Ray and Keith,
This is the clearest explanation of these ideas I have seen. Thank you
for this exchange. It is a gift!
Barry
On Jun 26, 2011, at 12:20 PM, Ray Harrell wrote:
I separated out our comments. Will write an answer after I teach
today. Here are a couple of definitions that must differ from
England to America.
Facts: “Just the facts” means a mutual agreement from my
perspective. I was taught by academics and theologians about this
word. It’s grounded in what we now call “System’s thought” which
states that facts (and truths) are relative to the system within
which they function. The difference between the two is “Facts are
mutual agreements that change as new agreements evolve.” Truths
are the foundations of the system that can only be changed carefully
lest the entire system collapse. America’s systems have been
radically changed over the last 25 years and as you all point out,
are seriously in danger of collapse from the termites that have
eaten the foundations.
Hanta Virus: is native here and was and is controlled by Native
public health systems through the people that European Americans
quaintly call “Medicine Men.” For the record: “I are
one!” :>)) The old story about pure immune systems here is
what Keith calls “rubbish.” It’s an incorrect historical and
scientific fact.
Google “Columbian Exchange.” There is a lot of very good writing
today that has grown out of the research from the academics over the
last twenty years or so. Actually, since I joined Futurework.
What I have been saying here is now regular old stuff being taught
to grade school kids as a result of graduate history majors research
for their Doctoral Thesis. An Organization I belong to (The
Organization of American Historians) publishes a Journal of American
History that reviews many of these newly published books every
month. They also review web sites for historic accuracy. Last
month there were 137 book reviews with twenty about the American
Indians and most about the results of the Columbian Exchange. I
call it “setting the record straight through competitive scholarship.”
The research on Hanta Virus has happened because the American
government knows little to nothing about it and introduced modern
housing patterns into the Navajo reservation that ignored the
traditional rules for handling the carrier of Hanta Virus, the deer
mouse. You don’t have to believe me about this, you can even find
“medicine man info” on Google. Just google “Hanta Virus
Carriers”. You can be your own follower of traditional religion,
according to the Anthropologist descriptions of us. (smile) If
the dropping from a deer mouse is found in a house, the house is
immediately vacated and burned with all belongings.
That’s why the traditional public health and urban planning required
such a careful handling of sanitation and keeping the animals
outside behind thick log walls that they couldn’t eat their way
into. We don’t believe in better living through dangerous
chemicals.
However the government health service and teachers have brought
capitalism to the Navajo reservation and we have outbreaks of Hanta
Virus that targets the young and the healthy for immediate
death. That is now the considered opinion, based on the
symptoms, of what killed the millions of Aztec workers living in
close quarters by Spanish sanitation rules. A good test for the
immune system theory would be that no Europeans died from it.
However it was the Catholic Priests who lived with them in the same
conditions who also died.
The system of science is a wonderful thing. It’s mutual
agreements are almost “truth” but can change with the introduction
of future new information. We too have had such science. The
beginning of the training of what Europeans call a Medicine Man is
the simple instructions around the first study. “Observe
everything! Omit nothing down to the smallest detail. Remember,
the Earth is your “bible” and you must develop superior skills of
memory and the assembling of what you have observed and their
implications for the people.” The most common phrase is
agagasesdi. “I’m paying attention.” It is my understanding
from speaking with other Indigenous practitioners from around the
world at the UN that the traditional way of handling Eboli in Africa
is similar and stops the infection dead in its tracks. But it is
not the Greek method. We do not believe this is all there is.
We believe in the eternity of the spirit and so we do not believe
that the spirit dies no matter how big a mess is made here nor how
many of these bodies are killed. We honor the gift of the body to
house the spirit for the sacred purposes of living but ultimately we
believe the purpose of living itself is the knowledge it brings to
the Eternal Spirit. That means that approach death a little
differently and community as well. We believe that we need a
working group to finish the work of learning that gives our lives
significance in this place. A market is like a toilet.
Necessary and some are better than others but it is not the purpose
of significance of this life.
More comments on Keith’s comments, after I do my work. Keith, I
appreciate your energy and the gift of your mind in the
contemplation of these things. You do come from a far distant
place from myself.
REH
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