At 4pm local time on Friday October 25th 2019, access to the climbing of Uluru (aka Ayer’s Rock) in Australia was definitively cut off to tourists, culminating in what has been a decades-long struggle for Aboriginal sovereignty against the incursions of mass tourism. The ban comes 34 years after ownership of the rock was returned to its traditional Aboriginal Anangu stewards, who have been caring for these lands for over 30,000 years. The route to the top of Uluru is deeply sacred to the Anangu people, and the path to the summit is only ever used within the context of an initiation ceremony for Anangu men. The route to the summit is understood by the Anangu to be the same path taken by their ancient ancestors during the Dreamtime, during which the very land itself was formed from their bodies and movements. The notion of climbing the peak with the attitude that it is just an object to be climbed and consumed for leisure is deeply offensive to the sensibilities of the Anangu, for whom the worshiping of Uluru is synonymous with the respect and reverence given to the most fundamental source of life itself. To make matters worse, tourists use the top of Uluru as an open air toilet, shitting and pissing on the peak, which then runs down the rock and poisons the water and wildlife below. A Euro-Centric translation of the kind of offence being undertaken by summiting tourists might look like myself and some friends walking into the Vatican, grabbing a large crucifix off a wall, and playing baseball with it there inside the building during a mass that the Pope himself is presiding over.

After many years of the Anangu pleading with tourists to stop climbing their sacred rock – including posted signs and an invitation to instead walk around the perimeter of the rock as a less invasive way of visiting it – thousands upon thousands continued to scale the peak year after year, arguing that Uluru belonged to ‘all Australians’ and that it was rather a matter of national education and civic enlightenment that told them that they were entitled to step anywhere they wanted, at any time, and that the ‘right’ of attaining the view from Uluru’s peak superseded the wishes of its Aboriginal stewards.

It’s a strange kind of contorted reasoning, where on the one hand, modern secular materialism argues that all matter is dead and interchangeable – that the notion of sacredness is just primitive superstition, and that there is no law or boundary that is superior to that of human liberty and human knowledge production. Yet on the other hand, since at least the early 1700s, modernist Europeans (most especially Anglo culture) have been obsessed with penetrating the highest, most sacred summit sites around the globe – from Africa to the Himalayas to the Swiss Alps to the Scottish Highlands, Anglo ‘explorers’ have expended tremendous treasure and extinguished countless lives (their own and their Sherpas and hired help) in order to defy local indigenous prohibitions against summiting their sacred summits. This was just one of the ways in which the middle and upper classes could viscerally participate in global projects of imperialism in their own way. Where local indigenous populations considered prominent summits to be sacred and off-limits to human presence, modern explorers saw the same peaks as untamed natural adversaries to be conquered in the name of human progress and evolution. By thus ‘proving’ to the local indigenous populations below that there was nothing sacred about the peaks – no Gods or divine spirits to be found up there – the conquerors simultaneously performed the supposed supremacy of modernity and techno-science as they slowly penetrated the few last remaining uncharted regions on their maps, until finally, from the peak of Mt. Everest in 1953, nothing was left that could withstand the gazing eye of Euro-Centric modernity as it surveyed all that lay below it.

When I first moved to the US state of New Mexico in 2010, one of the things that first endeared me to the state and culture there was when I was first told about sacred mesas/plateaus that were considered off-limits to non-indigenous peoples and tourists. While it was perhaps not legally binding, the general culture among most people there was that these sacred sites should be respected, and that there were some places where, due to culturally understood signs of respect, people like myself were asked not to walk. I felt a similar appreciation the first time I took the Rail Runner train from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, where, before traveling through Pueblo land, a recorded message plays throughout the train, asking passengers to please respect local indigenous protocols and refrain from taking photographs out the windows until the train has passed beyond Pueblo lands. Although I couldn’t perhaps put words to it at the time, these prohibitions made me feel safer and more comfortable living in New Mexico, even as an Anglo and foreigner, because it meant that there were still at least places in these lands where something other than modern secular materialism reigned supreme – that there was still some semblance of resistance remaining that continued to defy the extractive gaze of a colonialist paradigm.

We need boundaries and limits in order to preserve meaning and perspective. Without spaces that are reserved for special or sacred occasions – without the reverence for Mystery and protocols through which to observe it collectively – all space becomes equally mundane, and the spell of Universalism holds us under its sway. Universalism tells us that things are the same everywhere, for everyone, and that there is no other possibility other than the currently dominant paradigm of secular modern materialism. Universalism tries to convince you that mountains are there to be summited and conquered as quickly and efficiently as possible before hurrying on to the next summit. Universalism causes the imagination to atrophy, and it tries to convince you that it’s useless to even try to imagine other ways, other paradigms, other qualities of relationship. At its roots, Universalism is the re-packaged specter of Monotheism and the illusion that there is only one singular God – one singular power, or divine source of all life and meaning – and that this singular power is known and possessed exclusively by a particular group of people which makes them supreme above all others.

It may seem inconsequential to some that this week, in the Australian desert, footsteps have ceased to plod up the sides of Uluru. It may seem beyond most people’s concern that its peak will once again know stillness and silence for the first time in almost 100 years. Yet, the significance of this shift should not be overlooked. For those who will still choose to visit Uluru in the future and take the opportunity to circumambulate the rock along the six and a half mile track around its base, perhaps some will be aware that the slow circling of mountains by foot has been a form of ritualized worship and respect performed by various indigenous cultures around the world for many thousands of years. The West African elder Malidoma Somé translates the Dagara word for Mystery as “the thing which your knowledge cannot eat”. For Mystery is the groundwater of the imagination, and in order for it to flow and continue to feed life itself, it resists being made visible and rational. By preserving and observing the sacredness of places such as Uluru, we are reminded that there are other possibilities; other paradigms other than the current dominant regime of extraction and moving on. We’re reminded that the fastest and most efficient solutions are often incompatible with long-term sustainment of life itself. We’re reminded that Universalism is not universal, and that the weave of the world is woven by a spiraling dance of divine counterpoint and sacred difference.

*Note: This article was first published HERE by Bella Caledonia in Scotland, on October 27th, 2019

Greetings fellow wonderers and wanderers --

In this fourth episode of The Donkey and the Bridge, I’m grateful to be joined from Taos, New Mexico by Pat McCabe, also known as Woman Stands Shining. Pat is one of the most inspiring and inspired voices I’ve ever come across, bringing an incredibly compassionate yet critical perspective to issues of indigenous knowledges, gender, colonisation, and the many illusions of separation that divide us.

​BIOGRAPHY:
Pat McCabe is a Diné  mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace who draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance. She is devoted to supporting the generations to come, and upholding the honor of being human.​

Follow Pat on Facebook or visit her website at www.patmccabe.net
Also check out two events Pat is facilitating in Spring and Fall

Greetings fellow wonderers --

Joining me today is  friend, sex-educator, dancer, writer, kink-advocate, ritualist, and community worker, Zahava Griss. A dancer by training, Zahava has been using embodiment, ritual, and radical love to perform and educate on themes of racial and gender justice, sex and the erotic, and ways of de-colonizing our relations with pleasure, grief, and communal ethics. Enjoy our discussion as we weave through these topics, wondering on how things have come to be as they are, and what support for, and from, our sensual bodies can look like.

Greetings all --

It's a pleasure to share this interview I conducted with Stephen Jenkinson, a profound mentor of mine for many years now.  Stephen is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house for the skills of deep living and making human culture. It is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, working for a time yet to come.

His latest book, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, was released in July 2018.

In his landmark provocative style, Stephen Jenkinson makes the case that we must birth a new generation of elders, one poised and willing to be true stewards of the planet and its species. Come of Age does not offer tips on how to be a better senior citizen or how to be kinder to our elders. Rather, with lyrical prose and incisive insight, Stephen Jenkinson explores the great paradox of elderhood in North America: how we are awash in the aged and yet somehow lacking in wisdom; how we relegate senior citizens to the corner of the house while simultaneously heralding them as sage elders simply by virtue of their age. Our own unreconciled relationship with what it means to be an elder has yielded a culture nearly bereft of them. Meanwhile, the planet boils, and the younger generation boils with anger over being left an environment and sociopolitical landscape deeply scarred and broken.

Taking on the sacred cow of the family, Jenkinson argues that elderhood is a function rather than an identity–it is not a position earned simply by the number of years on the planet or the title “parent” or “grandparent.” As with his seminal book Die Wise, Jenkinson interweaves rich personal stories with iconoclastic observations that will leave readers radically rethinking their concept of what it takes to be an elder and the risks of doing otherwise. Part critique, part call to action, Come of Age is a love song inviting all of us to grow up, before it’s too late.

Click on the PODCAST image to access the interview

If that link isn't working,  try the following   link instead

If you enjoyed the music and want to know what was used, the intro track was Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen, and the  outro track was Rivers of Babylon by Gondwana.

Greetings all --

Joining me today is Dr. Daniel Foor: Accomplished ritualist, teacher, initiate and practitioner of West African Ifa/Orisha traditions. He's also the author of the brilliant book Ancestral Healing:  Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.   After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, Daniel, his wife, and their new baby girl have settled in Asheville, North Carolina, from where he has been training practitioners of ancestral lineage healing. 

In addition to the ongoing apprentice trainings, Daniel is currently launching a unique online Animism course,  where students from around the world will gather, practice, and discuss online the teachings that Daniel shares via video on animist ethics and pragmatic rituals for relating with our other-than-human kin.   What I love about Daniel's work and approach is that it's down-to-earth, compassionate yet rigorous, with great attention to nuance and the basic skills and practicalities of ritually working with ancestors. 

In our conversation below, we touched on a wealth of topics including:

• Why Animism?
• How can adapting Animist ethics and practices contribute to healing both the environment and our relations with non-humans?
• What is a God, and how do Gods relate to ancestors?
• Am I still British/Jewish/bi-sexual/Hispanic/etc. when I die?
•  How can ancestors work act as allies  towards social justice?
• Why must social justice expand to include the dead, and non-human beings?

Please enjoy the podcast below and if you're intrigued and/or moved by Daniel's work, check out his website: 
ancestralmedicine.org

Daniel Foor is a licensed psychotherapist and a doctor of psychology. He has led ancestral and family healing intensives throughout the United States since 2005. He is an initiate in the Ifa/Orisha tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and has trained with teachers of Mahayana Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and different Indigenous paths, including the older ways of his European ancestors. He's the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing, and he currently lives in Asheville, NC.

Click on the PODCAST image to access the interview

(the main link isn't working for some people at the moment -- try this other link  via iTunes if that's the case)

If you enjoyed the music and want to know what was used, the intro track was Egúngún by Asabioje Afenapa, and the  outro track was Why People Disappear  by His Name Is Alive.

If you're interested in  learning more about Animism and the sorts of subjects talked about in this podcast, here are some resources that could be of interest:

What is Animism?
Short primer by Daniel Foor on what exactly is Animism.

The Wakeful World by Emma Restall-Orr
A rigorous and rich exploration of the science and metaphysics of Animism by British feminist and Druid Restall-Orr that  focuses specifically on the ancient and contemporary traditions of Animism within Europe.

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
Abram's weaves phenomenology, magic, and lyrical writing  to draw attention to the enchanted relations available at our own doorstep, wherever we are. 

Animism: Respecting The Living World by Graham Harvey
A comprehensive survey of animist traditions and understandings from around the world.

Bespoken Bones:  Ancestors at the Crossroads of Sex, Magick, and Science
Podcast series with Pavini Moray that centres queer, trans, POC, and gender-non-conforming perspectives on how Animism, Sex, Ancestors and Magic can bring about personal and planetary liberation.

This  post continues an experiment in resourcing collective  wisdom via social-media discussions. This and another few related conversations were had on my facebook wall in November of 2017. As a longing for the archiving of community wisdom and resilience, I'm making these conversations available again in this format and hope that it may serve as a resource for related research, conversations, and resilience.

Original Posting: The heart of my original question from the other day...which is that most people don't belong to any deeply rooted or deeply practiced 'tribe' and what i'm concerned about is what happens when trauma/wounding itself becomes the identity around which 'tribe' is fashioned.
In such an architecture, it's possible that healing the trauma simultaneously would mean ceasing to identity with or be identified by the 'tribe' and so the trauma is potentially held on to as an impoverished means of maintaining a sense of belonging.
 
 
Koll Kowski It's called "secondary gain"

• Tamsin Haggis As in, people get together to share news of the supposedly shared affliction, then gain a community and a sense of belonging? And probably then have to remain identified with the affliction to maintain the gain of the belonging...
• Koll Kowski Yep, exactly. Works the same with illness. It's very tricky to let go of a condition once you gained the attention & support of family, friends and support groups etc. It can then hinder the actual recovery as one needs to let go of the identification with it and the support to find a new way of being...

Daniel Foor Just one angle...by including in our ancestral narrative also the (often) much older ancestors, the ones already deeply well in spirit and who lived on Earth in ways we might describe as indigenous/animist...those ancestors provide one nourishing identity factor or source of belonging that can still hold the more recent ancestors who (among other experiences) often lived through a higher degree of oppression/oppressing/dislocation/etc. In doing this the often more recent ones who were previously troubled can be ritually assisted to become more well/seated in the present, so they're still absolutely involved in one's sense of self (inc. the ancestors who have acted in culturally harmful ways), but it's with the recognition that they change. Again just one way to not abandon or try to opt out of our bond with the troubled dead (I think one relevant emphasis of the folks who seem at times to over-emphasize the wounding...Don't Forget These Things!) but also not let their suffering define us. Call in the elders, the more ancient ancestors and let them hold all of it. In that way it's actually a go deeper into the story remedy, dig even deeper. p.s. Love your questions/threads Christos and clear voice, keep up the great work!

• Daniel Foor Or from another angle, over identification with the trauma is a kind of ghost interference or possession and can be usefully treated as such.
• Christos Galanis Thanks Daniel Foor for this really helpful and celebratory insight...there's that feeling that some new information gives me, of resolving an either/or tension I was unknowingly holding inside me, and then another angle on it suddenly holds that tension within itself and suggests that it doesn't have to be either/or...this idea that one doesn't have to disown or evacuate one's more recent wounded ancestry, but that one can go deeper into the lineage and be sourced by currents that are not as troubled or hungry, and then from that deeper groundwater, to rise back up and be able to have the capacity to then engage and embrace the more wounded layers. The scene that is literally coming to mind as I write this is of a healthy and ancient ecosystem in which there are young and medium growth plants with shallow taproots which are involved in the more immediate, everyday relationships of adapting to immediate disturbances and shifts and changes, while the most ancient and large trees are able to tap much deeper and more calm reservoirs, where change is perhaps less violent and disruptive...perhaps another analogy for the imperative of having elders in one's midst for a healthy community...

• Daniel Foor Not only do we not have to disown anything about our ancestors, if we can just see them as people (in the present) who are capable of change, once we've come into more conscious relationship they can become amazing allies in personal, family, and cultural healing. Even the ones people like to hate on and feel all tangled up about. They can change. What a relief! And for sure the tall trees of the ancient ones hold this process, provide the container and also the energy for the transformation itself to unfold. At least that's how I've been ritually approaching this work for the last 15 years or so. And again, just one way.
• Katie Lee Weille Thank you daniel (and christos) this is a very rich and helpful perspective

Pat McCabe Yes. As I willfully and willingly leave the tapestry of human trauma one of the most daunting aspects is definitely the sense of being alone. Our social currency is so built on our trauma, there are few thought forms and dialogues that are there for someone stepping out of that paradigm. It is here that I draw upon my own culture, which proposes that we come from Original Beauty, and not original sin. 
Beauty above us
Beauty below us
Beauty before us
Beauty behind us
There is Beauty all around us...

• Christos Galanis Pat McCabe; Yes, I hear you and how daunting it might be to cease to identify with a tapestry of trauma that generally promises a bounty of social currency depending on what aspects of one's identity one highlights. If it's any affirmation of the virtue of this process you're undertaking, I have been moved to deep & healing tears on two occasions watching talks you've given...the first was when you spoke as an Indigenous person of north america addressing the ancestors of europeans and honouring their hundreds of years of struggling against colonialism...and the second was when you spoke as a woman, addressing men and honouring the intense fire of creation that we are entrusted to carry within us...in all my years of working in related communities, I have never heard someone speak and honour that which has wounded them personally and ancestrally in the manner that you have, with as much courage to abandon the narrative of Power Over, and to see value in all expressions of Creation. Thank-you for this. <3

Desiree Lowit Working as a therapist with my focus on treating both PTSD and C-PTSD using EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in support of helping folks to alleviate the symptoms of PTSD, if not recover fully, I think there is great potential for individuals to change how trauma lands in the body, the nervous system and spirit overall. The whole issue with trauma is that the nervous system gets caught in the trauma and then one is always prepared to ward off more trauma. Yet this often leads folks to living into a life of hyper-vigilance versus living into the full bandwith of their existence. I think that identifying as a tribe (with other folks with PTSD), is a lovely stage as part of the journey to ones healing. With that, it’s a stage. So, one feels validated and held and not alone, this is very important. This here primes one for moving into the Next stage of their healing journey. As part of the journey, one can eventually get to the place of being able to handle ordinary and not so ordinary life stressors that might trigger their symptoms. Yet through both my experience using EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP), I see transformation and integration happening quite often. It takes time of course, no quick fixes here, yet there is so much potential to move forward and onward from the first (and very necessary) stages of recovery, which helps one to feel validated and like they are not alone. Then, if one should get to a place of moving to the next stage (should they have the privilege to access therapeutic supports like emdr, sp and other trauma therapies) then there would be less of a trend of being so identified with the trauma. Trauma should not define you. It can change your perception and one can learn from it and grow from it, yet if we over-identify with it, we remain in the limiting grips of trauma and it’s subsequent erroneous beliefs.
 
 
BangHan Kim Wonderful inquiry and insight. Learning so much from the commentaries. I’m contemplating the relationships between personal identity, sense of belonging, personal and collective traumas, and our changing world.
“Impoverished” feels like a good word for the state in which we find ourselves so far removed from ritual, rites of passage, community accountability, elder council, oral mythological wisdoms passed down, etc etc...
In which case i can clearly see how traumas suffered offers us an opportunity to be-long and be literally “held” frozen in a place and time of huge significance and identity shift in our lives. Without tribal witness, holding, and movement forward, what is the meaning of our lives and growth?
What is the point of growing? Does trauma identity allow us a landmark place that feels like a safe field where we can meet also our ancestral wounds// meet the gap where ancestral support is missing and we don’t know how to call it in?

• Daniel Foor A former Zen teacher would always emphasize the need to start by riding the horse the way it's (already) going. Naming the depth of trauma seems like one way to enter authenticity and real speak about the conditions. Not yet guiding the horse but better than getting dragged behind it.

 
 
Karl Frost ... and sets up a competition for status as traumatized/oppressed, which creates a social pressure to exaggerate outward performance of such. Not just loss of identity/community without trauma/oppression, but loss of status within community without more exaggerated performance.
 
 
Dare Sohei Well, a person who has nothing effective centering them other than a trauma identification, or a privilege identification, wouldn't willfully heal or release those things until they had a suitable replacement. Why would they?
So by cultivating a healthier belonging, the less healthy identities can be released.
 
 
Laura Chatain Carolyn Myss believes this to be true, but more as holding on to trauma as an individual identity than as a member of a tribe. It makes perfect sense, though. There are big disincentives to healing, one simple one being "What are you going to talk about when you're no longer talking a bout your wounding?" And "How do you get sympathy and attention when no longer ..... etc." From Myss.

This  post is an experiment in resourcing collective wisdom via social-media discussions. This and another few related conversations were had on my facebook wall in November of 2017 -- this edited version here alone is over 7,600 words, packed full of brilliant insights and contributions on the topic of wounding/trauma and identity.  Usually, such rich discussions eventually peter out and get lost in the hard-to find backlog  of old posts, the focus always being on the new and immediate. As a longing for the archiving of community wisdom and resilience, I'm making this conversation available again in this format and hope that it may serve as a resource for related research, conversations, and resilience.

Original Post: Does anybody have a clear understanding of how and where and when wounding and trauma came to the forefront of identity formation for so many discourses? I'm curious how much of it was incubated within diagnosis and treatment of veterans and those with direct involement with war -- and I'm pondering how that might have eventually come to be internalized and normalized by society at large...in which case I shudder to think that our culture now views itself as suffering trauma from simply being alive, and that warfare and everyday civilian life within this culture are perhaps increasingly being used synonymously...  ​

There’s a fascinating little world that emerges when a donkey meets a bridge. Or to be more specific, when a donkey meets a human that wants him to cross a bridge together. Known to most who spend time with donkeys is the curious fact that many donkeys just really don’t like crossing over bridges; especially bridges with water flowing beneath them. Try it yourself – you’ll be rambling along with a donkey in fine form, going forward together, yet when you come up to a footbridge, your furry-eared friend will suddenly dig in her front legs and progress no further.
 
No amount of pulling, pushing, or cajoling will budge your companion; once a 400-500 pound donkey locks his front legs and makes a decision, it’s almost impossible to physically impose forward motion through normal force. 

​For many, forcing compliance by beating with a stick or whip has been the go-to solution for this inter-species impasse –- resolution through imposition of one’s singular will over another through brutality and the violent overriding of the donkey’s own innate instincts, its own relationship to bridges and water, and its own power of self-preservation. This is partly the reason for the donkey’s reputation for being stupid and stubborn. Stupid because the donkey doesn’t appear to be intelligent enough to understand and comply with your will, like when unpleasant tourists try to communicate with locals by shouting at them; as if louder and harder somehow will cut across the fact that the sounds themselves carry no meaning. Stubborn because even if the donkey does understand, she won’t conform and act out your singular desires and needs over and above her own.
 
In actuality, donkeys are incredibly intelligent and sensitive beings, imbued with an intense sense of curiosity and contemplation, their bodies fine-tuned for parsing out the most minute details in their environment. Their memory is also remarkable, as donkeys are known to recognize two and four-legged friends even after twenty years apart. As animals that are hunted by other animals, their survival has depended on their ability to track and log potential threats over thousands of generations, accumulating an archive of environmental relationships that are passed down through their embodied epigenetic memories. In donkey behaviours and protocols live not only the bodies of their ancestors, but also the lands that sustained their ancestors. Though I haven’t come across an explanation for donkeys’ dislike of bridges anywhere, my sense is that their ancestral lands offer a clue to this particular behaviour. Originally evolving in the stark deserts of what is now Egypt and the North-East of Africa, donkeys would have seldom encountered regular and steady streams of water. And then like in most deserts, when it does rain it pours, and the land is too dry to absorb the downpour. As the water has no place to go, it will dance wildly across the parched earth, moving in unpredictable floods and furies, sweeping away whatever is in its path. 

​In his sublimely beautiful elegy to water - The Secret Knowledge of Water - author Craig Childs describes how in the deserts of the South-West United States, more people die from drowning in flash floods than they do from dehydration. There, many make the fatal mistake of assuming that storms off in the far distance will have no effect on them as they carry on trekking under clear skies through canyons and dry river beds, unaware of the massive wall of water rushing towards them at fantastic speed with nothing to slow down its surge. Perhaps for reasons such as this, donkeys evolved to avoid attempting to ford running water, preferring to stay safer upon higher and dryer ground, waiting out sporadic periods of flash flooding. This would be a completely different experience than that of horses, which evolved in grass-covered steppe landsscapes that would not be prone to such types of flooding. And although they both belong to the equine family of mammals, donkeys are not simply small horses, but a totally different species with a totally different habitat, history, disposition, and social structure. 

Where horses are hierarchical and tend to congregate in close herds, donkey herds are egalitarian and they disperse themselves over great distances in order to alleviate the strain on their desert habitat. Where there is an alpha horse in a herd that all the others follow, donkeys tend to have one or two best friends that they prefer hanging out with, with no single alpha donkey. In domesticating horses, you need to ‘break’ the lead horse, yourself becoming the alpha, whom the rest of the herd will subsequently follow. Such is a politics of dominance and compliance; perfectly suited to a large dense horse herd that needs to move quickly and efficiently as one unit when coming under threat. 

​The natural synergy between hierarchical horse socialization and human military capacities and technologies is one of the fundamental ingredients for the development and rise of the earliest empires of ancient Mesopotamia and the gradual proliferation of civilization.
 
In The Horse, the Wheel and Language, David Anthony traces horse-drawn military chariots back to at least 3500 BCE, placing this vital technology at the very centre of the expanding city-states from which Western civilization is derived. Similarly, the domestication of donkeys for transport between 4600-4000 BCE allowed for the first ever large-scale trade regime between Egypt and Assyria, with donkeys so revered in the ancient world that they received royal ceremonial burials.

​The ancient covenantal dance between humans, horses and donkeys plays a key role in the historical tides of power and territory, and the parallel hierarchical social structures of horse herds and armies is a powerful example of how inter-species collaboration and understanding can facilitate swift change and massive upheavals. Unlike horses however, with donkeys there is no alpha to ‘break,’ as the widely dispersed desert herds had no need to move quickly as one unit, and therefore no need for a regimented hierarchical social structure. Subsequently, in order to get donkeys to follow your lead, trying to identify and break the alpha is a hopelessly lost cause. Trying to ‘break’ a donkey and become the lead donkey would be incomprehensible to them as a strategy or a form of communicating power or territory, since they’re not looking to an alpha to dictate their collective behaviour and choices. Not that many don’t try. Given these histories, however, the scene of a human trying to get a donkey to submit by force becomes both tragedy and comedy, as the donkey could never comprehend that this human is attempting to become the alpha donkey in the herd, while the human just pushes on even harder, cursing the donkey for its stubborn resistance and lack of respect and understanding for this performance of power and dominance.
 
Which brings us back full circle to the donkey and the bridge.
 
How do you get a donkey to cross a bridge without the option of breaking the lead donkey and having the rest follow your lead, or without beating it into a cowering shell of itself?
 
From what was taught to me in my time working with rescued donkeys in New Mexico, and from all my research into the matter, the answer that comes through is the relational, collaborative negotiation of difference.
 
In The Wisdom of Donkeys, Andy Merriweather’s memoir of trekking through the south of France with his donkey, the author is confronted with just this very conundrum as his donkey Gribouille pulls up short at a foot bridge and absolutely refuses to budge. Exasperated, devoid of other options to get around the stream, and unable to progress any further, Merriweather spends hours trying to get his companion to dial-down his ancestral instincts. It finally takes Merriweather walking slowly back and forth over the bridge literally dozens of times in front of Gribouille to convince him that it’s safe; his own body providing the model from which Gribouille can integrate this experience and eventually carry on. As a map for the negotiation of power, territory, difference, and ancestry, this scenario has been working itself on me for many moons, teaching mysterious understandings that continue to compost their way through me.
 
An echo of this scene plays out in the 2017 Spanish/Scottish documentary Donkeyote in which the film follows the director’s uncle Manolo as he ambles through Andalucía with his own donkey, Gorrión. In this scene, Manolo crosses a small footbridge over to a rest area where he’s decided to enjoy his lunch. Gorrión, however, will not follow him, and the familiar struggle ensues, in which Gorrión needs to slowly be convinced that it’s safe to cross over. What one may witness in watching this scene is that Gorrión is not simply being difficult or stubborn just for the sake of it – you can tell from his eyes and his posture that a significant part of him wants to follow his friend Manolo over the bridge, And yet this much older part of him - his ancestral knowledge - keeps him rooted in place, his body caught between an ancient voice of caution and protection and the beckoning of his beloved human companion.
 
The past and the present are wrestling with each other over a bridge in the bodies of these two beings, the equally intense longings for collective survival and continuity grappling with the longing for personal companionship and belonging.
 
It’s a tension I believe most of us are playing out, with or without knowing it. We are the place where these two great longings meet; the longing for protection and security and fixity (expressed as trauma) imbued in us by our evolutionary and ancestral histories alongside the longing to integrate the new and inspiring (expressed as art); to sing with the voice of that which quivers our bellies and rattles our teeth; the impulses of creation itself striving to feel the sun upon its raw face.
 
Might there be a way to understand trauma and art as two different harmonic registers of the same vibrating string; their frequencies integral to the underlying structure of vibrant reality? Can we understand these pounding and throbbing rhythms of existential longing for fixity and creation  as the genesis of that which manifests as our very bodies?
 
If you were to ask me what I hope to give voice to with this blog project, I would answer that everything I mean to express is already alive in the confluence of contemplating this moment – the triptych of the donkey, the bridge, and the human. The words that I hope will accrue here are born of many longings: Longing to abandon the old tired frame that insists that all relations be understood as a binary of power-over and victim-under. Longing for relying increasingly less on guilt, shame, blame, or annihilation as coping mechanisms for the pain that arises from trying to keep one foot back, high and dry above the wine-dark rivulets of life. Longing to  increasingly live with the understanding that ancient hands and ancient lands are ever present in our days, and living as if one’s rational, individual will is perhaps not the be-all and end-all of a life lived well. Longing for works of redemption and justice that come from the full-throated singing of that which is inside us that we most push down and try to make small. Longing to gestate a space where non-human voices and collaborators are given the respect and hospitality from which - gods willing - they might share their mysteries and wisdom.  Longing to build an archive of allegations, rumours, and stories that have already been shared with me, or will reveal themselves to me in their own way, in their own time and rhythm.
 
Welcome, reader. Let our days be filled with bridges, and streams, and both human and non-human companions who know the value of both.

This  post is an experiment in resourcing collective  wisdom via social-media discussions. This and another few related conversations was had on my facebook wall in November of 2017.  Usually, such rich discussions eventually peter out and get lost in the hard-to find backlog  of old posts, the focus always being on the new and immediate. As a longing for the archiving of community wisdom and resilience, I'm making this conversation available again in this format and hope that it may serve as a resource for related research, conversations, and resilience.


ORIGINAL POST:

​Ok -- here goes.

Coming out of the richness of several conversations on here, I'm circling around an insight into two significant but different desires within social justice communities and those who want to take some form of action to engender a more just society. I'm feeling like at least a significant portion of inter-community conflicts that come up could very well stem from two very different goals, while those involved are assuming that they're working towards the exact same goal.

As always, the difference for me comes down to verbs and their etymology, which I feel often reveals the underlying relationships being advocated for or embodied by those concerned.

I see one desire or approach being that of Reparations.

The other desire or approach is that of Redemption.

I'd ask that you leave some space to not immediately go into the most popular contemporary associations of these words, like political movements in the US regarding the African slave trade, or religious/Christian undertones around redemption and sin, but to allow these words to have a life of their own and recognize that they have been around for hundreds, probably thousands of years at their roots, and that they signify two very different qualities of relationship and this is why we retain two specific words for each quality of relationship.

The etymology of reparations is clear in the word itself -- to repair, to fix, to mend. To me, this desire is already freighted with the narrative that something is broken, that something happened that shouldn't have happened, and that something needs to be done to restore that original unbrokeness or wholeness or rightness. It implies a potential for going back, for a redo, for fixing things and putting things 'right.' This gesture also implies that in seeking to repair, one knows what the reason for the brokeness is, and how to fix it, and how things 'should' be. I recognize this approach in a lot of therapy work, diagnostic models, and approaches to social justice that involve fixing society or culture. It places oneself at the centre of the narrative, as having the agency and capacity to fix things. I don't mean to shame or dismiss this desire -- I know it well in myself and it's by far the most familiar go-to impulse in the face of injustice.

The etymology of redeem is trickier...it means something like 'to buy back, to ransom, to release.' It places the emphasis on the thing, or person, or culture, or history that is being redeemed, rather than yourself. It also necessitates some form of exchange -- a transaction -- that you yourself must *give* something of yourself in order to buy back that which is to be redeemed -- you have some skin in the game, so to say. Something *must* be lost, in order to release the thing which you care about and desire to be redeemed. To me, this is also deeply relational, and intimately personal.

I feel that we have so few models of redemptive justice. And I'm wondering about the relationship between redemption and reparation -- what is the quality of grief required for one to forego a need for reparations, and to develop the capacity for redemption? It's an immense sense of dying in order to release the need for things to be fixed or set right or to happen some way other than how they already have.

I'm wondering how this knowledge and discernment in the face of conflicts or divergent tactics might support more understanding and compassion, and a recognition that people may be working for different goals, in their own way, in their own time and in their own process of development and capacity.

Thoughts, insights, feedback, comments, all are welcome as I work to untangle what this all means to me and my relationships to justice, trauma, activism and compassion.
 
 
Matthew Stillman quick thought - I love redemptive justice and all that you are conjuring around it... AND what if the earlier state that is being redeemed was broken and unjust? Transformative justice is implicitly invoked when talking about redemptive or restorative justice but it might need to be more explicit too.

• Christos Galanis Isn't the very notion of redeeming or restoring a prior state in itself impossible? One can never return back to something that has already happened, or recreate something that has already unfolded.
• Christos Galanis I'm wondering on the very ideas of reparation, restoration, return...how to understand them alongside an understanding that stuff happens, stuff has already happened, and there's no way to change what has already happened?
• Matthew Stillman Christos Galanis sure, but often that memory of 'the way it was' is our only context for restoration so it is possible to get caught in a groove there despite best intentions. This is why this skill is probably best employed in a villaged context so that the primary players don't have the only voices about 'what it looks like'
• Matthew Stillman Christos Galanis it's no accident that where we find examples of restorative /transformational/redemptive justice is from indigenous or decolonized spaces that have a very different notion of time than western civilization has.
• Dare Sohei its unfortunate that the word redemption might imply a "going backwards". i dont see it that way. redemption is a going forwards, integrating the wound as "gift", but i can see the trickiness when it enters the colonized mind. perhaps transformative both includes redemption and allows room for new words and ideas about how to move forward well....but i would like to speak more on "what it takes to get from reparations to redemption"

Christos Galanis Matthew, your insights remind me the absurdity of restorative conservation projects along the Rio Grande in New Mexico that I was involved with for a while...the Pueblo people wanted to reintroduce tree and plant species that pre-dated European contact. The hispanics wanted to reintroduce species that predated Anglo conquest. Hunters and libertarians wanted to restore peregrine falcons that had not been seen in the area for over 100 years. Conservationists wanted to reintroduce a species of tortoise that hadn't existed in that landscape since the Pleistocene era. 

My point being I suppose that all acts of memorial are in themselves political, and this is why I'm fascinated by this idea of redemption as something that can only be based in the present and in direct relationship between oneself, or a community, and the thing being redeemed in the exchange. There's some really tricky stuff around the nature and metaphysics of time and temporality in here that i won't go into right now

• Dare Sohei christos, can you and i "go into" time and space because the type of mythopoetic transactionality you are speaking of is literally the only way i've had things actually work in my own trauma healing.
• Christos Galanis Yesssss -- temporality has been central to everything for me for a long time (no pun intended) I'm super curious to hear of your own healing inrelation to mythopoetic time. I've also gained much insight from the book Blackfooot Physics if you're interested in the metaphysics of time and space from an indigenous perspective as understood and explained as best he can by an english physicist.

Dare Sohei im writing this with the intent that it will help me get clear on the transactionality of grieving:
the fundamental technique here is journeying/trance work, in relation with what the Aboriginals call the Dreaming, what i am calling The Imagination. the capitalizations are important because this is animism, and these are alive places, not some ability we own. there is no "my imagination". there is only The Imagination and i have the capacity to access it. 

Access in this context is the "cure" for the 'crisis of imagination' that trauma incurs.
another important principle here is something i got from jodorowsky: "the past wants the future to make sense, but it's the future that gives meaning to the past." to me, this "explains" how mythopoeisis "works".

In trauma states, one can cognitively grasp that there are other feelings available, but one cant seem to access them "in real life".
somatics and other forms of journeying work create a Temporary Autonomous Zone where access is re-enabled.

the tricky part of birth and early childhood trauma is that we lose access early to some fundamental connection to "source" before we have a chance to really encode the skill of it.
journey work allows access to the felt sense of our "original self/selves" and also our "future self/selves" at the same time.

journey work specifically dealing with repairing the health and building good present time relations with the ancestors allows access to a felt sense of belonging, which is a core component of what i am calling Nurturance.

in my experience, it's this mega-meta-prima-state of nurturance that creates what we call resiliency.
in order for me to have felt sense access to this, i had to move through a lot of grieving, become a channel for grieving, and learn to surrender to grieving when it arises in my experience. (this is not easy because surrender and grieving are direct relationships with Death, who is an alive being)

aka the more i want to access a healed state, the more i actually have to release and let go of: my opinions, my desires, expectations, etc.

this overview isnt complete but it is a start. in closing, what i want to say is that this kind of animism, that includes sensory awareness of other kinds of beings, is radical AF to colonial thought. it literally kills it with kindness.

• Matthew Stillman Dare Sohei <stands and applauds slowly>
• Eric Chisler Yes, the way we view time is so central to all of this, in every way. Not just time, though, but a general inability for macro-micro dilation as well (which I think largely rests on the foundation of linear space-time). I mean, the fact that both of these words are "re-" formulations kind of highlights how impoverished our ability to inhabit time is -- it's like a cultural stutter, where we get stuck on the past's discrete events *rather than the past's ongoing presence*. Of course, this is the kind of predictable march that proceeds from having the span of your life isolated from the span of your culture's life, and your culture's life from the world's life; when the world ends when you end, your ability to bring big time into your sliver of life is almost completely truncated.  So, the question for me is how do we inculcate deep time into activist circles? My answer lately is that there has to be a change in perception to kinship (what made me, what makes me, and what continues after me?) and memory (how we structure the scaffolding for kinship in our days). Without the ability to carry more days than your own, more lives than your own or those most similar to your own, there won't be an ability to do much besides minor, isolated, immediate action to repair not the world even, but repair HOW WE FEEL about the world. Which is what's really at the heart of this.  Reparations says, "Shit feels bad for me now, and has for a while. Shit should feel good for me now, and as long as I'd like."Redemption says, "Something that feeds me is ailing. I owe it what health I can give it." These are fundamentally different ways of understanding time, causality, agency, responsibility -- and until those understandings shift, it's going to be difficult to turn the collective eye to redemption. Redemption does not have a personal payout and it will not be chosen unless it seems to be the corner we've been backed into. I think that's why Christian "redemption" tends to happen as someone hits their mythic bedrock and has nowhere rational to go with their troubles -- it's only in the collapse of the world-denying program that the world can rush back in. Now, how we do that...well...
• Christos Galanis Dare Sohei awwww man --- so so much here. Yeah, we should probably talk at some point. Myself and several friends on here have been studying with Stephen Jenkinson at the Orphan Wisdom School and Grief is quite central to Stephen's teachings -- I've also loved the teachings of Martin Prechtel and appreciate that he always binds together Grief with Praise, and that's something I consider fundamental to such transactional ancestral metaphysics -- which is that I don't think it's enough to simply grieve, or let go, or surrender, or be open -- but that we must also *create* beauty and express praise for what sustains us and use our unique skills as human beings to use our talents to celebrate and give back through both grieving what once was, and praise it for its ability to touch us and sustain us -- both are really the same thing in many ways. I feel that trauma is, partially, stemming from the inability not only to grieve, but to praise as well, and i'm not sure how well understood that connection is, but my time in art therapy certainly helped me understand how important creativity and expression are in healing and integrating parts of oneself that have been cut off.
• Christos Galanis Eric Chisler "Reparations says, "Shit feels bad for me now, and has for a while. Shit should feel good for me now, and as long as I'd like."   Redemption says, "Something that feeds me is ailing. I owe it what health I can give it.""  Shit, I love this. I might steal it.  Also, I wouldn't necessarily accuse the prefix 're' of being an impoverished habitation of time -- I feel I could just as easily understand 're' as occuring within spiralling time in which change happens but there is simultaneously a continuity of citation and iteration that connects through the spiralling itself...so it can be both linear in one sense, but also also now and always present in another sense..
• Eric Chisler I suppose I shortchanged the observation: what re- has become for English speakers has made its presence in a word the ghost of "the past".

 
 
Christos Galanis Perhaps the grief undertaken in the face of letting go of the idea of restoring or fixing the thing you perceive as broken is in itself an essential component of the price you're willing to pay to redeem something/someone...

• Matthew Stillman <faints and dies at the virtue in this>

 
 
Jared Williams Who is we? I guess this brings up Bethany's response from the previous post thread. Is what you're alluding to agreed upon methods for redemptive, reparative or restorative ritual of sorts? Because other than throwing money at a thing it's hard for me to imagine any agreed upon method for these things that would be meaningful across any spectrum of cultures or experiences. I'm not saying all hope is lost or anything but, prior to the globalization of the past 100+ years, each and every culture had agreed upon methods for healing, punishing, cleaning, redeeming and renewing a person, a village, a spirit, a landscape and, though many of them were imperfect, they largely worked because the isolation of that culture allowed for it to be true to everyone involved.... we don't have that anymore really, and in the places that do, there's the internet, so that will soon end it. I think there might be a way I just can't see it, especially w how fast things are changing. I mean, there are hardly even agreed upon representatives of groups anymore so who even organizes a thing?? Perhaps there is a way though... I will chew.

• Dare Sohei we can build it/craft it using observation of what works in mammalian biology/nervous systems
• Jared Williams Dare I'd love that and would love to see how that would look. How to take a somatic and biologic approach to reparation into the larger western societal reality is another puzzle I suppose!
• Dare Sohei yeah, this the whole game as far as i'm concerned

​ 
Bruce Hooke I'd be interested to hear a bit more about how you have seen those two models coming into conflict. In the process I'm closest to right now it does seem like "reparations" is being used to mean something closer to "redemption" (based on your definitions of these terms) but I have not (yet) seen that lead to conflict.

• Christos Galanis I feel that I witness a lot of energy in social justice circles being spent on encouraging/demanding individuals or certain identities to take responsibility for past injustices committed by people who they identity with or are identified with, and hoping/encouraging/supporting/demanding them to do something to make up for that injustice, to contribute in a way that rights the wrongs that have been done, and essentially 'fixes' the system. I understand this as a quality of reparation, of repairing or fixing what has been broken. In most cases this is ancestrally based, as we're talking about mutli-generational systemic injustices that we've inherited through being born into particular cultures in particular times in particular places. I'm suggesting that redemption of those injustices, or specifically those individuals or ancestors, is fundamentally different from reparations for those injustices -- the tricky part, some of which is being beautifully teased out in this thread, is what exactly redemption might look and smell like in such contexts.
• Jared Williams Christos YES. In fact I'm not sure ancestral reparations ever work because they imply a healing of trauma that happened to others long ago and that never really feels 'true' and never undoes what happens - especially cross culturally. The only place I've ever heard of this working successfully seems to be in clans of a singular tribe ( through trade/inter-marriage or sacrifice of some kind + a ritual) or tribes that share the same root people, or villages of a singular culture- because again, they all speak the same god-language/village-language and redemptive-language. The idea of taking that idea out into the global world seems to only work temporarily and only for the specific people that were there for the 'healing'... once they leave the room or the world, the scars reappear.
• Bruce Hooke I feel like it's important to draw a distinction between what my ancestors did wrong and what my life has been like because of who my ancestors were. Yes, my ancestors were white and did bad things to people who were not white but what I hear being talked about is very clearly not what should be done to address those wrongs but rather what should be done to address the benefits and advantages I have right now as a result of having had white ancestors. The operative "past" here is not the past of my ancestors, it's my own past: what I and others around me did last week and last year and what benefits I and other white people accrued from being white.  I'm also still not seeing the actual conflicts arising from reparations vs. redemption.   I do agree that just trying to "fix" the system is not likely to be a productive way to think about things. It's also a very white way of thinking. Applying a "fix" also implies that once the fix is in place we can go on living as we always have, which of course isn't true. Racism isn't a leaky pipe. But in the circles I'm in I don't feel like I'm hearing about it being talked about as if it is.
• Jared Williams Bruce thanks and you're right, I agree with you. I was merely addressing the past-wrongdoings piece not the privilege/benefits aspect which is more important (and maybe more destructive) . It's definitely true that we are not even CLOSE to a place of making up for those benefits (particularly for the indigenous of the world) but it's also hard to know how to level a playing field when we have such dissonant ideas of 'normal' and fair AND is the playing field ever level if you are dealing with the kind of generational suffering that requires THIS kind of reparations anyway?... but anyway, I think you hit on the/a BIG thing which is that the powers that be, or those that have benefitted from the powers, have to give something up and, until we do the work, we can't yet exactly know what that will be - and that's scary as hell- and the fear of that unknown thing that will go away or be lost that has made life so easy for some is enormous.
• Christos Galanis Bruce Hooke I think this is the crux of it for me...not that I don't understand your argument, or the value in steering one's life and meaning towards co-creating a society in which everyone has the equal opportunity to flourish to their full capacities. It's the part about being born into a certain positionality, within which you may or may not benefit unequally from, and feeling, or being held to, a responsibility for making a better situation for those born into a positionality which accrues them less power and access and potential. My question then becomes, what are our debts, what are our responsibilities based on the past? Are we as homo-sapiens collectively responsible for outcompeting Neanderthals? Are those who partake in civilization responsible to hunter-gatherers and nomads of the past and present? Are all US citizens responsible to Mexico for stealing a third of their land in 1848? This issue has obviously been explored to great depth within Germany and the aftermath of WWII on the culture, and I've had brilliant conversations with German friends about that process. I guess I'm wondering, what is any one individual, or community, responsible for in the way of reparations, and at what point (if ever) do we stop being responsible for the past? And if we are responsible for the past, how do we redeem it, if at all?
• Jared Williams I remember talking to someone in college about this as I was on a tear about my ancestors and about reparations to native peoples and they said- then should we give back all of south dakota to the lakota the way we found it with no trains, no phone lines, no hospitals and no infrastructure? would that be better than integrating them into the very society that murdered them wholesale? Or would that simply leave them at the mercy of being out of step and isolated from the 'new world' and the inevitability of all of their young people leaving eventually anyway... it's a stupid example- but it came to mind- and it shows the futility or at least complexity of even beginning to talk about this stuff. My sense is our generational past is unredeemable and the privileges some of us have should be a acknowledged (sometimes shameully) but not apologized for... but I'm not sure where to go beyond that right now
• Christos Galanis I agree that guilt and shame are not ways to satisfy the very real longing for reparations and/or redemption...

Bruce Hooke One way to approach this would be to keep bringing it down to the present. How have the ways I live my life (including the ways I've been able to live simply because I'm white) impacted other people alive today? You can't understand this without the context of the past but the final goal is not to address some uncertain time in the past but to address the present. This means that at a certain point, when so much history has gone by that it's no longer clear how a past act impacted present people then talk of reparations is no longer relevant. For example, while the Norman Conquest clearly still shapes the character of Britain today, it's no longer possible to parse out how some people alive today benefited while others are still on the losing side. On the Native American example, again, bring it down to the present. The idea isn't to try to make things the way were when white people first arrived in North America. The idea should be to say "wow, the results of how the white invaders treated the Native Americas is still being felt today. For example, the Native Americans were commonly forced off the good land and given the worst land." What can we do to give the Native Americans a better shot at a good life today, without forcing them to give up their culture? With African-North Americans (and African-Europeans) there are all sorts of ways in which past history impacts life today. Again, bring it to the present. If you stop with "what did my ancestors do" then it doesn't work. You have to ask "what did people who like me do in the past that has given me advantages in life right now and disadvantaged other people right now?"

• Jared Williams I dunno- I do ask those questions pretty regularly and (thankfully) most of my friends do as well, but it hasn't led me into any sort of solution place... other than increased awareness, and it's helped me understand the landscape better- which is good and important. But I'm not sure it's a reparative or redemptive place.
• Bruce Hooke What, exactly, redemption should look like is not an easy question. I quite agree on that point. But I feel like understanding the present impacts of past actions is an important step in the right direction. I've noticed small changes in myself already as a result of what I've learned recently.

 
 
Bethany Reivich a 'redemption' other than of the self smells of superficiality and commerce, so yes, letting go of these attachments/delusions seems wise, but there are always more where they came from.... And again, as Jared pointed out, the 'we' business continues to be the biggest hurdle in real dialogue. Dialogue doesn't stray too far from the minuscule, and the subjective; it connects the self to bigger, but it doesn't rest there -- that's always the work. my feel of the word 'redemption' (I prefer playful word use) is a powerful collection of jumbled messes that never before came together, into the recognition of my own soul and my particular, ecstatic value and meaning in this world, and in a exalted temporality that itself "repairs" the past... so yes, that's the long work of wounding, mistakes, disorientation, weaving, etc and the recognition (made possible by an unseen, but also somehow intimate hand) of one's place and meaning, and most importantly a physiological embodiment of soul -- a physical feeling/knowing, not only an idea. Which is organic , nonlinear, and multi-layered (and basically mystical). To work with this systematically has something to do with engaging intimately on public levels, of embodying and demonstrating sensitive, subjective dialogue that enfolds itself in nuance, rather than (for ex) well meaning and altruistic white-washings or wishings of premature unity. Also the reverse, of bringing the macro into the micro -- or larger questions/dialogue into intimate life. A figurehead, a friend, or a ritual (even a mundane performative act), can catalyze individuals, similar to a sort of shaktipat or laying of hands -- the expression of deep wisdom by another awakens our own, in all its intricacies, that the precise teaching of correct jargon or etiquette special to particular cultural identities cannot. That's just an example of somatic knowing. So yes, the point is the somatic sense rights itself when all else is lost. (Part of healing is to intimately visit the avoided wound, which collectively seems deeper and deeper down ... into its inherent emptiness? i.e. relating to our own madness) And maybe it wont right itself until all, in fact, is lost (our minds,at least, probably those dont get lost til other things do though_), because until then, the intellectual, abstract continues to distract radical embodiment, collectively.... And trauma (a type of loss) without a map to get out (intellectual disorientation), is itself a very important door into that somatic knowing

• Christos Galanis chewing on your words...my first reaction is the opposite of your first statement, that I feel the only thing one *can't* redeem is oneself, and that it always has to be conjured in relationship with someone else -- that ultimately we can only redeem others, and we do so by seeing them in wholeness, outside of their trauma or wounding. But I'm not wed to that understanding, just watching how it moves in response to this thread...thank you
• Bethany Reivich Yes, agreed...it's by an unseen hand, as I wrote. Which I guess it means something about the unconsciousness of the act...to work toward that in myself...redemption...but it is really a thoughtless act of another that brings things together. Which I guess is why I have an aversion to the Idea of it...does this make any sense?
• Christos Galanis i think i get you, and i think i agree? i feel like there's certainly fundamentally non-rational and mysterious about processes of redemption...certainly it doesn't come through willpower and logical intention...i'm not sure what it is you have an aversion to though?
• Bethany Reivich I don't know...Yea it doesn't come through a person trying to redeem another. It comes through relationship, but the moment of redemption seems to occur through self recognition, not by being redeemed. The sort of obsession with consciousness, causality and agency in healing and all the assumptions that go along w it, is what I have an aversion to. Someone sees you for who you really are, or the truth in an act that needs to occur...they are not doing you a favour, in a deeper sense, and the work of redemption comes through a personal affinity to be around truth in each one

 
 
Ben Spatz Just FYI
 
 Articles:
If ‘indigenizing’ education feels this good, we aren’t doing it  right
  
Becoming Indigenous: The rise of Eastern Métis in Canada

• Christos Galanis Thanks Ben. This first article, I feel, actually just reinforces my earlier points to you, and actually speaks directly to this particular post here about reparations vs redemption. The author is analyzing universities and indigenous studies programs from a managerial analysis in my view, and focusing simply on categories of identity. I have friends and colleagues who teach in and run the indigenous studies programs at U of Calgary and U of Alberta and I can say without hesitation that the programs are not about 'teaching about indigenous history' although that is part of it, but of actually enacting indigenous pedagogies and epistemologies -- again, the need for settler/inanimist cultures to begin to be able to comprehend an indigenous/animist ontology is crucial to educating the general public, and the feedback from students themselves has been extremely positive, both of first nations and settler ancestry. What I feel the author is addressing is tokenism and white-washing, which is obviously shallow and inauthentic attempts to meet administrative criteria, but I don't feel such an analysis actually reflects the reality on the ground, nor the importance of what it means to now have indigenous studies electives be mandatory for all undergrads at both U of Calgary and Lakehead Universities in Canada. And yes, compared to the US where indigenous studies courses were outlawed in Arizona under hate-crime legislation for 'inciting racism against white people' I think there is some needed praise for the Canadian education system and it's initial attempts to redeem the history of genocide and displacement in those lands.
• Christos Galanis Ben Spatz This second article likewise only traffics in politicized/racialized notions of indigeneity and doesn't come close to dealing with the complexities and economies of first nations tribal recognition. Kim Tallbear's work on blood quanta is great for understanding the negotiation of identity and power and ancestry inter-tribally:
• Article:  Narratives of Race and Indigeneity in the Genographic Project  And Rasmussen's great work on situated Indigenous epistemologies as opposed to indigeneity as an identity:  Qallunology: A pedagogy for the oppressor

  
Ben Robins Absolution: Dealing with an issue by making it go away. Resolution: Dealing with an issue by coming together.
 
 
Mandy Edwards Hmmm. Apologies if I have totally misunderstood the discussion. But have you ever heard/ read up about the practice of Ho’po’ono’ono? It’s a powerful construct used by certain communities where the tribe takes complete responsibility for the misdemeanours of ANY of its members. Regardless. They ALL reparate and there is a specific prayer that is used. Here is one link that explains it:http://upliftconnect.com/hawaiian-practice-of-forgiveness/. 

I don’t know if this adds anything. After being taught by Stephen (1 class in - next one in Iceland and I can’t wait!), I am only just starting to ‘wake up’ and feel my way in such things. I’ve never had the confidence before to form my own opinions on such matters. But now I can see how important it is to start thinking and having such discussions. An ant can move a mountain one grain of mud at a time. And the only way we can influence change is by first, exploring who we are and what we stand for in this world. I thank you for this opportunity

• Christos Galanis I think this gets to the heart of my original question, which is that most people don't belong to any deeply rooted or deeply practiced 'tribe' and what i'm concerned about is what happens when trauma/wounding itself becomes the identity around which 'tribe' is fashioned. In such an archicecture, it's possible that healing the trauma simultaneously would mean ceasing to identity with or be identified by the 'tribe' and so the trauma is potentially held on to as an impoverished means of maintaining a sense of belonging.
• Mandy Edwards Interesting. I’m going to have to sit with this one for a while. I may (or may not!) have anything more to add. But yes, I see what you are getting at. Certainly when one looks at the media today, the #metoocampaign, and other such social media frenzies, it does appear to trigger in some people a desperate need to ‘belong’ in some way. I believe Stephen often talks about the fact that we no longer initiate youngsters into the adult world with any ceremony, that there is a deep cultural trauma here for many of us. I can hear him saying that human life isn’t inherently meaningful. Rather being human is a mandate to make meaning. Yet how is this achieved without referring to such traumas...? Hmmmm. Thank you.
• Eric Chisler Christos, that's the rupture all bloody and exposed!

 

Alisa Esposito I can only answer addressing my people and my place. There has been redemption with the burial of my husband and our dear Z and kinship made through their bodies becoming our ground. I cannot speak to social justice movements or society or global anything. I have no caring for that, I cannot bear witness to an abstraction. I have no will to attempt to repair or redeem what I have no love relationship to. I trust other humans to manage work of obligation and love where they live. I have been woven in here and I didn't ask for it, I'd say work of redemption is not a thing that can be chosen but which chooses u. Like Martin Shaw has said, it's the point at which you understand that you are being dreamt, rather than doing the dreaming.....Through my being woven in here, painfully and beautifully and actually quite forcefully, I've been redeemed and my work is intensely obligated in tending to a deep hyperlocal relationship. I've become a midwife of land and people in a real place, seen and unseen. I don't know how to translate such into a more "just world." This cannot happen thru any kind of outside regulation or application of justice measures because that takes the trust and relationship out...it happens because it grows....and because you are Told to stay put and tend.