For The Wild - MARTIN PRECHTEL on Identity and Sacred Rites of Passage ⧸22

00:00:00.000 It's high on a mountain, the warm winds are blowing, and where the winds are blowing to,

00:00:26.400 There ain't no way of knowing

00:00:29.400 The mountain grass is short

00:00:32.680 It's dry and close to burning

00:00:35.420 Crying out for water

00:00:38.680 As the season's turning

00:00:41.680 Sweet smell of the pines

00:00:46.680 Tall western cedar

00:00:48.360 Drifting on the wind

00:00:51.840 Through the mountains like a river

00:00:54.440 Hello, my name is Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild, where we explore

00:01:02.680 radical ideas relating to earth renewal.

00:01:06.280 Today we're speaking with Martine Prechtel, who is a leading thinker, writer, and teacher

00:01:12.820 whose work, both written and oral, hopes to promote the subtlety, irony, and pre-modern

00:01:19.560 vitality hidden in any living language.

00:01:22.560 As a half-blood Native American with the Pueblo Indian upbringing, his life took him from New Mexico to the village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, there becoming a full village member of the Zutujil Mayan population.

00:01:38.540 He eventually served as a principal in that body of village leaders, responsible for instructing the young people in the meanings of their ancient stories through the rituals of adult rites of passage.

00:01:50.780 Once again residing in his native New Mexico,

00:01:54.400 Martine teaches at his international school, Bolad's Kitchen.

00:01:59.060 Through story, music, ritual, and writing,

00:02:02.140 Martine helps people in many lands to retain their diversity

00:02:05.560 while remembering their own sense of place in the daily sacred

00:02:09.320 through the search for the indigenous soul.

00:02:12.540 For more information, visit floweringmountain.com.

00:02:17.120 Hello, Martine.

00:02:18.760 Thank you so much for joining us.

00:02:21.300 Hello.

00:02:22.520 I'm so excited to have you on the show and hear about your incredible experiences and visions for the future.

00:02:31.180 Oh, you bet.

00:02:32.260 I was just listening to all that.

00:02:34.020 I said, boy, I better live up to it.

00:02:36.800 Well, your book certainly did.

00:02:38.580 All the books that I've read have made me think anew.

00:02:42.180 Yeah.

00:02:42.420 So I'd like to begin by asking you to give us a little introduction to the Pueblo Nation and the Zutujil Maya that you lived with.

00:02:52.500 How can we begin to grasp how these people see the world and their purpose in it, their cosmology, if you will?

00:03:00.920 Well, first of all, I grew up in New Mexico, in a reservation, Pueblo Reservation.

00:03:07.280 There's 19 pueblos in New Mexico, and they're divided by different language groups.

00:03:12.680 You know, anthropologists divide them like this, and Native people divide themselves like that.

00:03:17.360 Matter of fact, the village I grew up in, today is their biggest ceremonial day.

00:03:22.080 I didn't go because I interviewed it, but it's enormously based on feeding spiritually the world that feeds us.

00:03:31.960 And New Mexico, in this area, you know, before it was called New Mexico, and it's all Native,

00:03:37.280 The main issue is always water. 1.00

00:03:42.360 So all of the rituals, non-Indians always used to make fun of everybody. 1.00

00:03:46.300 Oh, they're doing the rain dance. 1.00

00:03:48.580 It's based on the idea that grief of being human being ends up being tears,

00:03:55.580 depending on whether or not there is water in your blood vein,

00:03:59.200 in the tree leaves, in the ground, in the air, in the snow.

00:04:03.040 In the winter, we really depend on the snow here.

00:04:05.700 And so I grew up very lucky and also not knowing I was lucky. 0.99

00:04:11.860 I'm not a Pueblo Indian.

00:04:13.380 My mother was a native person.

00:04:17.060 Her people were mostly Canadian Indians of various and sundry types,

00:04:21.340 you know, Hurons and Anishinaabe and Huntington, and so forth.

00:04:25.480 It's a lot of painful history.

00:04:27.260 But I didn't really grow up with those cultures.

00:04:29.240 But because my mother was, you know, mostly native,

00:04:33.660 She got a job teaching Indians when, you know, an Indian was an Indian.

00:04:38.560 So she got a job teaching on one of the reservations. 1.00

00:04:42.040 But they were all-time, I hesitate to use the word conservative,

00:04:46.540 because that brings up right-wing Republicans, which they're not.

00:04:49.940 But they're keeping their things alive, not in a kind of dry and stuff,

00:04:53.720 the revivalist way, but with them, it never died.

00:04:56.700 And they're one of the most famous people who have done that.

00:04:58.920 And as a result, they don't like to be broadcast or be talked about or anything like that.

00:05:03.580 There's still no photography.

00:05:05.160 There's still no recording.

00:05:06.400 There's still no sketching.

00:05:08.080 It's really old-fashioned.

00:05:09.580 I was a little cute little kid there, and everybody liked me.

00:05:12.080 And I grew up there, and so I was lucky to speak.

00:05:16.620 They have their own language called Kewa.

00:05:19.380 And I grew up speaking that.

00:05:20.620 And then the thing about these languages is that inside the languages themselves,

00:05:26.960 they could put you in prison.

00:05:28.320 They could cut off your arms.

00:05:29.700 They could take away everything from you.

00:05:31.600 But if you have the language, you can still speak and understand the world in a way that is indigenous.

00:05:39.020 So that was the main thing growing up was that my mother was the first person in this territory of the southwest

00:05:48.500 to introduce English as being something that was the second language.

00:05:52.580 She always thought that English was a lot of language and everything else would be eventually eradicated,

00:05:57.660 which is, and these people here didn't go for it, thank goodness.

00:06:01.920 And so she was teaching it from another point of view,

00:06:04.400 and I was her test group. 0.88

00:06:06.580 She was asking me, how come all these Indians say this instead of that, 0.91

00:06:09.920 and how come they say it like this and that, and I said,

00:06:12.460 well, actually, in this language, there's no he, she, or it.

00:06:15.280 So you don't have a he, you don't have an it, you don't have a she,

00:06:18.720 but you have a woman, a female word, 0.59

00:06:21.620 another word that belongs only to women,

00:06:23.760 and the only women speak it, but all the men understand it,

00:06:26.120 You've got words that belong only to men.

00:06:27.580 Only men speak, and only men understand.

00:06:29.780 And yet, you know, and all these different things.

00:06:32.420 So then when you translate into English, you know, you get kind of Asian talk,

00:06:35.920 which I still kind of speak, to be honest, and proudly, I say, in English,

00:06:40.800 because I never held English to be the sovereign language.

00:06:43.880 I never held it to be a language, which I've since worked as hard as I can

00:06:47.920 to subvert into an indigenous tongue, which is why I write the way I do. 1.00

00:06:52.040 But as far as Mayan people go, they're very far away. 1.00

00:06:56.560 I mean, by miles, it's calculated. 0.70

00:06:59.280 I mean, the closest to Tequila is, well, actually, I don't know what it's called.

00:07:04.720 Tequila could be one in San Francisco, but that's probably about 3,500 miles or 3,000 miles from here.

00:07:11.260 But culturally, it's a mystery.

00:07:13.660 It always has been a mystery to me why there is so much corroboration of the way of thinking and being

00:07:19.880 between central Guatemalan Indians and a lot of Indian people,

00:07:23.940 Native people who are from the central Rio Grande region.

00:07:26.900 Their speech is probably not related.

00:07:29.180 I mean, I think people are related one style to another style,

00:07:32.340 but it's like so remote.

00:07:34.280 But as far as the mind and the beautiful set of human position in the world,

00:07:40.820 there's a lot of similarities.

00:07:42.340 And they also have similar history with what I call the European interruption

00:07:47.140 and into their culture, which in this case was Spanish,

00:07:51.640 not Spanish culture as much as it was Spanish government.

00:07:55.860 And the funny thing about the Spanish, 0.54

00:07:57.900 as opposed to the English and the French and the Danes and Portuguese 0.99

00:08:01.800 and all these other people that go around, you know,

00:08:04.960 at that time around the Renaissance and afterwards,

00:08:08.160 is that the Spaniards weren't interested in annihilating all the population.

00:08:12.160 They were interested in actually having a huge population that pay tribute,

00:08:15.660 where these other groups wanted to get rid of or enslave the local population. 0.99

00:08:20.460 But the Spaniards, for all their faults and for all the terror that they wreaked havoc everywhere, 0.66

00:08:24.840 actually kept a lot of good records and also made the native punks the national language. 0.98

00:08:29.580 Like in Guatemala in the 1600s, it was required for all Spaniards to be able to speak Pachiguel,

00:08:34.480 which is one of the most populous languages being spoken even there today.

00:08:38.680 And it's, what, a million and a half speakers, maybe two million.

00:08:41.580 Tutu Hill is very small, like 60,000 people.

00:08:44.920 But it's a dialect for that.

00:08:47.040 And then everywhere you went, they were required to, you know, 1.00

00:08:50.960 Peru, they wreak havoc, as they say. 1.00

00:08:53.380 But with the English, the thing was to get rid of all these guys, 0.99

00:08:56.580 you know, take the land, have them as slaves, 0.98

00:08:58.380 and then when that didn't work, you know, bringing black slavery. 0.98

00:09:00.760 So I grew up in a place where Spanish was spoken as a second language, 0.62

00:09:05.360 not English.

00:09:06.380 And English was a third language.

00:09:07.780 Of course, Guatemala, where I did live for so many years in the village of Santiago de Plano,

00:09:15.100 the language of the people was not Spanish, but it was Tutu Hill Maya,

00:09:19.420 and then almost everybody could speak three or four dialects of other Mayans,

00:09:22.740 some of which are not mutually intelligible.

00:09:24.900 And then the men, because of the commerce issue, some of them, you know, all of them,

00:09:29.700 they were the ones who dealt with the outside world, upside their own zone,

00:09:34.220 and they would speak some Spanish.

00:09:35.540 But the Spanish they spoke was the most incredibly courteous 17th and 16th century Spanish,

00:09:42.600 which is very similar in many ways to the Spanish people spoke in northern New Mexico today.

00:09:47.160 So it's always been a mystery to why these two places, you know, I didn't leave the United States to go find Guatemala,

00:09:53.840 I just ended up there, but I was always so mystified as to why they have so much love of the same things together.

00:10:00.080 So as far as the cosmology, I'm not an anthropologist, even though there are people who accuse me of it.

00:10:04.880 And to talk about it from that objectified point of view, I think it's better to go on, and it will appear as time goes on, because the thing is we don't have gods or goddesses in a strict sense, like, you know, the pantheist idea of Europe and India and all that.

00:10:22.740 But there's a force that is constant and there all the time, and it's not like another world.

00:10:30.040 It is this world, the other side of this same world.

00:10:33.280 And so the maintenance of what it is we have here in this world, considering our world,

00:10:39.200 is only a layer of a many-layered world, and it's our responsibility to keep our hand up of it

00:10:44.280 for all of the things that we remove from it. 0.58

00:10:46.780 The Mayans is based on feeding time as an entity, and they don't have a word for time,

00:10:53.300 so it's called the walking of dawns and the walking of suns.

00:10:57.600 And with the Pueblo people, one of the major differences is that the Pueblo people do not

00:11:03.380 have the abundance of the land, they don't have the jungles, and they don't have so many

00:11:09.820 trees, they have a definite winter here where everything dies back and it comes back alive,

00:11:13.900 whereas in the tropics, it's a different story.

00:11:16.300 So among the Pueblo people, they are also constantly having to feed with beauty,

00:11:21.200 with their rituals, their dances, all of the secret society rituals,

00:11:25.900 to heal, constantly healing the ground.

00:11:28.400 They understand the human body is not being a reflection of the world,

00:11:31.760 but being the actual world.

00:11:33.920 So in English, you have the verb to be, German, you have a verb to be,

00:11:37.180 you know, all of the Romance languages, you have a verb to be.

00:11:39.620 And so your body cannot be the earth and be the land at the same time

00:11:44.160 without it being sort of like an Escher thing.

00:11:46.760 But in these other languages, there's no problem with it whatsoever.

00:11:50.280 I remember seeing an anthropologist, and I like to poke fun at them

00:11:52.760 because I have so much fun, because most of them hate me.

00:11:56.040 But actually, the modern ones don't.

00:11:58.680 They actually like me, but they all time like me.

00:12:01.300 Anyway, I saw them once in a sacred house in Atitang,

00:12:04.920 and I remember this one guy talking to this other official,

00:12:07.820 and he says, well, now what is this over here?

00:12:09.740 And the guy says, well, that's a fun, that's a morning star,

00:12:12.400 and that's the mother of life that lives in the moon

00:12:14.860 but whose body is the ocean.

00:12:17.240 And he says, oh, you mean like

00:12:18.620 the sun in the sky? I said, no, no, not like

00:12:20.720 the sun. This is the sun in the sky.

00:12:22.740 And the other guy said, well, the anthropologist

00:12:24.960 says, no, the sun is in the sky. He says,

00:12:26.940 yes, the sun is in the sky. So what is

00:12:28.880 this on this altar? That's the sun in the sky.

00:12:31.740 And they said, well, how can it be

00:12:32.800 in the sky in here? And the guy said, yes.

00:12:35.640 Because if it has

00:12:36.940 to be this or it's not, that it either

00:12:38.960 is or, in other words, to be or not

00:12:40.860 to be is not a question in Tsutu Hill or in the language that I grew up in.

00:12:45.380 It's a totally different mindset, and so

00:12:48.880 this ends up being a giant philosophical problem for the other guys, whereas any two-year-old

00:12:53.120 Tsutu Hill understands that we don't need the metaphor in those cultures

00:12:56.620 in order to have this enormous rituality. We have ritual instead of metaphors.

00:13:01.440 Whereas in European languages, you've got to have metaphors to understand

00:13:04.820 any of these big things. I personally have a belief that this was not the

00:13:08.880 case, originally, I think that actually

00:13:11.000 the Indo-European language was

00:13:12.700 immensely amazing.

00:13:14.820 Language was an immensely amazing people

00:13:16.840 that at some point in their history

00:13:18.480 something happened to cause them to become

00:13:21.000 enormously afraid and

00:13:22.480 excuse them about their language. That's why I invented 0.99

00:13:24.720 this school I had in the Swiss Bowl based on trying to figure out

00:13:26.900 when that happened and how to stop being like that.

00:13:29.640 Sorry, I got carried away.

00:13:31.260 I always do.

00:13:33.020 You know what you're getting into, you know.

00:13:34.520 You read my books.

00:13:35.560 Well, it reminded me in your book when you were talking about plants as people and not as a metaphor.

00:13:44.440 And that idea really stunned me in a beautiful way.

00:13:49.600 It's good to hear.

00:13:51.140 Yeah, because planting the land is or was a sacred ritual all over the world with elaborate clothing and decoration.

00:14:00.600 Wow.

00:14:00.920 You know, the farm was a temple with sacred monuments.

00:14:05.560 So perhaps you could describe for us this holy connection between plants and people,

00:14:10.160 and how the Maya and Pueblo honor that connection.

00:14:14.240 Well, what is not the holy connection between plants and people?

00:14:17.420 Because all flesh is plants.

00:14:19.860 So basically your whole body is made of plants,

00:14:22.160 or somebody's body that you're eating is made of plants.

00:14:25.380 I mean, plants are the most amazing thing.

00:14:29.140 That's why I wrote the book on the, you know, on the Kishore Kuchmukic. 1.00

00:14:32.400 because with Mayan people, I mean, it's just no one talks about it

00:14:37.720 outside the culture, but because to them,

00:14:40.040 it's not like something to talk about.

00:14:41.580 It's just unknown fact.

00:14:43.720 And like when, I mean, I even wrote about it.

00:14:46.160 I remember marching around.

00:14:48.200 There used to be a flute player in the village.

00:14:50.380 Every time the old men and old women had to move somewhere on foot

00:14:54.440 to go do whatever errand they had to do, 0.93

00:14:57.820 they had to go with music.

00:14:58.860 So it's always with the specific songs for specific rhythms of walking, going distance, or going short distance, in the village outside.

00:15:06.360 Anyway, I was always there.

00:15:07.860 So I was going along, going along, going along, and these guys are really boiling hot, man,

00:15:11.800 because they heard about a bunch of young guys that decided they're going to be left to scurrilous,

00:15:16.000 and they're planting cardamom, and they were just cutting down big old tons of hardwood trees,

00:15:22.200 which were never supposed to be touched because it was supposed to belong to the holy beings of the mountains,

00:15:27.380 and there was a place that people weren't even supposed to go

00:15:29.220 except to make rituals, and they never lived there.

00:15:31.680 So these guys were just sawing all this stuff

00:15:33.120 and selling the lumber at German lumber companies. 0.73

00:15:35.860 So the old people found out about it, 0.99

00:15:37.560 and they were going to march up there and see if it was true

00:15:39.180 because they hadn't actually seen it with their own eyes.

00:15:40.840 And when they were way up there,

00:15:41.740 we saw somebody had planted a great big old cornfield,

00:15:44.740 you know, big, beautiful corn tree in the white corn.

00:15:48.440 And all these guys were so mad

00:15:50.460 and had their machetes bristling and everybody was yelling.

00:15:53.640 They all went to their knees and started kissing the field.

00:15:56.380 and the field had been planted by their mortal enemies, you know, next door

00:16:00.520 and they gave up and went home

00:16:02.480 because once they saw that field and once they saw the corn

00:16:06.080 and they realized it was their own ancestor and was growing out there

00:16:08.960 all of the folly of, you know, human, I want it this way and I want it that way

00:16:13.160 just appeared for them because they recognized themselves

00:16:15.820 because as far as they're concerned, they are plants, they are corn, their own self

00:16:20.940 so where I grew up, back to that again, back to old New Mexico

00:16:24.880 girl, it's exactly the same thing.

00:16:27.900 There are so many, you know, like even when we eat breakfast,

00:16:31.460 like my little daughter today, she said something about she didn't want to eat the blue corn,

00:16:35.060 she wanted red corn because I grew all my own plants here, all our food.

00:16:39.500 And I said, oh, don't say that out loud.

00:16:41.680 So what do you mean?

00:16:42.920 So you're going to insult the mother of the one and the other will be sad

00:16:46.880 and then her heart will fly out of her chest the next time we plant, it won't grow.

00:16:50.560 So we went down to where I got my blue corn growing,

00:16:53.060 and I got a purple cone going.

00:16:54.340 It's a special breeze

00:16:55.040 that came from this old man.

00:16:56.360 I got a robot actually in the book.

00:16:58.060 And we're going down there

00:16:59.180 and they were all flagging

00:17:00.540 and they're all falling over.

00:17:02.640 And she said,

00:17:03.480 I just insulted the one 0.96

00:17:05.580 and look at it

00:17:06.100 and then the red one,

00:17:07.000 you know,

00:17:07.360 was just fine.

00:17:08.620 So, you know,

00:17:09.300 the people said,

00:17:09.760 oh, well, that's folklore,

00:17:10.880 that's cute.

00:17:11.800 You see,

00:17:12.740 if you live in a relationship 0.51

00:17:13.960 with the ground

00:17:14.700 and the world

00:17:15.260 in such a way

00:17:16.040 that that is your consciousness,

00:17:17.940 then you become

00:17:18.620 more of a human being.

00:17:19.820 So, as far as plants being,

00:17:21.720 you know,

00:17:21.960 genetically far from people, that's also nonsense too.

00:17:25.240 All you have to do is become a scientist, check out chromosomal levels,

00:17:28.620 and you look at the genes, it's really not as far as you'd like it to be, you know?

00:17:33.040 So a plant is, not only are we totally dependent on it,

00:17:37.760 but the modern cultures have gotten to the point that when you're depending on something,

00:17:41.780 it means it's your slave or your minion.

00:17:44.120 For instance, it's meaning like, somebody works for me.

00:17:47.260 Okay, that's the person that I'm paying, so they're lower than me.

00:17:50.340 that doesn't work like that in native culture

00:17:52.520 like whatever is feeding

00:17:54.700 you and

00:17:56.440 you're depending on

00:17:58.160 that is your parent

00:17:59.520 that's your answer, that's the one that you kneel

00:18:02.520 in front of, that's not the one that says

00:18:04.040 this is mine, look what I got

00:18:06.640 all these fields

00:18:07.460 no, every time you see you

00:18:10.000 kneel and you fist and you think

00:18:12.020 because what if you're killed

00:18:14.260 or what if you die at that very moment

00:18:16.220 then that beautiful way

00:18:18.460 that you are at that moment is what you become upon your death so the idea by living in a certain

00:18:24.720 way in these cultures that we're talking about that you asked me about in the mindset to heal

00:18:28.520 and the key culture of this area is that your life and then subsequently when you pass away

00:18:35.400 it's supposed to feed life so much the present never dies so the present gift of being alive in

00:18:41.400 this particular time is called the belly button of time and that is given life by the way you fall

00:18:47.880 back to the earth it's like a seed so people and plant they're they're like left and right foot

00:18:53.300 at the same organism and therefore the way you live and the way you uh are i mean i got attacked

00:19:00.100 one time by a bunch of guys want to kill me when i'm all it's in another book but um i thought i

00:19:06.880 got hit i actually caught a piece of shrapnel uh what do you call it ricochet off a wall in my

00:19:12.240 sternum made a hole in there it looked like i was shot through and i started bleeding and i thought

00:19:17.860 I was killed because it's right over my heart. And so I said, no, I'm not going to go panic.

00:19:24.240 I'm not going to go terrified. I'm just going to be a ceremony with my old teacher, Chivili.

00:19:28.340 I said, I'm going to be, just like you said, I've got to be exactly what I believe in and what I am

00:19:33.380 as I go out. So I got this great second chance because I wasn't shot through, but I was dying

00:19:39.100 as far as I was concerned. So I was going to stay in one piece with that same mentality of being

00:19:44.420 this beautiful plant being going back in the ground

00:19:46.460 to replant the present with

00:19:48.460 my past husk.

00:19:50.680 And so it turned out I wasn't shocked

00:19:52.460 really. You know, the lead was

00:19:54.480 just stuck in my bone there. We had to pull it out with

00:19:56.440 the pliers and I was fine. I was terrified

00:19:58.540 for the rest of my life. But, you know,

00:20:00.560 nonetheless, it was a wonderful

00:20:02.440 second chance for me to realize,

00:20:04.480 yeah, you've got to be that beautiful

00:20:06.340 thing when you go down. And all those

00:20:08.300 cultures have that. So that you

00:20:10.440 live your life with that and you don't live

00:20:12.460 it to get to a goal line

00:20:14.060 So at this very moment, if I kiss my corn, that's what I always wanted to be known for, you know,

00:20:19.240 because she's my mother and she's given life to my whole family.

00:20:44.060 I loved the chapter you wrote about the young men running to run versus...

00:21:08.020 They're running right now.

00:21:09.820 You're talking, they're running at this very minute out in the rain.

00:21:12.240 wow that's it was yeah running to run not running to win not running to get somewhere or

00:21:19.200 you know to make money but running for you said the deliciousness of it and i and there's just

00:21:27.860 it was such an incredible word the deliciousness of running and living for just the passion of

00:21:34.080 life itself. Yeah, why not? Yeah, why not? And, you know, for me, as someone who was born in

00:21:42.320 modern America, I feel alienated from the major spiritual traditions. I know very little about

00:21:49.300 the practices of my blood ancestors. So I gravitate towards the messages of earth-based

00:21:55.860 peoples, not to glue a veneer onto my tainted psyche, but because I reject the dominant culture

00:22:03.420 and I recognize how deeply it's affecting the earth.

00:22:07.640 I mean, the earth is changing under the weight of humanity.

00:22:11.520 Habitat is disappearing.

00:22:13.800 The most fertile lands are now paved under urban sprawl.

00:22:18.060 The blood and the bones of the earth are being ripped from her.

00:22:23.360 So, are there certain indigenous teachings,

00:22:28.040 maybe the more practical side of things,

00:22:30.800 that are being reimagined?

00:22:33.420 light of this altered landscape? First of all, an indigenous, from my point of view, 0.94

00:22:39.340 when I use the word indigenous, I'm not talking about Mayans, I'm not talking about Pueblos,

00:22:43.820 I'm not talking about any specific tribal peoples. I'm talking about from the point of view of the

00:22:50.700 indigenous soul, which is not tribal specific. So it's a soul that I believe all human beings are

00:22:58.940 capable of remembering given a good cultural surrounding but since that you

00:23:08.960 say that does not exist that's sort of like an organ that is not really very

00:23:13.760 well developed inside all human souls therefore this is residual in most cases

00:23:19.160 and so it's like growing up eating McDonald's hamburger your whole life and

00:23:23.780 then once I'm trying to develop taste but how much has been damaged and how

00:23:27.620 much can be done. Well, I'm one of the hopeful idiots who keeps thinking, you know, it can 0.99

00:23:32.380 be revived. And not only revived it, but some things can show up that have never shown 0.98

00:23:36.520 up before. So when I talk about indigenous, I don't, I never, I'm not talking about something

00:23:41.220 that was, that can be paved over, that can be imprisoned, can be killed. I'm talking 0.82

00:23:46.740 about the thing that can't be killed, that can't be imprisoned, that can't be pulled

00:23:50.980 in, because that's still the arrogance of Western society thinking it's all powerful,

00:23:54.560 thinking that it has, you know, because the Earth is bending under the weight of humanity.

00:24:00.480 Well, that's not humans.

00:24:01.480 For one thing, there are people that should be trying to be humans.

00:24:04.700 Second one, the Earth is enormously powerful,

00:24:07.200 and humans keep thinking they're in charge of everything.

00:24:09.740 It's very comical to anything that has the indigenous stone intact.

00:24:14.860 The thing that people who are worried about it are so tied up with, I think,

00:24:21.340 is the fact that they do want it their way.

00:24:24.440 In other words, they want to be able to have an indigenous soul

00:24:27.240 and still at the same time have all the comforts of the conqueror's society, you see, in place. 0.98

00:24:34.120 And, well, I don't think that's actually possible. 0.93

00:24:36.980 So what you're thinking of trying to adapt something that's indigenous to,

00:24:43.240 and that's still also what you're saying is corroborating the idea that people have progressed

00:24:49.380 and they have changed.

00:24:52.520 I don't believe in evolution in the sense that things are going to an apex

00:24:57.040 or that this particular time in life is what we were always trying to get toward.

00:25:01.660 I think evolution is going to change.

00:25:04.500 And that what is indigenous is in constant change 1.00

00:25:08.780 and constantly learning how to be new. 0.99

00:25:11.720 Which is why I wrote the book on the unlikely piece to Kuchimukik.

00:25:14.860 I myself was terrified of all the GMOs and all this and all that.

00:25:19.420 And then I saw these seeds bucket all by themselves without my permission, you know, come through it and all of a sudden there they are again.

00:25:27.460 After, you know, if you have to read the book there, it's quite a long story.

00:25:30.220 But so as far as, you know, saying I don't want to co-opt and I don't want to litter the world by putting on a veneer and yet I want my cake and eat it too.

00:25:40.500 It's not possible to have those two things.

00:25:43.000 So I think what I'm saying is that the grief level of finally recognizing the fact that humans are not here to succeed.

00:25:51.480 Humans, if they are really, really, truly humans, are here to be an indigenous part of a bigger thing than themselves,

00:25:58.320 and without them in charge. 0.63

00:26:00.240 And then, of course, then you get all of the evangelical Christians that say,

00:26:03.140 yes, God is in charge, and that is definitely not one thing.

00:26:06.440 And then it's not just nature.

00:26:08.880 You know, because nature, the designation of nature as nature is also not just Western,

00:26:13.500 but civilization's idea that you have nature and non-nature.

00:26:17.060 An indigenous view is that there is no such thing as non-nature.

00:26:20.740 That is only people trying to fortress themselves up so much with so many walls

00:26:25.320 and so many ideas and so much armor to say, I am not that.

00:26:28.960 And therefore, they live in this eternal, crumbling, grief world

00:26:31.720 that is always constantly in sight.

00:26:34.260 So basically, the world that you have now that is seen, as you say,

00:26:37.360 alienated as a bystander, is in flight away from being at home as an indigenous person.

00:26:44.440 Well, you say, well, how can I be an indigenous person if I'm not tribal?

00:26:47.860 How can I be an indigenous person if I don't know what that looks like? 0.96

00:26:50.500 Well, first of all, that thing I, the I that doesn't know, it's a good thing it doesn't 0.92

00:26:56.680 know, because if it did, it would co-opt it.

00:26:59.400 So the point is to be able to go into a grief level where the grief itself becomes great,

00:27:04.800 So the understanding and feeling so deeply the loss, not the loss of getting what you want, but the loss of what you love the most, so it comes down to love.

00:27:16.900 Because if the taste buds of the tongue, the wiring in the ear, if the corona and the retina are not seeing fully what is out there, the only reason is because of the language that's being used.

00:27:31.480 But as far as I'm concerned, the first and foremost place that has to be approached, could be approached, might be approached, and definitely possible to approach, which is one of the big things, is with the language.

00:27:43.980 And most people say, oh, I don't understand that.

00:27:46.060 I say, well, of course not, because, you know, people aren't doing it.

00:27:48.640 But you have, like, for instance, if you just try to speak for one year without using the word it, in other words, a baby colt wouldn't be an it, a baby child wouldn't be an it.

00:27:58.840 A cup on your cupboard wouldn't be an hit.

00:28:03.060 And your car wouldn't be an hit.

00:28:04.780 And you say, well, what would it be?

00:28:06.560 Well, then, you know, normally you would get the more Tarzanic thing.

00:28:09.300 You would say, my car, he's a good guy.

00:28:10.800 Or my car, she's a good guy.

00:28:11.920 I already say that.

00:28:13.480 Develop a third word that doesn't, or a fourth word that doesn't mean that.

00:28:17.220 So that you're no longer addressing the world as inanimate.

00:28:21.000 And then the other thing is, instead of talking about the sun in the sky,

00:28:24.020 talk to the sun in the sky.

00:28:26.180 And then they say, well, then you're going to be locked up.

00:28:28.200 Yeah, in Western culture, you're with people.

00:28:30.960 Of course, it's like, in Tutu Hill, it's always great.

00:28:33.620 Also, where I grew up, they would say, you know,

00:28:35.860 like when the sun comes up in the morning, everyone kneels,

00:28:38.440 man, woman, child, or they go out and give gifts,

00:28:41.480 because they know the sun is dying every day and it has to be fed.

00:28:44.840 And the only reason it goes is for all the carbon units

00:28:47.360 that each human being takes out of the earth,

00:28:49.240 they have to give something back to the sun,

00:28:51.360 the moon's in the sky.

00:28:52.920 Western people say that's a belief.

00:28:54.580 We know that it's a science.

00:28:55.720 so as soon as you're speaking

00:28:58.760 you don't use the word son

00:29:00.080 father you say

00:29:01.900 you don't say hey there goes the son

00:29:03.760 you don't speak as an objectified like it's something there

00:29:06.400 a ball of fire or something like that

00:29:07.640 you say oh father it's good to see your face

00:29:10.220 good to feel your breath again

00:29:11.480 I your child your daughter your fruit your sprout

00:29:14.140 the one that hangs on your tree

00:29:15.540 this is the little baby bird trying to pack yourself

00:29:18.020 out of the egg of night

00:29:19.120 all those kind of things people say

00:29:21.080 and then goes

00:29:22.780 at night time when the sun isn't there

00:29:25.220 you can use the word sun.

00:29:26.380 And when you see the moon, you see grandmother.

00:29:28.520 Do you see water?

00:29:29.420 Call it my mother.

00:29:30.200 You don't even use the word water in front of the water.

00:29:33.060 And when you see a person in the street, you don't say,

00:29:35.540 hey, Marge, how you doing?

00:29:37.180 You say, hey, sister, or hey, auntie,

00:29:39.840 or hey, you know, whatever relationship you might have.

00:29:42.000 And if you don't know the relation, according to age,

00:29:43.980 you figure it out, which you think you should say,

00:29:46.120 and vice versa with them to you.

00:29:48.200 So the point is with language, when you get a modern language,

00:29:51.980 well, we're calling modern language, which is not that modern,

00:29:54.460 but when it is already subverting the indigenous idea and creates instant depression

00:29:59.740 because everything you're surrounded by is no longer related to you.

00:30:04.300 So if you can just take one word and change that,

00:30:06.920 and then you can get going and try to speak without the verb to be.

00:30:09.740 Now, I personally like the verb to be,

00:30:11.700 but I don't think that it's the only way to speak.

00:30:15.060 Like if you say in Kiwan, where I grew up, or in Tsupu-Hil, you say,

00:30:20.520 this is a cat.

00:30:21.640 You can't say that.

00:30:22.320 And you can't say either, like, there's no absolute no's or yes's.

00:30:27.440 Like, if someone says, would you like a cup of tea?

00:30:29.180 You can't say no.

00:30:30.380 You can't say yes.

00:30:31.560 You have to say, you have to describe what you mean.

00:30:34.740 You have a negative and positive forward-moving phraseology.

00:30:38.880 But if you say what I'm saying, as I'm saying to you right now, to modern people,

00:30:43.160 they will say, oh, well, that doesn't going to do anything.

00:30:45.640 But let them try it and see how their life goes.

00:30:48.540 Because, you know, it changes everything.

00:30:51.260 How you view the world is how you speak with and to and amongst one another.

00:30:56.900 Because the main problem with modern people is the only thing that counts as people,

00:31:00.660 and they don't care that much about them.

00:31:02.320 So their interrelations between people are extremely sparse

00:31:05.820 because they see them only as humans as opposed to animals and plants

00:31:09.760 and celestial beings and stars and trees.

00:31:13.760 And you could act like that if you say, you know, and it wouldn't happen.

00:31:17.960 But if you start to actually try to speak in your language,

00:31:21.140 in other words, it's one thing to learn another language,

00:31:23.080 because usually what you do when you learn another language,

00:31:24.760 you just translate into your own language.

00:31:26.620 You're not really actually speaking that language. 0.80

00:31:29.080 But if you try to subvert English into an indigenous language,

00:31:32.380 you might find something really different happening. 1.00

00:31:34.500 So that's what I worked with a lot of people with that.

00:31:36.980 In the beginnings, I mean, mind you,

00:31:39.360 so yeah, but we need it this afternoon before the earth collapses.

00:31:42.360 Well, you're not going to get it.

00:31:43.940 It's got to be slow.

00:31:45.040 It's got to be gradual because if it's fast,

00:31:47.200 It's the Gringos that work again, going too fast, going to the world.

00:31:50.500 So it's going to be slow and beautiful.

00:31:52.720 And there's lots of other places.

00:31:54.100 I mean, another thing is food.

00:31:57.380 I mean, it's one of the, there's two places.

00:32:00.380 It's music and food.

00:32:01.760 I mean, music is in suburb, so it's food.

00:32:03.480 But there is amazing customs and things with food that have leaked way back from our ancestors.

00:32:10.240 Now, I'm not a big worshiper of ancestors, so I want people to know their ancestry.

00:32:14.400 I want them to know their history.

00:32:15.660 I want them to know where they're from 1.00

00:32:17.660 but not so they can get an identity

00:32:19.320 but so they can get a real identity

00:32:21.060 that's different than their ancestry

00:32:22.600 but they can't do that 0.97

00:32:24.080 as long as they're running away from their ancestry

00:32:26.140 and that's a conundrum

00:32:28.380 so as long as you're running away from your ancestry

00:32:30.180 you're going to constantly be what you came from

00:32:33.420 it's that old cowboy thing

00:32:35.340 the world is round

00:32:36.600 you get going fast enough 0.99

00:32:37.620 you end up sniffing your own butt 0.96

00:32:38.780 because you've gone so fast 0.98

00:32:40.100 I'm sorry, a little graphic

00:32:41.920 but I grew up with that stuff

00:32:43.580 But with the food and music, you see, there are places there that go past all the nonsense of the head.

00:32:52.040 It goes straight to the heart and straight to the body and the stomach.

00:32:54.880 So with food and then music, of course, organic music, I mean, not so much plug-in music.

00:33:01.660 But when you play music, you've got to know how to make the instruments.

00:33:04.860 You can't just grab an instrument and play an instrument.

00:33:07.080 You've got to make the instruments so you know everything about it.

00:33:09.820 The thing is, if you dig and if you try and if you move and you're willing to go slowly and you're brave instead of wanting to answer and just sit in the lawn chair and hope the world goes your way, amazing things can happen.

00:33:23.920 They're not going to get in the front page of any of the imperial rags, but they're going to be there, I'll tell you why.

00:33:39.820 You've criticized the New Age movement's appropriation

00:34:00.180 and hollowing out of shamanic traditions.

00:34:04.000 I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

00:34:07.060 The great desire for wanting something that's not the same as these people have been raised with

00:34:12.560 has to be given its due.

00:34:14.900 I mean, I don't think people's desire for something deep and ritual is bad, you know.

00:34:20.600 And so a lot of the new age, we're just kind of lumping it together.

00:34:24.260 It's kind of a broad subject, just a new age.

00:34:27.360 And so it's basically people are going to go and change the names of what they already know

00:34:32.320 and then do the same thing over again.

00:34:34.180 In other words, if their parents were not raised, or maybe raised as Christians, but didn't raise their children as Christians, or maybe their grandparents were Orthodox Jews, but their grandchildren were not raised as Jews, still, it's all implied inside the cultural way of going about things.

00:34:52.260 And so as soon as you try to become, you know, a Buddhist or a South African shaman,

00:34:59.580 then you generally go about it in the way in which all spirituality has been treated since you were young,

00:35:06.260 even though you're not recognized, you just basically change the words and act the same.

00:35:11.460 So even in that sense, you know, and it's not such a bearable, terrible, bad thing,

00:35:16.040 But when you start making up a ritual in order to accomplish something,

00:35:22.800 then you're still manipulating phenomena, which is basically the tenement of technology.

00:35:28.680 So shamanism, where I come from, is not a career.

00:35:34.620 It's something that you get touched with and get called to do,

00:35:40.100 and everybody goes kicking himself. 1.00

00:35:42.020 But then you have to, because the holies say yes. 0.63

00:35:47.380 And what it is is basically trying to give a place for the people when they're messing up,

00:35:56.240 so that there's somebody who can advocate their case with the holies, 0.54

00:36:00.540 so that they can make it heal again. 0.95

00:36:03.340 That will only occur in proper situations, as far as I'm concerned,

00:36:08.220 in a culture that has an intact relationship with nature,

00:36:11.180 or with the wild anyway.

00:36:13.260 If you already have a people who are entirely, totally disconnected

00:36:17.540 with their ancestral and with the ground, and as you put it, with nature,

00:36:22.260 and then they're trying to be shaman.

00:36:25.040 I mean, I don't know how many of these New Age shamans, you know,

00:36:28.140 that was coming to me and want me to teach them this and that.

00:36:30.000 And I said, oh, no, no, learn how to be a person first, and then we'll go from there. 0.98

00:36:33.440 They don't know how to raise cow.

00:36:35.260 They don't know how to do this with chicken.

00:36:37.580 They don't know how to tie a knot.

00:36:38.740 They don't know how to ford a river.

00:36:40.260 They don't know how to get through the trees up here.

00:36:42.280 They don't know well enough not to go off.

00:36:44.000 The shamanism is based on the natural things, the way they are,

00:36:48.080 and all the myriad beauties of all the plants and animals.

00:36:51.120 I always put things in, I say, how many feathers does a songbird have?

00:36:54.440 And they all look at me like, what's that have to do with things?

00:36:57.560 You've got to know.

00:36:59.200 There's 10, okay?

00:37:00.120 How many does a raptor have?

00:37:01.340 There's 12, and the big one says 13.

00:37:03.620 And which one is the one you use for this?

00:37:05.480 And they say, well, that's just something learned.

00:37:07.120 I said, no, you've got to know all that stuff before, you're a shaman.

00:37:09.300 little tiny kids know these things so if you're going to have urban shamanism as they like to

00:37:14.380 call it then it's going to be a shamanism of the modern culture in order to heal modern people in

00:37:19.240 order to keep them in the trenches with the insanity that's wrecking the earth in the first

00:37:22.880 place so i have no relationship whatsoever to that kind of shamanism and the new age thing is

00:37:28.380 based um basically on uh feeling powerful and i i really you know like i never use the word

00:37:35.640 power in relationship to any kind of healing it's just shamanism is an anomaly inside the cultures

00:37:41.480 that are intact in other words shamanism is not what those cultures are made of those cultures

00:37:45.960 are made of people who are together and got together when they messed up then they got to

00:37:50.840 have an anomalous human being in there to help them to patch it up it's a farther and farther

00:37:55.800 they drift they can't be taught it's something that the natural world picks it's like two warring

00:38:02.360 tribes. You know, let's say, for instance, you have

00:38:04.320 two tribes that are ancestrally related to

00:38:06.280 one another, you know, some familiar, you know,

00:38:08.480 and they're warring, and they're at each other's

00:38:10.440 throat. And let's say both sides speak

00:38:12.280 this one being, that they're willing

00:38:14.440 to speak to the other.

00:38:16.280 And that's basically what shaman is. But if

00:38:18.420 you don't have the intactness to know what that

00:38:20.420 is, then it's very difficult to just

00:38:22.320 stand up one day and say, hey, I'm a shaman,

00:38:24.760 I'm going to wave these feathers, and you're going to be better.

00:38:26.940 That's not to say

00:38:28.080 that there aren't some people in all cultures,

00:38:30.520 no matter where it's found who have capacity that's not what i'm talking about because there

00:38:35.560 are people who can heal and there are people who can talk with holy and other people do all kinds

00:38:40.740 of things with the faith that they have and that's great so i'm not criticizing that i just when i do

00:38:45.520 get a little sarcastic about all of the rituals that get made up and done but a lot of damage is

00:38:51.280 actually done i used to go to men's conferences you know there were crazy guys like um robert

00:38:57.280 Bly and Michael

00:38:59.600 Need and people that used to hire me

00:39:01.260 actually, I didn't go to

00:39:03.280 teach, they hired me in order to keep these guys from

00:39:05.140 setting themselves on fire and blowing themselves up.

00:39:08.100 Do I believe some of the

00:39:09.300 crazy stuff they were doing? Because they

00:39:11.240 were coming from a, they got 1.00

00:39:13.280 rid of their religion and their spirituality

00:39:15.160 which had some sort of idea

00:39:17.340 of tradition, but was

00:39:19.360 not doing nothing anymore for them apparently.

00:39:21.680 And all these guys coming out of war

00:39:23.260 from Vietnam or whatever, and then

00:39:25.320 they were making up rituals that basically

00:39:27.160 came from group therapy

00:39:29.140 and trying to make them look

00:39:31.300 as if they were actually spiritual things.

00:39:33.080 With the natural peoples, I have to say

00:39:35.180 this, this is what's always very unpopular 1.00

00:39:36.900 when I say it, they always hate me if they say it,

00:39:39.160 but just as gently as possible,

00:39:41.680 any ritual that is done spiritually

00:39:43.200 in a real tribe

00:39:44.920 is never done for the people. 0.98

00:39:47.340 It's never done for the people so that

00:39:49.000 after the ritual is over, they say,

00:39:50.760 wow, I feel a lot better.

00:39:53.740 The whole idea is for the

00:39:55.200 holy to feel better because the holy

00:39:56.840 and mined and taken from and cut and holes dug in here. 0.98

00:40:02.360 And the indigenous people think they're doing that, too.

00:40:04.660 They don't think they're outside that.

00:40:06.800 You know, they don't say, oh, we're not Western.

00:40:08.920 We're great.

00:40:09.460 We're pure.

00:40:09.980 We're clean.

00:40:10.540 We don't do any of that.

00:40:11.360 No, they feel they're the guiltiest of all.

00:40:13.540 And so they spend all their time making a rich and a holy well.

00:40:16.680 They're trying to heal the earth.

00:40:17.860 They're trying to heal the soul of the spirit.

00:40:19.940 So they're not trying to heal the people.

00:40:21.220 But the people are healed as a result because they're the ones that are the benefactors

00:40:24.740 of all of this great earth that is here

00:40:27.060 that has been giving us our food and our lives.

00:40:29.720 So when you have all of these ritual things

00:40:32.700 that are supposed to make you have an experience

00:40:35.480 or feel something,

00:40:36.620 it's just very amateurish

00:40:38.320 that the people haven't been feeling these things

00:40:40.800 by natural world.

00:40:42.340 Whereas when they get up and eat their breakfast,

00:40:44.320 they don't feel that exhilaration of just being alive

00:40:47.060 like you're doing in a little kid in the world

00:40:49.120 and there's that tree and there's all these plants

00:40:50.900 and the beautiful smell of the air

00:40:52.580 and oh my God, what's that cricket doing?

00:40:54.360 and so maybe they don't have that.

00:40:57.440 And so they're trying to find a spiritual way

00:40:59.380 to jettison out of the muck

00:41:01.440 in which they were born and raised in 0.96

00:41:03.120 and which they are still in collusion with

00:41:05.420 by being this way.

00:41:07.000 So I'm always saying, you know,

00:41:09.060 best to learn how to become a people,

00:41:11.560 learn how to become a culture, 0.95

00:41:13.160 and then if shams are necessary,

00:41:14.740 they will appear and they will be legitimate

00:41:16.720 within the cultures that appear.

00:41:18.680 Martin Kector will not be the one to say

00:41:20.460 what those cultures look like.

00:41:21.620 But I will say, I think there isn't a spiritual DNA in a human being of any place to regenerate it, given the condition.

00:41:30.780 And for so many people who are in the daily grind, in urban life, who maybe don't have the space to grow food,

00:41:40.740 don't have even the thought process to slow down and listen to that cricket.

00:41:47.900 it where an apple tree doesn't worry about who eats this apple you know apple just keeps making

00:41:54.160 apples and it's not about getting to the place to where you can have that wonderfulness of being

00:42:01.140 able to be with the cricket and all that it's not about not having the space it's about making this

00:42:06.280 because i don't have this or i don't know it make it happen you know with yourself don't wait for it

00:42:13.780 to happen and another thing is that human success is still what you're talking about you're still

00:42:21.000 talking about oh wow great i am me as a person i'm going to finally get this no that's still

00:42:26.240 the conqueror talking that's still imperialism that's still me procuring something that i want

00:42:31.600 and i need and the one that i want is writhing in pain the i that needs it is the one that's

00:42:37.480 writhing in the pain the reason it's writhing in pain is because of the fact that i the one that

00:42:41.660 wants it and i'm not talking about the ego i'm talking about this um being that uh wants to

00:42:48.180 possess instead of become the thing itself and becoming how do you become it you know uh we talk

00:42:57.400 about initiation all that you can't just put a person through a program and and they become this

00:43:03.000 on the other hand as i said if you have faith that there is really a memorial process in the

00:43:10.300 spiritual DNA of the human being, which I am just giving the name of indigenous soul,

00:43:16.320 and if you allow that thing to live, then it may give forth something beautiful for the future.

00:43:25.540 The thing is a capacity with grief.

00:43:28.340 When you don't have a capacity with the grief as a modern person, then you cannot praise.

00:43:34.100 And so one of the greatest things is to be able to praise.

00:43:36.860 So what am I going to praise? I don't see anything worth praising.

00:43:39.180 Yeah, that's the problem, what you're seeing, not with what there is to praise.

00:43:43.640 There is always something we're praising in this earth,

00:43:46.620 and there's always something beautiful to hear.

00:43:49.160 It's just we're not hearing.

00:43:50.480 Of course you say, wow, the world is so like this, the world is so like that.

00:43:53.660 Yeah, that's the challenge.

00:43:55.260 See it, hear it.

00:43:56.240 I don't mean to say, see the good in anything. 0.99

00:43:59.060 I mean, you know, some guy is raping a woman. 0.95

00:44:00.780 There's nothing good about it, okay? 0.98

00:44:02.320 I'm not talking about that.

00:44:03.780 But I'm saying, see what there is to see.

00:44:07.400 See what there is beautiful.

00:44:08.380 Otherwise, it's just laziness, and the culture is forced to be lazy.

00:44:12.580 If it's not coming my way, it's the culture's problem.

00:44:15.460 If it's not coming my way, let me have litigation so I can get paid for suffering.

00:44:19.260 No. 1.00

00:44:20.060 Make beauty.

00:44:22.320 And so making beauty, the serious thing about beauty,

00:44:26.200 I found in modern cultures really, they took a slim view of what I say,

00:44:33.180 is that beauty comes only from a capacity with grief.

00:44:37.020 Beauty does not come from anything but grief.

00:44:39.960 Grief is not about being sad or sorrowful.

00:44:42.480 Grief is about having the deepest emotion of missing what it is you love.

00:44:46.680 And so if the thing that you love the most, you're missing,

00:44:49.620 then you can praise by weeping and by feeling.

00:44:54.340 And that actual ability to grieve then becomes the actual praise itself.

00:44:59.280 The incapacity to grieve what we have lost as human beings

00:45:02.940 by praising the beauty of it in itself is one of the biggest problems.

00:45:09.940 But you become a human being, you can become a human being,

00:45:13.740 in the process of bestowing on another what you yourself are never bound to receive.

00:45:21.320 In other words, it's probably not popular to tell somebody

00:45:24.780 you have to give to the youth what you never got.

00:45:27.540 I'm not talking about money, and I'm not talking about opportunity.

00:45:30.200 I'm talking about recognizing, watching them like a hawk.

00:45:34.580 And then that one little time a 16-year-old actually sees the gorgeousness of the sunset on the sea

00:45:41.600 and begins to weep, not for the angst of being a teenager, not for the sadness,

00:45:46.060 but for the beauty of what they saw.

00:45:48.000 And there's somebody a little bit older there that says, you know, what you're seeing is really, really worthy.

00:45:53.920 and then begins to weep with them,

00:45:56.900 not in a superior, condescending way,

00:45:59.400 but side by side.

00:46:01.240 Then people start to do flower.

00:46:04.840 And then they start to see the cricket.

00:46:06.800 And then they start to make room

00:46:08.180 for the things that need to be made room.

00:46:09.740 And that's the only place

00:46:10.740 that every revolution is going to happen

00:46:12.160 that can stay.

00:46:13.280 Because it's not made for people.

00:46:15.740 People are not here to succeed

00:46:17.460 at getting their weight.

00:46:19.100 As long as people have been getting their weight,

00:46:21.060 they're always in the big old mess.

00:46:23.920 They're always in the big old mess.

00:46:25.960 And you say, well, should I just be fatalist and give up?

00:46:28.320 No, especially not that.

00:46:30.840 It's not a to be or not to be problem again.

00:46:34.780 No, be beautiful.

00:46:36.980 Be beautiful.

00:46:37.900 Be something that God would like to eat for breakfast.

00:46:41.160 And then the world is replenished.

00:46:43.040 And then you are renewed.

00:46:44.860 But don't do it for that.

00:46:45.880 Do it to make the world beautiful.

00:46:48.300 You're welcome.

00:46:49.160 I've got all these people I know.

00:46:50.380 I've got a lot of students coming in.

00:46:51.740 I've got 400 students.

00:46:53.020 Jesus, I can't believe it.

00:46:54.500 And some I don't know.

00:46:55.680 Most of them I don't know.

00:46:56.660 When the first days they come in, they come in with these faces.

00:46:59.140 You know, you could cut a shark in half of these faces.

00:47:02.140 They're so angry about the way the world is. 0.99

00:47:03.860 I said, you know, the world is not getting better by your ugliness. 1.00

00:47:07.920 You know, if I had you over for dinner, the fool would get up and run away. 1.00

00:47:12.260 You know, for five seconds on earth, have beauty. 0.99

00:47:17.180 And then there will at least have been five seconds where the earth isn't like what you ate.

00:47:21.760 You know, try it.

00:47:22.960 You know, I like it.

00:47:23.920 the environment is not concerned whether or not the redwoods go extinct or whether the

00:47:40.600 sea rises or whether this plant goes dead it's done that a million times before it's the people

00:47:46.320 they don't want the people who want to make all the money and are killing the earth and

00:47:50.420 raping over the environment and this, that, and the other thing.

00:47:53.200 You can't have this big city and be in collusion

00:47:55.600 and then have environmental concerns being approached by all kinds of programs

00:48:00.400 and not have that be part of the same syndrome,

00:48:02.640 the flip side of the coin that's making the problem.

00:48:04.920 That does not mean you shouldn't protest.

00:48:07.240 It doesn't mean that you shouldn't try for environmental things, 0.77

00:48:09.880 but you should understand that it's not an indigenous motive. 0.97

00:48:14.120 For it to be different than that,

00:48:16.340 you're going to have to be the thing itself that you want to happen.

00:48:19.460 You can't just, you know, go out and lobby and say, I've paid my five cents, 0.97

00:48:24.240 and I'm going to go home and be in collusion with the bullshit I'm against. 0.67

00:48:27.700 So I'm thinking that in the original idea of your program, 0.97

00:48:33.420 it's just that people are always trying to, quote, find an answer, find a bumper sticker, find a way to go.

00:48:41.500 The point is, is that if you're only feeding humans, the holy is sling,

00:48:45.980 And the holy is the core of what you're calling the environment or something.

00:48:49.880 I don't know if you're calling it, but people call the environment.

00:48:52.880 And as far as I'm concerned, I haven't found that to be making much of a difference.

00:48:59.900 I don't think it's a bad thing to try and keep going,

00:49:03.120 but it's just the same mentality as running a war are in the boardrooms of all these people,

00:49:08.240 quote-unquote, trying to have a win-win situation as it is

00:49:13.320 and still fight for environmental concerns,

00:49:15.620 which basically makes it so people have a choreographed nature

00:49:18.860 that they can go take a walk in while they still live in their monotized urban area.

00:49:24.100 And that has nothing to do with, as far as I'm concerned, with loving the wild.

00:49:28.980 It has nothing to do with being an indigenous person.

00:49:31.580 And a lot of indigenous people have given up being indigenous,

00:49:34.080 and they're so-called indigenous.

00:49:35.360 So we don't want to confuse those two terms.

00:49:36.900 Those two different things.

00:49:38.360 But when it comes down to, well, it doesn't come down.

00:49:42.160 When we come up to it as an individual, very few people are courageous enough to do any things they say.

00:49:47.020 But it's not going to kill anybody to give it a shot for a little while or once a week or 15 minutes a day or something,

00:49:54.980 you know, to change their language or the way they dress or what they eat.

00:49:58.440 Things will change a little bit that way.

00:50:01.320 But the natural world has to be asked and it has to be addressed.

00:50:06.160 In other words, ask the cranes, the migrating cranes.

00:50:09.580 Then you'll be shaman.

00:50:11.660 Ask the Earth itself, the people that say,

00:50:13.560 well, let's do something for the environment,

00:50:15.020 because we are in charge of the Earth, no matter what.

00:50:17.500 Humans are in charge. Humans are in charge.

00:50:19.180 Humans are in charge. Humans are not in charge.

00:50:21.360 The more they are in charge, the more the Earth bugs.

00:50:23.980 Everybody says, oh, the Earth is falling apart.

00:50:26.600 No, the Earth is having a flu.

00:50:29.580 It's having a big flu, man.

00:50:31.080 It's trying to get rid of this bug. It's bugging them.

00:50:33.540 And it's bigger than they are.

00:50:36.060 This whole idea that humans are bigger than the Earth is.

00:50:38.500 Yeah, but look what's happening. 0.71

00:50:39.740 If you look what's happening, you're getting ready to sink into it and die.

00:50:42.880 That's what's happening to it.

00:50:44.620 And the earth will continue on, and the universe will too.

00:50:48.320 And, I mean, protest bad things.

00:50:50.480 You know, the pipeline through here, protesting it,

00:50:53.460 the road through here, protesting it, poisoning the river,

00:50:56.240 protest all of it.

00:50:58.580 But don't confuse that with a spiritual approach.

00:51:01.980 Okay?

00:51:02.600 And it doesn't mean that it's separate from that,

00:51:04.840 but you have the spiritual thing you have,

00:51:06.820 the wherewithout to do the other.

00:51:09.420 But any changes that happen are still for people.

00:51:11.580 It's not for the holy.

00:51:13.580 And the people don't want to hear.

00:51:14.360 What do you mean holy?

00:51:15.000 There's no holy.

00:51:15.680 You mean Jesus?

00:51:16.320 No, not Jesus. 0.96

00:51:17.060 You mean Yahweh?

00:51:17.640 No, I don't mean Yahweh.

00:51:19.160 It's something you don't know.

00:51:20.440 It doesn't matter.

00:51:20.920 You don't have to know.

00:51:21.620 It's inside every seed.

00:51:23.260 So next life, bust loose and live.

00:51:25.980 You know this life, and then we die.

00:51:28.060 Yeah, then we leave something, so it keeps going.

00:51:30.700 Different vision of time. 1.00

00:51:33.320 Indigenous past never leaves. 1.00

00:51:34.660 That's the other thing. 1.00

00:51:35.400 Like past tense.

00:51:36.440 You don't have a past tense or a future tense. 0.99

00:51:38.420 in most of these indigenous languages that are finite. 0.99

00:51:41.580 Like, when somebody dies, they never leave.

00:51:43.500 It's always here.

00:51:45.680 Like, there's a tribe, and what is it, two weeks from now,

00:51:48.300 and this sort of appearance, not a public tribe.

00:51:50.560 They're all going to go back where they came from, you know?

00:51:53.160 The whole entire tribe goes, you know, 6,000 people go,

00:51:56.100 they disappear into this lake where they originated from, 0.95

00:51:58.500 and they come out the same day that they originated,

00:52:01.420 which is, you know, 20,000 years ago. 0.97

00:52:03.560 And then a gringo say, well, you can't really do that. 1.00

00:52:06.920 That's when they're in it. 1.00

00:52:08.420 Yeah, and they come back home, and they start their lives up, and as far as they're concerned, every year is the first year of your business.

00:52:16.200 So, you know, it's different time understanding.

00:52:19.180 Is time another language barrier?

00:52:22.520 Well, time is language. That's exactly what it is.

00:52:25.980 And the problem in Western languages, you have to develop astrophysics to even talk about it.

00:52:31.100 But, you know, if you're talking about the things that they're talking about in astrophysics, you can say those in Mayan when you're five years old.

00:52:38.420 all that stuff

00:52:39.680 it's not that abstractly difficult

00:52:42.640 to understand because it's not mathematical

00:52:44.300 it becomes something totally

00:52:46.700 amazing

00:52:47.660 so it's very important

00:52:50.220 people say well then all I have to do is learn another language

00:52:52.520 well that would be good

00:52:53.440 as long as you actually learn it but you can't actually learn it

00:52:56.620 if the grooves of your mind are already cut

00:52:58.700 with the language that you grew up with

00:53:00.520 it's only certain extraordinary people

00:53:02.360 that can make that jump so that's why I say it's better

00:53:04.340 to subvert the language you already have

00:53:06.600 with these ideas

00:53:07.620 You know, you start cutting new grooves, you know.

00:53:11.120 When you have a verb to be, you have, they used to call it in the old days, although the rhetoric was linear time.

00:53:18.640 And what you have in a lot of indigenous languages, you have what would be called a spherical time. 0.95

00:53:24.820 You have, like, and when you're riding in your mother's belly as a seeris, you're surrounded by the amniose.

00:53:31.020 And Mayan thinking, amniose, the word for the amniotic fluid is time.

00:53:36.520 In other words, you're floating in that time.

00:53:38.480 And what is that time made of?

00:53:39.960 Well, it's salty, you know, it's full of minerals.

00:53:42.860 And I call it stars.

00:53:44.460 I call it stars.

00:53:46.140 And the stars, they're all time combined.

00:53:49.980 In other words, things that used to happen or did happen are there.

00:53:54.800 Things that are going to happen are there.

00:53:57.820 Things that are happening are there.

00:53:59.620 Things that are never going to happen are there.

00:54:01.580 Things that we wanted to happen in the old days are there and never happen.

00:54:06.440 And so they're all floating in this gigantic soup of the ocean of time.

00:54:10.960 And so as a small child inside your mother's belly,

00:54:13.860 you're living in this mixed time altogether instead of it being a linear beginning to end time, you see.

00:54:19.960 Then you're born into this world with the air breathing from the water,

00:54:23.860 and then you get sequential.

00:54:25.540 You see, things happen after one, after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other.

00:54:30.200 But they are totally fed by this great, big, what they call ocean of time.

00:54:35.780 And so this is like, everybody calls it a mentality.

00:54:38.980 But, you know, that's just the way that people speak and think.

00:54:41.520 It's not like, you know, something you've got to go to school to learn.

00:54:44.240 It's like everybody knows it.

00:54:46.400 So it's inherited in the language.

00:54:49.500 And modern language, I think, is for some reason drifted away from some ancient understanding of time

00:54:54.620 because they stopped being nomads.

00:54:56.680 At some point when they were ancient nomads, they had a totally different thing of time

00:54:59.640 because they're always constantly moving.

00:55:01.800 And when they moved, they didn't, like, move away from where they were.

00:55:05.360 They moved in cycles back to where they were.

00:55:08.460 And so I think ancient European languages actually did have a pretty good grasp of time.

00:55:13.580 But once everybody becomes settled, it's just like this biologist told me one time,

00:55:17.200 it's like the rug at the front of your house where the dog keeps running out,

00:55:20.520 you know, keeps wrinkling up, wrinkling up, wrinkling up.

00:55:23.380 Personally, you just have this gigantic mass blocking the door.

00:55:26.460 and instead if you spread this

00:55:28.800 gigantic beautiful rug out you'll see

00:55:30.520 all of the permutations of time

00:55:32.760 and life lived all in one place at the same

00:55:34.840 time not one before the other

00:55:36.600 and so

00:55:38.360 when it comes down to hope

00:55:40.260 if you have that kind of understanding

00:55:42.900 of time then all of this

00:55:44.220 very depressive you know well look what we're

00:55:46.840 doing to the earth and things which is very

00:55:48.900 true I'm not putting it down

00:55:50.320 but that's why it's happening

00:55:52.320 because people are always trying to find

00:55:54.640 answers everybody was making a war

00:55:56.400 thinks they're right you know no one's making the work because they think they're wrong they're

00:56:00.440 only making the work because they think they're right and one is they're doing this and doing

00:56:03.980 that because they're right they're good guys and the bad guys and the left and they all think

00:56:08.040 they're right instead of seeing what is there and the big time and the big mind and then trying to

00:56:15.220 be one of those little pieces of the stitching in that gorgeous rug of time so that you do your

00:56:21.100 part not to make it a big tear so i don't have time make time what are you doing with that time

00:56:26.520 the coffee shop being depressed forget it go out and do it it is really easy to get depressed

00:56:31.840 yeah it's a sport oh it is yeah and i highly paid sport yeah that's very true it's very

00:56:38.140 you can be depressed as much as you want when you're dead so don't waste your time being

00:56:42.260 depressed now because once you're there you can be depressed all the time if you want

00:56:44.960 i've seen everything i had shot down before me i lost 19 friends in 45 seconds i've been shot in

00:56:50.700 chest myself that's my whole culture twice over and people say how come you

00:56:54.960 still happy so then I'm not letting the enemy take me down that's my name you

00:57:00.780 know and because otherwise they win by the fascist woman to dinner man don't

00:57:10.320 eat alone thank you so much my team if you're sad more than two days in a row

00:57:15.480 you ate something bad or you're thinking something weird

00:57:20.700 Thank you for listening to Unlearn and Rewild.

00:57:28.960 I'm Ayanna Young.

00:57:30.720 You heard the guitar music of Robbie Basho,

00:57:33.420 two tracks, Blue Corn Serenade, and Kawaka Damore.

00:57:37.460 Our theme song is Like a River by Kate Wolfe,

00:57:40.240 and our producer is March Young.

00:57:50.700 Thank you.

For The Wild - June 13, 2015

MARTIN PRECHTEL on Identity and Sacred Rites of Passage ⧸22

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