00:00:00.000Who's got a head, a head, a match-up with a raven? Who's got the prairie sun in every smile? Who's got good credit yet with all Mother Nature?
00:03:55.080and sometimes it was the church that were running things
00:03:59.540and other times it was the Inquisition or in India, sometimes it would be the merchant class.
00:04:07.120And I have a degree in oriental philosophy, so I always come back to that when I'm thinking about our contemporary times,
00:04:13.640how just merchants, coins, merchandising, more, more, more money, exponential growth.
00:04:19.520It's a crock, but it's a meme of our lives.
00:04:23.000And yet on the other hand, if you take any group of kids to the beach when they're four or five,
00:04:28.200They all make art, even though their parents probably don't even recognize it as art because the parents are up there sitting on the blanket, you know, talking to each other and eating chips and thinking about their own daily struggles.
00:04:40.980But here are all these kids, and they're using their imaginations, and they're making pictures, and they're dancing, and nobody told them how.
00:05:05.360And I guess, you know, you want to know how to foster creativity at every age?
00:05:10.320What I tell people is, number one, don't discourage your kids by distracting them to anything
00:05:16.640that's going to take them, you know, to make them think that their creativity isn't of equal value.
00:05:22.640I think is the most valuable thing we have is our originality and our creativity.
00:05:27.280But, you know, kids get distracted because of what their parents like to do, you know, sports or, you know, money or, I don't know, a social life.
00:05:36.740Yet this creativity, I don't think we lose it.
00:05:42.360Just go into a room, go to the store and buy four or five small canvases and some acrylic paint and put the different colors of paint, you know, onto a plate or something.
00:05:52.640And then go into a room and turn the lights almost all the way down so you can't really see what you're painting.
00:06:03.460That's being a bored child who's going to find something to do with these paints or crayons or whatever you've got.
00:06:11.440And I think that that spark of creativity, once an adult remembers it, can really fill your life with a creative joy that you thought was impossible.
00:06:21.620I resonate with that a lot, you know, reawakening that creative spark
00:06:25.860that might be lying dormant but isn't gone.
00:13:23.400There's a lot that we can do, but I don't think that it's the kind of what you can do that your parents and teachers would give you as an assignment, so I'm not going to do that, because I think each person's life is different, and I think every day we have an opportunity to make something better, and if you're thinking about it like that, it automatically crosses racial lines anyway, because if you're making things better, in my opinion, you're making things better for everybody.
00:13:52.300If you make things better for aboriginal people, you're basically on the level of fairness and correcting injustice.
00:14:51.660And so just the idea of communicating as an artist to the whole wide world,
00:14:57.100you do it in a way that's very much a parallel to think globally, act locally.
00:15:03.600And what I try to do is everything I can when something comes up.
00:15:08.460You know, I try to be able to, you know, I see someplace that needs a check or that needs some money or needs some advice or different needs come up every day and you address them as you can.
00:15:22.540But as a singer in a big concert or a global person writing something that I want to be kind of like a folk song in that it's going to last for generations and cross language barriers and country barriers, actually I'm singing or writing for the individual in each person.
00:15:48.000I'm not singing to 120,000 people all at the same time,
00:15:51.060even though that's the reality of who shows up.
00:15:53.300I'm still singing to the eachness of each person,
00:15:56.860the person that is similar to me inside or different to me inside.
00:16:02.040So it's funny how I think that's what artists do.
00:16:06.320I think that's one of the characteristics of the work of many artists.0.65
00:16:11.920You know, if you want to think about white folks' art, think about the Renaissance, the sculptures and the paintings.
00:16:21.500Some of them kind of don't travel out of 15th century Italy, and others of them really do.0.51
00:16:28.460And I think that if you look at the world kindly and you look at history kindly,
00:16:32.800And when you're thinking about artists, many artists have managed to reach both the global and the individual in whatever their work is.
00:16:43.140And I think I've gotten lucky with a few songs that did that, you know, whether they were simple love songs or, you know, songs that addressed war and peace or real complicated issues like My Country Tis of Thy People, You're Dying and You Are Right.
00:16:53.940That was the first time that the word genocide was used by an artist in describing North America.
00:17:54.140And if you go back to the doctrine of discovery,
00:17:56.800The Doctrine of Discovery was put together in the 15th century with several overdubs by several popes, but it was done during the Inquisition.
00:18:06.660I mean, that's a very important point.
00:18:09.460The indigenous people of the world were discovered by colonials during the Inquisition.
00:18:16.620Do you realize what white people were doing to white people in those days?
00:18:19.780So for me, it's a very informative and somewhat comforting, in a funny way, thought to realize that the cruelties of the 15th century that came around the globe and wiped out indigenous people legally because they had not already been Christianized by some Christian power.0.57
00:18:45.280The Doctrine of Discovery said that if European explorers were exploring and came across a piece of land that was inhabited,0.62
00:18:53.600that if the people were not Christian, they were not supposed to be treated as human.
00:18:57.300They were supposed to be enslaved or destroyed or converted.
00:19:04.200But in any case, the racket said that they were to be controlled and exploited by the people who were running the church,
00:20:33.860Henry VIII was making business deals with the church at the same time as the Doctrine of Discovery.
00:20:39.940He went along with the Doctrine of Discovery because it was a business deal for him.
00:20:45.200He had to seem as though he were on the side of the political church at the time.
00:20:49.240So in the laws of the Doctrine of Discovery was very powerful in Spain, in Italy, in the Netherlands, in France, in Portugal, and in England.
00:21:02.520And those were the laws that were operative when Columbus was out sailing the ocean blue and Cabot and Cartier and the rest of them were claiming indigenous land for the crowns and churches of Europe.
00:21:18.360So I think that if people know that, there's a lot of forgiveness and understanding of just the boneheadedness and the racketeering of those faraway times.
00:21:27.080And it also gives people somewhere to go with it.
00:21:29.840Let's do away with the doctrine of discovery.
00:21:31.760Let's discuss it. Let's see some eyebrows go up.
00:22:20.300My country, tis of thy people you're dying0.99
00:22:30.000Now that the long houses breed superstition
00:22:40.400You force us to send our toddlers away0.87
00:22:46.320Radio schools where they're taught to despise their traditions, forbid them their languages, then further say that American history really began.
00:23:03.440When Columbus sets sail out of Europe and stress that the nation of leeches that's conquered this land are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
00:23:19.940And yet where in your history books is the tale
00:23:25.360Of the genocide basic to this country's birth
00:23:30.540Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed
00:23:36.160How a nation of patriots returned to their earth
00:23:41.560And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell0.99
00:23:46.880As it rang with a thud over Kinzoa mud
00:23:52.280And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year
00:23:57.780My country, tis of thy people you're dying
00:24:45.900And the history books censored. A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way. Yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived.
00:25:00.560Their blood runs the redder, though genes have been paled
00:25:05.980From the Grand Canyon's caverns to Craven's sad hills
00:25:11.780The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale
00:25:17.260From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
00:25:22.620The white nation fattens while others grow lean0.91
00:25:28.460Oh, the tricked and evicted, they know what I mean
00:25:33.740My country, tis of thy people, you're dying
00:25:40.040The past, it just crumbled, the future just threatens0.93
00:25:48.640Our lifeblood shut up in your chemical tanks
00:25:53.640And now here you come, bill of sale in your hand, and surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks for the blessings of civilization you've brought us, the lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've brought us.
00:26:17.520Oh, see what our trust in America's bought us.
00:26:23.080My country, tis of thy people you're dying.0.99
00:26:33.480Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,
00:26:40.160Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws
00:26:48.160Now that my life's to be known as your heritage
00:26:54.900Now that even the graves have been robbed
00:27:02.000Now that our own chosen way is a novelty
00:28:31.180And I'm wondering how you move through your feelings about the government, especially after they blacklisted you from reaching people with your messages of truth.
00:28:40.720How do you think the millennial generation can engage in a proactive relationship with the government in these times of disruption and distrust?
00:28:50.500One of the reasons for disruption and distrust is because we keep using the word the government.
00:34:10.780Sing bye-bye, stars of history, and bye-bye, bankers' trust.
00:34:17.600Aquarius is shining, honey, but the song is one of us.
00:34:22.980And me, I don't want to go to the moon, I'm going to leave that moon alone.
00:34:28.820I just want to dance with the rose by sea, this summer.
00:34:33.480Yes, yes, yes, wait for me, a brown eye, man.
00:34:38.600Yes, yes, wait for me, you're blind man.0.97
00:34:58.000Many well-meaning non-native people romanticize indigeneity.
00:35:02.720I heard an interview that you once said that people wanted you to come on stage as some Pocahontas figure earlier in your career.
00:35:11.100But you have shattered a one-dimensional perception of yourself and embody so many dimensions as artist, musician, teacher, philosopher, activist, farmer.
00:35:23.500So in these times of great displacement, whether from land or ancestry, what does it mean to be indigenous in today's world?
00:35:32.720And do you think that people can grow to be indigenous to land that they don't historically come from?
00:35:39.340I think people can become something like indigenous, but no, I don't know.
00:35:44.240You know, I think we're kind of stretching the definition of indigenous a little too far.
00:35:49.620We need a different word, and I can't come up with it right now.
00:35:52.180I think that you can become effective and you could become a supporter of the indigenous people who happen to come from there.
00:35:59.100But, you know, there are a lot of ramifications to identity, including an indigenous identity.
00:36:06.120I mean, if you marry an indigenous person and, you know, you've been married and raising a family for 40 years,
00:36:12.720you're pretty much a member of the group.
00:36:15.100So I'm not going to worry about the definition so much.
00:36:18.560Truly indigenous people who come from colonialized nations.
00:36:24.660I mean, now we're starting to define it a little more, you know.
00:36:27.320Truly indigenous, you know, like aboriginal people from Australia who are unfortunately sitting on the only land to which they have title and it has uranium.0.99
00:36:38.160I mean, they're screwed, you know, because they're indigenous.1.00
00:36:42.260Now, if they had grown up in families, in colonialized families, how you grow up is very, very important as to your worldview and your effectiveness in the world.1.00
00:36:53.080in both show business and what we're talking about now,
00:36:57.240you know, contemporary issues of indigeneity.
00:37:00.380Because, like, when I first went to Greenwich Village,
00:39:08.420And yet our reserves in Canada, especially in my own family, the people who've stayed on the reserves are very, very dear to us.
00:39:16.260They haven't had travel, and we have, but they have had community life in a very special way, too, which, you know, hopefully they share with us.
00:42:36.300And I'm wondering, because of your connection to your ancestral cosmology and beliefs,
00:42:41.320and because you studied Eastern philosophy,
00:42:43.860I'm wondering what are some of the most powerful spiritual wisdoms or takeaways
00:42:48.340that help guide you to live your life so fully?
00:42:51.260You know, there's not one single thing that I would mention. Oriental philosophy, what it got me was a big smile, because I was so thrilled to know that other people besides myself loved the Creator.
00:43:08.980When I discovered Oriental philosophy, it showed me that minds were greater than what I was finding in my own little neighborhood.
00:43:17.660I found Oriental philosophy when I was in high school.
00:43:20.120And there wasn't anybody who had ever heard the word reincarnation.
00:46:02.500God is alive, magic is afoot, God is afoot, magic is alive, alive is afoot, magic never dies, magic is afoot, God never sickened, many poor men lied, many sick men lied, magic never weakened, magic never hid, magic always ruled, God is afoot, God never died.
00:46:32.500God was ruler, though his funeral lengthened, though his mourners thickened, magic never fled, though his shrouds were hoisted, the naked God did live, though his words were twisted, the naked magic thrived, though his death was published, round and round the world, the heart did not believe.
00:46:54.760Many hurt men wondered, many struck men bled
00:47:00.800Magic never faltered, magic always led
00:47:04.900Many stones were old, but God would not lie down
00:47:09.140Many wild men lied, many fat men listened
00:47:13.080Though they offered stones, magic still was fed
00:47:17.340Though they locked their coffers, God was always served
00:50:55.080I really believe in the positivity that's coming through in the songs, but I also clearly do see some of the negative portraits that I present in songs.
00:51:07.560And none of it's deliberate, it's just kind of the way I see it and what's happening in my own daily life.
00:51:13.360I mean, I'll go through an airport and all kinds of things will happen.
00:51:15.920There'll be all kinds of joys and bummers, you know, every five minutes is something new.
00:51:20.280you know you see somebody who you wish you could know and then you see somebody and you hope you
00:51:25.780don't sit next to them and sure enough you do and it turns out you have things in common so i don't
00:51:30.460know life's a trip you think i would have come up with something better than that in the last 50
00:51:35.400years but keep your nose on the joy trail and share what you can share when you can share it
00:51:40.680and don't be afraid to take a bath and take a nap and don't burn out you know that's kind of my
00:51:45.920advice. It's very, very easy when you really do care and when your eyes are being opened to
00:51:51.160some of the justices and injustices of the world. It's really tempting to just have an emotional
00:51:57.260reaction and burnout and then go nowhere. No, no, your observations are probably true.
00:52:05.660You know, go slow and careful. If you really care, come up with a little strategy of how you can
00:52:11.760be happy and share that happiness and make things better for yourself and others. It's really a lot
00:52:18.200of fun. Well, Buffy, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and your spirit. You are in
00:52:25.840the truest sense an inspiration, and it's exhilarating to hear you speak. So thank you
00:52:31.840again for being on Unlearn and Rewild. Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure, Anna. And again,
00:52:37.540And congratulations on your great title, Unlearn and Rewild.