge of their territory and adapted technologies appropriate to the environment and way of life. For this reasons such people may appear conservative and slow to adapt. But one should remember a maxim employed by some of the indigenous people of North America. In taking a decision one does not so much consider its immediate impacts but the consequences it will have upon the seventh generation to come after. In this respect we should recall a, possibly apocryphal, story that has been related to be by a number of architects. It was found that, after many centuries, the great oak beams in an Oxford college needed replacing. Consultants considered substituting other materials until someone discovered in the college records that at the time of the founding of the college a stand of oaks had been donated with an eye of future replacement. According the story these oaks were now well matured and could be used to renovate the roof.
Conclusions
It is not the intention of this essay to argue that we should abandon the Western world-view and become Blackfoot over night. Rather it is to suggest that it would be useful for us to examine our metaphysics in the light of that of another society. In this way we may come to realize that much of what we take to be inevitable and self-evident is, to a great extent, a social conditioned perception which contains a variety of unexamined assumptions.
There is a great deal to be proud of in our science and technology yet our modern world exhibits much that we now desire to change. Radical change requires a shift in perception and a transformation of consciousness. Maybe there are lessons to be learned from Blackfoot physics as an alternative way of viewing the world.
But could "Blackfoot physics" be applied in Europe, for example? The essential issue is that, unlike in the west, there are no Blackfoot physicists, nor for that matter are their any Blackfoot artists. Rather each person is a generalist, who has come to know the wisdom of the group. This is not to say that there are not people with special healing abilities, or Keepers of Sacred Bundles, or Elders who know many of the Lodge tales, but rather that the traditional ways of the Blackfoot are available to all their people.
Blackfoot science has not fragmented as a particular system of knowledge from the other areas of life. It would be difficult, and probably impossible, to abstract something called Blackfoot Physics from the entire culture and then import in packaged form into a Western laboratory.
It is certainly true that Western science is already extracting certain knowledge from the Indigenous peoples of the world. Most of this involves information about the pharmaceutical powers of rare plants, fungi and the like. Indeed, one of the arguments for delaying the destruction of the world's rain forests and other threatened ecologies is their potential for exploitation for wonder drugs and miracle cures. But, again, this is being done in a fragmentary way. Science removes the plant from its environment and analyses it to discover active ingredients. Once they have been synthesized there is no need to preserve that particular ecology or to attempt to understand the world-view in which that plant was respected and used.
As long as Indigenous science is only employed in this fragmented way it will make little impact on the Western mind. A genuine dialogue can only develop if Western science is willing to extend its horizons and, for example, temper its abstract objectivity with what could perhaps be called an impersonal subjectivity:. Impersonal since it does not rely upon the accidents of personal biography and prejudice, yet subjective because it speaks to our deep relationship to the world, and our objective intuitions about nature.
That subjectivity is antithetical to science because it is believed to involve the distortions of highly personal biographical material is the legacy of Europe's romantic movement. In an earlier age the subject, the artist or musician for example, sought to eliminate the purely personal in their work and become the servant or conduit of what lay beyond. Indeed, personal expression was considered to be in bad taste, a falling from the ideal.
Such art sought to express the numinous, the divine archetype, pure form, call it what you will, in a direct a way as possible by eliminating the idiosyncratically personal. It was a marriage of objectivity and subjectivity, the inner and outer response to archetypes and materials. I am suggesting that something similar may be possible within Western science. The power of its objectivity should be retained while, at the same time, opening the door to an impersonal subjectivity - a more direct connection to the material world, one that is felt, experienced and becomes the object of a trained intuition.
Within the framework of such a science it may be possible to open a dialogue to other traditions and ways of thinking. Such a science could be simultaneously global, in that it seeks universal laws of nature, and local, in that it responds to particular ecologies and social needs and, at the same time, choosing alternative metaphors for its expression.
The philosopher Wittgenstein pointed out that when philosophy believes it is speaking of great truths it is really involved in a variety of language games. This is equally true of science for, no matter how abstract the mathematics, its interpretation and meaning must always be expressed in everyday language. And such language carries with it a great deal of biological and cultural baggage. Language, in which all science must be expressed, is far from being value free.
It could be said that our current way of thinking, our "European minds", has not yet caught up with the deeper meaning of the scientific discoveries of this century. Quantum theory stresses the wholeness of nature and the inadequacy for what could be termed "the Cartesian Order". That is, an order based upon notions of continuous space and time. One of the most significant movements within contemporary science is the search for this new order. In a sense it is a desire to reanimate time, a way of bringing back a truly dynamical time into the heart of physics. But to do this implies an entirely new metaphysics and a change in the way we think about the world.
Such a change is also inherent in the discoveries of chaos theory and non-linear systems. A science seeking certainty, control, predictability and closure has ended up subverting itself. The world, we have learned is far more complex than our attempts to describe it. It contains regions of infinite sensitivity and absolute unpredictability.
As I have argued in this essay, one of the great changes in the European mind was the secularization of time and the projection of nature into some world external to the essence of a human being. It seems to me that within our modern world are the seeds of something entirely different. They are the seeds of a consciousness that, in some ways, may resonate with that of the Blackfoot. It is a consciousness that seeks a deeper and more compassionate relationship with the natural world. One which may replace prediction and control by something more intelligent, more subtle and more and holistic gentle in its action. Above all what is require is a creative response to the modern age. Such a change of consciousness requires an enormous energy, for we are being called upon to dismantle old perceptions and prejudices and leave ourselves open for the operation of the creative.
References
U. Eco, "Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages", Yale U.P., 1986
Joyce Medina, "Cezanne and Modernism: The poetics of painting" SUNY, Albany 1995
F. David Peat, "Blackfoot Physics" 4th Estate, London, 1995.
F. David Peat, "Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind", Bantam Books, NY, 1987
Henri Borthoft "The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way towards a Science of Wholeness". Lindisfarne Press, Hudson, NY 1996
The biologist Brian Goodwin, in a private discussion, told me about a current revival in the Goethean approach. He is working with what could be called objective intuition, an way of inner knowing that, he believes, should coexist with conventional biology, each enriching the other.
In this respect I am reminded to a story from Ancient China. In a time of great political unrest the country's leaders sought the advice of the Confucius. What action should they take to restore harmony. The sage replied that they should first purify the Chinese language and restore it to its original pristine state. In our own times we have become aware of the extent to which the English language has become corrupted in the mouths of some politicians and the military. The language we use is irreducibly linked to our perception of the world.
Alan Ford and F. David Peat, "The Role of Language In Science", Foundations of Physics 8, 1233, (1988)
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