EP 111: Transcending Dominator Mindsets | Tiokasin Ghosthorse

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In this episode of the Radical Responsibility podcast, I speak to Chokasin Ghost Horse, a Lakota peacemaker and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, well known as the founder and executive producer of the Indigenous voices radio show, First Voices Radio. He's been not only nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, but he's been recognized as an indigenous musician and received many, many awards. As a musician. In this episode, Chokes and Ghost Horse and I deeply explore the differences between Western languages and indigenous languages and how many of the struggles that we have in our current society are embedded in a very dualistic and sometimes aggressive nature of our. The linguistic structures of our language. Whereas the indigenous way of.

Speaking and even thinking and understanding and making sense of the world is less dualistic and less inherently fraught with aggression and polarization and divisiveness and so fascinating conversation.

I'm here with Tchokson Ghost Horse this morning. Welcome, Tjokson.

Hi. Good morning, Fleet. How are you, man?

I'm really good. It's great to see you again.

Yeah. Bright sunshine all the way around here. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I want to. Just before we get started, I want to share a little bit about your background with our audience. So Chilks and Go Source is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota, has a long history in indigenous activism and advocacy. In fact, you spoke at, I think at the United nations in Geneva when you were like 15 years old. That was a few years ago. Just a couple.

Long time ago.

Tilkson's executive founder, executive producer of First Voices Radio, formerly First Voices Indigenous Radio, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 and has received many awards and is a renowned musician and won.

You award nominee for best instrumental album in 2019. And you know, I haven't heard your music. I mean, I've known from my buddy genre, we've known each other and I've known you as.

An indigenous leader and activist, but I didn't realize you were a magician. So I'm gonna have to check out your stuff.

Hey, yeah, I'll send you something. Yeah.

But Telkizen has been speaking worldwide and been an incredible leader and activist for indigenous rights and bringing that wisdom forth. And hopefully here we are in the middle of this pandemic and maybe the rest of us will wake up and actually start listening and you Know, today in the summit, we're focused on listening to the Earth and listening to.

The indigenous voices, our fellow human citizens, who are still connected with that indigenous way of living and feeling and knowing and to it ing what's really the reality of our life here on Earth. Our first mother. And so I'm just really looking forward to this conversation we're going to have.

Yeah, I think that, you know, thank you for the introduction, and I just want to say greetings to everybody and. And a little chante waste na pe chi Uzapiello. That's basically, I give you my heart with a good handshake. A good heart with a good handshake, basically. So thanks for that introduction, Fleet, again.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah. So.

We are in the context of this global COVID 19 pandemic. And you're in New York, and I think you're outside of the city a little bit, but New York's been heavily affected. And I'm just curious about, you know, what all this is initially brought up for you as we're going through this and kind of we're in this new reality, at least for the moment.

Well, Fleet, first of all, you know, when this was first announced or basically paid attention to sometime in late January among the Northwest peoples, the Lummi included, and we had a certain sense that something was going on when I was out of the country, actually, I was in Costa Rica and then went to Hawaii and then on to New Australia and New Zealand. And when it felt like this, something was following you around. So I arrived in the US and then I started hearing of us just now hearing about it, and like, wow, the rest of the world knows what's going on, what's with the US And I thought about the control stance that the US has, that we are an invincible people, and that this thing we've been through so much as Americans, quote, unquote, is that nothing can touch us because we're going to win. We're going to conquer this thing that's coming at us. So we viewed this coronavirus as an enemy. And so.

The whole terminology has been about defending and attacking and conquering and even putting ourselves into this, I would say this prison mentality or the prison language of lockdown. And, you know, it just keeps going on and on and like, wow, this is. This is totally a mechanical way to take care of something, to try to resolve something that is so alive, like the coronavirus, in fact, even turn it into a scientific terminology. COVID 19 as if there was going to be a 20 and I get the scientific terminology and jargon that people are using, but it's still the mechanical ness of a society that continues to view coronavirus as the perpetrator and we are the victim. So there's no balance in these aspects of it. So everybody's gonna be put into dualities of, you know, either love and hate or fear and, you know, acceptance of something. And I think a lot of people that I've talked to personally when I'm around them are refusing to review, to put the Earth first in their mind or from their heart, is that the Earth doesn't matter, even though that's where the coronavirus came from, is one of the guidance or the indicator that there is something definitely wrong. And I thought, well, I'm not afraid. I don't know why I'm not afraid. I'm not really feeling afraid that everything was happier for me. And I have to say that because I saw and I felt that the Earth immediately shifted. And that was the shift only in me to understand my perspective was not as holistic or encompassing as I thought it was. And then I removed myself from the ideas that I was forced to think with the concepts of the Western world and democracy and science and religion and, you know, how we have a solution oriented society in America. And rather than understanding that this is just a long circular continuance of what Earth has to do to constantly keep in balance with herself.

And she was only reacting normally to an abnormal situation, as they say. And I didn't feel like I was abnormal. I thought that was a very normal thing for Earth herself to enlighten people. And I wouldn't say necessarily awaken people, but enlighten them that there might be some other way to think and definitely fear. And I know out of fear people become more instinctual and there's less time to think. But if you're at ease with what Mother Earth is doing and you understand that rather than the knowledge or information of what to think, you understand something. And that understanding leads to wisdom on how to deal or how to communicate or how to equate the coronavirus.

And we come up to its level rather than it coming. And that's going down to its level because there's, as you know, fleek, there's more viruses on the Earth than there is the known universe, stars and a known universe. So I always think about, wow, what, what are we so afraid of? That one or two viruses and maybe that. That there's a deeper meaning to this. All of this is something in the past that we haven't resolved here, and. And we could just open that wide up. Wide open. But the initial reaction was not one of fear for me. It was almost a smile. I felt like I was smiling because I felt eventually people would see. And that. That was. That was what I looked forward to. The optimism of people seeing more than being awakened. Yes.

Yeah. And not in any way to make light of the suffering that people are going through and the people that are losing loved ones and so forth. And at the same time, this virus, like any virus, is part of life. It's part of the Earth. It's intelligent and in some ways, it's a vehicle of information at the moment. It's bringing information to us and really, I think, asking us to really see and take a look at what's going on. And it's sad that, you know, it takes things as shocking as this to shock us out of our, you know, our sleep or unconsciousness. Many indigenous leaders, the Koji people in Colombia, many other tribal people around the world for many, many decades, have been telling us that we are completely out of alignment with the Earth and that we're headed towards disaster if we don't enlighten, as you said, and really lighten our footprint and get back in alignment with the Earth. I'm curious as to, you know, in some ways, you know, from the beginnings of time, human beings have moved towards shelter. More sophisticated shelter, more sophisticated transformation, transportation. Trying to insulate ourselves from the, you know, the ups and downs of the natural world. And, you know, that's normal, I suppose. But in doing so, we've insulated ourselves from the natural world. And so many people that grow up in urban areas, they have very little contact with the natural world at all. I mean, to them, the Earth is just, you know, concrete and stores and cars and metal and chrome and neon lights and whatever, you know, it's. That there's very little connection with the natural world. So it seems like our very human tendencies are to take us away from the Earth. And how is it that we can find our way back to reverse that?

Yeah, I don't think it's a matter of reversing anything. I think it's recognizing the continuum rather than a beginning or an end. And there has to be a language and awareness and a living with reality rather than using reality. And I think an example are the books that I have behind me. I can tell you that that's information and knowledge. But if I take this book and throw it into the fire, are you going to lose the information and Knowledge without, you know, the fire is what brings you the understanding that there is something very alive out there. And so why do we remove ourselves rationally and continue because of our so called intellectualism or even intelligence to say that we're okay with removing ourselves because then we're less suffered. We are not experiencing the sticks and stones caveman mentality. We don't have to run around and in skins and hunt and things like that. So you see, everyone has a privilege and we don't understand the privilege that we are in. And therefore we continue to think in extractivism from the earth as well as each other. And we're just kind of eating each other. And I think you all have that idea of the hungry ghost. I think that that is insatiable, that the greed of humans to even, even apply what they think, that is a good thing called empathy to, to each other. But that's only centered in human forms or human thoughts or anthropocentricity. Right? And so when I'm thinking about, okay, how, how is it to that do we overcome our, the, the virus. It's not the virus that we overcome. We overcome it by our, our intuition, not so much our thinking patterns. Because the etymology, a lot of the words I'm using, most people don't realize their own language at all and how much this language is basically cornered and has concepts to it. So it's very noun and subjective, very objectifying of everything. It thingifies everything. Whereas what I know of other languages, especially indigenous languages, are, are mostly verbs. So you see, everything is alive. And so if everything is alive, then you think in abundance. Therefore the coronavirus makes more sense that it came to enliven, to enlighten that ancient knowledge. Excuse me, the ancient understanding that we all have because it's been covered up with knowledge and information back. As you see these books behind me, I think that has some value books. But really.

You can't burn understanding. You can burn knowledge and information as far as printed material and as much as people can remember. But it's the understanding before the knowledge and information. And I think it's really a matter of understanding that other people. The standard of thinking is not the western world, even though the Western world wants that all human beings think alike. All human beings to a certain degree do think alike. But there's a, there's a separation somewhere. And I think that separation is actually how much we are involved with the Earth. And I can say that, well, I'm not separated because I'm educated and I have the western Degrees and I have, you know, all these privileges. But there's something to educating the wisdom out of yourself. And I made sure with every book I read, I kind of have this mantra of saying, do not educate the wisdom out of myself because then where is my understanding if there's no wisdom to what I read and to apply this? So, you know, in a few days I'm going to be out there with my, my hands in the ground and, you know, singing these songs that I remember from grandmother and grandfathers planting and knowing that the whole cycle is beginning again. So, you know, there is this cycle of cyclical thinking because it's difficult for me to think in sick cycles, in circles when I speak in a very linear language. And that basically is a beginning and ending subjective and noun, noun filled. And it's very hierarchical, very domination. And it's interesting because when I was in with your mentor Bernie Glassman out.

In Auschwitz a few years ago, 2013, I think it was with Virgil Killstrate, Steve Newcombe and myself and Leroy Clifford, we asked to do a small ceremony and in the center of Birkenau. And it was out of that, after we presented that we went back to the retreat center, the Catholic retreat center outside of these.

Camps. Extermination camps. Is that when we sat down, I had to ask Uncle, I said, virgil, I said, is there really a word for domination in our language? His answer was quick. He said, no, there is no word, there is no concept of domination. And that just blew everything. I thought of, like, how do we overcome this thinking of the Western world. And I thought, there's nothing to overcome. I accept it even more, but I don't adopt it. I'm adapting to its standardization of everything, knowledge and education. And so when I felt that there was no domination within our languages, Earth languages, by the way, that's the way the earth rolls, is that they, they know relationship much more than we do as humans. And I think that part of the, I don't know, secret, but I think that's part of the process that we haven't been exploring in a rational language that we're speaking now.

Yeah, just a lot there. Just for our audience, you were referring to the Zen peacemaker bearing witness retreat at Auschwitz Birkenau. That's been happening every year for almost 25 years now, I think. And that was quite a moment of that ceremony. I remember it. And there's this long, like a road that goes right across the middle of Birkenau from the selection site. It's railroad tracks. Where the Nazi doctors would send people to the gas chamber, to the work camps. And. And they would send people walking all the way across on this road to the other side and then off into some of the gas chambers over there. And so we walked down that. And right in the middle, you and Virgil kill straight did that ceremony. Very, very powerful. And I think you really. The language, you know, our Western language and our. In our. In our neural biology is really reflected by our language. I mean, language. If you want to change your brain, go learn a new language, right? You have to get a whole new set of neural networks. And. And Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of nonviolent communication, talked about how violent our Western language inherently is because it's so objectifying. It's all about, you know, objectifying things and evaluating things. And so it really does determine our way of thinking, our way of looking at the world. And.

So I'm curious about, you know, I feel like we have a bit of a conundrum here, especially in the US.

Native people have so much to offer to us in terms of different ways of being and thinking. And yet, because we've never dealt with the holocaust against Native peoples in the Americas because there's still terrible injustices going on, the whole pipeline thing recently in the Dakotas as well as the pipeline thing that's happening up in Canada right now, I mean, it's just this ongoing. It's not like just repairing the data that was done. We're still impacting Native peoples in very negative ways. And so it creates a kind of divide and a lack of understanding. And even for those non Natives who maybe are interested in Native ways, there's a little bit of caution because Native people don't want to be exploited and have their ways exploited. So it seems like there's this gap across which it's hard for that wisdom to find a vehicle. Right. And I'm not trying to make any value judgments about any of that here. It just seems to be what is. And I'm wondering how can we shift things so that, you know, the Western world can start to learn more from Native peoples, not only here in the US but all around the world.

So I have a few tongue in cheek answers for that, if you will. I think one is that, you know, it really comes down to even all of us. This is a language of inclusion, is a Lakota. So much so that there is a small margin of exclusion. So if you think about that, how much abundance and inclusive thinking is near to perfect, that in the Lakota way, there's Always one bead, so to speak, in the beadwork that is twisted. So we understand that there's no such thing as imperfect as perfect. So things are imperfect in all of us. And I think that's the thing that we look at and that one is not to perfect it, but to accept imperfections. So I think this is how a lot of natives in the western hemisphere before 1492, even though anthropologists and scientists want to prove that we were just like anybody else. And that's nice. And of course we have natives have to be aware of the over romanticizing of who we were, who we are and who we will be. And to get ourselves into this present, to not get caught up in the intellectualism. But intelligence, which really means between the lines, the space between the lines, this is what intelligence means. So the duality is the one line to the other. And there's no recognition or acknowledgment of what's in between the lines. And so everybody thinks in dualities. Well, I know that, you know, the newest, newer Lakota speak in terms of subject and noun and noun terminology. And you realize that the verb behind it is that the land can't be looked at or felt like the way we used to. And in the studies that I've done is that the intelligence with Earth is no longer.

Recognized. And I think that's what's missing from the vernacular of the English speaking and any foreign languages. Because this part of the Earth is what gave us our languages. And to understand it that we were uploaded in a sense from the Earth rather than downloaded in the dogma fashion that most of the world understands religion from. So it's the acknowledgment of the land. Because the land, if we are not acknowledging the land and just kind of moving a blessing onto it, that's part of the domination thinking rather than, you know, blessing food. We forget that food grows us and blesses us in a way from. From the earth. And so in America, it depends how we are treating the Earth. Is that will, it's like peace with Earth will take care of how the Americans are treating the native people. Not our native people or the native people, but native peoples, right. And to recognize us as part of that intelligence of the Earth, because we have been always on the bottom of the totem pole as far as democracy and western ideology is concerned with, is that we have always been on the bottom of the totem pole. Fleet is. But some of us want to climb that totem pole of hierarchy and kind of understand about if I get to the top, then I'll be successful. But then we lose the grounding. And it's a place of honor to be on the bottom in a sense to hold everybody else up. Because when Earth starts to shake and rattle and roll, all of those peoples who think that they're elite to the Earth will come down. So even in the most intelligent or intellectual academic worlds, people think that they're supposed to leave eventually. And that is built in racism. You could talk about racism to the Earth. The ecocide that's going on, I think that's against the Earth is against all of us. So it's actually the war. And you talked about maybe this language is military style. And recently there was something that said that the first, the first language, first language.

In a conflict, right? The first weapon drawn in the conflict is language. And how are we thinking about the Earth? How are we living with the Earth? Because after I speak with you, I'm going outside, I'm getting ready for my four day, every day, burn the, make a fire. And Pleiades is setting and May 3, it's his final setting. And you know, this communication is thousands of 200,000 years old. And according to a lot of other Lakota, it's much more than just 200,000 years old. This way of recognizing natural intelligence from natural law, you know, And I think that's part of what we are missing here. So I don't think there's exactly a solution because I think we're somehow, we're all inherent in our DNA, that we understand it somehow, but we just don't have the expression. And you were key to say we don't have the expression in these languages.

So if you're going to be talking a noun filled language that comes out of Greece, for instance, A to Z, your symbology and your concepts have to be, have to fit that box. And when you're speaking more of a holistic, more involved with the earth and breathing the earth and understanding that consciousness, you understand that the Earth finally removes your conscience from the duality of either or puts you in the mystery. So it's like wakana makes you.

It's like you're applying mystery to everything.

And that's how you live. Rather than, you know, a certain time you do a ritual or, you know, we apply this and you go through these steps though it's more of a natural thing. And I think we feel that we have various words, we call it in English, but when you're out there and you're sitting in a fire there's no need to think because you're in the consciousness of that intelligence with the Elements of Earth, because they have consciousness. They live in us, all of those four elements, Earth, fire, wind and water. So they are in us, and that's intelligence. But see how we treat the Earth, those intelligences. We are treating those intelligences like they didn't have consciousness.

Yeah.

You know, I know making offering is at least assuming, and maybe my misunderstandings, but making offerings as part of your tradition, and in my Tibetan Buddhist tradition, making offerings is a big part of that. And, you know, I have your standard American, rational, skeptical, scientific education. And even though I've embraced these traditions and, you know, but still have that, you know, what part is the essential spirituality? What part is superstition? And, you know, I remember I was. I was reading a book one time. It was quite a few years ago, but I was reading about just some ordinary Tibetan people in Tibet in their way of life, and they were just making offerings throughout the day, making offerings to the four directions, making offerings to different beings, making offerings to the insects, making, you know, and it suddenly just hit me that this, you know, had nothing to do with superstition and that how arrogant I was, you know, to not. To not be in that flow of offering and appreciation with the world in which I am and all the beings I share the world with. And it really opened my mind. I can't say it's, you know, shifted my consciousness to where I live in alignment with the earth in the way I'd really love to, but. But it definitely did awaken me to.

To really see that this way of being in recognition and the continual sense of offering and appreciation is at least one pathway back into relationship.

Yeah. I think, again, it's a relational aspect. Waking up and doing it and recognizing.

Your first breath. And then the next thing most of us do is go and douse our hands in water, wash our face. And all of these things are ceremony. And we have to be conscious about it in language where. In this language where others understand that it's all the ceremony, it's all medicine, and we forgot how to use the medicine because the medicine wants to use us and it's available spirit wants to use us, but it's inviting us, and we think that we can control. While we have to invite the spirit, we have to invite these things, you know, but it is part of that Tibetan, the people that you saw, that they were offering. And it is as, in a sense, an asking. So, you know, in. In what I understand is that There really is no identity except through the Earth because we have identified ourselves in a language that separates us. And, and that's what I wanted to express was that it feels that when I'm speaking English I have to separate myself because mostly everything that I'm speaking begins with I. It's I and me and my and mine and ours. And in the older way of being, which seems to be more an advanced way, see I have to speak in English, advanced way of living with the Earth, it seems that's the highest intelligence. And I think people feel that. So if we learn how to relearn how to live with the Earth again, we have peace with the Earth. There's no need to have peace on the Earth because you're at peace with all the Earth and that's including the least intelligent human being.

Right?

Because we don't understand that. Those Tibetans are offering, asking the ancients for their knowledge, asking if we could understand the knowledge so that we can still learn how to live here and have peace with Earth. And regardless of how we attempt that, there can't be just one way, right out of fear. We are into a survival mode now. And I think America has been part of that on survivalist mode since they got here, way long before 1620 with the Pilgrims started in 1492. But there was other people that came here long in our histories that didn't colonize in this way. Maybe because it was their, their attitude or the way they grew, that they were satisfied with who they are. So in America a lot of people are still searching and I think the coronavirus is helping to guide them, point Americans in the right direction. Now the path we choose hasn't been delineated, marked is that we have that being free, which means more responsibility rather than freedom, where it's controlled by church and state, you know, and so we have to unstandardize or decolonize even this language and speak in more of an organic way rather than more of a technical and, and more of a noun laden language. So empathy is being overused in a sense because we're supposed to have it for each other. That's how we're going to get through this thing. But we're forgetting the Earth. You know, the Earth comes first. And that's when you start feeling the truer consciousness. And that's all empathy is, is to be aware of what, as you say, love out is out there. But it's really that your body is in the soul rather than the soul only being in the body. I think that's a difference in thinking processes.

Some of our.

Trauma experts that have been part of this summit.

When we talk about relational resilience, we're talking about we're social beings and we co regulate together. There's a way through to our facial expressions, to our presence, through our voice, through our heart that we can actually co regulate with each other. In fact, we're all doing that. And that has a lot to do with what empathy is. But we can do it in a much deeper way. So that idea of co regulating. I do a lot of training work and a lot of workshops I lead where I get people in dyads or pairs and have them do eye gazing and heart work and ways they find themselves that can get in this incredibly powerful, stable, intimate space of connectedness with a stranger. So I'm wondering if that. That idea of kind of co regulating our nervous systems, co regulating ourselves and resilience, if there's a sense that we can get out in the natural world and kind of co regulate with the earth, you know, get into that flow somehow attune our own nervous system to the rhythms of the earth. And at that, I don't know that we can have any positive impact on the earth. Hopefully the earth can have a positive impact on us. But. But there is maybe some flow that we could tune into. And I suspect that perhaps something about the ceremonial paths of indigenous people has to do with that in some degree. I'm just guessing. I don't know. I'm asking you.

Yeah, I think that the ceremonial path you talk about is not so much a ritual. You have to do it this way and that way. And I think it almost comes not as a free association thought process, but it's one recognition. Again, were not coherent with our thinking. And I was on a panel with Paul Stamets and some other people last week and we were talking offline about how they live in the great Northwest in British Columbia and how their interaction now is so much in nature, with nature, rather than on nature. Them having to go to a park or even, you know, to your backyard. It's much more. That's not nature. That's something that we sequestered in in right angles. So there's a right angle coherency and an open, you know, where there's no angles coherency. So our thinking is when he said that my interaction is more with nature and nature is rewiring my thinking nature is re. Is encompassing that thinking. And now he sees that there are certain people and he said indigenous peoples are not so rewired as we are. Because their motherboard in their thought process, in their heart, in their composition of who they are, has not been removed as long as a process as the Westerner who, you know, 30 to 50 generations, when they got here to the western.

Western Hemisphere, basically already changed because they got rid of their Earth people, as you know. So here he's talking about we need to rewire. And that means to go within the complexity of nature. And again, to not separate that, to call it nature, call it some verb like nurturing, because that's exactly what we do, is we're being nurtured in the nurturing of nature, if that makes sense. But it's acknowledging that and thinking that we cannot control that. And I think we get out of the control factors of. Well, we're going to control everything from the coronavirus to the future. Because the future, we're always thinking about the future. What are we doing with this consciousness now? You know, and then we're afraid of the past because people like their skeletons for some reason, because it makes them feel real. And the trauma now is to make something up. And you know, you see the privilege of not feeling anymore is that you tend to make up trauma as a worst case scenario. My trauma is worse than yours. And everything gets into comparative values of that. So, but let's acknowledge that the Earth has.

Now cleaned up and now cleaning up what we've done. So maybe it's us or the problem, not the Earth. And so yet we're still extracting from the Earth and all over the world that's going to continue. And that's where she again, in the prophecies of native people have come forward and saying, yeah, the Earth is going to fight back, defend the sacredness. And the sacredness is actually doesn't need to be defending because she knows what she's doing. We're not here to save the Earth to Earth. We're here to recognize that the Earth is saving us already and has been. So I don't go for that benevolent, you know, sort of.

Altruism. You know, I'm a human being and I'm intelligent and I have superiority over all animals and other life. And God made us this way. Well, you don't have to be religious in that, that dogma, but it's in the language, it's in the education process, it's in the government, it's in the sciences and that sort of monotheistic way of being which is making us not beings, but more zombies to, you know, continue with the Same system that has gotten us in trouble in the first place. It sounds like gloom and doom, but there's some sense of reality that we have to really face and go within. You know, the chante, even that fleet is meaning that we're recognizing that a heart is related to the tree because the tree has a heartbeat. And science just proved that the chant chante is basically our trees. And we know the heart is like a tree. It gives us the brain, it gives us the nerve system, and that's a tree. So if we recognize ourselves as Earth, not part of Earth, but as Earth, it doesn't mean that there is, we make, we worship, or we make ourselves gods, or make Earth the God. Because even the word God is implying dogmatism.

Yes, I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, you know, obviously we problematically have this idea of dominating dominion over the Earth and you know, which leads to this exploitative, extractive relationship. But even sometimes people posit, you know, a healthier notion would be stewards of the Earth, but that's still putting us in this separate, one up, dominant role, as if our job, you know, and instead of actually realizing we are of the Earth and having the humility to come back into an alignment with the Earth where we're, you know, even that stewardship sounds better than dominating, but it's still that one up, you know, separate, dualistic and very kind of arrogant positionality. Anthropocentric arrogant positionality.

Yeah. And, you know, it made me think of, is there an exit strategy with this language we're using? You know, do we go out and adopt, do we take something from them because we're speaking, always speaking, a lack of language. I want this, I need that, you know, and the only way to do that is that you control, control the outside source to bring it into your home, bring it into the city, bring it into the cosmopolitan, the civilized mind. Because that's what we're built for. We're built for, for, you know, learning and information. Yet we don't understand that, that learning information is based on greedy. And so when I think about, you know, describing the lesser of two evils basically is that, do we continue using this language? Because stewardship sounds even more rational. So it's like the more rational, more intelligent you become in this language or this Latin based language is that the more we're able to deny who we are, function by what we do. So we can stack up a resume or CV and say, well, look at me, this is what I do. So I have PhD, MD MA. And all these things behind your name because you don't know who you are. It's kind of defining. You're trying to find out who you are by what you do. And the other way around is we already know who we are. It's like. And that defines what you do, you see. And so when I think about who are we? We are human beings. We are, as some elders would say, we are children of Earth because look how we're behaving. We haven't learned yet. That's a denigration too, is that children already know, they haven't lost the understanding of it. They are still walking among the stars, so to speak. And speaking with the universal or feeling the universal language within. We programmed ourselves, rewired ourselves from the natural process is. And forgot about abundance. So a lot of these indigenous languages that I know of in my studies for 33 years is that these languages practically are thankful and appreciative all the time. And when you're appreciative and you're in appreciation, that's, that's a form of, of high intelligence, if you could say that without being dogma. But the intelligence is engaged with knowing the answers that already been given to you that like the Earth knows more than we do. And so why aren't we going to the ultimate teacher, you know, even our mother, you know. And so to humanize empathy, to humanize, you know, intelligence, I think is, is that mistake. And as you said earlier about the Tibetans, there's no superstition, there's no supernatural. If you remove super from natural, then we have it, you see, because that's another way to paint those people as, oh, they're not real, that's quaint. And they're gonna go away because they're not with the program. They don't have books, they don't have atom bombs, and they don't have, you know, all these things that we are trying to deny that we're an advanced people because we have books and we have atom bombs and we're gonna go colonize other planets, you know, and yet we partly should know that what we're doing is kind of like severing our relationship by continually speaking a language that really has no exit strategy.

You know, I was listening to a Futurist.

Jamie Wheal.

Video podcast he did a while back and he took us through kind of an exercise and he had this bi directional graph and. And on one side was pessimism, the other side, optimism. Down below was passive. Above was active. So in talking about the climate emergency we're in now. So he said if you go into the pessimistic passive, that's kind of the, you know, the deep adaptation movement. Chin Bendle basically people are saying it's too late. We should even kind of start thinking in terms of a hospice type mentality about preparing for the end.

Or you go into the pessimistic and active people and you get into the, you know, activists that are trying to wake us up, you know, the extinction rebellion, folks, and that prophetic voice which is often necessary to wake us up. Or you get on the optimistic side, you go into the passive. It's, you know, people think we can just chant om maybe and transcend this somehow. And I don't mean to make light of spirituality, but that's at the extreme. And then. And the optimistic active is more the people that think artificial intelligence is going to save us or like Elon Musk, we're going to co colonize Mars or something to save ourselves. And you know, what he was suggesting is he wasn't demonizing any of these approaches, but I think he was suggesting if we can stay more in the middle and not go off in these extremes, maybe stay in not knowing. And I'm just curious about how that resonates with you because it may be that, that we're going to have to see some real collapse, social economic collapse, before things will really change. Or maybe we can wake up and start changing our ways. It's hard to really say. I'm just curious about kind of where that takes you.

Yeah, wow. I think that again, we're forgetting about the Earth. Is she going to collapse? And where is your.

Your.

I don't know, your composition, your fortitude with the Earth? Because if she's providing everything, why, why are you in fear? I think we still have the attitude that, that we are killing the Earth. It's true. We're only, like uncle says, we're only killing our ability to live with Earth. Humans cannot kill the Earth that we cannot destroy. Regardless of what we're doing, we cannot, we're just going to kill our way.

So I think that's a very important distinction. People talk about climate. The Earth is going to be just fine. It's the question is whether we're going to survive and also what's happening to all of our fellow species in the interim.

Yeah, and I think really, again, aflit. I'll go back to the language. There's a dimensional effect, dimensional thought processes. And I'm told by some deeper studies that I'VE done. And being told by some, even Lakota elders that there's 22 dimensions in the Lakota language and we're only speaking maybe 2, 3 at the most in English or any Latin based languages. And so understanding that there are much more interrelatedness going on comes in your DNA. It doesn't mean that we're all cut off from that. It's that maybe it's the language once again. And I guess the mentality that you're saying is a glass half full, half empty. But you know, what if there was no glass and the water would be released and that consciousness that is water is out there. And I think the 2 million dams within the continental United States or contiguous United States, the 48 states that we are in, all these dams, the 2 million would take decades to dismantle. I think it's releasing Earth in a sense before you know, because she's going to release herself anyway. She's never been. It's only we've been cutting ourselves off by cutting, making dams, mental dams, you know, everything. And so the wall is going up down there, supposedly on that fake border that starts with inside. Where does the wall start? It's not, is not accepting people who are different even within this society. So many people are trying to be different that they all are the same now and they go outside of themselves to find source, resource. Excuse me, but we're forgetting about the source. That's like saying personal sovereignty of a Native person is that we're not seeking to be part of.

To get a piece of the American pie, but the Americans forget who owns the bakery, you see. And I think it's a recognition of ownership, but yet we don't have in the vernacular of ownership because that means that we are pulled away. We are into the I think therefore I am rather than we think therefore we are. It's a difference in thinking. And again, you know, reference is that people are afraid of this, you know, not having anymore because maybe they're not used to, maybe that they're not used to having. They're used to having most of the time. And those of us who are used to not having is that we're speaking abundance because you make, you make appreciation for the little that we still have as Native people. And I know we are losing it also. A lot of us have lost it. Include myself in that. But it's having that little thread that we hang on that you know, that our ancestors have been through this and so have others.

It's either the aggressiveness or the Passiveness that you say. But there is a balance of understanding. I think there was. Last count that I did, it was almost 200 words or more in Lakota for.

Balance and here in English, I think the most that I came up with was seven. So the focus is to learn how to let the Earth balance you because she's going to do it anyway. And how do we let go of that control of parks and national parks and you know, creating what's only comfortable for humans because we're forgetting about what is comfortable that the animals and nurturing has, has given to us. And it's not just free for the taking, but it's free for the giving that we have forgotten. So we become caretakers, like you say, stewardships rather than caregivers. Right. There's a difference between givers or takers.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's. As you're speaking, I'm reminded of that famous quote from Albert Einstein, you can't, you can't solve problems with the same mindset that created them. And it really does seem, you know, even a lot of our more progressive environmentalist, you know, ideas and stuff are still about how can we more effectively control the earth with better technology so that we somehow have it serve us without destroying us.

And.

But it's still this, you know, very control oriented and completely lacks the humility of, you know, what is my relationship to the Earth and what do I have to learn here? And it would seem that one, especially for.

White European people, but really all modern non native people, whether they're people of color or Asian people or white European people.

Recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous peoples worldwide would seem to be a good step towards some kind of humility. Even if it was only.

I even hate to say symbolic, but even if it was only a symbolic sort of recognition of indigenous people hold that relationship to our first mother, the earth and have been holding it for us for a long time, inviting us to come back into that relationship and acknowledging their sovereignty would be a, a first step towards a humility of some kind of recognition and appreciation.

Yeah, you reminded me of where is our thinking based on our default thinking? Where is our go to thinking? We can say it's instinct or do we say intuition. I know with instinct it comes out of based in fear. So our ideas of surviving this coronavirus are even for us surviving colonialism. So we basically survived it out of fear, but yet still based in intuition. So now it's time for all of us to really think about this intuitive value that we all have and that Intuition is actually the intelligence that we're missing. And I think about practical mystery, practical ceremony, there is many ways. But again, I will. And it has to do with that Earth is not a noun, yet we've made Earth a noun, so to speak. And, and we've, we've lessened our survivability factor because we think to control rather. And you mentioned something earlier I wanted to not forget is that we refuse or it's a taboo to talk about death, you know, because that's the end of the line for us. So it's, you know, hurry up and get all we want. And it's a system based on acquisition or acquiring or taking and basically becoming addicts because it made us feel good as Americans, we're number one. And that is prevalent throughout the world. Any society, I suppose would do that. But the addiction to privilege is going to be a hard thing. And you see that happening now at this state where people are starting to react out of cold turkey. They're reacting because they can't have. And they're expecting things to be the way they used to be. And we need that high being patriotic, patriotic citizens of this greatest democracy and country in the world. So you hear the patriotism go on and on. It's based on addiction, based on patriarchy and how we treat the earth and we dominate, continue and that we're going to come through this and you hear that, but there's this falseness behind it. And I don't feel that I see people going through the motions of something that's already beating a dead horse. So I'm glad you said that. It's like the same thing. We can't wake up with the same language that put us up to sleep in the first place. You know, that's a nice. And that's what I'm emphasizing is is there a new language, is there an old language? But no, I say there's neither. There is a continuing language. And that we haven't recognized that continuing. And the closest I can think of is not that we're ahead of the crowd here, but indigenous peoples are closer to that continuum, which is the earth. And I think we can all say, well, we are too if we just look at our language and reuse our language in a more poetic way or a more spirit filled way or things like that. And we're still not nounifying things where, you know, we say that nature is environment. And so when we think about science and how we are basically speaking now a more mechanical, industrial language is that we have to nounify nature to call nature environment. But you know, I've been to many environmental places around the world where we're in class and we're speaking about of retreats and workshops, but they don't see that, oh, there's not a word in Lakota for environment, you see. So I tell them, like, what if we didn't have any more environmental retreats? And they're like, why? Why don't we? Why can't we always have to pay attention? I said, no, no, that's true, but what if we don't have any more environmental retreats is because we're living the environment. So there's no word for environment, you see. So this is a language we can move away from. And in 1910, 1912, the advent of industrial age coming to that part of controlling even technical industrial words in is that we started to get rid of natural words in this language. Even so in 2017, I think it was the Oxford Dictionary, don't quote me, but they started to get rid of natural words like even flowers, like daffodil, and over, I think it was 43 words they got rid of in today's dictionary and replace them with technical and, you know, those kind of technical words, computer words. It's like, oh, they're taking naturalness out of definition now and they're putting it into artificial intelligence. So but for us, artificial intelligence has always been.

A lack of connecting with the earth, being related to the earth. So this artificial intelligence came with monotheism, which when watching that ceremony, as native peoples did in the Caribbean, when Columbus got here, he was talking to somebody out there claiming here. So the native peoples, of course, are not going to understand disconnection because if you're always in a relationship, there's no word for connection or disconnection, you see. And our bodies are always constantly telling us, but the 10% domination appear where we make, you know, was it 99 10ths of the law is about possession, right? So we're always dominating that with thinking that the rest of the body is going to understand this. And we can control the body by our brains, yet is the body as if we allow it to and understand and recognize it is actually trying to keep us balanced. And it's speaking the language of balance because we get the water, we get the food, we get the warmth, all that comes from nature. There is no relationship through ceremony with that. We tend to wait for Sunday to do that or wait for some workshop to do that to say that, see, we're still here, but we're not living yet. Yet. And we'll continue to live in this gloom and doom, glasses half full, because we're not living it. We're only using reality.

Well, I hear you continually pointing us back. I just really appreciate all the nuanced ways that you're pointing us back to. This living experience is more being in relationship. And I'm reminded of my friend David Cooper, Rabbi David Cooper, who also been to Auschwitz with us a number of times, and he wrote a book called God as a Verb. And that we even objectify the sacred, right? I don't mean to disrespect anyone's faith, but we objectify the sacred into some noun, right? And he said, no, it's more of a process, it's a relationship, it's a flow. And yeah, it's just really challenging even to talk about these things and not get hung up in our linear, objectifying language. And I think that that's why one of the things that we're talking about in terms of the summit is how do we make that shift from the head, that linear cognitive kind of to the heart, to some more intuitive way of being and feeling. Feeling. And I think one of our presenters might have been Stephen Porges, trauma expert, talked about, you know, that idea. Descartes, you know, said, I think therefore I am. And obviously that set us in a pretty bad direction. And he said, it's more. It had. I can't remember the exact way. Expressive. It has something to do with. It's more about feeling like I feel, you know, I feel therefore I'm human or something, or something more about the lived experience of feeling and relationality and being. And you've just been pointing us in that direction in so many different beautiful ways. I really appreciate that tremendously.

No, thank you. Just part of that is we. We thank, therefore we are. So if we. Rather than. I think it's. We think because when you basically are praying, praying out of self, it's that. That's kind of a lonely thing. But when you're praying with the earth, you know, earth is right there alongside of you, you're not basically praying up or down or it's that, you know, that you're within the prayer all the time. And so when we thank, when you're in appreciation, again, that's understanding the relationship and not say, thank you, God, for that, that cup or, you know, objectifying everything into the spirit. The spirit doesn't. I mean, that cup created for what it is. And even though man has taken it, it's still caring for you. So you see all around you, your chair, the screen, all of these are caring for you. And we don't recognize that relationship, that it already knows how to care. So how are we saying that we know how to love? You know, it comes very, very more of a human thing, that selfishness. So we remove the I out of the language and that kind of sets you out of control. Like, wait, where is the irrational thinking to me is that the rational people are the ones who are rational because who wants to be right angled, which means normal. You know, where's the standard of normal coming from? Definitely not from the Earth. It's from the peoples who think that they are elite to Earth that they become so, so heavenly that Jay Dina. That they become so heavenly that there's no earthly good. You see. And that's what in all this spirituality, science and governance, it's like there's something better than who we are. And there is no word or thought to be in Lakota to be something else, to become something else you are. And so that, that Akan, that, that future and the past are right here to the being from the being from the ancient future now. And so we've always been here now. We've always been that. And it's speaking the older Lakota in a way rather than a new noun field that was changed by Catholic priests in 1926 in that era. So it's understanding that everything changes, but to suit or survivability. And once we are able to understand intelligently that it's the thinking that we have to base the earth as a thinker and allow her to, you know, addressing her like before we talked about, I went outside and I basically stuck my head out the door and said, what do you want me to say? Earth mother, what do you want me to say here? Bring that, invite Earth into everything and understand that. So that all through this interview I've been asking, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to say rather than what I can think up in concept from A to Z. And that's another thing. Is there really a need for the Alphabet? You know, because it's only our structure that we understand, but we. Earth doesn't have an Alphabet. And a lot of these languages, indigenous languages, don't need an Alphabet because we're outside of the box, you see, and this is why we. They said that, well, you're not as intelligent as we are because you don't even have an Alphabet.

But.

And this is why they banned us, because they couldn't understand that or holistic or relational way of being with everything. And so that couldn't be controlled. And that's a result is that we are on reservations as Native people, Even the minds of people. See, it's like, we'll put indigenous peoples over here. Rather than mix us with the rest of us, we'll just sequester them and put them here in the pigeonhole of what can we bring to this process rather than what can we give up to give them back their process? So, see, there's. There's that way. It's like, okay, yeah, I'll join. We'll include. And I'll join you because your brothers and sisters. And basically we've been, you know, kind of going out there and bringing it home, putting it in our box so we can deal with our problem and intellectualize. I see We're. We're doing something too. And this is telling you, Fleet, this has. This language, this way of living has made me a ferocious cynic, if you could say that, because it seems like this language based in judgment and not relationship. So you have to rationalize your opinion, your commentary. So when I'm thinking in feeling the other way, you're saying that your brain, this part up here, is basically a seed of the heart. In Lakota, this is a seed of the heart. So you're always coming from the heart rather than being cut off from it and looking to connect the brain with the heart, you see? And I think that that's a difference. This nasula involving the seed that goes around from your head to the vitals that you have is. That's the seed. And so the center is here. And so into your Lakota, you're understanding that the asking for the original instructions from the center of creation, as Black Elk said, he's the center of the center of the universe is everywhere. And for us as peoples, well, we're not coming from the center. We kind of refer to it poetically. So decisions that we make could be. And had been that we made decisions through the Earth rather than through the bank. Right through the. To the bank of memory that can be changed and knowledge, information. That's always changing, but yet it's the Earth that's changing the knowledge and information. Yeah. That way.

Well, thank you so much. I could listen forever, and we could continue this conversation. I think we are kind of sadly towards the end of our time for this conversation, but thank you so much for being so generous with your time and for the incredible work that you do. I did mention at the beginning that Tokesin is actually a survivor of what's known as the reign of terror at pine ridge in 1972-76, with the FBI incursion there and Cheyenne River Reservation and Pine Ridge and.

Really very rough times in our history. During my background in prison, I actually got much more connected and knowledgeable and knowing about brother Leonard Peltier, who was unfortunately still incarcerated. And.

I think a lot of it's always amazing to me, even, you know, as much sort of press and it didn't get nearly the press, it should have the struggle there standing rock around the pipeline, that these things, you know, come into the consciousness of the mainstream, you know, for their 15 minutes of airtime or whatever it is. And then we go on to the next thing. And it's like the fact that we live in a country that is still oppressing the original owners, the original people that welcomed here on us, on this land, and continue to hold the earth for us. It's just amazing to me that we're.

As kind of arrogant and unconscious as we are. And I just. I have this aspiration that maybe this will be that time when the Earth can actually get us to start paying attention.

Yeah, the Earth is actually in, as a lot of things that I've studied is in a cleansing period. And that's just not physically. It's having to do with how we are perceiving our perceptions of who we are, who we aren't. And, you know, what are we choosing to live with rather than, you know, saying that we have power over.

And we think that's freedom because we have power over something. And that's where the mantra that I have is peace with Earth. And now these next five years, from 2012, 1492, 1992, and then there's a 20 year gestation period of being born, which came in 2012, which fits a lot of Western prophecies of Native people that it's not a punitive thing, but it's actually something we've been through before. And I think that's why a lot of natives aren't so upset or in fear. Even though these.

We become sort of victims of fear. And I think that was the first wall we had to bring down in order to understand the survival of the fear, which to many is a coronavirus. So when I think about these prophecies, where we actually are in them, let's recognize that there is other intelligence at work here rather than just who we think and what we think intelligence is. Right. Because we tend to intellectualize a lot rationalize things. And I'm looking to the irrational, the intelligence, intelligence which is between the lines, the mystery. Because that's what we need to recognize to really see our way through what the coronavirus is trying to wake us up to.

Thank you very much. Chokes and Ghost Horse, founder and host of First Voices Radio. And you take care of yourself and be well.

I will. Thank you so much. A good honor to be with you and good to see you after all these years. And I would like people to understand that, you know, all these words are just thoughts that I've come up with by the experience, as you say, from when I was a teenager in all of this, unrest was happening on a reservation as well. That's still happening. We're still organizing. But I think more so you see that we're organizing with the Earth because the Earth is organizing us.

So thank you.

Thank you so much.

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