Love Lessons from Indigenous Peoples’ Day
For years I have been wondering if co-creating a new world of love and gratitude is really possible. Last week we celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day and it gave me much to think about in regards to the reality of creating such a world.
For decades of my life, I believed that God, an objective supreme being out there somewhere was in control and bringing all things to fruition according to his will. Human beings, his masterpiece, were the main ones tasked with doing his will and making it a reality. Only certain humans could engage in this activity, however. They are the chosen ones, obedient to the rules and regulations for living that he’d set forth in the Bible. I came to believe that I am one of those chosen beings.
I eventually became skeptical of this view of reality, however, and I began to see the world much differently. Rather than looking through male-dominated, western, consumeristic, and competitive eyes, I began to observe the world through the delicate lenses or windows of nurturing waterfall light emanating from feminine and indigenous organs of sight. I discovered a way that seemed right and natural to me as I took more in.
In the past month, I’ve visited Chaco Canyon and Bandelier National Monument. These are two places of extreme natural beauty and the home of some of the most extraordinary relics of human civilization I have ever seen.
For a millennium, from about A.D. 500 until their mysterious disappearance around 1500, the Anasazi, a Navajo word meaning “the ancient ones,” lived in multi-storied homes that the Spanish called pueblos and cliff dwellings built in the canyons and high mesas of northern New Mexico and beyond.
Anyone who begins to take in the harsh grace and wonder of the country will find no better introduction to the beauty and enduring mysteries of Anasazi culture than in the 34,000-acre Chaco Culture National Park and the 32,000-acre Bandelier National Monument.
Walking through the pinon pines, scrub juniper and steep sandstone cliffs reminds me of the Mediterranean region where I have been fortunate to visit a great number of times in my life. I thought often as I walked the land, how come I have never heard of these places and this advanced civilization and their ruins right here in my own backyard?
Why do these places of mystery and wonder not get the attention and press that the ancient civilizations of Rome and Greece get? Could it have something to do with the ideology of white supremacy and our idea of American exceptionalism? Could looking into what happened here reveal something about the flawed and violent nature of who we really are and who we have really become as a nation?
Do these indigenous cultures have something to teach us about what is necessary to bring us back from the brink of global disaster?
Thomas Berry, in his book, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, certainly thinks so. He believes that the wisdom of Indigenous people and women offer us a great deal to learn from. I find myself more and more in agreement with his assessment.
A wealth of indigenous knowledge is available all around me. So is a wealth of feminine wisdom. I love how Wendell Berry puts it:
“The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.”
True learning requires honor and paying respect. We must recognize the harm and damage we have done to the land, and to the original people who stewarded it so beautifully and skillfully for millennia before we got here. We must repent and seek another way of being together with all life on the planet.
As a black man, I realize that my culture is American culture, not African culture. American culture is a mash-up of Indigenous, African, European, Asian, and Latinx ways all violently blended together. Perhaps, understanding indigenous ways tied to this land is the best way for me to understand myself and the cultural milieu into which I was born, raised, and am daily being transformed.
Please don’t hear discounting all that I need to know about African people, culture, and the skin tone passed onto me, which has determined so much of my experience here in America. I’m realizing that it is all equally important and I need to pay attention to all these different aspects that make up my being. For example, Resmaa Menakem’s somatic rituals and practices, outlined in his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, are really helping me overcome what he calls, white body supremacy (WBS). WBS is a virus we all suffer from in America.
As I learn so much from visiting and paying attention to indigenous land, I am also learning a great deal from women. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s New York Times best-selling book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, is astounding me with prescient brilliance and splendor.
In one of her chapters, she talks about the three sisters of native culture, corn, beans, and squash. These three plants grow together in a unified presence that seems like “a blueprint for the world, a map of balance and harmony.” When the first colonists saw this they believed that the natives did not know how to garden. However, the yields from their planting style kept coming and everyone had an abundance to eat. Maybe like those first colonials, we will one day learn to embrace the wisdom and knowledge that is present in indigenous people and perhaps save us all.
I am really beginning to listen, learn, and grow as a human being. I am part of the whole of creation that is transforming and emerging into something that we will never be able to fully understand. What is required of us is to trust that we all came from Goodness, are maintained by Goodness, and somehow are going to return back to Goodness.
This is the foundation of abundant living. It is faith that God of Creation, in whatever form you choose to believe, is somehow guiding us through love. No one gets left out. No one has a monopoly on the blessings that are flowing. It is our job to unlock those blessings and gifts for the whole of Creation. I love how Howard Thurman puts it:
Thou art made for wholeness,
Body, mind, spirit; one creative synthesis,
Moving in perfect harmony, within, without,
With fellow man and nature all around
To make Heaven where Hell is found.
I have found Robin’s book to be immensely useful for this task. Throughout its pages, we learn a feminine and indigenous way to make heaven where hell is found, right here, right now. I cannot overstate the profound beauty, poetry, and scientific efficacy of the book. It is helping me understand theology, spirituality, science, politics, and history in a way I never thought possible. As I read through it, I sense that I am literally holding treasure in my hands.
I also realize that I’ve been prepared to receive all this wisdom. In 2017, when I engaged in Illuman’s men’s rites of passage in a place called Sky High Ranch in Colorado, Harriet Tubman, spoke to me during a six-hour wilderness wander. As a cold rain dampened my enthusiasm for the experience, she appeared out of the red dusty soil and sat atop a rock, scolding me and encouraging me to stop complaining. She said to embrace the freedom that I’ve always taken for granted. She told me to trust the earth and that everything I needed would come up out of it as I truly needed it, just as it had done for her and all she helped liberate on the Underground Railroad.
Today, I am walking through this world with more reverence and respect for all the living things around me which are coming up out of the earth. Correction, all the living beings, or persons, around me, that are coming up out of the earth. This I and Thou, relationship that Howard Thurman and Martin Buber taught about now makes sense to me from my own experience, not just the resonance I feel when I read their words.
This world is animate, alive with being and I am simply a part of it all. Will I be a good brother to all of Creation and share the wonder and beauty of all that is manifesting itself to me? Will I become a good ancestor to those who come after me, sharing truths that help guide us through the often harsh and hopeless realities we wade through and wonder if we can go on?
This is my work. This is the message of love I want to share with all who will listen.
