In issue #9, I assigned homework! The assignment was to find out what people lived on the land you currently call home 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, or more, what languages they spoke, and if those languages still exist.
I’d appreciate if everyone can share what they found here! I’ll share my answer in a comment. If you didn’t have time to do the homework…no worries! But, you’re reading this now. Maybe you’ve got five minutes. Try to figure it out and share. Native-land.ca is a good place to look for much of the world.
I enjoyed this post – how philosophical and anthological it is – and that the environmental crisis we face today is a reason to look back to ancient societies to consider other ways of existing in the world. I found myself thinking about this all week. I hope you don’t mind my ramble here outside your assigned homework :)
Although this post highlights the opposition between western and indigenous cultures, this is also a great opportunity to reflect on ways that western culture HAS adopted ancient traditions and thought processes. The most optimistic view of these examples of western cultures adopting ancient traditions is that our relatively newer European colonialist culture is confronting problems it cannot solve in it’s own framework and must look to ancient cultures to learn from. Pessimistically, it’s evidence of the extractive nature of our western colonialist culture.
For example, yoga is a 5,000 year old tradition developed by Northern Indian civilizations and was only brought to western societies in the late 19th century and not popularized until the mid-20th century. After reading this blog episode, I found it interesting when two psychiatrists hosted a wellness workshop for our anesthesiology department this week and suggested hand mudras to generate calm and peace during stressful moments at work. Here is an example of a specialty, psychiatry, that reached it’s hay-day in the mid 19th century, who’s training is inundated with pharmaceutical and physiological western science and is now using an ancient Indian practice as a front-line treatment for stress in anesthesiologists.
Another example that come to mind are how local farmers are adopting crop rotation to improve biodiversity in their organic farms (this practice was done as early as 6,000 BC) and introducing different strains of wheat grain for the large gluten-intolerant portion of our modern population. These practices are “learned/extracted” by the most forward-thinking farmers of our generation! It’s almost funny when you consider this from the lens of conscious frameworks you’re emphasizing in this post.
Reframing and adopting different ways of knowing clearly extends to many industries, but I like how this tied in nicely with your environmental sustainability concepts. I immediately thought of your systems thinking post, because “adopting a new way of knowing” clearly ties into the Donut Economics concept. As you point out in this post, we don’t have words in the English language that encompass the fluid, circular concept modern environmental scientists and economists hope to adopt over linear GDP growth. Ancient cultures had mastered co-existence with the land and providing resources for everyone in their societies through their scientific disciplines. An economic donut had to be invented for us to conceive this concept at all. Maybe now is a more relevant time than ever to study civilizations and languages of antiquity. I’m sure its as great of a education gap as economics in our population.
I live on Pueblo Sovereign Nation land. who colonized NM 1300-1950. “Our beliefs and actions are still guided by Pueblo Core Values, which include Love, Respect, Compassion, Faith, Understanding, Spirituality, Balance, Peace and Empathy.“
I live on Ngāi Tahu tribal land in NZ. Ngāi Tahu moved into the northern part of the South Island of NZ in the late 17th century. Then moving further south over the next few decades. Relatively recently!
I'm living on land currently administered by the Confederates Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. There's a Salish/Kootenai language school a few minutes south, in Arlee, MT.
I live on Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w) nation territory. They are a Coast Salish people that have lived here since "time immemorial." In archaeological terms, that's correlates to upwards of 7000 years ago. The oldest evidence of Indigenous culture that's been found in what is now called Canada dates back 14000 years, also on the British Columbia coast.
The Squamish language was nearly lost during the 20th century, but efforts to revitalize it are ongoing and it's now taught at two local universities and through other resources.
I spent my childhood in a town called Geraldton on the Western Australian coast. As you probably know people arrived in Australia across from south-east Asia probably longer than 50,000 years ago - as long ago as modern humans moved out of Africa. There is carbon dated aboriginal cave art that is older than 28,000 years ago in Northern Australia. There were many tribal groups, many hundreds of different languages, and long cultural traditions. The region where I grew up lay at an intersection between Amangu and Nhanta peoples. Recent excavation of the Yellabiddi Cave (Amangu for Emu) shows habitation of the region going back at least 23,000 years. It is tragic when I think of the state of those peoples when I first arrived from England at age 8, with my family in 1956. The aborigine people as they were then called (though there were many less polite names for them) lived in a "camp" on the outskirts of town, more or less in the coastal dunes, in shanties made of corrugated metal, scrap wood and cardboard. I doubt that they had plumbing; the children came to school in a mix of often soiled and ragged hand-me-down clothing, and while there were a couple of aborigine girls in my elementary school year, I have no memory of any aborigine children proceeding beyond 7th grade to high school. Later, the government built "transitional" houses, (small inferior homes with opaque, louvred windows scattered among the larger, clear glass windowed subsidized State Housing Commission homes in which my family lived) as a project to close the camps and move the people "into town" and to "civilize them". That was still the time that aboriginal children were being forcibly removed from their families and tribal homes in the far north to Church-run boarding "schools" closer to the city of Perth, in order to bring about "assimilation".
Wondrously, things have changed! Aboriginal peoples have developed a political voice. When I returned to Geraldton in 2015 for a fiftieth high school reunion, I found out that the only "foreign" language being taught at the school was an aboriginal language. And they had an academic track of Aboriginal Studies. They now have a special program to help aboriginal girls proceed into and through years 11 and 12 of high school with the possibility of continuing on to tertiary education. The program is called Warlugurra Walgamanyulu. Change is possible!!!
I live in Sharon, CT, USA. While the earliest European settlers on my land were in the late 18th century and there were two small farms - the oldest part of my house had people named Sabin, and the other farm - now overgrown old stone cellars and an old well - was lived in by a family named Duto. Before that this land was within the Lenape and Mahican larger groups but the most local group were the Schaghticoke tribal peoples, and language group largely Algonquin and Mahican. They were granted a large reservation in Western CT by the Colony of CT in 1736, but that has shrunk mightily. Complications in recent years related to competing land interests, a split into two Schaghticoke groups, and CT Light and Power and Kent School fighting for and occupying large parts of the lands have led to many court battles which the Schaghticokes have largely lost. From the original 2500 acre reservation stretching from Massachusetts to the Ten Mile River and both sides of the Housatonic River (an area which would have included the entire township of Sharon) they are now left with a small area of land under the trust of the State of CT - less than 400 acres along the western edge of the Housatonic River in Kent. It is interesting - and sad - to think in this context of how, for decades, industry along the Housatonic (GE particularly) has polluted this river, filling it with PCB's and other toxins. Before the European arrival this river was the source of food and water for the Schaghticoke and the means of transport that connected them to a vast network of peoples of Iroguois, Mahecan, Lenape and others. Even now the Housatonic Clean-up continues to be debated between local citizens, EPA, environmental groups and GE. I don't know if any of the Schaghticoke peoples are involved. This debate and the clean up efforts, the possible PCB landfill planned for later in 2020 in the Massachusetts town of Housatonic are all taking place much further upriver than the current Schaghticoke territory. But for now, neither the Schaghticoke, whose land this was, nor the rest of us can safely eat fish caught from the river. thanks for this homework assignment - I learnt a lot and found myself eager to know more about these local peoples.
I enjoyed this post – how philosophical and anthological it is – and that the environmental crisis we face today is a reason to look back to ancient societies to consider other ways of existing in the world. I found myself thinking about this all week. I hope you don’t mind my ramble here outside your assigned homework :)
Although this post highlights the opposition between western and indigenous cultures, this is also a great opportunity to reflect on ways that western culture HAS adopted ancient traditions and thought processes. The most optimistic view of these examples of western cultures adopting ancient traditions is that our relatively newer European colonialist culture is confronting problems it cannot solve in it’s own framework and must look to ancient cultures to learn from. Pessimistically, it’s evidence of the extractive nature of our western colonialist culture.
For example, yoga is a 5,000 year old tradition developed by Northern Indian civilizations and was only brought to western societies in the late 19th century and not popularized until the mid-20th century. After reading this blog episode, I found it interesting when two psychiatrists hosted a wellness workshop for our anesthesiology department this week and suggested hand mudras to generate calm and peace during stressful moments at work. Here is an example of a specialty, psychiatry, that reached it’s hay-day in the mid 19th century, who’s training is inundated with pharmaceutical and physiological western science and is now using an ancient Indian practice as a front-line treatment for stress in anesthesiologists.
Another example that come to mind are how local farmers are adopting crop rotation to improve biodiversity in their organic farms (this practice was done as early as 6,000 BC) and introducing different strains of wheat grain for the large gluten-intolerant portion of our modern population. These practices are “learned/extracted” by the most forward-thinking farmers of our generation! It’s almost funny when you consider this from the lens of conscious frameworks you’re emphasizing in this post.
Reframing and adopting different ways of knowing clearly extends to many industries, but I like how this tied in nicely with your environmental sustainability concepts. I immediately thought of your systems thinking post, because “adopting a new way of knowing” clearly ties into the Donut Economics concept. As you point out in this post, we don’t have words in the English language that encompass the fluid, circular concept modern environmental scientists and economists hope to adopt over linear GDP growth. Ancient cultures had mastered co-existence with the land and providing resources for everyone in their societies through their scientific disciplines. An economic donut had to be invented for us to conceive this concept at all. Maybe now is a more relevant time than ever to study civilizations and languages of antiquity. I’m sure its as great of a education gap as economics in our population.
I live on Pueblo Sovereign Nation land. who colonized NM 1300-1950. “Our beliefs and actions are still guided by Pueblo Core Values, which include Love, Respect, Compassion, Faith, Understanding, Spirituality, Balance, Peace and Empathy.“
I live on Ngāi Tahu tribal land in NZ. Ngāi Tahu moved into the northern part of the South Island of NZ in the late 17th century. Then moving further south over the next few decades. Relatively recently!
I'm living on land currently administered by the Confederates Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. There's a Salish/Kootenai language school a few minutes south, in Arlee, MT.
Tsimshian
I live on Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w) nation territory. They are a Coast Salish people that have lived here since "time immemorial." In archaeological terms, that's correlates to upwards of 7000 years ago. The oldest evidence of Indigenous culture that's been found in what is now called Canada dates back 14000 years, also on the British Columbia coast.
The Squamish language was nearly lost during the 20th century, but efforts to revitalize it are ongoing and it's now taught at two local universities and through other resources.
I spent my childhood in a town called Geraldton on the Western Australian coast. As you probably know people arrived in Australia across from south-east Asia probably longer than 50,000 years ago - as long ago as modern humans moved out of Africa. There is carbon dated aboriginal cave art that is older than 28,000 years ago in Northern Australia. There were many tribal groups, many hundreds of different languages, and long cultural traditions. The region where I grew up lay at an intersection between Amangu and Nhanta peoples. Recent excavation of the Yellabiddi Cave (Amangu for Emu) shows habitation of the region going back at least 23,000 years. It is tragic when I think of the state of those peoples when I first arrived from England at age 8, with my family in 1956. The aborigine people as they were then called (though there were many less polite names for them) lived in a "camp" on the outskirts of town, more or less in the coastal dunes, in shanties made of corrugated metal, scrap wood and cardboard. I doubt that they had plumbing; the children came to school in a mix of often soiled and ragged hand-me-down clothing, and while there were a couple of aborigine girls in my elementary school year, I have no memory of any aborigine children proceeding beyond 7th grade to high school. Later, the government built "transitional" houses, (small inferior homes with opaque, louvred windows scattered among the larger, clear glass windowed subsidized State Housing Commission homes in which my family lived) as a project to close the camps and move the people "into town" and to "civilize them". That was still the time that aboriginal children were being forcibly removed from their families and tribal homes in the far north to Church-run boarding "schools" closer to the city of Perth, in order to bring about "assimilation".
Wondrously, things have changed! Aboriginal peoples have developed a political voice. When I returned to Geraldton in 2015 for a fiftieth high school reunion, I found out that the only "foreign" language being taught at the school was an aboriginal language. And they had an academic track of Aboriginal Studies. They now have a special program to help aboriginal girls proceed into and through years 11 and 12 of high school with the possibility of continuing on to tertiary education. The program is called Warlugurra Walgamanyulu. Change is possible!!!
I live in Sharon, CT, USA. While the earliest European settlers on my land were in the late 18th century and there were two small farms - the oldest part of my house had people named Sabin, and the other farm - now overgrown old stone cellars and an old well - was lived in by a family named Duto. Before that this land was within the Lenape and Mahican larger groups but the most local group were the Schaghticoke tribal peoples, and language group largely Algonquin and Mahican. They were granted a large reservation in Western CT by the Colony of CT in 1736, but that has shrunk mightily. Complications in recent years related to competing land interests, a split into two Schaghticoke groups, and CT Light and Power and Kent School fighting for and occupying large parts of the lands have led to many court battles which the Schaghticokes have largely lost. From the original 2500 acre reservation stretching from Massachusetts to the Ten Mile River and both sides of the Housatonic River (an area which would have included the entire township of Sharon) they are now left with a small area of land under the trust of the State of CT - less than 400 acres along the western edge of the Housatonic River in Kent. It is interesting - and sad - to think in this context of how, for decades, industry along the Housatonic (GE particularly) has polluted this river, filling it with PCB's and other toxins. Before the European arrival this river was the source of food and water for the Schaghticoke and the means of transport that connected them to a vast network of peoples of Iroguois, Mahecan, Lenape and others. Even now the Housatonic Clean-up continues to be debated between local citizens, EPA, environmental groups and GE. I don't know if any of the Schaghticoke peoples are involved. This debate and the clean up efforts, the possible PCB landfill planned for later in 2020 in the Massachusetts town of Housatonic are all taking place much further upriver than the current Schaghticoke territory. But for now, neither the Schaghticoke, whose land this was, nor the rest of us can safely eat fish caught from the river. thanks for this homework assignment - I learnt a lot and found myself eager to know more about these local peoples.