Dipping a toe at the beach of the indigenous way of life

The white, European mindset that ‘we’ have to reconcile with the indigenous people in Canada, while honourable, and even ethical, starts from the wrong place. It has honour in that there is a documented, and experienced and incarnated history of intense abuse of the indigenous people, the emasculation of their culture, language, ethos and belief-system by that European ‘white’ mindset. 

Warranted as the process is, including reparations, and a recognition of the insufferable wrongs done in the name of God, nation and ‘civilization’ (as opposed to savagery), it lacks the kind of energy, legs, hope and gift that comes from a full appreciation of the indigenous attitudes, perceptions, philosophy and ethics that are, or at least could be, a dawning of a new age of enlightenment for North Americans.

Land treaties that have been abrogated, and repatriations and reparations that are necessary, notwithstanding, it might be helpful to unearth a few of the gems of indigenous writings, and the thoughts and beliefs and perceptions behind those writings, in order to shift the reconciliation process from one of “making up for past wrongs” to “acknowledging and openly appreciating the incredible insights of the indigenous way of life”….from guilt and shame to gratitude and appreciation. Legal cases that relegate Indigenous realities to “subjective beliefs” substituting ‘religious beliefs’ for indigenous protection of sacred mountains, for example, along with the preception ‘you’re just immigrants like everyone else’ are examples of attitudes and perceptions that demand both exposure and erasure.

 A reading from The Great Law of Peace, KAYANERENKO:WA, by Kayanesenh Paul Williams might shed some light: One fundamental principle that flows from the Creation story is the relationship between human beings and the natural world. The Book of Genesis gives human beings ‘dominion’ over all parts of the natural world and suggests that everything was created to serve the needs of humanity. More recent Christian thinkers have struggled to insert the concept of ‘stewardship’ into these words. While logic agrees with the approach, fundamentalists who see an obligation to develop and exploit wage theological war with environmentalists who feel a need to conserve. The Haudenosaunee Creation story places human beings squarely in the midst of a natural world in which they form an integral part, and in which each part has been given responsibilities. Sotsisowah (John Mohawk) explained: The Haudenosaunee Creation story….is replete with symbols of a rational universe. In the Creation Story, the only creature with a potential for irrational thought is the human being. All the other creatures of Nature are natural, i.e. rational. Nature is depicted as a threatening and irrational aspect of existence in the West’s cosmologies. The Haudenosaunee cosmology is quite different. It depicts the natural world as a rational existence while admitting that human beings possess an imperfect understanding of it. The idea that human beings have an imperfect understanding of the rational nature of existence is something of a caution to Haudenosaunee in their dealings with nature. Conversely, the idea that the natural world is disorganized and irrational has served as something of a permission in the West and may be the single cultural aspect which best explains the differences between these two societies’ relationships to Nature. The reason it’s so important to get people to cease fearing nature is that negative emotions invade one’s ability to think clearly. People who are afraid of nature have much more difficulty defending it than people who are not. All of those negative emotions giver you permission to enact violence on nature. (Williams, op. cit. p. 33-34)

 Attitudes to nature, as well as the attitude to human irrationality, may both seem ‘foreign’ to many whose childhoods have been conditioned by a very different perspective. However, as history has evolved, developed and shown itself, perhaps the “euro-white-christian’ perspective shows significant holes in both logic and empirical evidence. 

Williams borrows, too, from Neil Patterson’s ‘The Fish’ in Haudenosaunee Environmental Task force 2001: From a Haudenosaunee perspective, there is a personal mandate from the Creation to protect Mother Earth and all that inhabit her. We should all begin to look at what personal changes we can make to reduce waste that our waters will eventually receive….It there are doubts in the minds of our leaders about action like this on the Natural World, the answer is obvious. These past mistakes of history serve as a guideline for future generations: not only our grandchildren, but for the fish and everything that is in the Circle of Life. Lur elders have learned from their elders these rules and guidelines. (Williams, p. 35)

 While it is futile, today, to wonder about the condition of the planet if the admonitions of the indigenous peoples had been observed, as well as how the economic and political ‘norms’ would be radically different, as in any process of transition, we can start today to get our hands, minds and hearts looking through a different lens. And this lens, in part the gift from indigenous peoples, could be a new ‘birth’ in both perceptions, as well as in the foundational principles on which we base those perceptions and the actions of transformation that follow. It is not only a transformation of the climatic conditions of the planet that is needed; it is also a transformation of the basic premises on which humanity and nature co-exist that must precede the climatic changes.

Another significant difference in perspective and attitude, concerns the comparative attitudes to good and evil. Williams writes: Christianity has wrestled with the issue of how an all-powerful God who is absolute good could permit evil to exist and even to flourish. The Church answers: it is a mystery that we humans cannot fathom; we are told we must have faith. Haudenosaunee thinking recognizes that good and evil both exist, and have been here from the beginning. They are, and therefore the question is not why, but rather how to address them in our lives and societies, and how to find a balance. Evil will not go away: we must continue to recognize it, understand it, and guard against it. (Williams, p. 35)

 There is a degree of pragmatism grounded in the observational evidence that all around us, we witness, and too often participate either overtly or covertly consciously or unconsciously, in both good and evil, and, irrespective of the legal systems, the ethical instructions, the psychological research and theories, we not only have to confront evil but also to balance it with good. And while, the human approach is admittedly prone to irrationality, and thereby needing help and support from others, there is an element of embedding very different understanding, perception, attitude and relationship within the ‘christian’ context and the indigenous context. Another significant difference between the euro-christian mindset and the indigenous, is the relationship between the real and the spiritual or what Wade Davis has called an ‘inner horizon’.

 (Borrowing from Wade Davis, Shadows in the Sun: Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire, New York, Broadway Books, 1998, p. 36). Williams continues: In ‘scientific; societies, things exist if their physical presence is provable. In most Indigenous societies, a thing that is dreamed also exists. The Haudenosaunee Creation story reflects a society that recognizes (as quantum theory suggests) that beings can move between out world and the spirit world, and that each world influences the other. And from Wade Davis, ‘Just as Aboriginal Australians assert that there was a Dreamtime before there was this age of the earth, so the Haundenosaunee Creation story takes place in a Dreamtime in which the animals are also spirits, and in which the formation of the world is happening at the same time as its first inhabitants are both already existing and taking shape. (Williams, op. cit. p. 36)

Rational/irrational….real/spirit…part of and protective of nature/dominant over nature….good/evil co-existing and needing balance….these are both a different way of perceiving, conceiving, considering and obviously of enacting a human existence on this planet…. In a footnote, Williams writes, in response to the Canada Health and Protection Act that required clinical testing by ‘science and objective observation’, Haudenosaunee medicine, which sees a partnership between the patient, the healer, the plants and the spirits that assist the healing, would have a difficult time providing scientific proof of its effectiveness. (p. 36)

 And these notes, observations and reflections are a mere ‘scratching the surface’ of the indigenous world view, by one still in ‘kindergarten’ as far as becoming steeped in the indigenous culture. I have not even acquired the moccasins that will be needed in order to ‘walk a mile in the moccasins of the indigenous peoples, in order to begin to understand first, and then to appreciate fully the import of their potential enhancement of our world view. For decades, I considered the grafting of a few symbols onto a liturgy in a Christian church service as another (albeit well-intentioned) patronizing crumb of meagre acknowledgement of the indigenous people, effectively a superficially polite and condescending form of colonialism. I never encountered anything but authentic and deep appreciation from indigenous individuals who attended services; however, on reflection, a more integrous, authentic and honourable approach would be to plan liturgies together, thereby integrating, incorporating and synthesizing two very different ‘cosmologies’ as well as perspectives. 

No doubt, others are already attempting to accomplish this ecumenism; however, any efforts in this direction would have to acknowledge the substantial differences in perspective, attitude and belief…while creating a liturgy that serves that end. The two perspectives differ so considerably that, it now appears, the Christian church has a long way to go to reflect upon, and to openly discuss and even to consider the relationship between what are two very different world views among very different histories and mythologies. And they each point to a very different application in the conduct of world affairs. 

It would seem that, the ‘establishment’ church would do well do relinquish the lead in the hypothetical process of attempting to reflect upon and to work toward any kind of compatible liturgy, as deemed to be compatible by the indigenous participants. Indeed, there is so much of profound value and authenticity in the indigenous cosmology, creation story, and especially in the significance the indigenous people ascribe to tat the need for healthy, supportive and honest relationships.

Paul Williams writes too: The Haudenosaunee do not believe (as the Bible seems to assume, in saying that we were made in God’s image) that we are the ultimate beings in the world, the end of all evolution. Things change. Sotsisowah John Mohawk observed: Things flow from sources which have roots deeper than individual talents or society’s gifts’ They flow from nature, and the sacred beings who designed nature. If one embraces the initial premise, that human beings were extremely lucky that of all the places in the universe, they have a home just the right distance from a sun of just the right intensity, that there is enough easter, grass and enough of everything. From there, it’s a small step to accept that whatever created all that is a force of unexcelled sacred dimensions and the will of that force is something people should try to cooperate with to perpetuate life. The way a group expresses its cooperation is through ceremonies which recreate the conditions present when people first came to consciousness of these things. Humankind’s relationship to nature projected in this precolonial pre-patriarchal, pre-modern story carries a fundamental and unchanging truth, but one which subsequent generations would need to relearn over and over. Humans exist in a context of nature and not vice versa. Everything we have ever had, everything we have, everything we will ever have—our health, our good looks, our intelligence, everything—is a product not of our own merit but of all that which created our world. That which created our world is not society, but the power of the universe. Nature, which is the context of our existence, is sacred. A significant manifestation of nature, the regenerative power of life, is also sacred, and we who walk about on the earth are not without obligations to perpetuate this system, the ‘work’ of the Giver of Life, in the greater scheme of things. (Williams, op. cit. p. 37)

 Is it too much to envision, to dream and to imagine a world in which these perspectives, along with their supporting cosmologies, legends, myths and ceremonies might be seen, embraced, integrated and celebrated, not as a redemptive path to reconciliation, but more as a gift from the peoples who were here before the European conquerors and whose wisdom and culture warrant our humble observance and respect?