'Earth Mother getting angry': American Indians fight climate change

[DeepModem Mom]

Concord Monitor/AP: 'Earth Mother getting angry'
American Indians fight climate change
June 18. 2007

From New Hampshire to California, American Indian leaders are speaking out more forcefully about the danger of climate change.

Members of six tribes recently gathered near the Baker River in the White Mountains for a sacred ceremony honoring "Earth Mother." Talking Hawk, a Mohawk Indian who asked to be identified by his Indian name, pointed to the river's tea-colored water as proof that the overwhelming amount of pollution humans have produced has caused changes around the globe.

"It's August color. It's not normal," he said.

"Earth Mother is fighting back - not only from the four winds, but also from underneath," he said. "Scientists call it global warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry."

At a United Nations meeting last month, several American Indian leaders spoke at a session called "Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change." Also in May, tribal representatives from Alaska and northern Canada - where pack ice has vanished earlier and earlier each spring - traveled to Washington to press their case.

In California, Minnesota, New Mexico, and elsewhere, tribes have used some of their casino profits to start alternative or renewable energy projects, including biomass-fueled power plants. In New Hampshire, where American Indians have become integrated in the broader society, some have questioned the effect of local development....

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070618/REPOSITORY/706180330

[hippiechick]

1. Indeed.

I've related several times the thoughts of my Sustainable Development Prof, who truly believed that Mother Gaia is a living organism. He said, on numerous occassions, that when she tires of our abuse, she will give a mighty shrug and shake, and rid herself of us like the parasites we are.


:hippie:

[donsu]

2. kick

nt

[OneBlueSky]

3. if, throughout our history, this nation had embraced the earth-centered spirituality . . .

of the Native Americans rather than decimating it and the people who cherished it, we'd be a hell of a lot better off today . . .

"To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new theology here. As it was, they took inventory. Frederick Turner

[DeepModem Mom]

4. That is a stunning passage, OneBlueSky. Thank you! nt

[glitch]

7. Second this. nt

[Martin Eden]

5. in the movie "Little Big Man"

"Old Lodge Skins" played by Chief Dan George is holding up a scalp, and replying to Dustin Hoffman's character after the Sand Creek Massacre:

Little Big Man: Do you hate them? Do you hate the White man now?

Old Lodge Skins: Do you see this fine thing? Do you admire the humanity of it? Because the human beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals. But also water, earth, stone. And also the things from them... like that hair. The man from whom this hair came, he's bald on the other side, because I now own his scalp! That is the way things are. But the white man, they believe EVERYTHING is dead. Stone, earth, animals. And people! Even their own people! If things keep trying to live, white man will rub them out. That is the difference.

[Morgana LaFey]

8. I have often fantasized what our life and culture would be like

if when Europeans came here they'd blended cultures with the indigenous peoples instead of decimating them and their culture. Just imagine the possibilities!

Western Europeans' "contribution" to the world has amounted to destroying and/or profaning everything. Absolutely everything.

[Chulanowa]

9. Rome's Legacy

Turn everything into a machine. Efficiency is key. Production is god. It doesn't matter if your culture is notable, so long as you can expand it with a killing force. The only worth a land or a people has is that which can fill your own pockets through their exploitation.

France, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Great Britain, The United States, Nazi Germany... all have tried to be Rome. All have tried to emulate the "success" of the Roman Empire, through slavery, exploitation, and massacre.

Everyone would be a lot better off if the Mongols or Moors had taken Western Europe. even the Western Europeans would have been.

[Morgana LaFey]

11. Eh, I vote for the old Goddess-worshipping civilizations to have

not been overrun and conquered by the conquering hordes myself.

[Chulanowa]

12. Which ones are those?

The Celts? The Germanic peoples? North African tribes? Unfortunately Morgana, the idea of some sort of goddess-centered worship prior to the Christianization of Europe is a very modern myth.

It starts with the romantic mythos of the "noble savage." Lacking good writing about the Celtic tribes, scholars of the modern era painted this idyllic picture of them being some sort of "salt of the earth" types who were totally in communion and balance with nature and had basically some sort of paradise until the Romans overtook them. Much of this was concocted for the same reason that the Native Americans got branded noble savages, or that Caribbean pirates were depicted as freedom-loving heroes - It was sacrificing historical fact for "golden age" bullcrap.

So you take this junk history, and fast-forward a few decades to the growing popularity of Wicca and its sort among the women's liberation movement. They look at this constructed history of total peace and oneness with nature and harmony and such, and deduced of course that this was all due to having a female-dominant society since a male-dominated one would never achieve harmony with anything due to evil penis-vibes, or somesuch. So all of a sudden, not only are these people beautiful and bronze-skinned nature-lovers who were tragically ground down by industry, but they are also enlightened and liberated goddess-worshipeprs who were smooshed by the patriarchal Church.

Fact is, we really don't have a good picture of what the Celts believed. What we do have is Greco-roman records of dubious historical value (During Boudicca's revolt, the Iceni were accused of throwing Roman babies in the air to impale on their spears, and then eat them. Raw. Riiiiiight.) What we do have implies a continent-wide Solar worship, that is then further broken down into more localized gods and powers over rivers, groves, rocks, etc. The most complete record of any sort of Celtic religious beliefs and mythos we have is that of pre-christian Ireland, and the stories of the Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha de Danaan, etc. And these stories are all pretty darned male-oriented, as are the fragments we have from Wales - a lot of the Welsh ones are outright misogynistic, full of women betraying their husbands, cuckolds, and other "women are treacherous" themes. Blodeuwedd comes to mind.

All that aside, there are rather reliable records of Celts raiding their neighbors for women and cattle - they usually kept the cattle, and most often sold the women into slavery. Life as a woman among the Celts was likely pretty damn brutal - not exactly a culture where you would expect religious practice to center around a goddess.

As for the Germanic peoples, we have some pretty good records of their views on the system. women were respected, but still more or less regarded as household furnishings rather than full people. The goddesses of the German peoples all tended towards the "housefrau" model, tending the house and kids while their husbands are running around inventing everything, killing the bad guys, exploring the world, etc. You'll notice that it's only the male gods that have a part in Ragnarok, for instance.

Not trying to be an ass - I just get a little annoyed by some of the bad history people have cooked up and that others repeat. It's like hearing all the versions of the Atlantis myth - thank you, Edgar Cayce, for screwing up a rather simple parable.

Now, all that said... I think we're pretty much on the same page here - the world could have done without Rome. Though, thank goodness Rome used slave labor, else we would have locomotives crossing the world thirteen centuries too soon!

[Morgana LaFey]

13. Not talking about the Celts

well, yes, white male anthropologists like to think of it as myth. You can too if you like. You'll have plenty of (white, male) support.

Go study Gimbutas' work a bit. Or simply read The Blade and the Chalice by Rianne Eissler.

[Chulanowa]

14. I've done both

In fact I had Rianne Eissler in mind when I was talking about "golden age" mythologies. You can claim a grand conspiracy of evil white guys trying to "suppress the truth" all you want - it really seems to be what you're best at - but the fact is, neither work you point out actually has any archaeological basis.

Marija Gimbutas used a supposed linguistic theory to create a model of a singular continent-wide society for Neolithic Europe, leaning heavily on mother-dolls as proof... which is like saying that every culture that used the svasticka supports Nazi ideology. Her theory of a matrilineal Europe got a note of vindication when Neolithic remains in Scandanavia were found to be interrealated through the female side, but it's hardly conclusive evidence - matrilineal societies are pretty damn common through history, in all four hemispheres. And Scandinavia is quite a hike from where Gimbutas was building her theory in the Balkans.

I would be interested in knowing what you think gives her Kurgan theory more weight than the Anatolian hypothesis, or the ones suggesting the Indo-Europeans came from the Indian subcontinent? They all have about the same amount of evidence backing them, after all.

And then, we have Rianne Eissler. She more or less took Marja Gimbutas' theories, and stapled the Communist Manifesto to it for her book. According to The Blade and the Chalice not only did Marija Gimbutras' agrarian goddess-worshippers exist for certain, but they were a perfect and utopian society, where there was no warfare or strife, no class or social divisions, no extremes of wealth, no hunger, no sexism, totaly egalitarian with free love for all. Of course, one has to ignore the fact that in this proposed society women were dominant and "the goddess" was the singular divine figure, in order to swallow the "egalitarian society with no sexism or class divisions" bits. A little note on this "goddess" - I find it curious that there is no name for this entity. Generally when dealing with lost cultures, it goes the other way around - We know the name, but none of the particulars. At any rate, this paradise in Europe was shattered when evil penis-worshipers from the east thundered down on their horses, raped everyone, and set up a system that had absolutely no purpose or aim except to kill people and subjugate women. Furthermore, this event completely and utterly ruined humanity the world over - It's strange that the loss of a utopia in ancient Europe would have much of an effect on the natives of, say, Australia at the time, but apparently it did, which is why their matriarchal societies stoll have war, strife, class divisions, et cetera...

If you can't tell, I find the book to be goofy. It takes a shaky foundation, injects a heavy amount of modern ideology into it, and then uses it to denounce all the other societies that, in theory, should fall in line with the book's proposed history - and it all claims to be absolute historical fact. It's sort of like believing that Robert E. Howard gives an accurate portrayal of Picts and Cimmerians.

Now, are these two women wrong? In my opinion, most probably - and if so they will be joining a long list of white men who were also wrong on the same subject, so don't give me any of that crap. The simple fact is, my opinion aside, there just not enough evidence about these people to make a solid theory on their culture beyond "well, they made pottery this way, and they probably grew an early form of turnip, because we found some terra cotta bowls with roots in there...." We're talking about folks who had no written record, built no real permanent residences, and lived six, seven thousand years ago on a continent that has seen a hell of a lot of migration across all directions.

However, might I recommend Dancing Shadows by AOUMIEL to you? It's similar to The Blade and the Chalice and draws on several of the same suppositions, but focuses more on the "out of India" theory and leaves out the trappings of the 19th century idea of utopia. I'm sure I have other books to recommend, though I confess, most of my library focuses on shamanism (I try to vie away from the "male vs. female" aspect of paganism, myself...)

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread DeepModem Mom.

[Chico Man]

10. Wonder how mega casinos fit into the picture

I don't think I've ever seen a solar panel at Foxwoods, and most of the tribal folks drive around in big black SUV's with tinted windows acting like mafia gangsters. At least the museum looks to be somewhat "energy efficient" with a dirt roof and what looks to be south facing windows..