Hello Gail and Ed, Thanks for sticking with me on these things. I have a couple of comments. I give respect to you both for your humanity and your stubbornness in seeking solutions to things.
The way I think of this is as a great circle of cultural identities. Each identity goes back to the beginning of time. Each has a tradition that draws upon the knowledge of that legacy. We all sit around a common fire that constantly transforms reality and affects us all. Only by sharing our immediate perceptions and the insights of our legacies can we design a common destiny that brings us all together without destroying our individual genius and the knowledge our legacy brings to the evolution of the world we live in. The problem is the battle for position. From where I sit, it seems silly for someone on the other side of the circle to insist that they know what I'm seeing, hearing, smelling, "sensing" from my position and how I interpret that from my heritage. It also seems silly to insist that the current fashion in education, public health, economics, spirituality, science, history, law or philosophy in any one position is capable of comprehending the whole without everyone's help. There is not greater insult than to insult one's heritage that gives them identity. Think of the phrase "wannabe" and apply it to anyone on this list and you will feel the sting of insult to one's ancestors. But that isn't all, for example, my reaction to people here, on this list, is often from the mood projected by the modality of written language on a computer from wildly different perspectives. I find it amazing that we all stick together given our diversity and the frames we have been given to project off on each other. Even still, I often feel that the members of the dominant society on these lists believe that Native people, and the artists in their own societies as well, share a common uselessness. With the natives, usefulness (utility) is limited to handicrafts and exotics and with the artists it's relaxation and entertainment. I would be surprised if the bulk of the people on this list believed that they had anything of use to learn from native people, and from their own artists in their economy. In a lecture that my father gave at Union Theological Seminary in New York in April of 1986 he said: "One of the reasons that the educators and school systems know so little (about us) and have ignored our culture and value systems is that they have operated on the assumption that there is nothing worthwhile in the culture to teach or know. (except handi-crafts)." I won't go any further with that since I've written reams on it or it feels like I have. Let me just say that the Christian missionaries in my own Indian family who went to Korea and Japan both came home emotionally and culturally enriched from the cultures they initially set out to change. I think the case could be made that the former European Empires are poorer not because they have less things to play with but because their children came home culturally enriched from their encounters in Africa and Asia with societies that they initially considered either decadent or primitive. Now that they no longer have the rite of passage afforded by empire there is nothing except an occasional war to serve the purpose. I don't mean this in a flippant manner. I had people who were sorry that I was not sent to Vietnam to "grow up" and instead went to Washington to sing in the White House. The lead poison was not enough of a rite passage from childhood, they wanted to add cancer and agent orange to the mixture. My experience is not theoretical but actual in this relationship with the dominant society. My experience with the dominant society has been rewarding in the Arts and humanities and savage and primitive in so many other ways. But frankly put, that could just be the language and my cultural assumptions. More about that in part two. So the first comment is that I believe there is NO hierarchy of cultures. Just cultures that majored in different things while being incomplete, provincial and stupid in their chauvinism when they try to go it alone. I believe the dominant culture needs what those Inuits have to offer and I have direct experience as proof. I have an adopted sister who is from the Arctic. She is Aleut but shares many of the same experiences as the Inuits. Adding to that experience of being ripped from the breast of her people when her parents died and sent to school in Oregon and then to Santa Fe's Institute of American Indian Arts. Still, she recovered and has had an illustrious life. As an artist she has performed the Greek Trilogy at Epidoris and at the Parthenon in Greece (Clytemnestra and Hecuba). She was in the Peter Brook International Company and performed his production of "The Birds." (She studied voice with me and became a part of my family and the Godmother of my daughter.) She also directed and taught acting in my opera company and at Manhattan School of Music. The work and exercises that she used in developing psycho-physical skills for the company began with the traditional education of Inuit children in the arctic. There were many Westerners who came to the Arctic at that time and studied the traditional skills, techniques, endurance and sophisticated linguistic and sensual techniques for psycho-physical development of the individual. The very skills that the government schools in America and Canada worked to eliminate from the First Nations peoples. Andre Serban and Peter Brook worked hard to convince them to teach them those skills while the American and Canadian governments worked hard to make them into productive merchants of petroleum products. The amazing thing to me was that the Europeans in Europe both understood, valued and coveted the native skills while the Europeans here resented the fact that there WAS something different and of value in the First Nations cultures, unless it was handicraft products to be sold by the pound. As for my sister, after teaching these American opera singers about Inuit/Aleut realities she took them to work with Du-yee Chang the great Korean actor/director and then the French Bernhardt technique with Sylvain L'hermitte and Flamenco with Lilliana Morales. There was no hierarchy just expertise and each group was as hard as the next. Enough of that. There is no hierarchy. There are just cultures around the wheel of existence working out from the materials of the substance of the Universe what it means to be human and real people. It is my experience that we all need each other. "No man is island." II The second comment has to do with language. The Cherokee language and most native languages I'm aware of, have a big thing about the passive voice. The passive voice is a way of saying some very outrageous things without them being hyper aggressive or causing a loss of face. You can read it in the Asian, Korean TV programs on the internet where the translations are almost violent and the energy of the voices staccato and sharp in attack while simply discussing things. Same for the Japanese. In the Asian, as here, when you change the passive voice into the active English, the words immediately become hostile and aggressive when they aren't in the original. In the original you don't have "please" and "thank you" because in the passive voice the please and thank you's are assumed. If you say the same thing in the Active voice, please and thank you are required to reduce the appearance of hostility. This has become apparent more than ever in a Cherokee language class on a mixed list that I'm leading on the internet. The cultural diversity extends from Hawaii to Alaska to Canada and the lower forty eight to England and the Caribbean. I didn't bring up the passive voice to the list. That was brought up by a Native American Physics grad from Harvard, on the list, who spoke of the problem of communication at Harvard and how that difficulty has come to help him translate poetry from all over the world and become a major American poet. His translations of Chinese poetry are actually making money, on Amazon, being sold to Asian Americans to help in studying English. He has shared with me, on many occasions, that his sensitivity began in his Native language and the problems of English at Harvard College with the "passive" voice. Here is an URL: to give you a little more on this by the late Cherokee psycho-linguist Dan Alford. His story is not unique in Indian Country. http://www.enformy.com/moonhawk-nurturing01.htm REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gail Stewart Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 4:52 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Way of Right Relationship Hello Ray, I understand (I think) your indignation but would like to disabuse you, if possible, about my posting mentioning posts you had not seen. I made only three refereces in my posting -- to your article of the same day, to Mike Spenser's post of the previous day which I hope and trust you received, and to my indebtedness to John Verdon of this list for a reference to a book. That reference was not current and may or may not have been made through this list. (I am indebted to John for a number of references, made in varous contexts.) I hope this will help to reassure you that I, at least, doubt there is such discrimation against you as would have excluded you from any posts made to the list. As for discrimination more generally, your own post refers to this and it has certainly been my experience, as a Canadian, that we are far yet from regarding Canada's aboriginal peoples as brothers under the skin. However, quite remarkable progress has been made within my lifetime and even among my acquaintance from both cultures. At the same time, while personal relationships may have improved, I believe (as my posting tried to point up) that the immensity of the revolution in thought required for most of us later immigrants to the Americas to understand what it is like to live within rather than merely surrrounded by our natural environment has barely begun to be appreciated. It is not just that we have all been, for example, on a burning spree with fossil fuels and are now trying (and soon likely to be forced) to cut back, but that this is just the tip of an intellectual reordering of our planetary environmental relationships if we hope to have sustainability of human life on the planet in anything like our current numbers. The alternative to rethinking our situation is not pretty and the entire matter (including your postings continuously challenging the perceptions of the dominant society) relates very much to our current concepts of work so is good grist for our mills on this list. At least that's my view. May the discussion go on! Work, jobs, what are we trying to do? Cheers, Gail Not really sure of where you're coming from on this, Ray. The people I wrote about were Inuit, not Canadian Indian. They had chosen to adapt to our way of life even if they still retained some of their traditions. It was a choice that they pretty well had to make. Had they not made it but adhered to their semi-nomadic hunting-gathering way of life, their continuity would have been at risk, perhaps even extreme risk. Our society's intrusion into their lives is multiple and unstoppable. We've not only forced them to become clients of our various social institutions and services, but we've taken over their lands and waters in a variety of ways. We not only make national parks out of them, we explore them for oil, gas and other resorces. And we tour them and hunt on them. I recall flying down from a community on the Arctic lslands in a battered old DC-3 some years ago. Most of my fellow passengers were American hunters who very proudly kept talking about how they got "their" bear or caribou. There was something very propriety about the conversations. It was as though "their" bear or caribou had been waiting up in the high Arctic to be shot by them. Frankly, I found it disgusting, but had to accept that it was an aspect of the changing nature of the modern Arctic. Regards, Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Harrell" <[email protected]> To: "'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 9:37 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Way of Right Relationship > Sad but not mistaken? Therein lies the problem. Whether to design the > environment for the good of all or to eat it slowly like an army of > disconnected ants. You think its sad but you do not take the Native > systems alternative seriously. The Yonega alternative, to teach the > children to ignore their own identity and psycho-physical reality, only > works for a short part of their lives. Once they realize they have been > tricked out of their birthright all too often the answer is to look > reality > in the face and choose to leave with suicide or drugs. No capital, no > future, no investment in a Yonega's version of success. That's simple > basic psychology and choices that are not ir-rational but horrible. How > could free Indian foresters want to join such a group that would propagate > such a thing as an ideal? > > The Canadian government thought that creating a reservation for the plants > and animals was a respectful alternative economic structure for people > whose > systems were built on respect and balance for all of the species. It > doesn't compute except to show that the government doesn't speak in the > language of the First Nations. Those government folks are biased, afraid > and stress the active grammatical tense over the passive in their language > and communications. Same here, but when we [I] speak in their language > and > avoid the passive, the translation sends them away even though their > horrendous hubris results in genocide. > > Even today, I don't get materials from this list for discussion. [Gail > mentioned posts that I have not received.] I assume its because certain > members refused to stay and deal with blunt discussion unless I was > excluded > from their posts which were rife with inaccuracies and bias. Its OK to > overwhelm another culture but its not OK for those cultures to verbally > fight back in resistance on the internet. My childhood friends, now > Elders, > ask me not to talk to their Yonega neighbors because telling them the > truth > and defeating their argument just feedbacks to their having to deal with > powerful and hostile neighbors who strike out because their arguments are > irrational and they can't win them verbally. Jesus has forgiven them but > He has left them impotent and dangerous. > > REH > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick > Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:49 AM > To: Gail Stewart; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION > Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Way of Right Relationship > > I've experienced something like that in the very remotest of northern > communities in which people still apologized to the animals they had to > kill > > in order to stay alive themselves. The people were still strongly tied > into > > the ecosphere and they knew it. However, things were changing. Kids > learned our view of the world at school, and when they had finished their > primary grades they were shipped out to Yellowknife or Inuvik to do high > school. Elders were still respected, but as icons more than as sources of > ancient wisdom bearing on the ecosystem. > > In my last visit to one of those communities, about five years ago, I > stayed > > with a local family. I had work to do but found it difficult because the > TV > > was blaring for much of the day. The community was close to a national > park > > that our government had created out of the community's ancient hunting > lands, and tourism was expected to become a growing source of income. The > people still knew the land, but they expected to increasingly use it as > tour > > guides and not as harvesters. > > Even if it was all inevitable, I found it a little sad. > > Ed > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gail Stewart" <[email protected]> > To: "RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION" > <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 6:28 AM > Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Way of Right Relationship > > >> >> (Incidently but not irrelevantly, has anybody on this list ever >> experienced >> themselves as active participant in the ecosphere, the thin skin of this >> spinning planet, among all its living inhabitants? Might you be willing >> to >> share something of that experience?) >> >> Regards, >> >> Gail >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Futurework mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Futurework mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework >> > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
