EP 185: Listening to The Earth | Tiokasin Ghosthorse

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Hi. Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. This is your host, Fleet Maul, and today I'm having a conversation with longtime friend Native American activist, teacher Elder Tjokoson Gostos, a Lakota from the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota. He discusses our really fragile and endangered relationship with the earth, which exacerbates our disconnection with each other and steers us toward choices that are unsustainable we get into. Every time I have a conversation with Tolkesin, we just go deep into the very structures of language and the very structures of disconnection and separation from an Indigenous point of view. So this is incredibly illuminating and I really encourage you to give this episode a listen. Thank you. And I'm really excited to be here today with my friend Jokerson Gostors. How are you, Giokofsen?

I am good, thank you, Fleet.

Well, thank you so much for being with us today and I'm going to read a bit of your bio to familiarize our audience with you and then we'll jump right into the conversation. Okay?

All right, great.

So Chokes and Ghost Horse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tokerson is the founder, host and executive producer of the syndicated nationally and internationally syndicated First Voices Radio for the last 28 years. In 2016, he received the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, National Fellowship of Music, 2016, National Endowment for the Arts, National Heritage Fellowship nominee, 2017 Indigenous Music Award nominee for Best Instrumental Album, 2019 and National Native American hall of Fame nominee 2018 and 2019. He also was recently.

Nominee for 2020Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for the Artists Transforming Communities. He was also awarded New York City's Peacemaker of the year award in 2013 and by Tjokson's own account in his bio here he is a perfectly flawed human being. You can find First Voices radio at first voicesindigenousradio.org and you can learn more about his work at Akontu Institute www.akantuinstitute.org.

Okay, so again, welcome Tyoksen, and.

Today our focus is on listening to the Earth. We had a day on looking at climate change and climate resilience. Day four of the summit. And we talked to scientists and activists and, and policymakers and so forth, trying to understand where we are.

Scientifically, where we are in terms of raising people's awareness, where we are in terms of affecting policies that could really get us to a carbon neutral economy, things like that. And today we want to really focus on a kind of deeper conversation about.

How we can really begin hearing what our first mother, the Earth, our planetary home, is communicating to us and really deeply shift our relationship to the Earth, to each other.

And really begin to realign ourselves. We've gotten so far out of alignment from the original ways of being on the planet. So I'm curious, just that idea of listening to the Earth, what comes up for you with that phrase? Does that make sense to you? Listening to the Earth? And what would you come up for you?

It half makes sense. Please. Listening to the Earth, only half. It's half of the circle. And I feel that we have to nurture a, an environment, for lack of a better word is, you know, I find that we only go halfway when we're saying we have to listen to the Earth. And it's fine, I get the total, you know, if you go a little bit further with thinking. But really.

Maybe we shouldn't be listening to the Earth. Maybe we should go and observe how the Earth listens to us. And if the Earth listens to us, then it's shown by example, not instruction or how to do something. And often I go to outside and you know, I'm not going to listen to the Earth. I hear the Earth. And so it's really telling me already how it's listening to me. So I think part of that whole idea is being able to metabolize with what is already. And I think this is why we need to complete our thoughts. Because all the nurturing that we do in this body actually comes from, from the Earth. And I say that is, is, you know, the Earth, let's put it this way, that the Earth doesn't charge us for water there doesn't charge us for food or, you know, sustenance or air. It doesn't charge us for anything. So we haven't gone that far beyond our economic minds and material minds to know that maybe this is what we should be doing with ourselves. But humans need this government, this rule, this domination for some reason.

But there's a lot of people on this Earth still living with this Earth that also understand what I'm talking about, that she answers every prayer, every wish she gives Freely. And this is the part that we forget is, wow, we've got how to do that. We've come up with terms as share, sharing, you know, giving a part of so that you get a reward back for it, so it becomes a possession. And I think that's what gets in our way, this mind junk of possession. And this is where we, we don't know how to listen to the Earth because we think we go into Earth, go to the Earth in a benevolent form. We're superior, we're supreme, we're dominant. We have knowledge and information. But wisdom is not because of knowledge information, it's experience with Earth because at the same time the Earth is experiencing you. And that's the transmission of truer knowledge, which is wisdom.

Yeah, Well, I always know I can count on you, Tjoksin, to get us out of kind of linear, oversimplified approaches with language and so forth. And we'll keep exploring that. So when I hear you say, I think, you know, it's waking up to the fact that the, the Earth is a living system that we're part of. Right. We're not separate from the Earth. And our hubris has allowed us to think we're not only separate from the Earth, but we can dominate the Earth and we see aspects of it as maybe living and other aspects is inanimate. And, and we've lost sight of the fact that it's a living system that we're not separate from. We're made of the very same elements that the Earth is. And, and maybe it's about really just waking up to who we are, that we're really just beings within this living system that is the Earth, and that we could be back in relationship with a lot more humility. And maybe it's also about listening to ourselves because our own bodies are of the Earth. So.

You know, there's a famous quote from Einstein that goes something like, you can't solve problems with the same mindset or the same thinking that created them. Right. And so it seems like maybe not only do we, I mean, we need some radical mind shift and heart set adjustments, we modern humans. And. But it's even, you know, our mindsets are embedded in our language. Our modern languages are so inherently dualistic and objectifying. And I know that indigenous languages are quite different, your Lakota language in particular. So I'm wondering if you can talk about how we can begin to sort of get out of these limiting boxes of the way we think and the way we speak and the way we even conceptualize how to address a problem or challenge that we're facing. That somehow the shift has to come at a deeper level.

I suspect yes, it is deeper and yet it's not. Because when we think about the myth of human thought process, it we don't go any further than the information that we gather. So we can feel our worth out of the information we gather. And we apply that to books and how to live amongst each other. But really the information is distancing us from actually living with the Earth because the Earth has given instructions. So the Earth is not showing us how to. But we tend to be benevolent in that form and take our myth of progress to all other forms. That is not.

I would say Western in this case. And I'm thinking about, you know, there has been a concerted effort since our experience from 1492 to read more about native people, a concerted effort to dismiss, have a short conversation or their knowledge doesn't count, doesn't matter. It's part of the primitive aspects that we cannot use in this modernity. But yet the relational aspects that remain among all of us also include those who think rational, rational languages. So, and I'm going back to the earth, understanding that the Earth is also, you know, adjusting to us, looking at us and saying, okay, that one needs this and that one needs in all the forms and in her intelligence of non rationalizing, no agenda, not even a language to communicate with the way we do, which we think is intelligence. It doesn't need to think, it doesn't need intelligence, it just is. And that's beyond the scope of this language that I know of. We get closer with those cultures that have been living with the earth sustainably for 100,000 years old. And yet our reference points are 2, 3, 4, 5,000 years old. Out of western democracy, Greece and Rome and a little bit further than that. So you know, the reference points get in the way. Has to do with civilization and accumulation of information called knowledge. But that knowledge and information is always changing and we never can catch up to the earth. So why are we using our so called logical intelligence to think that we are going to ever be able to listen to the Earth with this type of thinking? And my experience is being with the Earth and not thinking at all. Just one huge ball of energy. And where is that energetic form of language besides conceptual or even precepts, setting up concepts? And therefore you have sort of this bust, this train, train, like a train thinking one car after the other. And it comes in concepts. Well, that has a beginning and an ending and if you're into the quantum physics of the Earth, she has no ending because she's in, in concert in cohesion and coherency with all other cosmos, the cosmos that's going on everywhere, even inside ourselves. So the language, that barrier that keeps us from understanding this is basically the dominance and the possession of knowledge and information because we can get greedy with information and knowledge and that becomes controllable and.

Manipulated. And so we find the cause and effect, the right and wrong, the better or worse. And we accept this type of warlike language, conflict language so easily because generations before 1492, that's what was going on in another land, maybe for perhaps 200 generations before coming here. And as far as I know, there are nations and tribes that only have 150 to maybe less than 200 years of experience with this type of thinking. But that is looked down on because it's not based on new thinking, new invention. So we're fooled by the fact that that formula, that Einstein that you tol said Einstein, basically you can't use the same language to wake up with because this is the same language that put you to sleep in the first place. And so this is what I'm saying. And a lot of people don't want to go deep into that subject because they know that it's beyond their knowledge, beyond their conceptual thought process to ever understand what.

Is all about. All these other terms that have been with us, these 15,000 year old songs, even more so to always try to dismiss or culture, how do you say canceling culture? Because that's the way of this country. And that thought process is to always go back to the drawing board and say it's new, it's brand new, spanking new. Well, what happened to the one you just used? It's like a throwaway society, a throwaway invention of the latest trendy thought process. And that book's outdated, so we'll go to the next one. Well, behind all this movement, Fleet, is the motion of the earth. So this is why I say we're one or two steps out of rhythm of the earth or behind the earth. And what about those societies that are not relying on the accumulation of information or materialism, you know, that mind junk of trying to keep that all together. The legal terminology, the constitutional terminology, the science, the scientific terminology, religious terminology and all that sort of dogma gets in front of that heart when all it is is that we're not understanding the innocence that who we really are. And we tend to try to. How do you, how would I say this every moment is innocent and we try not to.

Put mind junk in front of that. You see, and these are simple terms, simple terminology, but I'm not going to get all academic so that people like. What I say is, no, we have to go be simple with what we're feeling, not what we're thinking to feel.

Yeah.

Well, I think all the world's contemplative inner traditions within indigenous societies, but also within some of the other deep contemplative traditions, have kind of seen the thinking mind is the problem. It's a useful tool, but it's the problem when it dominates. And so a lot of the practices are how do you get out of conditioned mind? How do you get into non thought actually? And traditionally one of the ways of doing that is to get out in the natural world. Because when we're in the natural world, we tend to quiet down because of the majesty, the power, our connection with the natural world. We naturally quiet down. So maybe that's the avenue that instead of ramping up all this thinking to try to figure it out, maybe we all need to quiet down. And maybe there's a language of the heart that's non conceptual, that's not linear, that maybe would bring us back into right action and right relationship with the earth.

Yeah, I do, I think, you know, I could probably say that to me, religion is like this belief system. And when native people don't have a word explanation for religion because it's older than religion and we could say spirituality, but then spirituality is trying to define what religion maybe is. And so this belief system, the earth is not a belief system. And that this belief system of religion and science and government.

They extract your relationship from the consciousness of earth. If I could say that it leads you into this monastic oneness and actually places you into a. Like there's a vulnerable situation where you are constantly looking for connection. So it's trendy to say, well, we have to connect, we have to connect and connect and we have to go from the mind to the heart. And then you spend the rest of your life rationalizing why you feel lost and dazed and confused because that belief system has consumed any chance of understanding and replace it with.

Ritualistic knowledge. And so constantly we're looking to go to the heart. But I know of many indigenous languages that can't even fathom trying to go to the heart. Except that coming from the heart makes more sense. Coming from the heart, going to the mind. So in another way we're trying to quiet the mind, to listen to the heart. But the heart is always listening anyway to that little baby thing going called the mind. And so it's a symptom of believing that we have become benevolent and that we can perform miracles. But in that mindset of possession that we've appropriated those cultures that have no word for religion and like plants have no religion, Earth doesn't have a religion, nor does indigenous peoples, because they have all evolved and moved past this.

Antiquation of belief. So to me, the Earth is real, not a belief system. Mystery is real. And we are always trying to, in the Western way of thinking or trying to solve mystery, save it or get rid of it, or science it to death. And this all gets in the way. It becomes mind junk. And so I, I think.

There is this opening, this, if you say opportunity, then that's where we're at right now. And that the control of the resources, if we let go of that, I think that means we have to let go of trying to control the earth and extracting. So I'll put it in the context of the Earth is running out of the minerals, the metals to create more technology. So once it's out of those metals and minerals or whatever we're using to make our devices and seem like we're intelligence because we can kill Earth and kind of make it shiny on the outside for our technology, then there's that, you know, using the same formula that you described earlier and indigenous peoples, and I'm not trying to put us on a pedestal, I never try to do that, is that we are having just to watch this happen and yet saying, look, this is.

This is not the way, this is not the way of the Earth, it's the way of the human. And the human has come up with religions to kind of soften the effect of the destruction. And out of that we look for exoneration and more or less salvation point mentality. And so we're always looking to save something ourselves, looking for someone to save us, and yet we're not really understanding the simple energy that's happening every day, every second, the innocence. Like I talked about the innocence every moment. Except that we tend to place.

We tend to clutter our minds up with that junk I just talked about.

I wonder if you could talk more about the way of the Earth, if you will. You know, you talked about coherence before and you know, the Earth has its rhythms and its cycles and its seasons and it's spherically shaped and, and you know, the circle. I know is important within indigenous cultures. And I wonder if you could. What might Be some ways to point us towards reconnecting with the way of the Earth instead of the way of the human mind or the conceptual mind, perhaps.

Well, if I can bring the obvious difference between time and the concepts that is coming out of the Julian Gregorian calendars and all those calendars that were invented, and yet those calendars are dated around. They center around 2000 years ago A.D. and B.C, and you find that many indigenous peoples are going, what? What? You know, and we look to the stars for our calendar. The stars are our calendar. Not so much like in astrology. We understand that so much. At least I do, without having to go into scholarly, you know, scholarly research about are they right or are they wrong? No, this is their stories. That there is a Pleiadian calendar that we know is still in effect and that has no time.

It's too big for a Julian or Gregorian calendar.

So the atomic clock, I guess, is the closest that could come to any. If there is a calendar like. Such as the Mayan, the seasonal calendar that is not 365, 24 7. It depends on each location that people are in. Human beings who think about watching the stars, that's the calendar. So the story goes that if, in the Lakota way, if you stop counting the stars, then it will all come to a big change, even an end, if I could say that. So you have people out there that I know, Lakota, that are still counting the stars, because the stars are always changing and trying to keep in rhythm and balance the energy that's coming from these places. Now that language is so immense that we can't squeeze it into the restricted. And I call it the parabox. The paradox. Such as a paradox is having a beginning and an ending, as a superior and a.

Inferior top and bottom, better or worse. And then it also has a cause and effect. So it's built a box of reasoning and rationale that everybody is trying to fit into. Because the nature of this box is extraction. And to take everybody else's mind, cultural ways, even cultural mores, to make itself feel better. But it has to do it on a constant basis where other cultures are outside of this box, having room for this box and knowing that it's part of the whole. The Medako Yasi. So I think we are all born with this, and we lose that consciousness at a certain time because of our ritualistic knowledge that it's been applied to. This is how you do things. Even amongst the native people nowadays, the modernity has affected us so much that we don't even know. I woke up this morning and.

Say.

Good to be indigenous, right? Is that saying. Because I can never wake up and say, it's good to be a colonist. And I wonder how that would go across with people who, who it's hard for them to say, you know, I wake up and I'm a colonist. It's good to be a colonist. And maybe that's the thinking that we have to look at and to go deeper is, wow, you know, I can never get up and say, I am. It's good to be indigenous. But then we have to look at the history, Then we have to look at the treatment of the earth and one culture and societies born out of civilizations and how we are getting further and further. Every generation is getting away from that basic thinking that we are all born with every person. But you know, the efficiency of this other thinking that has come in to extract you away from the connection has actually.

No exit strategy from it. So the cold turkey that's coming with the earth is not wanting any of us to go away, but to realize, to wake up, as you say. But it's not this language, is that going to wake us up? It's the energy you and I exchange here. I could say faith based, but that's too easy. Just we get easy, even that belief system out, we see that, wow, is the earth and the universe having faith in us? Are we that arrogant that we can think that that is what's going on and if I make myself clear, is that we are so anthropocentric, we don't know the etymology of our culture as well as our language, and we just keep repeating the same old circle that you talked about.

You spoke a little earlier about, I think, something you said about the innocence of each moment. And.

Seems like there could be something of returning to that original innocence for each of us because we learned everything you've been talking about, these extractive and conceptualizing and dominating ways of thinking and being that have led to all of our current challenges. We're not really born that way. I don't think it's learned. And so something about how do we kind of return to that original innocence? And just in the moment, like, you know, this moment right now, you and I are here together and we could maybe relax into something, you know, it's like we would like, well, okay, original instance. What's that? Can I package it and then can I mark it as a product? And how long does it last? You know, we just keep thinking that way. So is it in, in something about Being in the moment and something about trusting in something about our, our original or nature or something. And, and so that we don't just immediately get caught in this whole other way of being and thinking.

Yeah, I, I tend to think in the first, first of all because I was taught how to think in this society. Pretension, pretension, manners. And yet behind that was the gloom and doom. If you don't do something, this is going to happen to you. And I think how I was programmed re, educated, reinterred, and away from my respect for fire, my respect for, for water, the earth and for the wind. These are the elements that I grew up in when I was younger and they took care of me and I didn't have to think. So when it came to the thought process of even, you know, Descartes says, I think therefore I am. When it came to that, that's the hardest thing for me to understand because that was the American way to think about what intelligence is all about. I think about, you know, who tried to redefine us.

It was so many. It came from all directions. And I think about a child growing up in this system that how we were viewed as Native people is the same way they are viewed. If you don't follow the rules and then, and I'm taught that the duty is to work, go to work and get your value from your work. And.

You know, the system of that tribe is not there anymore.

The am I saying the tribal reservation system that's going on now, it also gives to the individual no incentive to labor. So therefore you're considered lazy. And I haven't had an uncle who would wake up in the morning, he had no job, he didn't go to any work, he didn't earn anything. He woke up in his log cabin. He got up and made sure his family had food. And think about sustainability of a garden, how you kept the garden, you saved, you put everything and preserved it. And you knew how to nature to keep food through the hard winter months. So he got up and made the fire. He made sure there was more wood for the fire so that the family was warm and that they were okay fed. And he got up and he left. And he went to an elder and he did the same thing. And he sat down and he waited and he waited and, and heard these elders tell him the story. And that was his education. And he'd go to the next elder and make sure that everybody was okay. Then he'd come home. Now that man was called lazy because he didn't earn the money. He didn't get an education. And I'm like wow. But he made sure everybody was okay. That basic human being principle. Not just a human to, you know, to. That's based on. On. On fashionable value of money. So. Or education from the west. Right. So. But that's what was in was was we were. We. We were forced to labor like slaves. And that supposedly was our well being. When we got up from 8 to 8 to 5 or whatever that was. And you come home, he didn't have time to do anything else but so tired that you went to sleep. But in far as a lot of nations were concerned that this.

Egotism, exalting. Exalted egotism that comes from American civilization to say I. Right. This is paraphrasing something to say I instead of we and this is mine instead of this is ours.

But it's hard to learn the I part. Even today it's difficult to talk about myself, which I can do more so.

And not listen to the content part of us. Let me alone. Because that if you're not doing anything then you're not of any service to a civilization. And so in the resilience.

Protesting in other words, we're resilient to. That's what is being done to the earth and the destruction of the earth and to people and.

That innocence inside all of us. And so when a native person or anybody who's lazy, there are bad people there. They're bad, they're just bad. And then the government has the opportunity, obligation or to.

Show the civilized way and how citizens do this in order that we can all get along. So the assimilation process happens to all of us. And in the native way that what we've shown is like wow, we have this other way of being. All of us, the earth, the animals, air, all of these.

Beings that walk the earth and involving them in our language, always.

Involving the creation stories that are always going on and that's the welfare, that's the true health of the welfare of the earth instead of the extracting of it is that you really understand that you don't need too much to be happy. And we've been on this.

Road to nowhere about trying to be happy with materialism. And it's driving us crazy. And we continue to, to do that. And I think part of this is it's stopping, slowing down. And you know, it's like wow, is it difficult for me to try to express things as if I'm not trying to criticize do's and don'ts or don't do this, it's more like there is another way to do things. It's another way to do things. And that other form, to force other people to think the way. The standard way of controlling the standard way. This is how we all do it in order to get along. That's this. I would say I go to the other part is it's a form of genocide. It's a form of genocide to try to force people to think one way.

Because it's even more so I think you mentioned that there are people who think or can talk several languages. Even the indigenous people still today can talk different indigenous languages, including the foreign languages. Spanish, English, Portuguese, you know, all these other foreign languages. And I think, wow, how can an uneducated person do that? Is because they have the experience.

With them, with the other peoples that walk the earth, the other. And so the same way you should extend out to the earth. They have. They are experiencing you. When you're hearing a bird call, they're experiencing you. But we forget. Oh, we had. Oh, that's a nice sounding bird call. We're not. We're all that. They're supposed to be there for us. Right. And yet we don't understand that we're supposed to be there for them. You know, that puts us in a good place. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, a lot of what you're saying just keep pointing away from this anthropocentism that we're plagued with, back to humility and simplicity and so forth. I'm curious. You've had a traditional upbringing and education, and at the same time, you've had a Western education and you live kind of out in the modern world.

How.

How have you balanced those two worlds for yourself? How has that worked out for you? Is there an ongoing tension there or an integration? Or are they just kind of two parallel realities? How does that work for you?

I think it's the best place to be right now because this was given to me from the get go, since I was born in a place where there was no water. I mean, excuse me, no plumbing, no electricity, no. No cars, no telephone, in a log cabin where it was against the law to be born outside of the Indian Health Service, the Public Health Service, the governmental forms. So my mother, being young at that time, of course, and older brother and my grandmother and grandfather and my father out hunting. They're all on horses. And her water broke and. And she didn't want to be either. She thinking maybe they want me to be born or taken away because I was born illegally. And so she walked she waddled three miles to the hospital, and my father arrived there in time. So you think three miles at that time. And how did a woman survive the. The resilience to go along the way and ask the trees and the water, the earth and the birds and the cloud, clouds and the light and all the life that was there supporting her, to constantly ask them on the way to help her. Not just God, you know, it was. Or I'm doing this on my own. No, it's all that help that got her there. So. And I think that's part of.

The understanding how to live in this society. And as you remember Virgil Kill street.

It was before that, maybe 20 years before, in the early 80s, I think it was. I was in. In a class of his and that he. People were asking the same kind of questions. How do you live without being assimilated? How do you live? And he basically said, you know, that's very good to ask and good to ask that question. But if you really think about it, is. Is that. That's trying to split us apart, divide us. So what he said was, I am one Lakota living in one world, and there's room for every. Everybody in that world, and it's more true than not. That's part of it. And then to learn the concepts of, oh, there is no word for domination or concept for domination. There's really no word for ownership. There's really no word for I and aloneness, because when you're alone, it's easier to be isolated. And actually you begin to look for help because you're away from that thought process of being with all of it. And so in this way I speak this language, I have to kick in another way of thinking.

And it seems like I'm always explaining myself right, and there's little acceptance.

If I. If I don't speak the proper English or the more scholarly or the educated way, so that I am kowtowing to giving it to people.

And so that's presenting. So it's like I have to represent the whole of my nation. It's kind of true, but actually I'm more about representing the earth in another thought process, right. So I think part of that going between two worlds is not very much true for me. I try to do that, and I felt conflict all the time. So now I'm here, and I see that everything has energy, everything is meant to be this way. Everything is medicine, whether we use it properly or not. This is what's going on. And someday, maybe when we can't extract anymore out of the earth, then maybe that's when the earth will really truly know how to give by taking everything away.

Yeah, I was really taken with the story of your mother. That sense that we do have what we need, it's all around us. And, you know, the world is resilient, life is resilient, we're surrounded, we are resilience, but we lose sight of that. And then we think we have to extract and own and produce and. Yeah, and as part of the time thing you were thinking about, because actually, right in this moment, we always have what we need. It's like I'm worried about whether I'm going to have what I need two moments from now or a week from now, and therefore I better extract and package and store and own and write all that. Yeah.

I wanted to ask you about your feelings about where we are with the COVID 19 pandemic. This has been quite an experience for all of humanity to go through something together. There seems like there could be a lot of positive things in that, a real positive teaching, some kind of.

And at the same time, it's separating us in many ways because of, you know, the need to do physical distancing and wear masks and. And then also the divisiveness and where we have such a polarized political landscape today that everything gets weaponized, even medical things, even taking care of ourselves. And we're all kind of hoping, waiting for it to be over. And yet, just reading recently, there's another omicron variant that looks like it could be more serious and even more virulent and maybe does lead to serious. It doesn't seem like it wants to go away. And I've heard that some.

A friend of mine shared what one indigenous elder shared with him was, well, it'll go away when we get the lesson, or it'll go away when we've actually changed who we're being and how we're being or something like that. But anyway, I wonder what it's been like for you and your feeling about where we are with all this and what kind of teaching is it, or is it an opportunity? What is it for us?

Thank you for that. In the beginning, when I returned to this continent in. In March, early March of 2020, I heard about it in Australia and New Zealand and Hawaii and, you know, was. You could feel the, like the storm coming. And I wondered, oh, is this the storm that they're talking about? When I was standing at Wounded Knee, they were talking about the storm that's coming. And it comes in many Forms, not just lightning and thunder. And the virus has come in all forms. It's not just what we see as that bacterium or that virus or whatever that things that we cannot see. It could be in thought processes. So when I came back here, I received some phone calls and communicated from back home.

The names I cannot give. But they said to create 33.

Prayer ties in a certain color and where to put them. And mind you, there is really not the thought process of superstition or myth. Because that practical mystery that native peoples are forgetting now is actually listening to how the earth is doing these and telling you that, okay, well I'm bringing you another wake up call. I'm bringing you the intelligence of a virus. So how do we understand that is that I was told a little later that I needed to make these paratized 33 of them and also to have a fire every week, every seven days or so or 33 weeks. And so that year 2020, that's what happened. And the fires were myself and some friends was just me at first. And then friends start coming and I said, this fire is not wanting fear, it's not wanting any of those scientific conflicts to attack the, you know, the enemy. You know, this is how we're going to overcome that which is natural. So it's not really that we can overcome nature by making everything nature enemy so that those walls are brought down. So we had no agenda fires. And as interesting as we went along, we didn't talk about religion, we didn't talk about science, we didn't talk about a lot of things that normally, you know, taxes, property rates to the voting. You know, there was also a little tinge of that. But it quickly went away that we were here to watch how the fire dealt with us. So we would come and some of us would sit in silence and, and just be amazed by what we were missing. So those 33 intelligences that we were missing is actually coming true now. You see it, the earth was showing us the processes is that first of all, if you put fear in front of it, that's the first virus. And so all this all through that time, I could hear the news, I could listen to the radio and watch people in panic. And it doesn't mean that, you know, you stop people from making their choice, right? And that's the polemics of it. If you're not up with us, then you're against us. That.

Binary thinking of cause and effect. And yet the Earth actually was telling us you can use the medicines, even the virus is a medicine. And it's not that you wanted humans to succumb to it, but the fact that we weren't going past the human aspect of watching the Earth make somewhat of a comeback, but also watching the Earth offer the medicines about how to overcome ourselves with our ego, with our ego science, our ego religions, our ego governments. So it's all based on the human. And yet when the, these animals showed up and the birds showed up, they were like tuned into something.

I mean it was like Noah's ark, if I could say that that happened. And even the stars were showing us by the fireballs that showed up with the energy that was showing up with the bear that showed up all these things that were happening. This is what I was watching and observing and how much they came to acknowledge. This is how you do things.

Wow.

Well, you know, it is certainly.

It'S radically changed my life. I know it's changed many. We know that at least initially there was this huge window where we weren't pumping so much carbon into the atmosphere. And as I'm sure like the Earth was probably taking a huge breath of fresh air. And you know, I was a road warrior traveling every week before the pandemic and you know, out in the world doing good work but I was always concerned about the carbon footprint of that travel and you know, and.

But you know, since the pandemic hit I just, I'm here in one place. I've traveled once since it started. I did go to Europe this past November for the Auschwitz bearing witness retreat. Where you've been? We've been there together, but other than that I've been at home with my wife and we're gardening and I've been staying in one place and I haven't like really lived in one place and just stayed in one place for a long, long time.

So.

It has changed our lives and I sometimes wonder whether we're going to get a message and simplify. I think a lot of people are. I think there's also probably a pent up desire just to get back to business as usual and the way things have been going. But I think a lot of people are getting the message and slowing down and simplifying. I hope so anyway.

Yeah, I like those thought processes. I think the Earth is showing how sovereign she can be without us and that we do need her and the fact that we need to know how she needs us because it's been a one way street. We need her, but she's trying to show us how she needs us to be in respect to not travel so much like you say, but also to think generationally, is that, okay, this is all about you and your generation. You know, isn't it about the one that you can't name Generation X, Generation Z? You know, isn't it about that? Because that's what automatically is happening in life, really. All the other elements that we're leaving out here, they also are still relating to each other. And that's one thing that we haven't been doing for thousands of years now, in a sense, because we've been at war, not just with humans, excuse me, but with Earth. So we're at war with the Earth because of our language and objectifying and.

Subjecting her to. To an onslaught of war and peace. And there's no in between. Now, what about those humans and that are in between without being animistic? Because, you know, that's a category that hasn't even been well thought out, well felt, is that maybe there's something to be.

In putting the Earth first in our languages. Maybe that's the ultimate library. But it's too hard to come out of an addiction. I think that's what we're in addiction of not knowing what grief is. You know, we tend to want to have psychology and workshops about addiction. And we don't even know what that is because we, we go out and drink the Kool Aid. Well, I'll go out and drink the Kool Aid right after this, this interview. I'll go out and have something that was produced someplace in China or someplace. And you know, that that is really has to be at a level of what if this food, this process, this. This privilege stopped? And I think that's what happened. It's like, wait, you guys are forgetting that you're only a human. You can't be greater than the Earth because you're not the message. The message is Earth. So maybe it's part of us looking at this MIDAKO E OSI even more so, that we all related in a sense, that.

We.

The relationship is speaking not just only through us, but all other life. And maybe that's what it's about, that the energy is not being used in a good way or properly. In a sense.

Putting the Earth first and continuing to.

Make decisions through her first rather than through the bank. I think that's either we saved a lot or we spent too much. You know, we're basing our value on how much that is and what's mine. And maybe it's that ownership that's getting in our way.

And as you know, I Don't own much, and I don't want to because I know how that feels inside here.

I can recycle, but that's kind of exterior. Am I recycling something in here? You know, I don't think that's possible. It's just there. Yeah.

You spoke before about being close to the elements and.

Even growing up, having that experience, being close to the elements. And I know for me, one of the.

I mean, I feel generally, I feel blessed to be able to find a lot of joy and happiness in my life continually. But one of the really happy times in my life, maybe it was just because I was young and carefree, but I lived in Peru for a number of years and lived just in a subsistence way, growing food and sitting around a fire every night and taking up, you know, bathing in a cold stream and being in the hot sun. And I would do. Was. No, it was very liminal. We had kind of an adobe. Simple adobe house with a dirt floor and a thatched roof. And we were very close to the elements. And I lived that way for several years. And it was. It's very nurturing to live that close to the earth. It's so much simpler. And.

I think there's something about being closer to the elements actually heals us.

And helps us be more resilient and so forth. And it's hard for us to do. There's so many of us on the Earth now. We have these huge urban centers and so forth. So, you know, all the ways I feel blessed. I live out in a small New England village now with my wife Sophie, and we're just.

Maybe 50 yards from the Connecticut River. It's right out our back door and surrounded by farms. We have a garden. We. We get most of our food from local farms, and we bought a wood stove. So a lot of time I have a fire going, you know, so. Been able to recreate that somewhat. But it is.

Modern life. There's something about the way we try to insulate ourselves from the elements that has disconnected us from the very source of our beingness and resilience.

It is. It is just. You reminded me of a story again. My mother is.

When she felt sick.

She would go to this place of a piece of ground, very dark earth, and she would remove the first layer, probably her body length. And she would lay there maybe for 20 minutes to an hour and just lay on this dirt, the earth. And then she'd get up and it's like a new person. And like, I asked her, what. What is? What is that? And she Would say.

It'S basically the energy behind the energy that's moving everything, and that's the earth. And so she described it as her body was drinking the intelligence of the earth and balancing all her body out, because that's the same thing. And you know, and I couldn't go down to fifth Avenue in New York and say, you need to come to the earth and jump in a mud pile or something like that. And it's for free, by the way. But instead we'll make it, you know, we'll advertise it and we'll cost you for going out there and digging that mud up and making it heated up. And you know that you can go have a mud bath. So it's the same thing, but you won't get the same out of it. Yes, the earth doesn't care, but yet it's what we are relieving it as it is instead of trying to change it. So my mother did that all through her years. Even now she's 88 years old and she still refers to the earth. She tells me those stories about taking a piece of that mineral, rich, dark soil and putting it in her mouth. Right. Which you weren't supposed to do. But then you read further. That's what women did through the ages, even in Europe and other places. And they're still doing that. And you know, many of the people that traveled over time that this two years that traveled there was whittled down to. Well, now we know that the most of the world did not travel anyway. It was only those who could in that privilege of being able to travel. Like how many percentage of the US citizens have a passport. And you know, so there's certain places that you cannot go.

And these places that we describe as.

What am I saying now, it's a place where humans don't live is where this energy is. So humans are chasing all the energy out. And because of our extraction thoughts and physical material extraction, we're making those places poor by the mining or making poverty for animals. We've made poverty for indigenous peoples because we put them out there on the reservations. They can't participate, but only if they say the things that we want them to say and they go to our schools. And therefore we can tolerate them and tell them what to say. So in that way, are we telling the earth what to say, how to make it? We can change her to make it accommodating for us. Maybe it's the other way around. We have to accommodate the Earth now. Yeah.

Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. I always.

By my just my mind, my way of thinking, my being, expanding, relaxing, moving into what we as you know, in the Zen Peacemakers, we talk about not knowing. Right. And so I just so enjoy being in conversation with you and thank you so much for sharing your experience and wisdom with our summit audience today.

Well, cool. Thank you. Anytime, Fleet. And I think we, we could be doing this again and yeah, thanks. It's an honor to be here again.

It's an honor for us to have you. Thank you so much. Kyokusen Ghost Horse of First Voices Radio and Akantu Institute and encourage people to explore your work and your music. And it has been really good. I wish you all the best.

Thank you.

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