Transcript: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE on the Power of Humility [ENCORE] /290
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Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I’m Ayana Young. Today I’m speaking with Tiokasin Ghosthorse.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse If we think peace with Earth rather than peace on Earth, one means domination, one means relational.
Ayana Young Tiokasin is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio'' for the last 28 years. In 2016 he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Well to Tiokasin, thank you so much for joining me today. As we were chatting earlier, I have had so many of my dear friends come to me before the interview feeling so jazzed that I get to speak to you. So this is a great day for me. And thank you for joining us.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Oh, it's an honor always, to join people who are interested in Earth first and in our language, we say tokahe maka ina, we think of Mother Earth first because the energy is sent to us, uploaded to us from her, as always. And then later on, I think we can think about downloading from the sky, Sky Gods as it is, you know, and I think that that's all part of the balance. Glad to be here. Thank you. Well,
Ayana Young Well, I’d like to begin our conversation by talking about something that I think is becoming more and more prominent, which is the savior complex that can arise when we think about the many issues Earth is periled by at this moment. In your article, Indigenous Languages As Cures of the Earth, you write; “We all rush in like fools to find more solutions, better remedies, fix-its from the profit makers, and fuzzy warm language to comfort the addicted aspects of ourselves. We make films, Facebook pages, petitions, we ask politicians to do our bidding, we cast votes virtually because we have to save our country, save the world, save the Earth, save the whales, save anything, but our own sanity.” And I think most of us can relate to this frenetic energy you describe, but I also think about how these actions are propelled by what we might identify as love, passion, and rage for what we feel is important...So my question is how do we interrogate our savior complex, while also acknowledging these tremendous emotions of love and loss?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse It's a great question, and thanks for that little challenge. I was kind of waiting for that. That's great. Thank you for that Ayana. Well, you know, in the original intuition of Lakota language, intuition of all of us I would say - without any filters of what intuition is by giving a definition, from this perspective of the Western mind, which I've been educated in and as Robert Clemens or Mark Twain said, It took me years to get over it, right? So when I’m thinking about what happens when we lose contact, we lose relationship with the Earth, we are constantly looking for that search, for ourselves, in others, and it gives way, because of our loss of instruction, it gives way to the fact that somebody else can come and rescue us. And when I think about, the original instructions, the original intuition, is the fact that even today, people go out to the wild, go out to nature, go someplace hidden, to heal, basically to understand and usually it's this sort of benevolence of I can go to the wild, to the Earth, to nature, to listen. And when I think about that, it's well, I think it's different. When we were taught as young people that we can, yes, we can go to the Earth and mother nature to listen, but in that, in the fullness of the thought, where most Indigenous peoples kind of, you know, look at that wonderment and what do you mean going to the Earth and listening for lessons actually. And then what we understand is, as one Native person, I would just say it this way, is that we usually have gone to the Earth, to find out how Mother Earth is listening to us. And that takes a lifetime, it just doesn't come up with a cause and effect.
You know, we go we get rewarded, we come back, and then we have the answer - the solution. So I think the savior mentality is tied up in the cause and effect of, we have solutions to save, what we can have our, possessive, our environment, our climate, our Earth, our - everything is possessive. And so when it comes to the savior mentality, the salvation point mentality, it’s that there is always going to be salvation for us as long as we follow the rules and regulations of an authority figure, religion, science, or government. And all of those have authority figures, where you look at it the other way, in relational languages, and in Indigenous languages, there is no need for monotheism or authority. Because that domination does not fit authority, well, it does actually domination and authority go together, but domination does not fit relational languages, and in relational languages, everything is in scope, everything is relative, everything is related. And there's no need to get connected, or even save that which giving you all the answers, meeting all your needs as Mother Earth does.
So Mother Earth does indeed listen to us and gives us all that we need all our cries, all our whimpers, all our prayers, she answers it, gives us food, gives us water, gives us warmth, and we learn in between those like warm and cold, we learn what the balance is, we learn what the rhythm is. And so once we are into the rhythm, you can really start questioning, what is savior mentality? What is salvation point mentality? We're always looking for the solution. So I think rather than looking for this solution, we need to acknowledge where we are at in this consciousness, or in this continuum of being in the present and this comes through when you speak your Indigenous language and most Indigenous languages that I know of, don't have nouns. So therefore there cannot be a savior mentality.
Now you see how the western mind tries to take all of what I just said and put it into the box of, I need to find the answer to why is this? We need a reference, we need something so that we can learn “how to”, as if how to was a manual to do something. And what we've forgotten is that Mother Earth is always listening to us, Mother Earth is always teaching us lessons. There's not one time in human history, that humans can teach Mother Earth, any lesson, you see. And so that's our arrogance to think that we can control the Earth, we can, you know, do what we want to the Earth, and even save the Earth. And so in that sense, you know, the Western mind, the Euro-Western wants to be at the top of the heap so that they can, I don't know what it is, reward, cause and effect, take and reward, or give and reward type of mentality, a dualism. And you see that Mother Earth is not like that, very many qualities of communication she has. So I guess that's a long way of understanding or trying to answer the question of what is savior mentality.
Ayana Young Thank you for that. Yeah, something that was coming up for me was, maybe it's about control and that need of control potentially stems from some type of fear. You know, it's interesting, because I have really been stepping away from the idea of solutions or savior mentality, although I know I was very wrapped up in that, you know, back in my just, honestly, a few years ago, and so it feels relieving to challenge the savior mentality and challenge, that frantic need to be dominant, whether that dominance is coming from good intentions or not. Yeah, so it was really helpful hearing that response.
And similarly, I think about non-Indigenous folks’ hyper-fixation with climate collapse in terms of “end times” rather than thinking about this moment as being a part of the Earth’s cycle, and because of all of the data on warming temperatures, depleted soils, loss of diversity - I understand why so many of us struggle with this...But, speaking for myself, the more I’ve learned about climate collapse, the less prepared I feel, the less I know...and that makes sense, because if we are mired in a spiritual problem, then of course the data isn’t going to do much for us. So, I wonder if you could speak to that space between education and wisdom as we try to wrap our minds and hearts around Earth’s transformation?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Again, another good question. In 1492, you find that Bartolomé de las Casas, the priest who went with Columbus and followed up a few years later about how the Native peoples in those islands saw the newcomers and what the difference was in how they denied the Earth, how they conquered the Earth, how they did this possession ceremony on one of the islands and stuck a staff into the Earth and claimed her in a sense, you know, so there was the patriarchy coming in with about 2000 years of that same language of domination. It's basically the language and the behavior, all of the explorations, all the domination, all the colonization before they got here. So what we're saying, what I'm saying is that the climate denial has been since we noticed it back then and we've been saying this for a long time, Native peoples have noticed this and we've been telling people all along.
So it would make sense to me. Well, if we've been saying these things, for 500 years, why aren’t they listening to us? You know, because we're listening to the Earth as much as we know that the Earth is listening to us. And this is why we don't want to take too much or even apply theory, which a lot of Indigenous language don't have in their original base languages. There's no need to theorize, no need to show like a theatre, and put on an act or play. It's really about what is practical mystery, mystery is the energy and that transformation. So when we see the Earth changing, we want to know, because we're uncomfortable, and then we tend to blame ourselves, which is partly true, only as far as we don't want to take responsibility for what we are still doing to ourselves as well as the rest of life.
But you see, we always have faith in the Earth, with the Earth, because that's where our language comes from. The Earth doesn't lie, so therefore our languages do not lie. And so when we speak directly, that's called rude, that's called no manners, that's called, you know, everything that doesn't fit to pretension of manners in the Western European mind, because they've been corralled into speaking, a restrictive language, restrictive thinking for that long, until they got here 500 years ago. And so you think about how that began way back there in Western democracy and, and when we think about the climate denial, you know, people were trying to leave the Earth, even then, you know, and then once they were able to achieve some amount of civilizational success, then that's when they start denigrating those peoples who still have and had, and lived with the consciousness of Earth. So basically, they had peace with Earth. These other ones were mental justice seekers and so all the laws even today in the US government, any government, is to control the human mind through man made or human-made laws because it's all about mental justice is all about keeping you away from the Earth to justice, the true justice that is with the Earth. And so yes, education becomes somewhat of a secondary environment, becomes somewhat of a secondary thought. And because we can be educated about the Earth, and as you said earlier, becomes all numbers and measurements and weights and what good is it to us?
So yes, I think part of this climate denial that we're just so hyper-on is that we have this thing that's halfway true that we listen to, it says trust science, but we don't know what we're saying with the etymology of the word science. And we could look at that and that's why I asked others who speak this language much better than I do to look at their etymology, and what are they basically spelling? You know, what is their spell that they're putting on themselves and others, because you this language we speak doesn't go that far back or back that far. So it's too big for this mind of restrictive thinking. But our hearts understand that there's something going on. Our hearts never say it's wrong or right, it's our minds who follow the rules and regulations and don't want to believe others because we have been schooled and educated that we are right because we have the measurements right here and that science always changes. Because that science is controlled by Earth, if I could use the word control, every time the Earth changes, those numbers and statistics and weights and predictions, and whatever forecasts, everything changes, because you know, half of that is 50/50 chance anyway.
But you have these so-called “uncivilized primitive” Native people who've been kind of impractical all this time and as my uncle says, you know, in a sort of a metaphorical way “You can't take it with you. So why take it now?” You see, so when we look at this, is that, is that what's going on now? Are we trying to save the Earth to take with us, are we trying to leave a legacy and see the work within our time, so that we're proud of ourselves and take credit for us because I have a piece of paper that says, I know something because I follow the rules and regulations of that dualism? And when it comes to the practicality of that, I could not really apply any of that education to the work that is required by the Earth. Because that education also taught me I'm doing my best, I'm doing my best, because a lot of us had that money to go to school. Right? Then it really drew you away from the spirit of what the Earth meant to be. And this is why looking at Earth transformation is really - we're transfixed, that we can change the transformation so that it is saved for those who could afford to save the whale, those who can afford to save the National Park. And all those ideas are just beyond Indigenous folks, the ones who aren't colonized. They're like, wait a minute, how can you do that when Mother Earth is already in movement, never questioning, always moving and caring about that same time. Now, that's the understanding I think we have disconnected ourselves from.
Ayana Young Yeah, I'm really sitting with my own desire to protect what is left, and, and also wanting to be in relationship rather than wanting to go back into that savior mentality, but it's really challenging, especially with the emotional, just the grief of what is being lost. And so I think I'm going to have to sit with this more just on a personal level of how to reckon with the reality of this time, and what it actually means to be in right relationship with each other and the Earth in general. So it's a really big one.
Something that's come up in conversation for me is the importance of shattering binary thinking and welcoming complication, because so many of us are finally learning that simplifications and processes of efficacy are not to our benefit or betterment. They're certainly easier to navigate and profit off of, but that's about it. And so I wonder if you could relate this to how showing up for the Earth requires one to remove themselves from the nature humanity binary, or perhaps if you think there is a relationship between revering complexity, and shattering binary thinking,
Something that has come up in conversation for me, is the importance of shattering binary thinking and welcoming complication because so many of us are finally learning that simplifications, and processes of efficacy, are not to our benefit or betterment. They are certainly easier to navigate and profit off of, but that’s about it. And so I wonder if you could relate this to how showing up for the Earth requires one to remove themselves from the nature/humanity binary, or perhaps if you think there is a relationship between revering complexity and shattering binary thinking?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse We have a saying that we kind of reinterpret into all my relations, it's called mitakuye oyasin, and really mitakuye oyasin, you cannot feel, you cannot think in dualism, you can think only in inclusion. And if there is no word for exclusion in our languages, then you see how further along we've come in that process of evolving our spirits into understanding the transformation, the complexity, the simplicity, that is complexity, because people want to think that they have to down dress the idea of complexity so it's simple. But yet, if you're speaking the languages of the Earth, like I said, Earth doesn't lie. And so your languages are along the complexities of the Earth and you see how many, so many variants of species and how to deal with the weather, in all of that is to not think that we're in control of it, or even that God made this for us. You see.
So once we let go of those domination thought processes, that more than two dimensional thought process, you wake up and they come and you're like, “Wait now, we can't know all of this, we're spending our time gathering information without ever experiencing it.” So we are stuck with the ideas of information and knowledge and then we refer to “Well, someone who's tenured in educational processes is wise now because he's tenured, he's older, she's older. And so they're wise.” And yet those textbook knowledge keepers are not ever experienced. They may go out and study here and there, but when you have Indigenous peoples always in the rhythm of the Earth, they're not educated. But yet, in a sense of taking this concept of education and trying to put it on Native people, it's like injecting with them with something, right, and they're not ever going to understand it, because they're already too far ahead of education that this system requires in order for you to get ahead, but with the Indigenous processes of Earth, it doesn't need education, it needs experience with and that way, we spend all of our time trying to reinterpret something, that we can't wrap around our minds, and we're stuck in the same cycle of cause and effect. How do you do this? And what do you do? And that's a point of privilege that we come from is that, I have a question, you answer it for me and you tell me how to do something so I can take it easy the rest of my life type of thing. But yet we avoid the suffering, we avoid the pain, we avoid the grief, as you said.
So I think one thing to know is that, that energy that we all have, every one of us even other life forms, is that every moment we live in innocence. Now without the ties or the tethers to guilt, you know, so every moment is innocent and it's true is not because you're a child, that you're innocent and then you become guilty, dark and all these things. It's not that energy is the same. It's innocent, it doesn't matter if you're 85, or you're one year old, that energy is still the same. It is just how you are living with us, as you see children are living with energy. But because of the programming, the system, we get away from living with the energy, and we start using reality rather than living reality. And so that energy changes until we run into people who have never really left that energy and the acknowledgment of the continuum of just being in the present all the time rather tied to the past, rather, rather than being you know, in anticipation of a future the whole process. You know, because we have the education therefore our technology is going to save it for us and I think part of that is understanding inclusivity, your relationship, rather than connectivity or exclusiveness.
Ayana Young Yes, I really see that and, yeah, I'd like to ask you about the use of prophecy, because I think this is a term that has really been misunderstood by new-age understanding, but you point out that prophecy is not the ego’s voyage into the future, and it’s not inherently punitive. And to some extent, I wonder if we really understood the use of prophecy, it might encourage us to desire different outcomes altogether...So can you clear up some of the misunderstandings you hear most often when people bring up the idea of prophecy?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse I think that the current definition we use in the Western world is we tend to make these prophecies like, like profits into magical ones or magic people. And it's kind of true, but it's still with, you know, chance. And if that doesn't come true, it's like forecasting the weather and it goes wrong, then you hate the weather because you didn't forecast it, right. So that definition is with whoever, is taking the true essence and the definition of prophecy away, and put it into a mental concept. And so when I think about well, what is a prophet in that sense, in a lot of Indigenous languages, a prophet would be the one who observed the Earth as an Earth person, as an Earth being and knows what the seasons are, and knows that the stars, following the stars, and knows that intelligence, right? And so you see how much, or how less, these prophets really think of human invention, human technology, you can dig up the Earth and make all kinds of machines to, you know, say, “Oh, look, we can, at least to predict the earthquake.” And all it is is that we dug up the Earth. You know, oh, we, we can dig up the Earth and cut down all the trees and then we can predict that there will be, you know, land erosion from the book that's made by trees and still not see - we only see the elephant in the room, but no one talks about the room.
So it's a system that I'm saying the prophets, the prophecy that is punitive, if it doesn't come true, you hate it, you don't like it. And therefore, it's a give and reward system. In the other way of thinking, prophecies come from experience. If you do it this way, then it may come true and if you don't do it that way, well, you know, there's a chance that it won't come true and you're just kind of, you know, shooting into the darkness, so to speak. So I think it's more based on reality and the more experienced you are, with the history passed on, by women, actually, that detailing history passed on generations and generations, and we're talking 20,000 generations on this side of the Earth, you know, and from that primal thought, as we say, we can't say we began over there, we're using Western time scale. So 20,000 years of passing the same song, the same songs, just practically the same language to understand what prophecy is - that you can actually say; “Oh yeah, those, those birds, they come back every seven years.” And you know, we can say that that much, but that's practical. That's practical prophecy.
Then if you understand the energy, here's the other thing with this, Ayana, is if you understand the energy of what magic truly is, magi is not the genie that people think, because that's another westernized a monotheism, the magi is actually a bird who uses the tool of the Earth to make magic. And what are we doing as human beings? Fishes use the water, and even the air with the tools that they've been given, and that's magic. You see, we cannot live in water, we cannot live in fire, we cannot live, you know, without a plane up there in the sky, we can't live in stone. And yet all of those tools of the Earth are being used properly. The energy is being used properly, by the magi, the wise ones of the Earth, who know how to use the tools of the Earth properly. And with our technology, we become magicians. We fool ourselves, we fool everything else but we cannot fool nature.
So these magicians, this illusion that we can save the Earth that we've been talking about before, and the complexity of that energy is not understood because we don't speak language, we try to put it into quantum physics mathematical formulas. And yet that goes only so far, when we put it within the language of the energy we speak, then you have a living language that goes along with the prophecy that you talk about. So you know, and that way we have to maybe redefine or talk about prophecy a little bit more, rather than the accepted idea of what prophets use in the biblical sense.
Ayana Young There's a lot to chew on there. I hear that word so often these days. And that was really clarifying. So thank you. Yeah, I want to read another quote that you wrote and it’s “I would further the idea of getting, giving the ‘land back’ to Earth herself first, then the Native peoples so we can live with our languages, cultures, and mistakes that we made by accepting education too easily and almost losing the wisdom of experience with her. I would suggest doing that in a hurry before Earth takes the land back for herself from all you “ownership and steward” thinking people.” And, this is a topic that continually needs to be brought up so that it may take on a life of its own, so bluntly, I’d like to ask about giving land back to itself and the profound beauty within that, and how that sentiment fits in the larger conversation of land back?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse In the beginning, I talked about domination, we have no word, idea, or concept of the word domination. So that means that we can't lord over, we can't dominate the Earth, and since we have to relate, and because that feels healthier. When you're isolated in domination, you feel like you're God, playing God, so to speak. And Earth is kind of like having patience with that, I suppose all this time. But she's always been giving us the land, right, she's always giving it to us through the food with everything that grows with her, the warmth, the whatever, showing us lessons. So in that way, you know, we can never understand how she really, truly restores herself because that science says, we need to take her part and know to understand how she restores herself. But in taking her part, we lose a little bit of ourselves from actually understanding your relationship in a spiritual energy connection in that way.
So when you think about Native peoples, who are living with that language, without science, but the science is in it, living with the culture of the Earth, and understanding the mistakes that we make now, especially with this Western education, that helps us to lose how we live with the Earth. In other words, that land that we lived on was taken away from us. So we start losing that experience with her, we start losing the language, and start losing the culture. And we start making the mistakes of the Western, the ones education accepts. And so once we have that, we get a little bit further away every year with every generation and we want to hurry up. And let's get it now, let's get it back, because that's what the Earth is doing. And that idea comes from the Western mind. But when I say, let's do this in a hurry before the Earth takes the land back for itself, is that in the beginning, again, we need to lose the idea of ownership and stewardship, because that's one in the same - it’s very dichotomous and this these, any thinking people won't understand that the answers already provided of how we cannot ever own the land. I know it sounds like I'm rhetorical here, but it's an idea of - so that intelligence that's been given to you by all the four elements, it's given to you. And it's not that we own that, it's a gift. And that gift keeps on giving, so to speak, if we have the respect, and not try to own, not try to steward, and not definitely not trying to dominate anybody or anything that already has a connection already relating to that.
So if anything, this is more of a statement to the Western world, that yes, give the land back to us because we'll know what to do with it. Even if we made our mistakes by saying it's free to everybody, and now everybody else owns it. But the difference is, that we as Native people are still home. We may be landless, but we're still home. And that tie can never be said or severed no matter what the system does or what the people think that we should be civilized, yet civilized, civilization is what's killing with ownership, stewardship, the education I can just go on and on and say what's wrong with the Western Hemisphere, I mean Western thought process, but in a Western Hemisphere that the thought process is so deep, that consciousness, no matter who brings this new type of education onto it, that education will never work with it because it doesn't know how to. It comes from overseas where they put everything on and domination, and kings and lords, and feudalism, hierarchy and, you know, they use a language of war. So this language of war is really now against Earth. That's why we have to think in dualisms, enemy or friend, and right now it's like, we're using science to really try to save ourselves from what Earth eventually will do, it’s eminent that that she needs to change, because we're the ones that are suffering from a lack of or loss of connection to the Earth. Earth is not suffering from connection to us. She's always relating to us, you see.
So what’s the first medicine? To tokahe maka ina, to think of the Earth first in the heart, in the water, in the morning when you get up you're doing a ceremony all together with water. Right? And the next thing is that you look for food, and you look for warmth, and you look for these things that Earth is giving to you, but where is our appreciation for that? So the more we appreciate, the more we understand that we have to give back the land to the Earth, you know, because it’s hers anyway. So let her do, let her restore, with us trying to stop trying to put fertilizer into places she doesn't want it because we're only adjusting, we're adjusting the Earth to our needs rather than ourselves being needed by the Earth so to speak. You know, we don't have to do that anymore. We have to adjust to the Earth. And I think any thinking people would understand that.
Ayana Young I have so much going on in my mind. But I know that it would just come out in mumbling mumbles right now in response. But I do want to bring back into the conversation, something you were speaking earlier about the noun centered languages versus Earth languages. And there's a few questions I wanted to bring up here. One, I wonder if you could share how languages become noun-centered? And why this specific delineation matters so much. And then, you know, is it possible to un-noun or de-noun the languages that we have? Like, is that even possible? Because I think many of us know the limitations of the English language for instance, yet we continue to speak English, its dominance is all around us. And then the question becomes, do we deconstruct English in English?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Yeah, I hear you, it would be more difficult, I think, for a Native person to try to decolonize, or colonize, yeah, in that sense of decolonizing, meaning, we have to not speak that language, because it throws us off from the many dimensional effects that are naturally within us, tied to the Earth or with the Earth, and it puts us into a two, three mode of thinking three dimensional mode at most. And then we tend to think out of that restrictiveness, sso we want to control that. We make, we title everything, we noun everything, we subjugate everything, we objectify everything. So we think of essentially thing-ifying everything materially and so we think we can do that to all life on Earth, other people, you know other worlds. And so there's no respect in that. Now what I've done is try to reinterpret what I've been told by the Lakota Elders that I talk with, and just kind of coming to an understanding “Oh, yeah, this is what they mean.” You know, if we turn, if we're able to think, and I use these three words in two different ways is, if we think peace with Earth, rather than peace on Earth, one means domination. One means relational. So the relational language is found within English. And how do you relate?
So in the original way to understand this language, Indigenous language is that what we do is describe the energy and then we describe the motion of the energy and that way it makes everything alive. So everything is alive to us, everything is sentient and now we can, you know, like, “Oh, but my mind says, that pen that I write with cannot think.” But yet, you see what comes out of it, you see that it puts symbols down at writes. So in our language we call it Wicazo, you know the energy of wood that comes from the sun, so to speak. So it's a consciousness of the sun, the wood and, we come, and we put it down in thoughts.
So we're always in relationship with motion and so when I think about what happens in English, is, okay, this pen is no longer a pen, it's penning. You see, or that cup you're drinking your tea with, it's no longer a cup, it’s cupping. So everything starts coming alive once you start understanding the language of nouns. So cup can be a noun, it's like, understanding self, of course, we all say it starts with self, when you understand I, as a noun, and you look up in a dictionary, it's a noun. But in Lakota, I is a verb, you are a verb, you're vibrating, you're alive, you're moving. So then that removes the idea that there really need not be an idea of I or me, or my, or mine, or ours, because it's not about you, but it is about you being with all that sentient life, and that, you know, you're always a part of something, you start feeling like you're never going to be excluded, and separated or lonely.
So this is the changing of languages, it doesn't mean that you have to go back in time, you just have to recognize where you are, so that you know how far you've got to go, you know, I don't say involve evolvement, I'm saying, be involved in evolvement that is a continuum of the Earth, of the cosmos. And you will go and you start understanding Indigenous folks, they were sitting there 200,000 years ago watching the stars, the same way as astronomers today do. But yet because of their understanding of that energy, they know what star we can't see with telescopes until the telescope gets closer to that star. And then the Native people say, “Oh, that's so and so.” You've seen that with Kogi, you've seen that with people that we've been - that there knowledge has been held back in the Western Hemisphere, because it's based on supremacy. Because the Western world has to be right. It has to be right and by God we are right because look what we've done to you, for you people, we brought you computers, and the atom bomb, and wars and processed food, you know we can name all of those things. So I think by simply bringing things alive, that they already are, by changing our language, I think that's going to be a process, I don't think I'm going to see it in my lifetime, nor do I need to, accept that the idea has been in work in works and progress within Indigenous peoples, for forever as far as I understand.
Ayana Young Just to continue on this language topic for one more question, in Indigenous Languages As Cures for the Earth, you write; “Earth languages are not lies or manipulation to serve political, religious, economic or scientific rationalizations. They are not invoked, entrusted or gifted to be placed within linear boxes of data. They are spoken every moment as cures, where all praise goes to the Earth.” And, I’ll be honest, some of my hesitations around talking about the importance of language, is I think about the popularization of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and how many of us welcomed the call to rethink our language, the pronouns we give to the more-than-human world, our understanding of kinship, but ultimately, this just transpired a change at the level of perception, not relation. And so, I do question the connection between language and condition, at least for English speakers...so maybe you could respond to this or elaborate a bit further on the idea that language exists beyond speech and how we need to think about language as action?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Yes. Wow. Okay. That would probably take longer than my answer, which would, when I would teach at Yale when I was talking to grad students and people looking for their PhDs and, and, you know, I'm like, “Who am I to be teaching all these peoples who are, you know, have these ideas that they're coming to extract from this Indigenous person about how to further their, their, I don't know, prestige in this society, because it's based on information of what they took from other people's.”
So I go back to and this probably has something to do with it, tell me if it doesn't or not, so it's a story that I read way back in the 90s, about a young person who had a grad degree and had studied cultural anthropology. And he was able to get a grant and go to Zimbabwe, I think it was and notice, and live among, his grant was for 20 years, I think, and it was a good grant. And at the end, he was supposed to make this book, write this book, so he lived among the Bushmen, [the San], the tiny ones, for 20 years. And then he would write every day, and he got into their cultural mores, and, you know, what usually happens and they understood what he was doing. And so he lived among them, or at least close to them, and he would have to come back to England once in a while to verify what he was doing. And so he would go back, and he would miss them so much. And then later on in his years he began to understand that my time is up, you know, 20 years, and I'm gonna run out of money, should I ask for more? He had mountains of information. And all that time, he's seeing transitions of Indigenous generations, maybe two, three generations, come and go. And he said he understood that whole process of how they accepted death so well, because they were actually living without thinking of need.
And so once he saw these Bushmen, on his last very last day, he had sat on a hill, with an incline sloping down to a valley. And so he was looking down at the valley, he looked up, and he saw this most beautiful sunset you could ever see in Africa and he thought, why did I miss this? 20 years and I didn't pay attention until now that I've got a lonely heart and I've seen these things. And so he kind of romanticized that a little bit. It was kind of in the evening watching the sunset, and he saw this little chimpanzee kind of walking on three, and there's one arm and two legs, and in one arm, he had a little melon and in that melon, he was kind of walking with three and then down below him, and he’s watching this chimpanzee and the chimpanzee kind of glanced up at the sun and then stopped and looked again. And he just kind of looked at the sun, he sat down, basically, in front of the man who the cultural anthropologist, who was watching the little chimpanzee and the chimpanzee sat there and looked at the sun, the same way he was looking at the sun. And then the little chimpanzee took the melon, stood up on his hind legs, and held it above his head to the sun, as long as he could, because you know, they can't stand very long on their hind feet as long as we can. So he stood there for minutes and then finally he put the melon down. And then he left. That was his offering to the sun. And that cultural anthropologist cried because it was the first time he realized that he didn't know a thing, he thought he knew everything because my traditional Western education taught me that I'm supposed to know everything, as much as possible. And so he told his helpers, the Bushmen, who had his packages, his papers all packed up, ready to go the next morning and he put them all in a pile and he torched them, he burned all 20 years of research up, because he thought he knew about what culture was, and that little monkey had taught him everything about respect. And then we never heard from him again, he never wrote the book - we heard the story.
So when I'm thinking, what can we do where we are, in this society, at this time, is really looking at the Earth, once again, without romanticizing it. Without romanticizing Indigenous peoples, or having the answer, we are just only giving the relationship we still have with the Earth what little that is. But to take that away, would surely mean that there will be no more roots for the rest of humanity. I know that because the rest of humanity is trying to ship off into another planet or something. So going back to that, that we don't have the formula of colonization decolonization, because that's the formula. And we're given that by the Western world to work with, because that's supposed to be how we are in order to decolonize and so to decolonize, our language, and yet, when we leave that formula alone, it comes out to where the simple, complex heart rendering respect that that little chimpanzee was giving to the sun, by understanding the whole transition, the evolution, the reciprocity, of what we're born with. You see, so I think that original intuition that I talked about, is there within all of us. It's not some mental construct. It's not mental justice, its original intuition.
And what does that mean? You know, maybe it's there, maybe we see it somewhere. It's not a gut feeling. It's not by chance. It's something that you can actually understand and live and feel. So I don't think we understand the energies, I don't think we understand the medicines that are given to us each and every second. And it's usually one of the ways that we're given the medicine to understand, is to understand that every moment is innocent. Every moment is innocent, and that you can say it clears the slate. But it's true. No matter if you're a human being that's doing wrong things you're still in every moment that is innocent. And that is what we all can understand that every, can I say every virus is innocent also. Does compassion have a choice? You see? So we can understand as Native peoples as much as this educational process allows us to, because this educational process, as an Indigenous person, is always telling us what we can or cannot do. You see, and how we shouldn't say that because we're defaulted to getting along with the Western society, or defaulted to saying the things that they like, so that we can survive in it. So there's no relationship and that there's only this give and reward, this cause and effect society, of struggle, of survival.
Ayana Young Yeah. And as we begin to close this conversation, I'm thinking about the importance of remaining humble during these times. And our conversation today reminds me of the tremendous importance of remaining humble, seeking questions over answers and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with the complex and unknown. How do you think humility can foster us into embodying different ways of being on this Earth?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Isn't it kind of ironic how we can't think humility, how we cannot think humbleness, we can be that but we have to lose the thoughts that are constructed for us, “Oh this is humility, this is humbleness.” To be clear with this, we say Onsila, in a way being humble or pitiful because look at us as a species. We have to take other things to keep us here, we have to kill other things to be here. And all that is done with arrogance, we do this and we take that and we'll be good, we're supreme to the Earth. And so right now I think the human peoples are going through a sense of humility. Because we based this lack of society, we're talking the lacking of, we're talking that we don't know how to be abundant anymore because that's been taken away from us. But no one knows how to be humble. And so humbleness to us is taught to us through the animal world, so to speak. And they are so respectful of each other that they don't want to overstep their bounds yet they do. And when they do, the Earth culls them back. In other words their domination thinking will be culled, we will be culled back. And I think that's what's going on.
But to understand humility, the importance of it, is to know that it's the most powerful place anyone can be, you understand the feeling of, of what it is to be with other beings when you're humble. Because you're not being dominant, you're not being below, you're just being with and surrendering. And knowing that, being humble is what a baby is, when they're born, what a mother is, when she bears children. What a father is, when they see that child, they may see that so-called miracle, but it's not a miracle, it's part of what we are, the humanness of it. Humility is being part of the human. And are there human beings anymore? Seems like there are a lot of technical humans, according to certain rules, regulations, and religions and sciences. And, you know, but that's the part of being human, it's humility. It doesn't mean shame. We should never think it means shame. It should mean that yes, we can be humbled by addressing our grief, we can be humbled by addressing that maybe we've done a little too much with technology, we made that our savior, maybe we've done a lot of things that we should have never done. But that's the wish list. And, and I think part of this is understanding the humbleness that you need the Earth. And I always want to understand like, “Okay, if I need the Earth, does the Earth need me? You know, and that seems to be the question that we're not asking, does the Earth need us? You know, the other way around, is that we need the Earth. And we kind of get stuck with that thought, but the humbleness is that, “Wow, does the Earth need us?” Yeah, I think I'll leave it right there.
Ayana Young Thank you for that and before we say goodbye, I am and I think this really connects back to the humbleness, but I'm going back to the beginning of our conversation and the quote, that, basically, we can't save the whales and the same thought process around what is it to steward land or save land or protect the land and I'm fumbling a bit because I think, emotionally, I feel like, let's just take the whales, for instance, I feel this enormous amount of connection, responsibility, grief, around how they're faring which isn't good. I mean, their populations are declining so quickly. And so I don't know what I'm asking, but maybe something around like, what do we do for those of us who feel this desire to protect and defend as if these creatures are our kin? Because I think about all the resource extraction projects, the mining, the logging, the damming, the fish farms, and so on and so forth. How do we reckon with these threats without stepping into savior mentality, but still being in right relationship? And I know that there's no prescription to it, and maybe my Western mind is getting in the way right now, of wanting so badly to cling on to something. But if there's any words you have for those of us who are desiring so badly to be of service to the protection of our more than human kin, and honestly, everyone that's dealing with the complexity of this time. Yeah, I wonder what you think of being in right relationship and being in service to this time, in a good way?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Oh, well, thank you. That's a great question again, is, again, that, you know, the way we understand Earth is through a language. And this language that we speak is the foundation of this civilization. So you know, that it is the first weapon drawn in a conflict. So I think the savior mentality is part of that conflict, we are in conflict with ourselves whether we should, is this the right thing to do. And I think your passion or your empathy for the Earth, is the beginning of your recognition of Indigeneity, within yourself. And once I know this, we begin to ponder and listen. It's kind of like wondering why we're seeking a final solution to exterminating ourselves, or trying not to exterminate ourselves by exterminating other life forms.
So when I think about trusting Earth, the Western mind that I have now it says “But how do I do that? How do I trust Earth?” That means I just have to leave her alone, because both questions and our coherency are no longer there. So we're trying to create some kind of common understanding from what we've taken away from her, this humanity of ownership. And I think, when we understand the meaning of ownership and that meaning of knowledge, it points to believing ourselves to be its sole owner, so we can save that whale for ourselves and we feel good for doing that. And, you know, maybe we'll get some kind of award for it. But is the whale really, you know, going the way it's supposed to? It's like, to me, and this probably has a relation to it, this is how I speak, but if we are going on with the technology, and we're, we are killing ourselves with his technology as well as other species. You know, isn't it the fact that we have to save the whale from our technology that is telling you to accept it so that we can advance in progress and Mother Earth has tried to get our attention with earthquakes, and, you know, the wind, and fires and, you know, just on and on the floods. And we paid attention somewhat.
So what we think is, in conference with older people from back home, they think, “Oh, yeah, technology, that's the word we have to come up with, and try to understand it.” It means something hurts inside. Right? So we're disconnected. So technology is the downfall of all of us. Mother Earth, set it up. Our arrogance is destroying us. So she's allowing that, those people who are addicted to tech and technology to basically suicide, slowly suicide or are way out.
But not all of us, I can say that. But that's not the saving grace. What it is that those peoples who are still connected with, you're still related to the Earth, and living simply without owning the Earth is part of that - saving the Earth, because they're watching the motion of the nurturing living, if I say that, and so they're not saving that piece of ground, they're acknowledging that, that here they are in their capacity to pay attention, to pray, if you will, to realize that transition, this little piece of Earth here affects that whale over there. So we're taught to look outside of ourselves so that other people can give us credit. Because we see credit within this Western world, that we're good people. And the fact that the etymology of European really means good people, the good people. And so what are we doing with that? You know, and when I think about it, okay, we're gonna save the whale, but we're gonna save a dog, we're gonna save all those things that are beneficial to us, right? And part of that is I could introduce this as a microtones. Microtones have so many living with the land, and listening to the mushrooms, listening to the soil, listening to the Earth, listening to the plants, about how to - how to. It’s giving us instructions, it's uploading to us all the time and that intelligence.
This other way that has been given to us is to be benevolent and go out and save the mighty whale, you know, the beast of legend, and they know how to do it themselves. If we just leave them alone, we just have to stop what we're doing with technology in order to save the whale. And truly get into the communication with the Earth, that Indigenous peoples who are still speaking those quantum physics, language languages are doing at this moment. They're saving a whale by being themselves. They know who they are. They're not questioning who they are. They are wondering, what are those people doing? Why are they questioning who they are? And we know who they are. They're trying to understand what all of us humans are doing. But yet it's not me. Excuse me. It's not that all humans think the same. And when they say it's a human thing, that's not true. You can say humans invented the atom bomb, but that's not true. You see, so we have to understand and take responsibility for what each individual does to the Earth as well as to themselves. So I think we need to take more responsibility for who we used to be, who we are now and who we will be. And I think that that's a simple formula there if I could say that, and I have no idea if that answered your question Ayana.
Ayana Young It was great nourishment for that question. And everything that we've spoken to has really impacted me deeply. And yeah, thank you so much Tiokasin for taking this time with me and all of those who will be tuning in. I think this is going to really just, I feel a little speechless because I'm just sitting with all that we just spoke to and it’s very meaningful. Thank you.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Oh, thank you. And I wish, my wakta for you all is that we all learn how to consciously apply mystery to everything.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Harrison Foster and Peia. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glaspell with research assistance by Julia Jackson.