Fourth of a series
Re “Indigenous Wisdom Is Not Mere Folk Psychology”
Support for traditional Indigenous wisdom challenges the conclusions of such popular books as Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful Nobel Savage, written by Profs. Steven LaBlank and Kathyrn Register or Wild in the Woods: The Myth of the Peaceful Eco-Savage by Robert Whelan, with its chapter titles like “Dances with Garbage.” All one needs to do is study Yale’s Human Resource Area Files, an internationally recognized organization in the field of cultural anthropology founded in 1949, to facilitate worldwide comparative studies of human behavior, to see that most human societies prior to the rise of monarchies in the West were relatively peaceful. They did not practice war as we understand it today. The remarkable research of Johan M.G. van der Dennen, published in her doctoral thesis and subsequent book, The Origin of War: The Evolution of a Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy (1995) also supports the idea that Indigenous wisdom can help remember ways of living in harmony that can lead to peaceful co-existence, perhaps a prerequisite for ecological sustainability. She writes:
Peaceable pr-industrial (preliterate, primitive, etc.) societies constitute a nuisance to most theories of warfare and they are, with few exceptions, either denied or “explained away.” In this contribution I shall argue that the claim of universal human belligerence is grossly exaggerated, and that those students who have been developing theories of war, proceeding from the premise that peace is the “norma”’ situation, have not been starry-eyed utopians…(p.2).
Although I have been talking about reclaiming our Indigenous science and remaining critical of an over-reliance on Western science, I do believe collaboration between Western science and Indigenous wisdom is essential if we are to survive the current environmental crises. Many Indigenous stories talk about such a partnership between the red and white brothers. Perhaps the time for it is now if we let go of the negative stereotypes about Indians that many academics continue to support, as James Clifton does in his 1990 book, The Invented Indian, where he says “acknowledging anything positive in the native peoples is an entirely wrongheaded proposition because no genuine Indian accomplishments have ever really been substantiated (p.36),”
In my book, Primal Awareness, I say, “the primal awareness of Indigenous Peoples about Nature puts us back in touch with the origins of love. We are naturally attracted to the sights, sounds, aromas and sensations in Nature. We spontaneously love the colors, the energy and the beauty that fills our senses. Our senses are made whole in Nature, but our dominant culture has rationalized our separation from Nature and has presented Nature as a dangerous place (except for distant landscapes it seems)” (p. 231). I end this chapter with a D.H. Lawrence poem that beautifully expresses the connection between Nature and love that Indigenous understands.
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: We are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table. (IBID, p. 231)
Neoliberalism will continue to sustain war rather than peace because it has replaced Nature and love with greed and personal power. If we can be return to our member of what our ancestors understood about peace, we may have a chance.
Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, Ph.D., Ed.D., is a Cherokee/Irish author of 21 books and a professor at Fielding Graduate University's College of Educational Leadership and Change. A former Marine Corps officer, he is co-founder of Northern Arizona's Veterans for Peace and recipient of the 2004 Moral Courage Award (Martin Springer Institute for Holocaust Studies). He lives in a small Mexican fishing village. Four Arrows may be contacted at djacobs@fielding.edu
