”I do not see a delegation for the Four-Footed. I see no seat for the Eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior. But we are after all a mere part of Creation. And we must consider to understand where we are. And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant. Somewhere and only there as part and parcel of the Creation.”
– Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, Geneva UN conference 1977
”Thus, many statements of Indigenous wisdom such as ‘we are all related’, ‘respect the land’ and ‘never take more than you need’ are simple, direct moral instructions from which complex social, economic, cultural and environmental processes unfold……..Perhaps the most important is relationality, the principle that connects and inter-relates the different spheres of life. Each thing has a relationship with each other thing and with the totality of all things. Hence relationships are not only multidimensional but also multilevel in that the micro-world of personal experience has direct implications for macro-worlds of community and “country”.
In Indigenous knowledge traditions, the whole of the socio-cultural system is shaped around reciprocal relationships with local natural environments. This includes systems of governance and leadership, economy, exchange, trade, language, social, religious, and cultural practices, and more broadly Indigenous lifeworlds and worldview.
Indigenous worldviews speak of wisdom within a much more connected matrix of the human, the natural, the historical, the environmental, and the communal. To be a wise leader cannot be separated from participating in the relational life of one’s “country”. This relational lens plays out most particularly in Indigenous attitudes towards the place and the natural world where a concept of “sacred geography” and “sacred sites” lies at the heart of what it means to be wise. We have called this the “sacred ecology lens” because it involves a sense of spiritual connectedness that includes and balances multiple human and biological systems.
More links:
a) Indigenous wisdom b) Indigenous wisdom;
c) Sami Elder Laila Spik (Youtube)
Download PDF: The Sami – Indigenous People in Sweden
We are pleased to offer the Thanksgiving Address: These traditional Native American words of thanksgiving come from the people of the Six Nations — the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora — also known as the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee, who live in upstate New York, Wisconsin, and Canada. Spoken as a spiritual address to the powers of the natural world, these words are used to open gatherings in order to bring the minds of the people together as one and align the gathered minds with Nature. The roots of these words reach back thousands of years to the very origins of the Haudenosaunee as a people. Greetings to the Natural World in a pocket-size (4” x 5”) edition.
”When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. we never forget them”.
– Faithkeeper Oren Lyons
Indigenous Teaching for a Sustainable Future with Melissa Nelson, Ph.D. a cultural ecologist and indigenous scholar-activist. She is an associate professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and executive director of The Cultural Conservancy,