KSH: What are the Cherokees saying about rising energy costs and automation? That is, if you don't deny that they are two of the most serious problems that we (and the Cherokees) face today?
Summary of what I've said in the past on this list: THE PROBLEM OF ENERGY; 1. Government should fund green Research and Development for sustainable energy run by scientists on salary and not by the politicians or the private sector only interested in maximizing surplus. Balance rather than devouring the planet. I was taught and learned that first hand from birth to the age of seventeen [when I left the reservation and the desolation of the world's largest lead and zinc mining fields]. a. Cherokees had sustainable forestry and agricultural technology and we limited population based on environmental balance. Before the 98% die off from European diseases, we considered devouring the earth to be an incestuous activity. After that the remnant populations ignored many of the old laws about balance, universal suffrage and peace. 2. America should build a society that cares about the earth, the diversity of peoples, plants and animals and that strengthens that diversity as a knowledge base and stresses personal responsibility for the long term future needs of the whole earth and not just the two legged variety. Keith, if you got up every morning at sunrise and prayed for all of the varieties of Animals and Plants and their life and success, you would have a different attitude than you have spoken on these lists. I realize it's not very English but then we have a lot traditions that don't make sense to the average English Man. Yet our ancient traditions are as true today as any of yours and we are just as stubborn as Englishmen in keeping them. a. Cherokees had universal suffrage long before England, as a part of the culture, education, political and religious structures. Our clan mothers came to diplomatic meetings with English men and were spurned even though the history has recorded their intelligence. b. We have preached the viability of natural systems versus unnatural irresponsible human systems that overstress visual intellectual intelligence to the detriment of the wisdom of the whole person. I do not support systems that are short term, poorly designed and not based in the development of personal competence as a goal for every citizen. [How can someone be free if they are incompetent in a complex world?] How can someone be free if they are unable to excel or even minimally succeed in providing for the development of their holistic consciousness and the evolution of the competence of their families? c. Cherokees and most Indigenous peoples contend that un-natural systems based merely in human logic and short term thinking are a race to the bottom of life and potential, not an appropriate ideal for the future. 3. If you [and Harry?] are right and economics is the core value of life and history then the rapacious mining of the world makes sense. However I believe that when free technologies that can't make money [because they can't be contained and limited] are used and initial research and development capital is provided to make mechanics for those technologies available to the general public, then a different model for society emerges. A more compassionate humane society filled with the best of ideals and competencies. I believe an ethic of balance and harmony rather than an ethos of excess and surplus wastefulness is more efficient in the long term than Harry's simple logic. An aesthetic ethic that is much closer to the individual forestry model used by Indigenous peoples that stressed the individual responsibility of every citizen for the upkeep of the system. Something that may be emerging in Asia as they turn back to their pre-Western cultural values. I don't hold much hope here in the U.S. however, a synthesis of the various cultures could work out a uniquely American vision and identity apart from its Western roots. There may be hope but they would have to trash the economic theories that value the split between haves and have nots and that advocates raw brutish external motivation, surplus and high salaries as an indicator of status, as the only mover of human progress. Mahler said there could be no original American complex music until the problem of the "Folk" traditions [identity] were solved. Most of the great European composers who came here ignored the Europeans and looked either to Native musics or to the transplanted African forms that became Jazz. I'm not sure they were correct in that but I am sure that current American identity is not much higher than the fad and fashion of the moment. You can see in that film on the Gamo people of the Rift Valley, the problems of Western Culture at its worst in the missionaries and the corporate push to destroy the people's spiritual connection to the land for temporary profit. http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/athousandsuns AUTOMATION: 1. Automation is good as long as it frees the workers to pursue the goals of human competence and the elevation of the spirit. That means that the benefits of automation has to be shared and that serious work on human competence and the elevation of the quality and spirit of the culture must be rewarded by the country that benefits from that type of citizen. 2. Automation is simple machine slavery. Musicians know this very well and assign the term "slave" to extra keyboards and other materials that substitute for live performers. But the normal way of dealing with cost reductions through mechanical slaves is to hire a number of live musicians to sit and play cards and collect their paychecks in return for the savings. Instead of coming up with other types of musical work, the employers and unions opt for Harry's second premise. A solution that is un-artistic, demeaning of the human spirit and just dumb in my opinion. 3. Simple surplus or what the West calls "profit" is never much of a reason for living. In my faith it is idolatrous. It's also inefficient since having more time or money is useless if your imagination is dead and your patriotism is only to your pocketbook. KSH You, as a product of modern times, are no more a traditional Cherokee than I am a medieval English serf. As before, the Cherokees have a great deal to tell us but no more than a great many other non-industrial societies. 1. We are all products of our time, lineage, heritage and cultures. Telling someone whose family has had to fight for four generations to maintain their culture and hide their spirituality in the church of their oppressor until 1978 when he was 46 years old and it literally took an act of the U.S. Congress to finally allow him and his community and family to worship in public; telling them that they are not "traditional" is like me saying that you haven't a prayer of knowing what those scores you edited mean because you have no idea of the performance practice or the culture that they sprang from. Musica Ficta. I'm a lot closer to my culture, having grown up in an Indian community and on Indian land, than you are to those composers you market over the internet. My great grandfather was born in 1838 running away from American troops. I may not be the "traditional Cherokee" in your head but we are very familiar with what is known as the "White Man's Indian" who only exists on paper and in the movies. The term: "Kill the Indian to save the man" comes to mind or is it to "win the argument." Am I not more than a little closer in time, culture and proximity to my traditions than you are to Dowland or Campion? I could make that case. I have worked with great English conductors and have been a part of the Early Music movement almost from the beginning of that movement. The approach and rules of the Early Music movement are very similar to our approach to things. A student that I developed was considered the finest baroque baritone in America and made over 100 recordings of music unrecorded by English and French composers including the first recording of many of Handel's "London" operas. All done with original instrumentation. But do I know more about that than an Englishman? No. You are English in your bones and you live there. That speaks volumes for what you understand without even knowing it. But your statement about my people and our faith is ignorant, embarrassing and beneath the accomplishments of your life and your people's traditions. I've never once called you a fraud but as an Indian I've had to deal with hyper judgmental people like yourself all my life. 2. As for the second statement I would say that industrial society and modern economic thought is bankrupt and has pretty well ruined the planet. When I read about Monsanto and see the immune illnesses around me I think that your industrial ethos has gone to the dark side. That's all I will say about energy, automation or your accusations about my heritage. As Dame Eva Turner told me so many years ago. "Ray, you must learn to let it roll off of you like water off of a duck's back." I know she was right, but will it never end until I'm dead? REH
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