On the Indigenous of the World


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In the Oren Lyons, “On the indigenous View of the World” (Corners, 2006)kl, recorded in 2006, your able to view how Indigenous peoples view life and the natural world.  It is one of mutual respect for not only one another but of every living being.  Lyons give such wonderful insight in to the belief system, one that is not known to us.  He is right when he said that, “Whites will talk about water, trees, animals, and fish as resources, we talk about them as relatives.” We live in a world where we exploit natural resources and bring species to the brink or to total extinction.  When you read this piece, what is interesting is that it has a conversation in 2006 on global warming and over population and thirteen years later we are still discussing this.  If you look at the totality, the major industrialized countries have lost their connection with nature and the understanding that natural resources will not last forever.  They will run out.  If we look at deforestation that is occurring, we are cutting down the very product that gives us the ability to breathe.  With that the vital circle of life will fail.  What then?  It seems that Indigenous people throughout the world utterly understand the connection between man and nature. There is a natural order to things, and it seems that our greed for “things” violates the natural order.  I think mother nature reminds us all too often that she is in charge.  Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and other natural disasters shows the sheer power of mother nature and she should be respected. 

I think we could have learned far more from the Native American Indians and had opportunities to change our course.  We did not listen and although we went to the six nations for guidance on democracy, we could have taken far more from their teachings.  Indigenousness peoples understood the contributions of women and it is not until recent history that women were recognized as equals.  Yet if you think about all the readings and the way we Europeans viewed native Americans we considered them wild, savages.  During the years of the Indian Schools, the primary goal was to remove the savage from the Indian, to wipe out any resemblance to their culture and to impose ours upon them.  They are more refined then the way we treated them, and our conduct was far more savage. 

There is much we can learn from the Tree of Peace.  What I find beautiful about this picture is that the land depicted as the turtle, as described by Lyons is wise and the turtle’s life span is far longer than any other animal depicted including man. The tree stands for spiritual law and each clan is represented by a different animal and lives among the tree of peace.  The eagle watches over the tree and guards it and every clan represented in the tree. We even imposed our belief system on Native Americans yet, we preached about freedom of religion.  Isn’t that what we were escaping from England as well?  We forgot what brought us to America and that the constitution only applied to certain people. 
https://ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/OrenLyons-IndigenousWorldView.html

Comments

  1. Richard MitchellSeptember 26, 2019 at 5:28 PM

    I must take exception to the term whites that continually comes up. I am white, of European heritage that goes back to tribal societies. All white people are not bad and all white people do not talk about the natural world only in terms of resources. I am a hunter, a woodsman and I love and treasure the wild places of the world and especially North American. Yes we should understand the Native American view point and their cultural way of balancing life with nature, but we should not idealize them as being perfect. We are destroying our planet because of overpopulation and urbanization. We can learn form the Native American ideals like the tree of peace, but we should always remember that people are different around the globe, many good and many bad. We need to understand the Native Americans from their point of view, but look at all sides of the story.

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  2. RussSeptember 27, 2019 at 11:59 AM

    The reason white people come up all the time when discussing Native Americans is because of racism. The problem stems from people not accepting that everyone is different. While no one is perfect, the bad ones seem to make life more difficult for the rest of us. In the circle of life, everything has to be balanced out. The point here is that if we take care of the Earth, it will reward us. From my point of view, whatever happens, happens for a reason.

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