A Transcript from Episode 290 of For the Wild Podcast.
Spotted fawn lays on a woodland floor curled in a nest of sticks; photo by Christopher Jolly.
Ayana Young Well, I’d like to begin our conversation by talking about something that I think is becoming more and more prominent, which is the savior complex that can arise when we think about the many issues Earth is periled by at this moment. In your article, Indigenous Languages As Cures of the Earth, you write; “We all rush in like fools to find more solutions, better remedies, fix-its from the profit makers, and fuzzy warm language to comfort the addicted aspects of ourselves. We make films, Facebook pages, petitions, we ask politicians to do our bidding, we cast votes virtually because we have to save our country, save the world, save the Earth, save the whales, save anything, but our own sanity.” And I think most of us can relate to this frenetic energy you describe, but I also think about how these actions are propelled by what we might identify as love, passion, and rage for what we feel is important…So my question is how do we interrogate our savior complex, while also acknowledging these tremendous emotions of love and loss?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse It’s a great question, and thanks for that little challenge. I was kind of waiting for that. That’s great. Thank you for that Ayana. Well, you know, in the original intuition of Lakota language, intuition of all of us I would say – without any filters of what intuition is by giving a definition, from this perspective of the Western mind, which I’ve been educated in and as Robert Clemens or Mark Twain said, It took me years to get over it, right? So when I’m thinking about what happens when we lose contact, we lose relationship with the Earth, we are constantly looking for that search, for ourselves, in others, and it gives way, because of our loss of instruction, it gives way to the fact that somebody else can come and rescue us. And when I think about, the original instructions, the original intuition, is the fact that even today, people go out to the wild, go out to nature, go someplace hidden, to heal, basically to understand and usually it’s this sort of benevolence of I can go to the wild, to the Earth, to nature, to listen. And when I think about that, it’s well, I think it’s different. When we were taught as young people that we can, yes, we can go to the Earth and mother nature to listen, but in that, in the fullness of the thought, where most Indigenous peoples kind of, you know, look at that wonderment and what do you mean going to the Earth and listening for lessons actually. And then what we understand is, as one Native person, I would just say it this way, is that we usually have gone to the Earth, to find out how Mother Earth is listening to us. And that takes a lifetime, it just doesn’t come up with a cause and effect.
You know, we go we get rewarded, we come back, and then we have the answer – the solution. So I think the savior mentality is tied up in the cause and effect of, we have solutions to save, what we can have our, possessive, our environment, our climate, our Earth, our – everything is possessive. And so when it comes to the savior mentality, the salvation point mentality, it’s that there is always going to be salvation for us as long as we follow the rules and regulations of an authority figure, religion, science, or government. And all of those have authority figures, where you look at it the other way, in relational languages, and in Indigenous languages, there is no need for monotheism or authority. Because that domination does not fit authority, well, it does actually domination and authority go together, but domination does not fit relational languages, and in relational languages, everything is in scope, everything is relative, everything is related. And there’s no need to get connected, or even save that which giving you all the answers, meeting all your needs as Mother Earth does.
So Mother Earth does indeed listen to us and gives us all that we need all our cries, all our whimpers, all our prayers, she answers it, gives us food, gives us water, gives us warmth, and we learn in between those like warm and cold, we learn what the balance is, we learn what the rhythm is. And so once we are into the rhythm, you can really start questioning, what is savior mentality? What is salvation point mentality? We’re always looking for the solution. So I think rather than looking for this solution, we need to acknowledge where we are at in this consciousness, or in this continuum of being in the present and this comes through when you speak your Indigenous language and most Indigenous languages that I know of, don’t have nouns. So therefore there cannot be a savior mentality.
Now you see how the western mind tries to take all of what I just said and put it into the box of, I need to find the answer to why is this? We need a reference, we need something so that we can learn “how to”, as if how to was a manual to do something. And what we’ve forgotten is that Mother Earth is always listening to us, Mother Earth is always teaching us lessons. There’s not one time in human history, that humans can teach Mother Earth, any lesson, you see. And so that’s our arrogance to think that we can control the Earth, we can, you know, do what we want to the Earth, and even save the Earth. And so in that sense, you know, the Western mind, the Euro-Western wants to be at the top of the heap so that they can, I don’t know what it is, reward, cause and effect, take and reward, or give and reward type of mentality, a dualism. And you see that Mother Earth is not like that, very many qualities of communication she has. So I guess that’s a long way of understanding or trying to answer the question of what is savior mentality.
Ayana Young Thank you for that. Yeah, something that was coming up for me was, maybe it’s about control and that need of control potentially stems from some type of fear. You know, it’s interesting, because I have really been stepping away from the idea of solutions or savior mentality, although I know I was very wrapped up in that, you know, back in my just, honestly, a few years ago, and so it feels relieving to challenge the savior mentality and challenge, that frantic need to be dominant, whether that dominance is coming from good intentions or not. Yeah, so it was really helpful hearing that response.
And similarly, I think about non-Indigenous folks’ hyper-fixation with climate collapse in terms of “end times” rather than thinking about this moment as being a part of the Earth’s cycle, and because of all of the data on warming temperatures, depleted soils, loss of diversity – I understand why so many of us struggle with this…But, speaking for myself, the more I’ve learned about climate collapse, the less prepared I feel, the less I know…and that makes sense, because if we are mired in a spiritual problem, then of course the data isn’t going to do much for us. So, I wonder if you could speak to that space between education and wisdom as we try to wrap our minds and hearts around Earth’s transformation?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse Again, another good question. In 1492, you find that Bartolomé de las Casas, the priest who went with Columbus and followed up a few years later about how the Native peoples in those islands saw the newcomers and what the difference was in how they denied the Earth, how they conquered the Earth, how they did this possession ceremony on one of the islands and stuck a staff into the Earth and claimed her in a sense, you know, so there was the patriarchy coming in with about 2000 years of that same language of domination. It’s basically the language and the behavior, all of the explorations, all the domination, all the colonization before they got here. So what we’re saying, what I’m saying is that the climate denial has been since we noticed it back then and we’ve been saying this for a long time, Native peoples have noticed this and we’ve been telling people all along.
So it would make sense to me. Well, if we’ve been saying these things, for 500 years, why aren’t they listening to us? You know, because we’re listening to the Earth as much as we know that the Earth is listening to us. And this is why we don’t want to take too much or even apply theory, which a lot of Indigenous language don’t have in their original base languages. There’s no need to theorize, no need to show like a theatre, and put on an act or play. It’s really about what is practical mystery, mystery is the energy and that transformation. So when we see the Earth changing, we want to know, because we’re uncomfortable, and then we tend to blame ourselves, which is partly true, only as far as we don’t want to take responsibility for what we are still doing to ourselves as well as the rest of life.
But you see, we always have faith in the Earth, with the Earth, because that’s where our language comes from. The Earth doesn’t lie, so therefore our languages do not lie. And so when we speak directly, that’s called rude, that’s called no manners, that’s called, you know, everything that doesn’t fit to pretension of manners in the Western European mind, because they’ve been corralled into speaking, a restrictive language, restrictive thinking for that long, until they got here 500 years ago. And so you think about how that began way back there in Western democracy and, and when we think about the climate denial, you know, people were trying to leave the Earth, even then, you know, and then once they were able to achieve some amount of civilizational success, then that’s when they start denigrating those peoples who still have and had, and lived with the consciousness of Earth. So basically, they had peace with Earth. These other ones were mental justice seekers and so all the laws even today in the US government, any government, is to control the human mind through man made or human-made laws because it’s all about mental justice is all about keeping you away from the Earth to justice, the true justice that is with the Earth. And so yes, education becomes somewhat of a secondary environment, becomes somewhat of a secondary thought. And because we can be educated about the Earth, and as you said earlier, becomes all numbers and measurements and weights and what good is it to us?
So yes, I think part of this climate denial that we’re just so hyper-on is that we have this thing that’s halfway true that we listen to, it says trust science, but we don’t know what we’re saying with the etymology of the word science. And we could look at that and that’s why I asked others who speak this language much better than I do to look at their etymology, and what are they basically spelling? You know, what is their spell that they’re putting on themselves and others, because you this language we speak doesn’t go that far back or back that far. So it’s too big for this mind of restrictive thinking. But our hearts understand that there’s something going on. Our hearts never say it’s wrong or right, it’s our minds who follow the rules and regulations and don’t want to believe others because we have been schooled and educated that we are right because we have the measurements right here and that science always changes. Because that science is controlled by Earth, if I could use the word control, every time the Earth changes, those numbers and statistics and weights and predictions, and whatever forecasts, everything changes, because you know, half of that is 50/50 chance anyway.
But you have these so-called “uncivilized primitive” Native people who’ve been kind of impractical all this time and as my uncle says, you know, in a sort of a metaphorical way “You can’t take it with you. So why take it now?” You see, so when we look at this, is that, is that what’s going on now? Are we trying to save the Earth to take with us, are we trying to leave a legacy and see the work within our time, so that we’re proud of ourselves and take credit for us because I have a piece of paper that says, I know something because I follow the rules and regulations of that dualism? And when it comes to the practicality of that, I could not really apply any of that education to the work that is required by the Earth. Because that education also taught me I’m doing my best, I’m doing my best, because a lot of us had that money to go to school. Right? Then it really drew you away from the spirit of what the Earth meant to be. And this is why looking at Earth transformation is really – we’re transfixed, that we can change the transformation so that it is saved for those who could afford to save the whale, those who can afford to save the National Park. And all those ideas are just beyond Indigenous folks, the ones who aren’t colonized. They’re like, wait a minute, how can you do that when Mother Earth is already in movement, never questioning, always moving and caring about that same time. Now, that’s the understanding I think we have disconnected ourselves from.
Ayana Young Yeah, I’m really sitting with my own desire to protect what is left, and, and also wanting to be in relationship rather than wanting to go back into that savior mentality, but it’s really challenging, especially with the emotional, just the grief of what is being lost. And so I think I’m going to have to sit with this more just on a personal level of how to reckon with the reality of this time, and what it actually means to be in right relationship with each other and the Earth in general. So it’s a really big one.
Something that’s come up in conversation for me is the importance of shattering binary thinking and welcoming complication, because so many of us are finally learning that simplifications and processes of efficacy are not to our benefit or betterment. They’re certainly easier to navigate and profit off of, but that’s about it. And so I wonder if you could relate this to how showing up for the Earth requires one to remove themselves from the nature humanity binary, or perhaps if you think there is a relationship between revering complexity, and shattering binary thinking,
Something that has come up in conversation for me, is the importance of shattering binary thinking and welcoming complication because so many of us are finally learning that simplifications, and processes of efficacy, are not to our benefit or betterment. They are certainly easier to navigate and profit off of, but that’s about it. And so I wonder if you could relate this to how showing up for the Earth requires one to remove themselves from the nature/humanity binary, or perhaps if you think there is a relationship between revering complexity and shattering binary thinking?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse We have a saying that we kind of reinterpret into all my relations, it’s called mitakuye oyasin, and really mitakuye oyasin, you cannot feel, you cannot think in dualism, you can think only in inclusion. And if there is no word for exclusion in our languages, then you see how further along we’ve come in that process of evolving our spirits into understanding the transformation, the complexity, the simplicity, that is complexity, because people want to think that they have to down dress the idea of complexity so it’s simple. But yet, if you’re speaking the languages of the Earth, like I said, Earth doesn’t lie. And so your languages are along the complexities of the Earth and you see how many, so many variants of species and how to deal with the weather, in all of that is to not think that we’re in control of it, or even that God made this for us. You see.
So once we let go of those domination thought processes, that more than two dimensional thought process, you wake up and they come and you’re like, “Wait now, we can’t know all of this, we’re spending our time gathering information without ever experiencing it.” So we are stuck with the ideas of information and knowledge and then we refer to “Well, someone who’s tenured in educational processes is wise now because he’s tenured, he’s older, she’s older. And so they’re wise.” And yet those textbook knowledge keepers are not ever experienced. They may go out and study here and there, but when you have Indigenous peoples always in the rhythm of the Earth, they’re not educated. But yet, in a sense of taking this concept of education and trying to put it on Native people, it’s like injecting with them with something, right, and they’re not ever going to understand it, because they’re already too far ahead of education that this system requires in order for you to get ahead, but with the Indigenous processes of Earth, it doesn’t need education, it needs experience with and that way, we spend all of our time trying to reinterpret something, that we can’t wrap around our minds, and we’re stuck in the same cycle of cause and effect. How do you do this? And what do you do? And that’s a point of privilege that we come from is that, I have a question, you answer it for me and you tell me how to do something so I can take it easy the rest of my life type of thing. But yet we avoid the suffering, we avoid the pain, we avoid the grief, as you said.
So I think one thing to know is that, that energy that we all have, every one of us even other life forms, is that every moment we live in innocence. Now without the ties or the tethers to guilt, you know, so every moment is innocent and it’s true is not because you’re a child, that you’re innocent and then you become guilty, dark and all these things. It’s not that energy is the same. It’s innocent, it doesn’t matter if you’re 85, or you’re one year old, that energy is still the same. It is just how you are living with us, as you see children are living with energy. But because of the programming, the system, we get away from living with the energy, and we start using reality rather than living reality. And so that energy changes until we run into people who have never really left that energy and the acknowledgment of the continuum of just being in the present all the time rather tied to the past, rather, rather than being you know, in anticipation of a future the whole process. You know, because we have the education therefore our technology is going to save it for us and I think part of that is understanding inclusivity, your relationship, rather than connectivity or exclusiveness.
Ayana Young Yes, I really see that and, yeah, I’d like to ask you about the use of prophecy, because I think this is a term that has really been misunderstood by new-age understanding, but you point out that prophecy is not the ego’s voyage into the future, and it’s not inherently punitive. And to some extent, I wonder if we really understood the use of prophecy, it might encourage us to desire different outcomes altogether…So can you clear up some of the misunderstandings you hear most often when people bring up the idea of prophecy?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse I think that the current definition we use in the Western world is we tend to make these prophecies like, like profits into magical ones or magic people. And it’s kind of true, but it’s still with, you know, chance. And if that doesn’t come true, it’s like forecasting the weather and it goes wrong, then you hate the weather because you didn’t forecast it, right. So that definition is with whoever, is taking the true essence and the definition of prophecy away, and put it into a mental concept. And so when I think about well, what is a prophet in that sense, in a lot of Indigenous languages, a prophet would be the one who observed the Earth as an Earth person, as an Earth being and knows what the seasons are, and knows that the stars, following the stars, and knows that intelligence, right? And so you see how much, or how less, these prophets really think of human invention, human technology, you can dig up the Earth and make all kinds of machines to, you know, say, “Oh, look, we can, at least to predict the earthquake.” And all it is is that we dug up the Earth. You know, oh, we, we can dig up the Earth and cut down all the trees and then we can predict that there will be, you know, land erosion from the book that’s made by trees and still not see – we only see the elephant in the room, but no one talks about the room.
So it’s a system that I’m saying the prophets, the prophecy that is punitive, if it doesn’t come true, you hate it, you don’t like it. And therefore, it’s a give and reward system. In the other way of thinking, prophecies come from experience. If you do it this way, then it may come true and if you don’t do it that way, well, you know, there’s a chance that it won’t come true and you’re just kind of, you know, shooting into the darkness, so to speak. So I think it’s more based on reality and the more experienced you are, with the history passed on, by women, actually, that detailing history passed on generations and generations, and we’re talking 20,000 generations on this side of the Earth, you know, and from that primal thought, as we say, we can’t say we began over there, we’re using Western time scale. So 20,000 years of passing the same song, the same songs, just practically the same language to understand what prophecy is – that you can actually say; “Oh yeah, those, those birds, they come back every seven years.” And you know, we can say that that much, but that’s practical. That’s practical prophecy.
Then if you understand the energy, here’s the other thing with this, Ayana, is if you understand the energy of what magic truly is, magi is not the genie that people think, because that’s another westernized a monotheism, the magi is actually a bird who uses the tool of the Earth to make magic. And what are we doing as human beings? Fishes use the water, and even the air with the tools that they’ve been given, and that’s magic. You see, we cannot live in water, we cannot live in fire, we cannot live, you know, without a plane up there in the sky, we can’t live in stone. And yet all of those tools of the Earth are being used properly. The energy is being used properly, by the magi, the wise ones of the Earth, who know how to use the tools of the Earth properly. And with our technology, we become magicians. We fool ourselves, we fool everything else but we cannot fool nature.
So these magicians, this illusion that we can save the Earth that we’ve been talking about before, and the complexity of that energy is not understood because we don’t speak language, we try to put it into quantum physics mathematical formulas. And yet that goes only so far, when we put it within the language of the energy we speak, then you have a living language that goes along with the prophecy that you talk about. So you know, and that way we have to maybe redefine or talk about prophecy a little bit more, rather than the accepted idea of what prophets use in the biblical sense.
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