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Monday, January 17, 2011

TRAINING OF THE YOUNG

Today’s essay focuses on the training of the young and contains the last references to Native American culture.
To give yourself a measuring stick for this essay I strongly recommend that you refer to my essay Cubists, which I have linked below.

http://mensaction.blogspot.com/2007/06/cubists.html

Four American Indian views on the training of the young follow:

Something is wrong with the white man’s council. When the Micmac people used to have council, the old men would speak and tell the young men what to do—and the young men would listen and do what the old men told them to. The white men have changed that, too. Now young men speak and the old men listen. I believe the Micmac Council was far better.

Peter Paul

Several of our young men were brought up in your colleges. They were instructed in your sciences; but when they came back to us they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger. They didn’t know how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy. They spoke our language imperfectly.

They were therefore unfit to be hunters, warriors, or counselors; they were good for nothing.

If the government of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care with their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.

Canassatego

We send our little Indian boys and girls to school, and when they come back talking English, they come back swearing. There are no swear words in the Indian languages, and I haven’t yet learned to swear.

Zitkala-Sa

When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone.

And what is to say farewell to the swift and the hunt, to the end of living and the beginning of survival? We might understand if we know what it was that the white man dreams, what he describes to his children on the long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so that they will wish for tomorrow. But we are savages. The white man’s dreams are hidden from us.

Chief Seattle

To draw a comparison to these teachings I think back to when I lived in an upper scale neighborhood consisting primarily of business and professional people. The talk among men usually focused on the economy, what they were going to buy, where they would go on vacation, and on whether the Yankees would win the World Series. It annoyed me that discussions never left the shallowness of the material realm.

In reflecting on Chief Seattle’s inquiry, what do these men describe to their children on winter nights, what visions are burned into their minds that they will wish for tomorrow?

None and nothing!

Those who live in cubes have no concept of sitting around the fire on a cold winter night. Cubes do not have cold winter nights or hot summer nights, or dry days or humid days, or dark nights or star-studded nights. The temperature and lighting of the cube is always the same. The only concern about the elements for cubists is how it affects their travel from cube to cube. The news channels burst into chatter with the advent of heavy rain, deep snow, heat waves, blustery winds, and frigid temperatures all to describe their affect on travel from cube to cube.

To the Lakota Indians winds, snow, rain, sunshine, day, night, and change of seasons were endlessly fascinating. They provided some of the grist for the teachings of the elders on cold winter nights. The changing temperament of Mother Earth provided the basis for an understanding of the relationship of humans to the earth and the relationship of the earth to God. The great American poet Walt Whitman said, “I think all great deeds were conceived of in the open air.” Living in a cube does not enable one to become cognizant of the open air.

Those who live in cubes do not sit around in quietude—a necessary requirement for listening, contemplating, and understanding. The children (and adults as well) have multitudes of distractions such as texting, watching television, using computers, playing video games or making inane phone calls for hours. They no longer have the attention spans to sit in silence and absorb.

What little advice father’s pass down focuses on going to school, getting an education, making money, and becoming somebody; hardly the stuff that makes for the development of men. The values held by Chief Canassatego of the Iroquois never made it into the Western mindset; men are not taught the ethics necessary to maintain the well-being of society. The behavior of their children reflects the lack of ethics.

Zitkala-Sa, an Indian mother lamented that children came back swearing after learning English, whereas in her language there were no swear words. People raised in the cube do not look upon swearing negatively; it is considered a manifestation of freedom of speech. The Constitution calls for the pursuit of happiness. If swearing makes a person feel good, then Western thought feels it should not be restricted. The negativity that swearing generates does not concern Western thought, for it has no race consciousness. It only has a self-consciousness. It strives to satisfy the ME.

America has the distinction of having the most violent boys in the world; it also possesses most of the wealth of the world. Could moral behavior and material accumulation vary inversely? Does material accumulation affect the relationship of youth to their elders as Chief Peter Paul lamented on the change of who spoke and who listened at councils?

Among those who live in the cube, the value of a person is determined by his contribution to productivity and the amassing of wealth. Productivity is governed by technology, which changes at an accelerating rate; fathers and elders have less and less to hand down to their children in the way of technological knowledge. What fathers and elders did to earn a living has become obsolete; therefore the value to society of the elders becomes marginalized. They are old people who tend to get put someplace and cared for by the state.

A review of the four comments made by Native Americans in this essay indicates that they considered training of the young to include self-sufficiency, moral rectitude, respect for the elders, care of society, and spiritual unfoldment.

That society had no prisons, little thievery, a high level of honor, good health, and a great deal of sharing. Mental illness, depression, and suicide were unheard of.

A fundamental difference between the indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific, as compared to those raised in Western thought, is that the former live in the world that God has made and the latter live in the world that man has made. When people leave the world that God has made they lose the natural connection with the Creator and all that He has bestowed upon humankind. A friend of mine runs a farm museum in Queens and he told be the children that arrive want to see the pumpkin tree and the cow that delivers chocolate milk. They have lost most of the awareness of the relationship of the food they eat and where it comes from, a condition that typifies Western society.

As Western schooled children progress into adulthood they become less cognizant of the world that God made and increasingly limited to the confines of what man has made. Life inside the cube is an aberration of natural living. As Chief Seattle foretold, we stopped living and started surviving. Western activity has become a battle of survival; the joy of living has passed.

E.G.

Friday, January 7, 2011

THE WESTERN PENCHANT FOR OWNERSHIP

Today’s essay will continue offering examples of the understanding of the indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific concerning gender and spirituality. To give yourself a measuring stick for the next several essays I ask that you refer to my essay Cubists, which I have linked HERE.

The emphasis of this essay focuses on American Indian opposition to ownership, especially ownership of land; a value structure opposite to that of Western and Asian thought.

Below are American Indian views on ownership.

Some of our chiefs make the claim that the land belongs to us. It is not what the Great Spirit told me. He told me that the lands belong to Him, that no people owns the land; that I was not to forget to tell this to the white people when I meet them in council.

Kanekuk
Kickapoo

No tribe has the right to sell even to each other much less to stranger. Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn’t the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?

Tecumseh
Shawnee

This is what was spoken by my great-grandfather at the house he made for us. These are the words that were given him by the Master of Life: “At some time there shall come among you a stranger, speaking a language that you do not understand. He will try to buy the land from you, but do not sell it.”

Aseenewub
Red Lake Ojibwe

Look at me—I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.

Red Cloud
Sioux

Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they get it back, with interest.

We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them, with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank.

Maquinna
Nootka Chief

One does not sell the earth upon which people walk.

Crazy Horse
Lakota

The white man’s desire for possessions is like a disease.

Sitting Bull
Sioux

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold, except things that can be carried away.

Black Hawk
Sauk

The greatest object of their (white people) lives seems to be to acquire possessions—to be rich. They desire to posses the whole world.

Santee Sioux

That last statement sums up the activities of the Western world. Not only does it have a desire to possess the whole world—it already owns it.

Every American grade school child learns that early European settlers bought the island of Manhattan from the Indians for $24 worth of trinkets. The inference is made that the Indians had no concept of value in letting the island go so cheaply. The Indians on the other hand wondered why the settlers would want to buy something that could be utilized freely.

European thinking obviously prevailed, and eventually Brooklyn, Queens, and all the other boroughs were purchased; then the states of New York and New Jersey. Eventually the whole country was purchased. The land of other countries was purchased as well. Now international financial interests own the entire world. Tecumseh’s question, “Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth?” has become a reality. Do you know of any free access to drinking water? All of the land and potable water of the world is now owned. The territorial control of the waters of the oceans includes 12 mile zones to 200 mile zones. Gifts from God have been taken from us by Euro-Asian thought and we have become indentured servants working for the right to get our daily sustenance of food and drink from those who own the world.

To all who read this essay regardless of where in this world you stand; realize that you toil more and more each day because the price of the world continues to rise. Each time world financial markets rise it means the value of the land and water has increased and you must work more in order to survive. The financial interests of this world have become your God. You must serve them or you will not eat.

We have accepted this way of life and adapted to it well. The major concern of the world is money, the economy, finances and ownership. The social and spiritual well-being of people has become irrelevant and does not garner mention in the media. Our interests focus on material matters; all other matters occupy a distant second place.

“What does it serve a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” The indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific understood the meaning of that message. They also understood the meaning of Paul’s message “There is no single gift that you have not received.” Too bad most of the Eurasian world can’t or won’t.

E.G.

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