Envisioning The Future...

"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In 1492...

... Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Native American Prayer For Peace...

 O Great Spirit of our

Ancestors, I raise

my pipe to you.

To your messengers the four winds, and

to Mother Earth who provides

for your children.

Give us the wisdom to teach our children

to love, to respect, and to be kind to each

other so that they may grow

with peace in mind.

Let us learn to share all good things that

you provide for us on this Earth.

 ~ Native American Prayer for Peace

What Is Intelligence?

Manu Aluli Meyer reveals what quantum physics and indigenous culture have in common, as well as her vision of a Free Hawai'i...

Hope...

A friend wrote this on her Facebook status this evening:

"The woes of this world, this nation, this state, this city and all of the good everyday people, those who have no clout, who just do the best they can, yes, all of this, wears my spirit to it's core for I cannot see any light and I am tired of searching for it in the darkness."

I replied:

"I have to take it moment by moment, and ration out all the depressing stuff I read, otherwise I become completely immobilised by despair and depression..."

Another woman felt the same way... 

We all keep working at it, but it gets harder every day to see that we are at least holding back the tide, let along reversing some of the really horrible stuff we humans are doing to each other and to the planet... 

So, I went looking for HOPE, and found this:

Visionary Willy Whitefeather

Directed by Catherine Margerin
Produced by Mary Mathaisell, Luna Media

This animated short film is a story of prophecy -  the story of man going down the wrong path, with one day the possibility of finding the path of peace and love. 

Combining animation, archival footage and live action, in a multi-layered non-linear story, the film brings the viewer on a fascinating journey through human existence. 

HOPE documents what we are seeing around the world with wars, genocide, diseases, climate change such as global warming, and the potential earth changes that have been foretold by many seers and indigenous peoples. 

HOPE is shaped around the knowledge and ideas of Willy Whitefeather, a man in his sixties of Cherokee ancestry, a fascinating storyteller, healer, survivalist and an individual of wisdom and heart. 

Using traditions and stories from Native American and world cultures, the film combines dreams, images and reminiscences from our collective memory to send a message of hope for the future. 

The animated scenes are in styles reminiscent of Pueblo pottery design, Sioux painted hides, Petroglyph drawings and Hopi mural paintings. 

The sound track is similarly layered with the sounds of a beating heart, breathing, wooden flutes, drums, rattles, a traditional Cherokee lullaby and original music.

Now is the time to reconnect with Spirit, to recognize the effects of our actions, to evaluate the underlying causes of suffering and to reshape our life and our world into a harmonious one.

HOPE urges us to change course and follow a path of wisdom, responsibility, beauty, simplicity and gentleness. 

And here, is a follow-up with Willie Whitefeather himself narrating the story...

Flags & Empires...

One form of kleptomania - have flag, must steal country...

 

Have flag, must build an empire...

Have flag, must plant it on the Moon...

Amazing Grace - Did You Know?

The history of the hymn, according to Wintley Phipps: 

 

First Peoples' renditions of Amazing Grace: 

Uluru - The Rock...

Local landscape photographer Peter Carroll was in the right place at the right time when the rain came bucketing down earlier in the month.

 
Peter was at Yulara - the township near Uluru - when he woke at 3am to the sound of torrential rain.

"It has been a 20 year dream to see Uluru with water pouring down her flanks," writes Peter in his blog, "so there I lay tossing and turning praying the rain would continue til the crack of dawn."
 

Most longtime residents of Central Australia know that the sight of rain on the rock is a rare phenomenon. For a landscape photographer, it's gold. Before the sun had risen, Peter was out there with his camera.
 

"I had to calm myself a little bit. It was pretty momentous," says Peter.  "I went round to the general car park area where the climb is...and that's where these white stripes started to reveal themselves, it was pretty spectacular."
 

The result of Peter's work is a spectacular collection of images that show Uluru in a whole new light.

Barely recognisable with silver lines snaking down the surface and eerie fog hovering - the images will no doubt find a large audience. Several have already appeared on the front page of The Australian.
 

Most of the shots were taken near the Mututjulu waterhole, says Peter, and what he heard that morning was just as powerful as what he saw through the lens.
 

"Once I got out of the car and started walking in, all the noises started to take over," he says. "When you hear that water rushing down the side, and plummeting over cliffs, it really is a special sound. And because we've had so much rain lately there's just hundreds of thousands of frogs around the place, it was pretty magical."
 

"I've been down [to Uluru] a lot and whenever I'm down there it delivers some special, special moment..I don't know what the inner workings of it are on the human psyche but it's fairly powerful stuff."

 

 

Midnight Oil was asked to write a song that would be performed during the  1985 ceremony to hand Uluru back to its traditional owners.   The band submitted three songs and the Aboriginal people chose to use Dead Heart. 

Lyrics

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
White man listen to the songs we sing
White man came took everything

We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone

We don't need protection
Don't need your land
Keep your promise on where we stand
We will listen we'll understand

We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

Mining companies, pastoral companies
Uranium companies
Collected companies
Got more right than people
Got more say than people
Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state
of things
The dead heart lives here

 

Crazy Baldheads...

"Build your penitentiary, we build your schools,
Brainwash education to make us the fools.
Hate is your reward for our love,
Telling us of your God above...
We gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of the town!"

Lyrics:

Them crazy, them crazy -
We gonna chase those crazy
Baldheads out of town;
Chase those crazy baldheads
Out of our town.

I'n'I build a cabin;
I'n'I plant the corn;
Didn't my people before me
Slave for this country?
Now you look me with that scorn,
Then you eat up all my corn.

We gonna chase those crazy -
Chase them crazy -
Chase those crazy baldheads out of town!

Build your penitentiary, we build your schools,
Brainwash education to make us the fools.
Hate is your reward for our love,
Telling us of your God above.

We gonna chase those crazy -
Chase those crazy bunkheads -
Chase those crazy baldheads out of the town!

We gonna chase those crazy -
Chase those crazy bunkheads -
Chase those crazy baldheads out of the town!

Here comes the conman
Coming with his con plan.
We won't take no bribe;
We've got [to] stay alive.

We gonna chase those crazy -
Chase those crazy baldheads -
Chase those crazy baldheads out of the town.

Images of Truth...

The Mouth Of Truth

The Truth - Jules Joseph Lefebvre

Triumph of Truth - Rubens

Truth - Gianlorenzo Bernini

Truth - Gianlorenzo Bernini

The Triumph of Truth - Hans von Aachen

The truth of things: Velázquez, An Old Woman Cooking Eggs

 

Time Unveiling Truth - Jean-François Detroy

The Blindfolding of Truth - Byam Shaw

Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy - Francois Lemoyne

Truth Has Died - Goya

Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever

The Seekers of Truth - The Eve Chronicles

Truth Dazzles Gradually

The Truth 2012

Truth Is Beauty - Pat O'Hara

Native Truth - Christine Tarantino

Truth Is An Arrow - Barron Storey

Truth - James Muir

White Privilege & Colour-Blindness

Two intertwined thoughts in this posting...

In 1990, in New Zealand, I was 'forced' to attend cultural sensitivity training when I went back to school (as an adult) to complete a broadcast journalism course...

The course was facilitated by a middle-aged hard core Maori man, who called it for what it was...

At first I was really resistant... my family had only been in New Zealand since the mid 60s, had not hurt anyone, taken their land, enslaved anyone, forced assimilation on anyone, engaged in cultural and ethnic genocide, used racist slurs - hell some of my best friends were Maori, Polynesian, French, Polish, Lebanese  so I wasn't racist blah, blah, blah...

Well, you know what?   My life and all the privileges myself and my family took for granted (including the chance to immigrate to New Zealand, to work damn hard, to buy a small piece of land and build a modest house, to enjoy a social welfare system, free education and health care etc) had been built on the back of land theft and exploitation... 

And yes, I was a part of the problem because I didn't realise/acknowledge that...

If you won't admit you are part of the problem, you cause the problem to persist...

 And no, there's no way for me to turn the clock back and undo what was done... No way for me to "pay back" what I've received in white privilege... 

But I can at least acknowledge it, own it and do my best to ameliorate the effects as they are being felt by those who have been exploited for generations...

Have you acknowledged your white privilege lately?

Or your relative African American privilege that was bought on the back of native land theft and genocide?

And how many of us are in the place where we don't see other people, especially children, from other backgrounds as anything other than American kids rather than First Peoples, or African American or Chinese or Vietnamese or Pacific Islander or Polish or whatever.

That says a lot about what is wrong with our approach... we all think we are not being racist when we are "colour blind", but that is racist in itself:

COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICA 

Color-blind racism has crystallized as the dominant racial ideology of the United States. Whites no longer need to utter the ugly racial epithets of the past, claim God made whites superior, or argue that minorities are inferior biological beings in order to keep them in a subordinated position. Instead, whites chastise minorities in a color-blind way and, by default, defend their racial privilege in a “now you see it, now you don’t fashion.” Color-blind racism is thus a formidable weapon to maintain white privilege.

Will color-blind racism increase in significance in the twenty-first century, or will Americans realize the continuing impact of racial stratification in their country? The trends, unfortunately, suggest that, if anything, color-blind racism is bound to become even more salient. For one thing, the Supreme Court may eliminate all forms of race-based policies (e.g., Affirmative Action, busing) as “discriminatory in reverse.” Such an outcome will underscore whites’ “we are beyond race” racial common sense. In addition, Congress may stop gathering racial statistics, because gathering them presumably racializes Americans. This will make it all but impossible to document racial gaps in income, education, occupations, and other areas. This would only eliminate racial inequality artificially. Finally, the United States is developing a plural racial order, a development that will further diffuse the salience of race. In the emerging racial order, a middle group of “honorary whites” will buffer racial conflict and become arduous defenders of color-blindness.

Hence, the United States may be on its way to becoming a land of racism without racists, where people formerly known as blacks, Latinos, and Asians will still lag well behind the people formerly known as whites. Yet this inequality, formerly known as racial, will no longer be interpreted as such because Americans will believe, like the character Pangloss in Voltaire’s novel Candide , that they live in the best of all possible worlds.

Color-Blind Racism - WHITE RACIAL ATTITUDES IN THE POST–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, IN 21st CENTURY AMERICA

 

It Happened All Over the World...

Colonialism... it's not dead yet... it's still happening and its disastrous effects will never go away...

I don't know how many of you have actually ever had the opportunity to look at your world with new eyes..

I came here for the first time in August of 2002 and stayed for three months... in the north end of Seattle, spent a lot of time in the U-District and down town in the CBD...

And even there, walking the streets seeing new sights every day, I was struck how down trodden even well dressed African American people looked...

They appeared to be participating in society - nice clothes and shoes, on their way to or from an office or whatever, but they all - without exception - walked with their heads down, not willing/wanting to make eye contact... 

There was absolutely no pride in their stride...

I was shocked... This is what I expected (as an outsider) to find in the south of the US 50 years ago, 100 years ago - not in Seattle in 2002... 

And from what I can tell, nothing has changed 9 years later...

And then, of course, there is the tragedy of genocide carried out on the First Peoples of this land, the repercussions of which are still so obvious today...

So where does this shame and humiliation carried in the body language come from?

Could it at all, even a tiny little bit, have anything to do with having to turn one's back on one's origins, roots, culture and "act white" to get a foothold in this society?

Could it have anything to do with being expected to abandon one's own heritage and conform to and perform in an "alien" environment?

I wish that some of you here could participate in the "blue eye-brown eye" experiment, carried out by Jane Elliott in 1968... (see the link)

Jane Elliott - A Class Divided

And we wonder why there is an achievement gap in American schools, a gap between white student performance and the performance of native, black and latino children...

Walk in someone else's shoes for a mile or two - use your imagination...

I know what it's like to go to school and not be able to speak English...

and to be thought of as less than because of that...

and having to work hard at school because I wanted to be accepted and to meet the family push to use education to get out of poverty/climb the social ladder/achieve acceptance, and at the same time, underachieving (I was quite 'bright') to avoid more of the limelight...

and having a name that no one could pronounce...

and having cultural slurs hurled at me - ones I didn't understand...

and being ambushed on the way to or from school and being hit, kicked, punched and beaten with pieces of wood...

and not having my origins or culture valued, recognised even...

and not feeling at home in my native culture, not knowing my history because not enough of it got transmitted/maintained in the process of meeting the demands of assimilation...

I understand this issue because really, I'm not Dutch, I'm not a Kiwi, I'm not an Australian, I'm not an American...

I think too much like a Dutch person to be called/recognised/accepted as a Kiwi, and too much like a Kiwi to be accepted as Dutch...

My Dutch relatives recognise my Dutch blood but I don't fit into the culture and our conversation can't reach really deep levels because although I "feel" what they are talking about (it's in my blood/DNA and comes out in how I dress/decorate my house/approach problems etc), I don't have enough personal experience within the culture to contribute meaningfully ...

My Kiwi friends say I sound too much like an Australian, my Aussie friends say I sound too much like a Kiwi and my American friends think I'm British...

I like that I have had this diversity in my life - it's given me many opportunities and experiences and understandings I might not have had, but there is a rootedness missing...what the children in trans-racial adoption families talk about...

Many other immigrant children I have talked too have exactly the same experience... and it doesn't change as you become an adult...

For some - when they go back to their native country, they feel like they have come home; for others, they feel even more alienated...

Many people here seem to have no sense of the 'other' and blithely put forward pontifications that have no basis in the realities of those 'other' to them...
 

So many people cannot allow others to be as they are...

It seems to be a case of assimilate or die... "You're in America now, you're in the west.   What's wrong with you?   If you'd just be and live like us, you'd be fine..."

If only those others amongst us would do what good "white" people did, we would all be well and happy and successful at school... 

In fact, we would all be "white" despite our skin colours and cultural heritages...

Yes - kids are adaptable and flexible and capable of learning whatever they need to survive in this world...

But I say the system and society ought to adapt to the needs of the people, not the other way round...

DON'T ASK CHILDREN TO LEAVE BEHIND, ABANDON THEIR NATIVE CULTURE, don't teach them within a racist, eurocentric, standardised curriculum and process...

Two Versions of Reality Co-existing In The Same Time & Place

Thanksgiving - two perspectives...

an 1789 newspaper publication of President George Washington's proclamation of the first official Thanksgiving holiday in the United States