Indigenous Voices, Part 8: Yarning with Indigenous Traditions

Episode Topic: Yarning with Indigenous Traditions 

In an era of compounding global crises, our speakers offer a strategic intervention: a move beyond the transactional toward the relational. This dialogue interrogates the “myth of progress,” dismantles the currency of academic perfection, and retrieves custodial responsibility through the protocols of “Embassy.” Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, Dr. Ashlee Bird, and Dr. Sousan Abadian examine how Indigenous wisdom provides essential checks on the malignant narcissism driving modern global disconnection and institutional failure.

Featured Speakers:

• Ashlee Bird, University of Notre Dame
• Dr. Sousan Abadian, Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington
• Tyson Yunkaporta, Deakin University 

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/ef5ecc.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Indigenous Voices. 

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Transcript

Welcome and Land Acknowledgement

Speaker 2 0:11

yeah, so, hello. I wanted to start out with a few words about the book cetera. would really like to acknowledge where we are, just regionally and where this trip has taken us. that just, and the understandings and teachings we've had from our first peoples, right across this region. Um, and everyone else as well. But yeah, our understandings of, of this place as a, um, as, as a heartland of, of trade and embassy, you know, being a heart of things, yeah, is, is quite, I mean there, there's, it's fairly close to what they call what they were calling the smoke, what they were talking. To me and, and, uh, a lot of waterways, there's a, there's this idea that you can take a canoe, um, from here to pretty much anywhere on, on the island. and that there are these just trade routes, arterial rivers, that, and ways of traveling, uh, that are just ancient and that there's been an embassy going, an embassy and trade kind of practice and protocol, uh, going forever here. Since I got here, I've, I've found out that, uh, we have a lot in common. yeah. Because we have the same sort of things. yeah. So I sort of came here under embassy protocols, from Bunion Mountains, which is a place of big gathering of lots of people coming together. so my, indigenous Knowledge Systems lab. I, those of you who read the book, I finally did get to do a proper knowledge center. So we have a, a lab going with people from lots of different, tribes, and we meet under those mountains, embassy protocols, and everywhere we go in the world, we take those protocols with us, and that's, that's where we're going here. yeah. So just wanted to let you know that that's how I'm here and that's my process for being here and, and that general understanding. How much I'm learning from people from all around the world. Uh,'cause that embassy doesn't stop at the, at the beach, you know, it kind of keeps going. no, it definitely keeps going. Yeah. so yeah, we're keeping it going. The book, the book was an act of embassy. It was. And true embassy is very intimate. and the book was a very intimate act of embassy that I thought would just be for a. I thought I could manage that many relations, new relationships. but it ended up being, you know, a lot of people. so yeah, I'm, I'm still trying to figure out how to manage those relationships. Uh, so I've, I've had three years to sort of stew on that book and marinade in not just my words, but everybody who reads that reads a different book. So I've had the book told back to me from everybody's story. so many different every day, an inbox full, and so many yarns with people, uh, from around the world for three years and interviews every day pretty much since then. my beautiful woman, Megan, can testify to that, how hard that's been. Not just hard, but really interesting as well, just to see everybody's, everybody's, everybody finds themselves mirrored in that book. And I think it's the intimacy of that embassy protocol of it, of establishing that intimate relation of us to, uh, the two of us, to start with. And then expanding that out, into those ever increasing sort of nested, fractal, beautiful. Um. Groups of governance, uh, that we have through those embassy protocols that can go as far as we need them to go, probably into space if we wanna talk to the other people out there. I did learn about that with the seven directions here while I was here too. Had some teachings about that, you know, about the seven directions. I didn't know that before, but apparently I, I talked about it in there and I didn't know that you have that, uh. West, but also to sky and then down into the earth. And the interesting one though is the one at the center where each of us sitting right now. So it's different for each one of us. And yeah, that's the one that goes to other dimensions and all that sort of thing because it is so subjective. yeah, so the book was an act of embassy and um, I was just reaching out to share with a few hundred people and I've shared with, uh, a lot more people. Connections, but people made connections with each other and ya around this book with the different books that each person read. And it has facilitated embassy with, uh, a lot of different people. And, and that's been very surprising for us. yeah. very surprising and, and really interesting. Still interested to see where it goes.

1 5:16

So where did you guys take it?

Knowledge as Responsibility

Speaker 4 5:19

Yeah. I, uh, I kind of, I just pulled out a quote that really compelled me and then tried to corral my stream of consciousness into some coherent thing. but yeah, this, this, what I have for y'all is kind of just my relationship with your, with your book and, and where it took me and, and hopefully where it, yeah. Place for dialogue. so the, the quote I have here is quote. In our traditional systems of law. We remember, however, that everyone is an idiot from time to time. especially in the space of academia. And often I think in the spaces of religion we get wrapped up in wanting to know, in having to know. if we don't know as academics, then what are we worth, right? Like that's our whole thing. We're supposed to know stuff. And in the institution of academia, more than anywhere, knowledge production, and to a certain degree, perfection are the currencies of power. And they, how, that's how you ensure your success and your security. but even though we're from cultures across the world, this quote first made me giggle. And secondly, it gave me a sense of familiarity, right? Baked into AKI stories. Even our origin story is Eric being an idiot. when the creator made us, when we were stone people, we messed it up so bad that he shook the earth and broke us down and started us again as something different as the ash people. basically all of our stories about obo, the raccoon, our trickster figure, are about him being an idiot and often a mean one, and messing up so he can teach us something. It's okay to be an idiot. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to not know. And of course, I'm not saying that not knowing is being an idiot in a negative sense. I'm simply using it as a jumping off point. We really have turned away from not knowing as a society, it's a sign of weakness. It's a sign of failure, of being lesser, but it shouldn't be at all. And that's not what my culture teaches me. when learning my traditional language, we deemphasize writing instead, favor our oral tradition. I asked, we asked our teacher, why do you, why are you so reluctant to write down words for us so that we can write them in our notebooks? He said, because it's okay to ask the same question over and over again because it fosters strong and trusting relationships. It's not seen as a weakness or a flaw, and it encourages practice. Right. And also in this learning space, in our immersion programs, we're taught that to see not knowing is a good thing because not knowing, not being able to participate in a conversation because maybe we aren't there with our fluency yet. It gives us the gift of simply being able to sit and to listen. And that is part of, um, being in good relation, being a good community member. There are no conversations, there is no passing down of knowledge and culture without listeners to receive it. this is what we need, I think, to put into our students and into each other. Instead of the fear of failure, embrace the not knowing. Embrace asking questions. Embrace needing help. Embrace being one part of something bi. Remember that our relationships to each other. We've that and instead people have kind of channeled this fear of, of looking what they perceive to be weak or foolish into overcompensating and need for power and control. We have to control everything, control themselves, those around them. And we've seen this with the earth as well, right? Our desperate want to control to control her. and we also need to remember that not knowing and remember that knowing and when you do have the privilege of knowing something shouldn't be about power anyway. It should be about responsibility. I think that's what this whole book is saying, not that indigenous folks are the most powerful superheroes in the MCU and are gonna like sweep in and save the world. Instead, this book shows us that knowledge is about responsibility. Tyson states about mastering knowledge, quote first, check your ego and motives. Why are you doing this? Second, you don't need to be an expert to understand the knowledge processes of people from other cultures and enter into dialogues with them. Important. Making yourself an expert in another culture is not always appreciated by the members of that culture. And quote. folks need to remember that knowing isn't simply retention of information. When you know something, especially something tied to culture or faith, you are responsible for that knowledge. You are responsible for how you use it or how it lives in you and how you put it into the world. We're responsible to knowledge. Instead of thinking that knowledge is power or currency or simply a means of production, we should be thinking of it as a gift to share and receive a responsibility to take care of it, as well as to receive it. And the sharing is not only a way to pass down cultures and knowledges and languages, also a form of relationship building and a tool for being a good custodian, a good member of creation. And I do think that receiving knowledge and seeking knowledge is an equal responsibility to being the one who shares it. If you seek it for power or selfishness or put or to put yourself above others, that is on you and it's not on the one who was kind enough to gift you with it. It's a question. I'm, so I, make video games and I work on decolonial design and native representation in games. And I don't know how many times I have been asked the question, well, how do you keep people from appropriating it and messing with it and taking it and twisting it and modding it and doing something bad with it? And after reading this book, I really started to think. Why is designing against bad actors my responsibility? Uh, why aren't we pointing the finger at them? I'm creating something to share, to engage other people to form meaningful relationships through play. But it happens with our cultures, whether they're in digital spaces or not, right? So we're just not allowed to like live our cultures openly because someone might have bad intentions and corrupt them. I don't think that's the way we should think about that. And this relates to the subject of narcissism that kind of weaves throughout this book. Uh, Tyson describes, um, you know, this attitude of I'm better than, I'm greater than, and my culture. And I think a lot of indigenous cultures are pretty absent of this in terms of their structures and faith systems. So for us, there's no like ticket to ride, so to speak. Like everybody goes to the next place. Just happens. That's where you go. That's just the next step. You're to be a person while you're here because you're taking care of the place your ancestors made for you. You're making a good place for those around you while you're here and you're leaving something better for those that come after the seven generations. Right? The ha philosophy that decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world for seven generations into the future. Um, about seven generations. It's in the practice of braiding sweet grass. So these three strands all have seven pieces of grass for the seven directions, the seven generations, and then the three pieces symbolized mind, body, and soul. So it's, it's a part of our culture, our lives experience. And I wanna point out this word sustainability because this is also one that every time I would hear it in the book it would, it was significant to me. it's also something present in the work of Robin Wall Kimer, who's a Pomy scholar. and she asks us, you know, when we talk about sustainability to ask. What is it that we are sustaining?

1 12:14

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 12:15

Who is it being sustained for and who is it sustainable for? I think we need to ask this question about not only our relationships with the environment, but so many of the structures of our lives. and I think for me that was one of the biggest takeaways from this book was to interrogate the structures of our lives, the relationships, the connections. You know, from everything from our relationship with those around us to the information we consume, to the food we eat, to our relationships as citizens of a state, of a land and a world, we have to stop taking our relationships of all kinds for granted. And we need to be an active participant, participant in them. Uh, we need to figure out what is wrong story and what is right story, and we need to do it together.

1 12:57

That's kind of my thank you.

Changing the Western Dream

Speaker 5 13:08

Hi everyone. I wanna set straight how you say my name properly. So my name is Suzanne Abian and, um, for, you know, a lot of my friends call me Dr. Seuss, so you can take me do that. So I'm Dr. Seuss for now, and, um, it was not mentioned that, uh, you know, what am I doing on this stage with these two lovely people? I'm Zoroastrian Iranian by birth. And, um, we consider, I consider us, indigenous to the, um, Iranian continents. And, and we have, many of our spiritual traditions are very similar to the indigenous traditions that I have found around the world. and some of our history is also similar in that we lived under 1400 years of basically takeover of our country and have been subjected to persecution and genocide. So we're about 20,000 left in Iran. It has made us stronger, uh, but we still survive. And here, here we are. Here I am. and um, I also came to the indigenous world. In fact, owe a lot of gratitude. low owe a lot of gratitude to the communities here.'cause when I was doing my doctoral work, I ended up, deciding to do work in the travel communities in the US and Canada to learn about, you know, I was in poverty alleviation. So I was looking at why were these communities stuck in cycles of poverty? And, uh, as I went into the communities and talked to them, what I learned from them, I, you know, I, my intention was to go and give something back to the people from whom I had been so benefited having come to this country. And of course, what happened is I still got war, benefit from, from them than they have received from me. But what I learned was the histories of trauma and abuse that they'd experienced in residential boarding schools and the damage to culture. So in addition to. Government and public policy and economic development and anthropology. I also have a degree in cultural anthropology. I learned a lot about trauma and I'm considered, uh, having an expertise. I, I hate this expertise though, but it is on collective trauma. what I do love is I've also learned something about what it takes to heal collective trauma. Intergenerational trauma. So that is, um, the other way in which I have, uh, learned about indigenous communities. What happened was, in the process of hearing these stories from my, relatives, they're my relatives here on this continent, it was a sort of remembrance, uh, because before then I hadn't really, lemme, how do I say this? I had taken on, and I still am a universalist in that I believe myself to be, you know, no soul has a religion or an ethnicity or a gender, and I identify mostly as a soul. But in, I have been asked to play this role here in this, not just here on this panel, but for now on this planet as my role as a Raan Iranian. So I'm playing that role and as an indigenous person, but I'm not that and none of you are that. But anyway, that's the role I'm playing. But in, in the remembrance of my zoan heritage from my indigenous relatives, I got to see and remember what had happened actually to my own people. And so that, that's been, that's been a, um, a process. the Greeks and the Persians haven't always seen eye to eye, but I love Greek words and there's a Greek word called Anis. that's about, uh, I think it was a concept that Plato introduced at one point, and he believed that learning was really a matter of remembrance that our soul comes here with, with, uh, some things that they've already known. connection with indigenous people on this land and other places was an act of remembrance. They, they, they re I remembered things and remembered a relationship to the land and remembered a relationship to the earth of a different and each other. that was different than I what I had been taught in Ivy League schools all my life. Living in Washington, DC seat of power, some would say. So it was, it was a form of remembrance. the first time I came across the, the material that some of, some of this, uh, wonderful. I mean, I, I, I love this book and I love the man who created the book and the lovely, the amazing woman who supported him in creating this book. I mean, and everybody else. and some of these ideas of indigenous thinking, saving the World I first came across in the 1990s. And I'm gonna remember my friend Joyce Ferrante, who died, in 2003. Around this time of year, I took her to the hospital, to the emergency room, and six weeks later she died of, she had terminal cancer, turned out and she died. And I wanna remember her, and I wanna remember her because she was a psychotherapist as redheaded blue eyed psychotherapist from the south, south of the United States. And she had the courage to go with a group of people to Ecuador. Visit the tribes, the Amazonian, tribes there. And she had gone with some of her friends with checkbook in hand to help these communities. And what the shamans in those communities told her and the group was that, they didn't have the problem that needed fixing. We have the problem in the West and they asked Joyce and her friends, uh, to go, come back to the United States and transform the dream. The dream that we're dreaming here that is damaging the world. And so she created, she helped create an organization called Dream Change Coalition. And a man named John Perkins was, uh, you know, author books. it was called the Dream Change Coalition. And the idea was that we had, we were, they were coming here to change, transform the dream of the west. What is that? What's what, what is our dream? what is, what are the destructive elements that we're dreaming into reality? and that was the task. And then what would, what would we wanna create it? How would we wanna create differently? So what new dream would we wanna dream into being? And part of that is, you know, is part, I think this book addresses a lot of that. but that's the first time that I came across. That idea of, that we needed to change our dream here in the West. And what was that? What was the destructive elements in that dream? Not, not just in the west, also in the east, by the way, a lot of the world. and what elements do we need to shed and what, how do we come back into right relations with, with each other, with the world, with the earth and um, you know, with ourselves. So. She was a psychotherapist and she worked in the psychotherapeutic community. But that was the question. She, and I'm, I'm bringing her, bringing, bringing her into this room with us, because I know she'd really enjoy being here right now if she was here. Uh, but I guess that's really the question. Like what is, what is the dream we're dreaming? I ended up, I was mentioning to some people that I have a book that I wrote, this generative cultural renewal. some of the lessons I learned when I went into travel communities because part of what I learned is the cultural damage that was, that has been done to indigenous communities. part of the healing is of course, healing from trauma, but the other part of the healing of healing trauma is cultural renewal. And not all forms of cultural renewal are positive, are generative. So for example, he's. Renewing culture in some ways in what he is doing in the Ukraine. I know in my own home country of Iran, they thought they were renewing culture when they had the revolution. Hitler thought he was renewing culture, so did the Serbs. You know? So renewing culture can be dangerous. So how do we renew in ways that are actually generative? What does it mean to be generative? this book. You know, it takes a certain slice. I, the next book I wanna write is actually the bigger issue with, with indigenous communities, how we renew our cultures, indigenous communities. And I'm also involved in my own culture, of trying to, because there's been a lot of damage. I mean, let's, let's just say what, what's also true, in that, you know, now we're looked at, even in Iran, they, everyone's, this is the symbol of my, faith, my tradition. A lot of people are wearing this. because they, you know, and, but a lot of Iranians are out. We, we, many of us have forgotten our, like, some of that stuff is lost. So how do we renew ourselves? What does it mean to renew ourselves? Because we also represent something for people. It's a responsibility. I've had this wonderful experiment I've run, beginning in the spring. I was asked a year ago. As part of this, uh, organization out of the UK called Confer, uh, it's, uh, works with psychotherapists and psychoanalyst keeping around psychotherapeutic worlds, even though I'm not really formally trained in that world, but it just turns out that way in the healing trauma. So I was asked to give a talk on post-traumatic growth, and then they wanted me to create a group for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as the first respondent responders in, in the traumas we, we've experienced as a result of the pandemic. If there was something that I could offer them, because they themselves were burnt out. Even though they were psycho, we think that they were the ones that would have the resources, right. But they were burnt out. So they'd asked me to go in there with, and I brought in a Celtic. Um, he was a Scottish Druid priest, but also he's, he's a psychotherapist and he and I worked together. We, there's 45 people signed up psychotherapists around the world, and we taught a course called An Invitation to the Sacred. Accessing our indigenous wisdom. And it was a complete experiment. and it was really, you know, there's a lot of wisdom. We can't, I think Tyson's book also shares that there's stuff we can't share because it's not for everybody, but there are things we can share. So even basic things like learning to communicate with the earth in a certain way or with the trees or rocks or just seeing, the world in a different way. Some of these people are living in urban settings, you know, how do they communicate with the, the natural world? I mean, these are, you know, so basic things. It was seven, seven week course and, uh, it was a, it was an amazing success. A lot of people got a lot of value from it. These, and this is an experiment in that these are all mental people in their minds, very attached to their psychotherapeutic MO models. And we were talking to them about how do you connect with a stone? How do you give it respect? How do you, love your plant differently? How do you, you know, just, there was a story of a shaman who came to New York City and he had never been outside of his community before out of the Amazon. And, uh, he walked around with the sandals and all these buildings, and after, after the end of the day, he was asked, what was it like for you? And he said, the buildings are lonely. Nobody prays to them. Nobody thanks them. You know, they're fragments of the earth. And that kind of shift about to honor what we honor everywhere we are. I mean, this room, the things that hold us as chair, you know, just the sacredness of where we are and um, how we live. So anyway, we're all running experiments on how do we connect differently to the earth. I think that's how we save. I mean, how do we save the planet? I mean, I'm trying, I I've been asked to bridge, to be a bridge of sorts to bring some of this material to. People who normally don't, don't, uh, come from this wisdom. I just wanna end with one other, just last thing that feels a little bit hard for me to share because, um, I have so much love and respect for the people who've invited me here. And I wanna thank the Anari, uh, institute for inviting me here and also this beautiful place, the Notre Dame, for having us here and hosting this whole thing. I mean, really, it's remarkable and I'm, I'm so grateful for this opportunity. and I think the, one of the, my favorite parts of Tyson's, and I'm, should I ask you to read it? But my, one of my favorite parts of the book, there were so many, I mean, I, I couldn't even, I, I can't even begin to, point out, but there was one piece that I really love and it was this, this, um, part of that, the, and about, would you like to read it for us? Would that be okay? I have trouble you to do that.

Speaker 2 25:39

I also, I also went blind over, over lockdown COVID.

Speaker 5 25:45

But your voice is beautiful. If we can like start it here. I was thinking here and then just read it to the end of that, if that's okay.

Speaker 2 25:49

Okay. Alright. S problem can be seen in the mathematical greater than, less than interpretation of the symbol. Ah. So that's that symbol. Um. That's from Old Man Juma, FIJA. So it's, it just looks like greater than less dense, symbols. But it's, um, you know, the direction that, that, uh, different animals legs bend at the knee. So it's, you know, mammals, this way and then avian, uh, that way. And that's two halves of a to uh, system there. There's a lot in that, but there's also this. So EMU problem can be seen in the mathematical greater than less than interpretation of that symbol. EMU is a troublemaker who brings into being the most destructive idea in existence. I am greater than you. You are lesser than me. This is the source of all human misery. Aboriginal society was designed over thousands of years to deal with this problem. some people are just idiots. Everybody has a bit of idiot in them from time to time coming from some deep place inside that whispers you're special. You're greater than other people, and things are most important, more important than all things, and all people exist to serve you. This behavior needs massive checks and balances to contain the damage it can do. Ah, yeah, but I'm down.

1 27:33

Would you mind,

Speaker 2 27:34

there are a lot of stories that explain how all this began, and as a Brolga boy traditional enemy of imu, I know them all. My favorite one comes from Nun Elder. In Perth, who tells the dreaming story of meeting of a meeting in which all the species sat down for a yarn to decide which one would be the custodial species for all of creation. Amy made a hell of a mess running around, showing off his speed and claiming his superiority, demanding to be boss and shouting over everyone. You can see the dark shape of IMU in the Milky Way. Kangaroo his head. The Southern Cross is holding him down. The kid is grasping him from behind, and the great SERT isil around his legs containing the excesses of malignant narcissists is a team effort.

Speaker 5 28:28

I love that.

Speaker 2 28:28

Yeah,

Plural Paths to God

Speaker 5 28:32

I love it because I think it's a team effort. I mean, we're here in a group. That is faithful. It's about religion. We're here as a group of in religion, so I'm gonna say something that's obvious. But you know, some of our religions come from a perspective of being better than others and we have, we really need to address this. I think we skirt around it. You know, those of us who are in interfaith gatherings, we're all so nice. We wanna be nice and we all agree that we're all equal, but we don't say that actually there are faiths. That believe they're the one way to God. They're the only way to God. They're the best way to God. They're the last word on God. And that way of thinking has to go. And that's what's different about indigenous ways of thinking. That is the main thing. That's different indigenous ways of thinking. Don't believe that. They don't believe they have. The one best way. They understand that there's a plurality. So what? Indigenous ways of thinking can save the world. This indigenous way of thinking can save the world, and we have to work to clean this narcissism up. It's caused so much damage. So I'm just gonna end there.

Speaker 4 29:59

One team minutes. I don't know if. Okay. So you wanna

1 30:01

respond to anything if you have any thoughts or,

Speaker 2 30:03

it just occurred to me how often I used the word idiot.

Speaker 4 30:06

I loved it. I was super on board.

Speaker 2 30:10

So a Greek, a Greek fellow told me that that's a Greek word, and, and

1 30:14

course the

Speaker 2 30:15

original, every word is Greek. Um, every word in the world is Greek. but yeah, no, this one, this particular one, he said the, the original meaning of it. I, I, he said I or something. He said the original meaning of it was, um, somebody who becomes disconnected, from their relationships, um, around them. Not just with people but with place and non-human as well. So a person in a state of disconnection, that's what an idiot is. It's not somebody with reduced cognitive capacity. So I thought I should say that.

1 30:47

That's good.

Speaker 2 30:48

That's important. And I also should say, I mean, I should also, uh, I wasn't very nice to any new people in the book. You know, because, and that's me coming from my ger based faith, you might call it. you know, because we put them on the outside. But I mean, some of my best friends are, and they would say the other way, like, um, you know, for, I knew people, there's a lot of really good story that I, I neglected to put in there, like particularly, uh, fatherhood. I is the dreaming that you have to learn how to be a good father. because that IMU mother, you know, she just runs off. As soon as she lays eggs. She never comes back. She's gone and it's the daddy that's left to care for the eggs, to sit on the eggs and then to rear all the checks to adulthood. And that's seen as the, um, the ideal and optimal model for fatherhood that, you know, in most of our cultures that, that you do have a lot of responsibility and obligation. and that's not just to your fruit of your loins, that's to all of your brothers and cousins children as well. yeah, you. Interfaith and I'm just completely slammed. Somebody else's you point of view. Um, important.

1 32:18

Does anyone have any questions? Yeah, because I could say something else, but I wanna make sure people, uh, someone has a question about,

Speaker 6 32:32

there's a microphone. Online?

Speaker 7 32:36

Yeah. I have a question. What's the correct weight with the right faith? Does it need wisdom? Does it need spiritual? What does it really need?

Politicians Need Experience

Speaker 2 32:48

No more abstract nouns to describe these things. I think. I think, I think once we once we're so embedded in. In land and place and relation in, in the right way, that we no longer need abstract noun like nature and, you know, faith, wisdom, knowledge when we no longer need these things, these words, to describe these things because they're actually embedded in everything we do in our daily practice. And we might be able to answer that question. We probably won't wanna answer it anymore. I dunno. It'd be good to get back to that. I think most humans were there about five minutes ago and we're all trying to give back. You

1 33:35

introduce? Yes. Can you introduce yourself?

Speaker 8 33:40

Yeah. My name is ba, I'm A around here, I'm a physician. How do you make sure that all politicians around the world read this

Speaker 2 33:48

missed do.

Speaker 8 33:54

The politicians around the world, and I doubt they'll be able to understand that. But someone will have to translate it first.

Speaker 2 34:01

Yeah. Take

1 34:02

them on a

Speaker 2 34:02

i I think they're like everybody and they just take what they want. They, they see, I, I know quite a few politicians have, have read that and I've heard the way they've spoken about it. And, um, I think people just, uh, yeah, people will project what they're gonna project and they'll extract what they're gonna extract. And then everyone else will just sort of come into dialogue. yeah,

Speaker 5 34:26

I find that a giving people experiences is more valuable than having them read stuff, you know? So, with these, for example, these people that I've worked with who are, tend to be very heady and caught, you know, stuck in their ways, in a way you could talk to them. And that's good. You have to bring in the mind. I'm good at that too. And these guys are really good at that. You have to give them an experience and then that changes them over time given experiences. So, you know, that's what I try to do Anyway.

Speaker 9 34:59

Thank you so much for your very, intellectual session. Uh, my name is, I'm a el talk human right. I got an opportunity. Indigenous people of our country, a so called ago, they're not, uh, they're reluctant to work with other people. They're not engaged with any people. But now because of the educational system, they're coming to the campus and are learning and all things are happen. Those are positive also, but still, when we're inquiry about their dignity and right to life, they said after getting the education. People of their indigenous community thinking about, uh, being best or being, normal people. Being local people is good and not being indigenous people is not good. That is their problem. So what he mentioned is, forgetting their, uh, cultural practices and not engaging with their own after getting education. Dignity, what you think about that. I would like to thank you.

Speaker 4 36:14

Yeah. I think this is something, and obviously like that speaking to the North American, kind of perspective, like this is something that happens in communities here too, commonly referred to as brain drain from communities, right? And we had this problem of like indigenous youth going out and getting educated and then coming back and either feeling disconnected or their community's feeling, uh, having a lack of trust or like, what did you go do that for? What did you even learn? What is it? Whatcha, are you gonna use that for? That kind of thing, right? Um, and I think some of that, especially here, you see because of. What happened in boarding schools and residential schools, right? These kids got taken away and their culture was completely erased. They were, they could, sometimes they would go, if they got lucky to go back to, their families couldn't even speak to them anymore because they forgot their language. Right. They could, they were completely removed. They were no longer in indigenous. Right. For all intents and purposes, that was the, that was the goal. so I think there's still some like residual fears of those and like seeing that happen around the world, seeing cultures be erased because you think about educational institutions. They're built for one kind of person and one kind of learning. And like they have a mission, they have a, they have a, a goal and, and, you know, it's hard to be in those spaces. And I mean, for me personally, I find it, I love academia. I love what I do, but I do find it hard to be in these kinds of spaces, right? They, they try to shape you and they try to change you and break you down and make you something different. so I think there needs to be kind of collective understanding of both sides. People who go into those systems and come back. Recognizing the fear of what, what that fear is, right? That something's gonna be changed, that it's extractive now that you're not a part of this community anymore. And there needs to be an understanding on the side that, you know, was receiving, saying like, I wanna give this person a chance. They went and did this thing to maybe help us. What can, what can they do now that maybe we didn't have access to before? In what way can they be good to our community and connect us to other things? And, you know, you know, um, help us because I do think a lot of. Indigenous folks who seek education. What we're trying to do is to, to give, find a way that our best way to give back. Right? So I think it's, it's a, a lack of understanding on both sides is often the problem. And we need to have a, a dialogue about that and that like the fear is okay and it's understandable, but we need to address where it's coming from. And then talk about how do we, how do we that, how do we, how do we.

Speaker 2 38:34

In indigenous knowledge, all things are in relation. So, indigenous knowledge is a method of inquiry that explores the way everything in creation is connected and related. that's it. it frustrates me that people see that as creation ending at modernity.

1 38:52

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 38:53

That somehow modernity is separate from creation. And, you know, my people have that misconception, that wrong story. And, you know, people who are, you know, the custodians of modernity also have that misconception about indigenous knowledge that somehow there's, there's a barrier between the two. But I, I can't see that it's all creation. It's one thing. So I, I never, I never stop, you know, with, with my indigenous knowledge, indigenous thinking, indigenous inquiry, I don't recognize those boundaries. So for me, that just continues. but it, it's endlessly frustrating. There are always a lot of gatekeepers there throwing up, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not, that's not indigenous. That's, that's engineering. You know? Yeah. I'm like, no, that's, that's in creation too. And, and I'm, I'm part of that. it, yeah, it is, it is really difficult. I think we all are sort of, damaged and abused. By that, that misconception and that big wrong story, that myth of progress that comes from the myth of prim. You have to have those, you have to have a, a brute fish, horrible hobsy in past in order to, to show some kind of, um, glorious, progressive present and, and even better future. Um, but I think we're all starting to question that timeline at this point in history. That arrow of progress as a continuous arrow of growth and evolution, resulting in ending with the Nordic mail on all the charts. And then I guess everybody for the next iteration, which will be some kind of cyborg attachments on that Nordic. We'll see where it all ends up from there. yeah, but I, I just think there's, I know there's more to it than that, and all of us know there's more to it than that. I why we have to keep waiting, every time we speak it has to be from within the frames of the biggest idiot in the room. You know what I mean? An idiot in the Greek sense where,

1 40:57

yeah.

Speaker 2 40:57

But, um, you know, I, it's probably worth reframing things from time to time, the most connected people in the, in the room and, um, yeah. That way. so it's all about indigenous knowledge about retrieving. It's not about disappearing into a British past, but it's about retrieving things forward always because you're in a deep time continuum, you know, in which your ancestors are present, but your descendants are also present in any given moment and you're accountable to all of those relations, human and nonhuman.

Speaker 5 41:35

I dunno if we answered your question. Did was, was there something?

Speaker 2 41:38

Yeah,

1 41:42

question. Ideas, their beliefs they have over indigenous people nine years and with new arrivals and. Otherwise many parts of the.

Speaker 2 42:38

I don't know if creation is, is progressive. I dunno if any of our faiths would support the notion that that creation is about progress, and refinement. I think it's certainly about complexity and it's certainly about relatedness and increasing those relations. yeah. But I dunno if it's about growth for. Think, I think even Satanists wouldn't, you know, if really pressed, I don't think they would adhere to that, but um, although they might, that was probably a bad example.

Freedom Was Always Here

Speaker 4 43:15

I think it also, like, I'm really prone to questioning this idea of progress. What does that mean? is it always a good thing, you know? Um. I mean, there's this really lovely, Simon Ortiz short story called Men on the Moon about a, uh, indigenous fellow, witnessing the moon landing on his first ever television set. And his grandson is translating for him and he's watching it. And then he has this dream about these like monsters and, on the moon. And, um, he has all these questions about like, why are they going there? Well, what are they and what are they bringing back? Because the thing that they're gonna bring back may be bad. He's really questioning this idea of, of progress and like sometimes I feel like we just, human beings just do things for the sake of being able to do them. Without thinking at all about the ramifications of that. We can see that with the way that our world is right now, um, in a lot of ways, societally and also environmentally. And so I think we like really have to question this idea of progress. Progress for who and what is it doing and, Yeah, I, I just think that's kind of something that we get super caught up in this idea of progress. And this also going back to the, you know, coming in with ideas that Tyson speaks about in his book, this like narcissism, that like one is better than the other, and that that's a mistake. That belief is inherently a mistake. That to think that, you know, we're coming in and our ideas are, are better because they're, they're different and or, and new or newer or whatever that means. But yeah, the idea of progress is something that I find really, really troubling.

Speaker 5 44:44

Yeah. And also I think, uh, this idea that the ones who come, the new ones. Are are more progressive. I mean, with this notion of human rights, for example, or, uh, liberty and freedom, we think we've created it in the West. But I can tell you for sure that this idea, for example, existed in the east thousands of years ago, and I'm sure it might have existed in Africa or the, you know, in, in the, in Zoan context, we believed in people's freedom, freedom of thought. You, you, a child even had to pick their own religion. You couldn't impose a faith on them. when Cyrus went to free, when he invaded lands, he freed people. He free slaves, he rebuilt temples. He didn't, he didn't impose his own religion on the people he let, so this is thousands of years ago. So the idea that we are now, oh, we're so progressed. We've come up with, you know, all this notion of freedom. Yeah, we have progressed in some ways, possibly in some, you know, so. These, some of these ideas have been around a long time and were rediscovering them maybe in a little different way. but they're not, they're not very necessarily new. So I don't know. You know, just piggybacking on what, uh, Ashley was saying, what, what do we mean by progress and is it something that has been brought to us or, you know, from the new people or, you know, maybe I know the Anishinaabe for example. I mean, talk about freedom man, freedom of thought. That stuff is, has been there here a long time. It wasn't brought in by the United States, you know, or the American constitution. Mm-hmm. So, you know, just this, I, this notion I think is not necessarily a true notion that the new people come in, they bring progress, and then the more simple people who are connected to the natural world in a different way, are somehow primitive and they don't have, I mean, so I think that that whole concept needs to be re-looked at in

Speaker 2 46:33

wrong story,

Speaker 5 46:33

wrong story, wrong story. Partly why we're here, right? I mean, the world, the way the world is, something's not working, something's not, right. So it, it's, we're not progressing. We just maybe didn't, it's, there's a clip from a movie on, on, uh, the role of, companies. And anyway, it's a, it's a, it's a story. It's a, it's a, a clip from someone who's trying to fly. It's early before, you know, we discovered planes and. He's taking off from the hill and he's flapping his wings and he looks like he's actually gonna fly. And the the camera zooms in. He's got this ecstatic look on his face, and he's got these, you know, metal wings as a, as a metaphor for our civilization connected to his arms. And so for that moment, he looks like he's flying and he's ecstatic. But if you wait long enough and if you zoom, you see that he's actually falling and hasn't figured. We look like we, maybe we have progress, but maybe it's that little moment in time where we're zooming in and thinking, okay, we're doing so great, but you know, let's wait a thousand years. Let's see where we're now. so I just wanna question again this notion of where we're, what progress is. I think a gentleman here wants to ask, I do wanna ask, let ask a question,

1 47:51

but as I. I presidency of the every two years election, and all of a sudden that becomes our timeframe within which to, to make any change. I think that we do ourselves great service. Making sure is a situation seems, seemed like the.

Speaker 6 49:03

Before, before the comments. so, you know, the, um, the title says a yaning session, a yarn is actually ideally between two people. And, um, it can be open-ended. So I'm watching the time. And this could go on forever and we're not gonna, and the conversation will actually go on. I saw a couple of other hands, but Dean Scott, apple be, wanted to comment on the previous speaker's, point, and then perhaps you can offer final reflections as we drift into the break, but keep these thoughts with you because.

Speaker 3 49:45

Yes. Thank you. I'm following up on the gentleman's question just now. Not to interrupt him, but to build on the question and the question about policy, or, or will the politicians, what could we do? so I do have a question, uh, related to that, of course, there's a windup. first of all is to thank you. So many of us, maybe all of us in this room wanna see constructive change and the sensibilities and practices and policies. We, we care so much about the future of the planet that we do need to get the message out to a variety of publics and to have them really reflect, take it seriously. So, that's at least I think a goal. I think a goal we share, the, there is a richly deserved. Well earned an absolutely necessary deep political tone to the book and to the discourse, and one who could deny it, an anger, a, a resentment, et cetera. I think many of us share it and some more deeply who've experienced it. So that's not the question. The question is, do you believe it is possible, not naive or misguided? Is it too much to ask that in the, in the engagement with audiences of various kinds who might help to make constructive change, the dialogue can move beyond polemic? I mean, are these, maybe p not the right word, but move beyond witness testimony to the past? What has done the situation? Absolutely necessary. Can we move beyond this? It's such a delicate question because easy for me to say yes, but I haven't suffered from this. So it's really a very sincere question, not rhetorical. How can we use encounter dialogue, respectful engagement, not to forget moral seriousness has. Step or is that naive to think that we can, we can cut through that. Is that clear question, I hope?

1 52:12

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 52:13

Okay. Thank you.

1 52:19

Mm-hmm. I, I think,

Trust, Healing, Closing

Speaker 2 52:22

I think that, yeah, that has to be done. I, I don't think we can do that collectively. You know, I, I kind of think every woman in this room would be. Tear up, tear her historical, I, you know what I mean? Before things have been settled, but many would, and I, I guess, you know, and that's, um, and it's good to sit down with people who are willing to shed that. And then, but then it's also, I, that's. Unwarranted unearned power and privilege over you, during that exchange. And I guess it takes a matter of existing in a state of no fear about such things, about your own subsequent loss of power and dignity as you go along. and I guess to the idea about, um, you know, innovation, progress, all these sorts of things, I guess any new innovation. You know, as with any new dialogue, connection that way, or progress within these things, any new innovation technologically, uh, it has to be accompanied by an equally powerful, social technology or psychological technology, that can ensure that the new technological innovation will not ever be able to be weaponized. We tend to put these things out innocently and they do tend to get taken up by mad science around place. We did. Maybe there's an answer for both those things in the law about Tesla. We were, he's on my mind'cause we saw the place where he was doing his early work at Niagara. Uh, when we visited there the other day, and I'm aware of it in the law, and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but there's lots of conspiracy theorists online. Talk about how he, he did create some kind of a big, very powerful technology, but he was worried that it would be weaponized and would destroy the world. And so he, he broke the blueprints up into different parts and all the formulas, and he sent some to Russia and he sent some to the US and some to Asia and some to Europe, and then said, you know, when you're ready to use this technology, well, that'll be the day when you're all getting together and working together, with those things. I doubt that's a true story, but, but it's right story, you know, it's right story and I guess, you know, so we need those really appropriately, sophisticated, nuanced social technologies and psycho technologies to accompany, you know, all the innovation and, you know, and, and it's as complex as figuring out ways that we can come to equal dialogue, uh, when things are skewed. Historically and, and currently and everything else. I'm down for it though. I don't care. I'm happy. I'll talk to anybody. I even talk to flat Earthers. I'm good.

Speaker 5 55:35

I just wondered why it has to be either or, you know, like maybe in, in some of the conversations. We've talked about some of the stuff that's painful for people and then it builds trust and then we can get beyond it. So maybe in the beginning, some of you'll have to be representatives and receive anger, unfortunately, uh, because you're so generous to do so.'cause you know, you don't of course deserve it. But in the beginning, maybe a little bit of that, but then trust gets healing happens, and, and we can move beyond. Happen quickly. Doesn't have, you know. Space sometimes to talk about things that are hurting them.