It's about time the white world starts to look at native knowledge with more respect - and starts to learn from what is too often called "superstition" or improperly also "religion"
I just take a few lines in example : it comes from a web page from Navajocentral on Navajo "beliefs". I just take a few of the "taboos" to show how you can easily make sense of them if you stop to consider them as "religion" or "superstition", but just remember they were in fact what was said traditionally to :
. Raise the children
. Calm down the aggressive
. Warn the forgetful
. Push to work the lazy etc...
And that they most of the time make easily sense
- Do not kill frogs, lizards, salamanders, and toads because it will rain and keep on raining, result in a flood, ruin your crops, you will jump around, you will become crippled, it will effect you unborn child, or it will cause paralysis and other diseases. EXPLANATION well, kill a poisonous toad in your local small stream, where your mother takes the water and where the lambs drink.... Yes , it can cause all this. Not superstition, experience !
- Do not kill horned toads because they are grandfathers or guardians of arrowheads. If you kill one you will get a stomachache, or swell up, or have a heart attack. EXP. same thing, toad can spit their venom far (ask dogs who become blind for having played with a poisonous toad, I have seen that in France) and yes, if you have a fragile heart, it can go that bad. experience !
- Do not kill a spider unless you draw a circle around it and say, " you have no relatives." Or "a Zuni did it." If you don't its relatives will come and bite you. The reason the Zunis are blamed is the angry spiders will go seek them and bite the Zunis. EXP first it s true that if you have a spider with some little ones around, you may attract them ... Well by the odor of the dead body, simply, probably. But it s also a question of karma : spiders are useful (killing insects) and can gear ally be put out without harm. You can even prevent them from getting in (sage, mint). So don t kill if it s not necessary , for yes, there is a difference in karma between killing for food, or survival, and killing stupidly, by laziness or even more by fun. When. Kid has pleasure to kill a spider, what do you do to clm him down and stop do it "don t do it or the same will happen to you" . It s education, not superstition !
- Do not urinate on an anthill because you will have trouble going to the bathroom. EXP : ever heard of formic acid ? If you disturb an anthill, the soldiers project this acid in great quantities and it paralyzed slightly the nerves. In Africa they treat headache like that ! So if you pee on it, yes you can probably get the surprise to suddenly feel this precious part of your body go numb.
- Do not burn ants because red spots will cover your body or you will get a rash. eXP : karma ! Don t do to them a unuseful harm or you will experience it later. And yes, in Karma, even small life's are taken into account. It s not that different to kill an elephant or an ant if you are in sheer pleasure of being mean and enjoy the torture... Let's say the more conscious the soul of the animal is, the more bad Karma you take, that s true. But karma ask for the respect of ALL life's that don t have to be taken for nothing - and especially not for pleasure
- Do not burn bees because you will have a rash
- Do not throw stinkbugs in the fire or you will get a rash or sores.
- Do not kill grasshoppers because it will give you a nosebleed. Bees, grasshoppers, cicadas, and many other insects are important in the Creation story and in other Navajo mythology. According to the Navajos, flies have their place in the natural order of life too. EXP yeah, ever read th fact that if bees were to disappear (and they are gravely endangered by stupid and dangerous behavior like the use of all Monsatos products) all human agriculture would disappear, and a bunch of animals life's (including our) too... Natives just had 500 years of scientific advance on the white human !
- Do not bother baby hawks or eagles because you will get a rash or sores on your body.EXp : education, karma !
- Do not kill moths or you will jump in a fire. EXP Education, karma !
- Do not count the number of legs on a centipede or the number you count will be the number of years that you have left to live. EXP lazy people who spend their days laying on the ground and doing stupid things like counting the legs of centipedes don't live old... That was so true with the tough life natives were living. You spent your days doing useful things , to prepare for winter, to make cloth, to attend your animals. In French we say "bailer aux corneilles" (yawn with the crows) : it used to kill people if they did not work hard enough . education !
- Do not kill a bald headed insect and spider or you will go bald. eXP education
- Never carry or handle feathers from ravens, crows, owls, buzzards, or most any bird because you will get boils. (Since it is difficult to know the source of many feathers it is best to leave all alone!). EXP the fallen feathers of an unknown bird can carry disease. god we have had enough media noise with the SRAS and the aviary flu to know that. If you have killed a healthy bird, it s different. But beware of lost part of an dead animal who may have been sick : Education
- Do not kill porcupines or you will get nosebleeds. eXP : well, that's what I tell my dogs with the hedgehog in France. Ever seen a dog with a nose filled of pines ?! It was probably more of warning for the domestic Animals (cats, dogs, but also tamed wolves, foxes, mountians lions etc) !!
- Do not spit on a spider rock or you will not be able to breathe right. eXp I don t know what a spider rock is, but the spider can probably , for some of them, send venom too, like ants. education !
- Do not put food in a bird's mouth or you will get a sore throat. eXP see the explanation for aviary flu : if. Bird is sick to the point not to eat,don t get near it, don t feed it, he may carry a dangerous disease (ask Parrots owners about psittacosis !)
- Do not kill a lizard or you will get skinny. eXP in Thailnd some lizard can be poisonous if you touch their skin. Here I don t know but I would not be surprised to learn that some kind of lizards, when touched, can leave on the skin something either disgusting (and you can t eat anymore with your fingers : you get skinny) or poisonous (for example it ruins the stomach and you lose weight without knowing why). education !
- Do not burn any animal skin or you will get a rash. eXp as I don t burn animals skins everyday in my kiva, I am not sure of that, but as someone who can have allergic reaction to some strong odors , I may imagine that burning s a skin (disgusting odor by the way - just think of the odor of a horse foot when the smith puts the hot Irwin on - you have an idea) can provoke allergic reactions, and why not rash. Education !
See : I took a whole list of "superstition" and "religious beliefs"... and they just make sense !
As long as you keep your head straight and don t take them for some divine order that has to be feared and respected or you go straight to hell...
White approach of native civilization (here, in the Us, but in many other preserved civilizations too) is so dumb sometimes, and it leads to so much trouble : it makes the natives doubt, or on the contrary stick to the words of their culture while losing the real meaning.
Chinese have a saying about that
which I love
And which has given this post it's title :
"The wise shows the moon, and the stupid looks at the finger"
There is soooo much to learn from the knowledge of the native worlds.
We have to go through all this knowledge - for it s not taboo, or beliefs, it s knowledge either of the environment , or of the human behavior, or of the laws of universe like karma- and make a real encyclopedia of native wisdom with all that. With the explanation, the keys to understand and "see the moon" instead of just "the finger"
White civilization needs it to make the shift of living it needs to make urgently,
considering the threat on our environment
and the coming end of "la société de consommation" (the market society which is a threat to the survival of this planet, we all know it, if it continues this way).
Natives know things the white world need to hear again, or simply to learn.
I am ready to help with that, with my white skin, my white Sorbonne diploma, and my will to help our world become a better place...
A last thing... A souvenir.
I had the (hum not that much) privilege to spend some time in France with a Human Studies (Ethnology) University Teacher (I put all with capital letters for he was this kind of guy - you see what I mean)
He was working since ten years on a thesis about a native civilization from a (still) French colony : the Kanaks in Nouvelle Caledonie.
And he had spent hours and hours studying the videos and notes he had taken during a certain type of ceremony (the secret family garden) , in a painfully boring description of every steps (the guy take six stones and let them fall, then he takes five others and put them on the right , then he takes a bow and does two steps, and stops, and then he breathes, and then he goes two steps right etc....)
When I asked him if he had discussed his work with the guy who was actually performing the ceremonies he described
he went outraged
"of course no ! I did not. This is a scientific work, I won t discuss it with the subject (!)".
And he was pretty stunned when I told him that well, maybe the guy did put the 6 stones away because, for example, they were not heavy enough to prevent his leaf to go with the wind, and that he had put the next five on the right because he was a leftie and wanted some space to work the next step,
and that basically his work was worth nothing as long as he was just "looking" and describing, and not "understanding"
And we then had a pretty wild discussion about how a university professor was not to "ask a guy like that about what he was doing because the whole thing was to understand it from a scientific point of view, and not a belief or religious view which was "obviously naive"
God, what a fight we had.
And I will remember all my life the last part of our discussion.
When I told him I found his work awfully racist ("but you cannot say that, I love these guys, I have spent two years there : how can you say that?")
Because his opening sentence in his (future) book was
"Kanaks believe the spirits of their ancestors are in the trees "
And I asked him if, for his next book on , for example , workers in GM factories, he would start his book by
"Workers at GM believe they build cars"
And he made then that answer that I will remember all my life , as for me it summarizes all the stupidity of our "superior white way" to think
"But, spirits don t live in trees. If you start believing those things, you go crazy !"
HOW DOES HE KNOW SPIRITS DON T LIVE IN TREES, GOOD GOD ?!?!
And how can the white wold be so dumb sometimes, even (surtout ?) in universities !
No comments:
Post a Comment