last month, as official roadie and chosen
moral support system for my talented herbalist mom, i had the unique privilege of participating in an alternative
health conference called medicines from the edge: a tropical
herbal convergence. through
some sort of indescribable socio-biological osmosis as my mother's daughter,
i've no doubt soaked up a lot of the ideas and practices on offer at a
conference like this, and i enjoyed being a participant-observer into the
realms of some seriously passionate plant-nerds celebrating herbal
medicine and more.
while the subject matter of
the weekend convergence first appeared somewhat
alien, i was excited to realize that it has much more
in common with my own connections to native spirituality and
learnings on global sustainability than i had originally anticipated. thank
you to all of the teachers, coordinators and hippie free-spirit
family whose contributions i carry with me now, inspiring my words and
work in the world.
the following are my inside-outsider
reflections from the edge; my own sort of mental coalescence
where themes of diversity, representation, and archaic revival converge.
permaculturalist Stephen Brooks opened the
weekend by describing the
edge as a place where we
experience an abundance of diversity - natural and biological, as well
as human and socio-cultural. we reflected on our planet's disturbing loss
of biodiversity as a threat to human and natural existence, drawing a parallel
to the loss of native knowledge and cultural diversity also disappearing
at an equally alarming rate. “human diversity and the diversity of knowledge”
Stephen said, “are key for sustainability, just like in nature.”
Costa Rica offers a special representation
of the edge as both a geographic bridge between the Americas, and a space where
tropical biodiversity thrives amid a diverse social landscape colored by indigenous
communities, afro-Caribbean culture, European colonial history and the growing
presence of foreign tourists and residents from all regions of the world – all intermingling
to varying degrees, creating countless hybrid cultures in their midst. well situated at ‘the edge’, our stage was
set for a weekend of learning and sharing. i was all ears.
and eyes, of
course.
…and heart and
mind and soul…
pictured here above is Maia Balam, whose project Rescate Madre Amerikua (Rescue Mother
Amerikua) draws on the importance of preserving native
traditions by creating films of indigenous people and tribes in
the struggle against resource loss at the hands of corporate extraction through
mining and development, for example. she spoke of capitalization,
modernization and commodification as contributing to a growing sense of
greed, itself based in our modern myth of consumerism as a panacea for social
wellbeing, and its destructive impact on indigenous lifestyles and ways of
being. in her audience, we sat in collective sadness at the loss of native
culture to consumerist pursuit, agreeing that a new consciousness is
needed to support indigenous tribes in resistance.
similarly, participants spoke of our
affinity to this concept of archaic revival, where a return to our shared,
native roots is at the heart of global transition toward
sustainability. grounded in an admiration for plant wisdom and a deep
appreciation for ancestral indigenous traditions and ways of knowing
and living with the Earth, we have faith in the revival of ancient
practices and forms of livelihood rooted in harmonious existence
between people and nature toward true sustainability. i found myself
agreeing with the sentiment that our common human future relies so
much on protecting indigenous communities, learning from their ancient wisdom
and promoting their traditional methods of working with plants and
medicine for the benefit of all. i emerged from
this brief session with Maia with the message that we, as conscious
global citizens, must merge forces with the indigenous peoples of the world to
realize sustainability through ancient practices; returning to our tribe in profound
acknowledgement of the ancient codes of knowledge we are lacking in modern
society. i was grateful for the message, yet confused with what to do with
it.
in his evening speech, Tom Newmark - Chair of the Green Peace Fund
USA - brought the heat in true activist fashion, adding a splash of
much-needed gloom to our otherwise inspired, albeit inevitable, doom. he
reminded us that our love of plants doesn't exist in a rainbows-and-butterflies
permaculture-perfect vacuum, helping us remember that if we don't save our
planet through regenerative farming like
yesterday, there won't be anymore plants to love, or any
humans left to love them, for that matter. his statistics were sobering;
his conclusions somehow hopeful.
the sacred seed sanctuaries project he
presented the following morning evoked sustainability's 'think globally,
act locally' mantra, explaining how if we all were to create our own
sanctuaries of diverse plant species, we would contribute to carbon
sequestration through regeneration on a planetary scale, making it less
important to keep resisting Monsanto and more important to become the solution
ourselves. his message spoke to me: "we need to renew our spiritual,
sacred relationship to mother earth to save the planet." is this what
we mean by connecting with the archaic revival? growing our own
sacred gardens across continents to make the Monsantos of the world irrelevant?
it sounded powerful, possible.
...still, i felt skeptical.
the problems felt too big, the solutions inadequate.
if our current patterns of existence have us at war with the very things vital
to our survival as a human family - water, soil, food, air - how can sacred
seed sanctuaries begin to even make a dent? especially if finding the time
and space for such a project may very well be open to only the most
privileged among us, while those responsible for environmental degradation
on a massive scale continue their business as usual. if we as consumers and
producers in modern-industrial society are literally eating the resources
supporting diverse species and manipulating the environment to
intentionally destroy the biodiversity on which all life depends, how can our
sanctuaries, however sacred, make that all just go away?
"if we are the creators of this
destruction," Tommy challenged us to consider, "isn't it our
responsibility to fix it?"
this question gurgled organically inside
me, uneasy in my intestines as my pen wrote feverishly in my lap.
"if we humans were responsible enough
to fix it," i wrote, "wouldn't we have prevented it from happening in
the first place?" maybe Tommy has more faith in humanity than i do when he
says that the industrial-extractive mindset will never solve the problems
created by that same industrial-extractive mindset. so we need a new
mindset, right? i thought of Audre Lorde's famous quote: the master's
tools will never dismantle the master's house. it seemed Tommy agreed, and
rightfully so. but what i started thinking about in that moment was that even
though we know the industrial-extractive mindset is the problem, we still
don't know how to overcome that mindset because it is so ingrained in our sense
of self-in-society, in our very identity at the core of our shared world
view. it is our inability to escape that mindset - because it is such an
integral part of how we exist in the world - that keeps our
industrial-extractive society from crumbling by the wayside, preventing the
sustainable practices we so need and desire from flourishing in its ashes.
"bring in indigenous knowledge and
use it," he said, ending his talk by appealing to our love of all things
indigenous. i sort of wanted to clap, and i appreciated the sentiment, but it
just felt off.
i asked myself: "has indigenous
knowledge become our latest resource in the endless pursuit of an elusive
sustainability wholly incompatible with the Western world view of materialism
and our industrial-extractive existence?" white man and our materialist vision
have been responsible for the annihilation of indigenous peoples and their
lands for centuries in the service of what we believed we needed to live a
worthy life in the pursuit of happiness in the 'new world'. now we want to
bring in indigenous knowledge and use it for the purposes of what we think
will save our planet and all of her people, ignoring the fact that our
solutions still come from within that same materialist mindset that got us here
in the first place - a mindset we can't step outside of because its pervasive
mythology defines every aspect of how we live in and understand the world.
i thought about our previous conversations on archaic revival. has
saving the native become the new white man’s burden? And is it because we care
to preserve their culture and dignity versus the numbing effects of modernity,
or do we care to save them because we know they’re our only hope for saving
ourselves? to me it bringing in indigenous knowledge and using it sounds a lot
more like colonialism than creative solution, coopting indigenous knowledge and
assimilating it into our materialist world view and somehow calling it
sustainable.
in that moment i came to a disturbing
conclusion that i’m not sure we can rise above: bringing in indigenous
knowledge and using it how we see fit
is not only neocolonial at its core but also futile in materialist
contradiction, not least where sustainability is concerned.
the day prior, Kathleen Harrison (pictured above) spoke of the dominant
(Western) world view interrupting indigenous world views, particularly as they
relate to our understanding of the real (material) versus non-real (spiritual
or magical) aspects of life. she brought up a conversation on cultural
revitalization and travelling as a means of cross-pollination among world
views, waking us up to what makes us feel alive. i valued her comment on how
many of us are living in two worlds at once, or rather between two different
world views - the material and the integral - as anglo-society is being
transformed by a plethora of native traditions, what she referred to as the
supermarket of indigenous concepts; we all laughed, of course, perhaps
reflecting on our own personalized mish-mosh of what we consider our spiritual
beliefs to be. (the other day i described
my own spirituality as a mix of hindu philosophy, Buddhist and Taoist principles,
mixed with Mexica and native-American ancestral ceremony. …supermarket at your
service.)
so now we have one foot in each world view
– material meets integral through travelling and cross-cultural interaction. (or perhaps, i thought, we’re creating a
mixture of the two into some hybrid paradigm that includes elements of each but
is something entirely different in its own right).
something i think about often is the
reverse of this world-view-blending relationship and the ways indigenous
societies are being transformed by materialist traditions like scientific
thought, market economics, consumerism and Western lifestyle pursuits,
abandoning many of their cultural practices in the process. so while modern anglo-society
is becoming somehow more native, native cultures are becoming more anglo-modern.
will we meet halfway? and what does this mean for the archaic revival we so
believe in? is it this difficult-to-bear reality that makes us want to adopt
and preserve indigenous traditions out of fear that our materialist culture
will contaminate their integral paradigms when we know that their world view is
what will save us from our own?
yet, is our romantic image of the native
and the inspiring messages it represents somehow out of touch with the
realities of the native peoples we want to learn from, know from and emulate in
ourselves? what happens when we want feathers and sage-smoke and they wear
Nikes and crew-cuts; when they don't measure up to the story we've created of
them in our minds? what does it mean for our native spiritual practices that
have come to define our sense of being? do our own stories of self in our lives
of privilege between two worlds start to unravel, too?
my mom's workshop - Our
Gut Feelings: Emotional Healing and Moving the Qi – took the cerebral conversations
we’d been having throughout the weekend and made them physical, personal. we
got in touch with the deep feelings inside our bellies, stuck energy in need of
release, understanding the connections between the organ systems and emotional
healing. we might be smiling on the outside despite the pain in our insides,
but our digestive organs call our bluff no matter how much positive thinking
and glowing radiance we pretend to embody in our new-age selves.
here, hippies hold their bellies in the grass near the
trees, meditating on their deepest core feelings.
next, blonde dreads and feathers cry in emotional
release as they practice belly massage on one another. it turns out it
isn’t all rainbows and butterflies; it’s a little bit sad, too.
perhaps a
little bit real.
we’re flighty, fancy free, light and smiling as we
flutter between music festivals, organic markets, medicine ceremonies, moon
dances, yoga classes, shamanic rituals, soul-searching and finding ourselves
joyful in like company – our privileged soul family. but when we get down to
it, when we pause a moment, do our gut feelings belie an emptiness inside? an
endless yearning for an elusive fulfillment we can’t seem to find between rounds
of ayahuasca, ibogane, kambo and tobacco ceremony? perhaps our boundary-less dabblings
in native ritual mask deeper issues related to our socialization as individual selves
situated in our materialist modern society; attempts to escape our empty
realities, to save our soul-selves from our society-selves, from the reach of
modernity and its perverse manifestations. in our love of hallucinogenic medicinal
ceremony, are we grasping for our true self to be felt, expressed, in a world
that tells us who to be and what to feel? to tap into integral wisdom and the
realms unseen so that we might know ourselves fully? how much archaic revival will
it take for our smiles on the inside to match the phony ones we wear on the
outside?
we become ‘other’ in our alternative lifestyles of practicing
an adopted form of indigeneity and we believe it’s somehow better, but at what
cost to our deeper wellbeing do we put on a happy face when maybe we’re not so
happy after all? how much longer til our bellies burst so that we might feel
what’s real?
...how will we deal?
gracias to the good guys at Proyecto Jirondai, whose
work seeks to preserve indigenous song and prayer through recording them and
sharing them throughout the Americas, we had the opportunity to meet real-life
medicine men from Costa Rica’s Cabecar and Bribri indigenous communities. One
of them, we were told, had to walk twelve hours from his village to meet the people
who would take him to our gathering. we were in awe of him, of his knowledge,
of the way he sang to the plants in their own special song. of how he learned
medicine through his dreams and ancestors and wouldn’t walk with a light at
night so as not to disturb the spirits. we wanted to learn from these men,
their way of life, how we might absorb some of their knowledge to heal
ourselves and others through the plants, just as their ancestors had done for millennia.
our intentions were honorable.
our questions were rapid-fire.
“so how do we use this bark? boil it or
create a salve?”
“how much do we use?”
“what is the scientific name for that
leaf?”
“can you sing that plant’s song again
please?”
“wait, what is this used for again?”
i watched the process of one-sided knowledge
extraction unfold before me as plant nerds turned colonizer-health practitioners
in an instant, desperate for the wisdom they could use in their own practice,
stripping it of its cultural significance and perverting its essence by removing
it from its context, eventually commoditizing it into a marketable product for
their clients. there would be tinctures and teas and lip balms and capsules
bought and sold with a story of a medicine man who sings to the plants and who
once walked twelve hours to share his tribal knowledge with us for the benefit
of all. his people’s ancestral spirit-wisdom would live on in modern medicine
chests the world around.
among all of these healers, i felt kind of
sick.
and strangely enough, that wasn’t the
strangest part.
the strangest was that there were only a
dozen of us in the audience for these real-life medicine men. at a conference
of over two hundred plant-lovers also in love with all things indigenous, fewer
than fifteen of us made it a priority to learn plant wisdom from our idols, the
people who invented it. it wasn’t that 175 people were lazy or lost, but rather
that taking place simultaneously was a presentation on the use of medicinal
plants in indigenous ceremony by none other than herbalist celebrity David Winston, who chant-yodeled in guttural Cherokee to welcome his listeners,
making his American-Indian grandmother proud to spite his white-man appearance.
no small feat, it turns out he is known for re-teaching Cherokee elders the knowledge
of their traditional plant medicine lost through the generations of cultural genocide
we call colonization, displacement and marginalization.
a white-looking man with some Cherokee
heritage brought up and educated in modernity and well-respected for his
contributions to restoring native knowledge.
…is David Winston our idolized archetype
for archaic revival?
perhaps.
i think what we like about him, though, is
that he represents the type of indigeneity we’re comfortable with. because it
fits within our worldview, and he makes it approachable by speaking to us in
ways that make us feel safe, comfortable in the familiar. he’s not dark-skinned
or nervous in front of your cameras in his face or singing to his plants and
talking about spirits in the dark. no, he’s telling you exactly how those
plants are used ceremonially so you can use them ceremonially too, out of
context with non-shamans and medicine-men-for-hire, to get your hit of the edge, native
spirituality at its deepest, in connection with the realms modern materialism teaches us not to
see. that’s what we want, isn’t it? to experience, at least fleetingly, what
people like the Cabecar medicine men have lived and known forever. so why
wouldn’t we go straight to the source and show up when they’ve walked twelve
hours to share their secrets?
could it be because in all of our attempts
to escape the skeletons in our materialist worldview closet, we still prefer
the representation to the real, the modern Cherokee expert-teacher to the
humble Indian whose knowledge we want but whose actual presence in jeans-and-a-T-shirt
doesn’t match up to the barefoot-and-feathered image we’ve created of him in
our spiritualized mind-selves. in the process, we end up valuing image over
substance and calling it real when it may very well be a reconstituted
representation, at best.
we crave the truth in indigenous wisdom, a
window into an integral world that still defines existence in remote corners
safe from modernity. we’re inspired by it, we seek to emulate it, save it. but by
failing to truly understand this wisdom and honor it within its place-based
context, situated in a wholly distinct view of the world we’re unable to fully
grasp from our materialist reality, might we be making a mockery of it instead?
in seeking to become other, are we perverting and diluting that which we admire
while getting further and further from its essence, and in the process, further
and further from ourselves?
save us, Rosita Arvigo! we
laughed and cried as the woman taught by the last Mayan shaman, don Elijio
Ponti, shared her story of perseverance in becoming his apprentice for thirteen
years. he rejected her persistence at first, but couldn’t get rid of her. eventually,
he conceded: “if i teach you, do you promise to take care of my people?” now
that’s a shamanic mandate if i’ve ever heard one. Rosita was refreshing in all
of the ways i wanted her to be. yes, she is a woman from Chicago practicing
shamanic medicine in Belize. she charges a hefty sum for courses in Mayan
uterine massage. but the way she went about her training and subsequent
practice spoke of honoring the traditions of which she became a part after
dedicating her life to studying with don Elijio.
“take
the children as if they were your own,” he had told her, an old man now. “take them,
and teach them to take care of eachother.” following his dying wishes, Rosita
started bush medicine camps for kids. young women in her audience today begged
to apprentice with her. maybe they were feeling what i was feeling as i
listened to her story. i felt grateful for her integrity, authenticity. she
wasn’t extracting knowledge and applying it in modern-materialist contexts to
make it appealing. she was on a mission to carry out the mandate of her
teacher, the last Mayan shaman. he was calling the shots; she, his servant in
the shared soul-purpose of sacred medicine. Rosita gave me hope that people
like her still exist. people who let the shaman call the shots. people who value
tradition in context, who know native spirituality and ancestral plant wisdom in
authenticity and substance rather than in image and representation. may we learn
from her in our love of the indigenous. in our practice of time-and-place-honored
tribal ceremony. in our daily medicine, today and tomorrow.
