"Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and
the Fur Trade" by Calvin Martin
SA quotes:
"Practically speaking, we might inquire how this
process of voluntary surrender and capture worked and
what its results were in terms of actual numbers
killed. The traditional Indian hunter of the Eastern
Canadian forest had evolved an elaborate system of
communication and spiritual control over wildlife, a
system which we judge, from references contained in
the early documentary sources described above, to have
been thriving at the time of first European contact.
For many of these hunder-gatherers the basic oracle of
life was one's soul-spirit, or Great Man, as Naskapi
put it. 'This is the term by which the soul in its
active state is referred to, and, as we shall see, the
active state of the soul is one which means guidance
through life and which provides the means of
overcoming the spirits of animals in the life-long
search for food.' Chief Joseph Kurtness, of the Lake
St. John Naskapi, explained to Speck that 'the Great
Man reveals itself in dreams.' We flatter our Great
Man by probing our dreams, and in turn we are rewarded
by an even more productive communication with him.
'The next obligation,' Speck was told, 'is for the
individual to follow instructions given him in dreams,
and to memorialize them in representations of art.'
Those who neglected their dreams lost touch with their
Great Man, 'and cessation of revelations as to when
and where to go for game, how to proceed, and how to
satisfy it when it is slain, would result in the loss
of a powerful and far-seeing guide, the individual's
'Providence' - and a doom of failure and starvation.
Thus autistic thought and behavior become dominant
factors in life.' Observant Naskapi thus came to rely
implicitly on the promptings of this inner voice,
since their success in all spheres of activity was
achieved, they felt, through his direction."
SA continues:
"inner voice"; listening to ones dreams and
"memorializing them in representations of art"; this
being practical to the survival of societies; this
listening to ones inner voice or face starvation.
"autistic thought and behavior" autism:
(clinical psychology) Abnormal self-absorption, first
observed in childhood, characterised by lack of
response to people and limited ability to communicate.
[wikidictionary]
I see this account of "autistic thought and
behavior" given above having the ability to go even
further in meaning than this clinical psychological
definition. For to remove one self from ones inner
voice is remove one self, in this context, from the
tribe and connection with the woods via limiting ones
ability to survive. Survival here directly involves
everything. No separation. Dreams, art, the inner
voice, the tribe, all directly active in survival and
thus as practical as practical is. The moq places the
code of art at the point, the axis where static
patterns emerge out of direct everyday experience of
dynamic quality. What art code do you follow?
warm night,
SA
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