Indigenous I NA (short audio)

2:47PM Sep 12, 2019

Speakers:

Keywords:

talk

circumscribed

spirit

native american

storeys

traditions

anthropology

americas

reality

native american tradition

great

second edition

recommend

advantageous

interacting

book

hierarchy

goal

remember

sweat lodge

We should be good to go here.

Alright, excellent, excellent, excellent. Okay. So I'm going to try to blaze through this as quickly as possible and one point in between the Americas and Africa and stop and check my notes really quickly. Because if you have any experience with tribal traditions, you know that there are a variety of storeys and names and they're all hard to keep up with. One quick thing about the textbook, I've told you from the beginning that you don't necessarily have to have it that these things are built from the textbook. But I would recommend this. What I did is instead I was given a book by the department.

But they're the this is the third edition. The one Mr. Bill has

right here, the one that you're seeing presales, the third edition, but the second edition is just as good. The only difference between the third edition and the second edition is the third has little like personal storeys, you're not going to see me recount those or talk about those. So the second edition is just as good. Why do I tell you that is because the second edition is available in a PDF form for about 15 bucks. The advantage there is you can see scroll through a digitally and find text very easily. So there are a couple of companies that sell them for 1516 $17. And they're pretty reputable. So I would recommend it. If you're concerned at all about like digital transference with people that are companies that you're not, you know, they're going to get my information, you can usually use PayPal, and that should protect you. But I recommend that that's what I do. If you're For example, when I'm checking my notes and things like that, I'm doing this, there's my copy, right? So I'm This is my text. And what's advantageous for me is that I can break that PDF up into smaller chapters and just this chapter, just that chapter so I can not have to rifle through the whole thing. So I recommend that for you. If you're interested in having the book. And going back, remember, there are two kinds of marked assignments in the class. There's the examination and the essay. I'm pretty loose on the examination. Yeah, you should book if you want you to notes if you want, I don't care, right. The goal here is for you to engage these ideas, not really to memorise stuff and have it all figured out if you've got a religion figured out, and there's something wrong with you, right? So don't do that.

I would rather you engage it. So

I'm pretty open as far as those things go.

And I think the book could be advantageous for you long term.

All right. Everybody clear on that so far. So let's talk about the Americas. I want to what I want to do is remember that the whole goal here is to find out how systemically how religions sort of operate as systems as structures, right? How they're like, organic, and how if you mess any piece up in the system, it changes the rest of the network, right? I've said that many times. I've said that with the Stone Age, I've said that we the Egyptian traditions, said that with the Middle Eastern or Mesopotamian traditions and so on and so forth. Everybody's clear on that basic paradigm, right? Remember the three terms that I use from the beginning to describe religion, reliquary to bind relegate to do it repetitious Lee, and then habit tues which means to structure it and create a habitat for dwelling.

Everybody comfortable with those ideas?

Yeah, everybody come to me the ideas of cosmology, cosmology, anthropology, even anthropology, which I haven't mentioned before, and political structures. What is the difference between cosmology and cosmology? cosmology is what? How the world what

works, cosmic janyk?

how it's made. So anthropology should be how what people do, and anthropology any should be what, how the people are made, right. And at this point, we've only seen limited anthropology needs. But you're seeing that in the African traditions, a little bit more discussion on anthropology needs and why people are the way that they are. Alright, so let's talk about the Native American tradition. Now, let's talk about this word really quickly. If you're still saying Indian, it's probably not the right idea, right? We kind of learned that, in the last couple decades, that this was a

it's not doesn't make you racist, it doesn't make

you evil, it just means it's probably not the best term. We started using the term Native American, because when we talk about it, Americas, we're not just talking about North, we're also talking about South. So some of the things you'll see here come from Aztec peoples for Mayan peoples, we're not talking about just things that happen in this land, right? We're talking about all of the Americas. So Native American became like the go to term 90s 2000s. There is some shift in scholarship and amongst Native American people to use the term American Indian, I'm not going to harp on those, I just want you to know that those are there in case you're interacting with folks that come from American Indian traditions, or people who come from Native American worlds, it's probably a good thing to inquire about that and have the best kind of phrasing possible to be as hospitable as possible. I'm going to use the term Native American, because it's more broad. It's more sweeping covers north and south. So

let's talk about some of the things that you see, before we do that.

I can never cover everything that's been ever said about any kind of tradition in the Native American world, right? If you know, some obscure charity ritual that I don't cover, you don't sit back there and boil that guy. Cable TV didn't talk about this. I can't say everything right. It's impossible. That's not the goal. The goal is not to list the ingredients. The goal is to understand the composition. The schools understand the mythos. Do you know what I mean by mythos? Right? We've talked about that. That's what I'm after. And remember, rule of thumb, this is for free. Any academic situation, you can't say everything when you say anything, because you'd be trying to say everything. When you said anything, you'd never say anything at all, because you'd be busy saying everything else. Yeah, I'll give you that one more time. You can't say everything when you say anything. Because if you tried to say everything, when you said anything, you had actually never say anything at all, because you'd be too busy trying to say everything else. The point is, we just can't do that no human can do that. You don't say anything and everything you say something. So what's the something we have to talk about? It's that myth. Oh, so the Native American world. Alright, so what are some of the key features of the Native American World one is that we're seeing the emergence, at least in our timeline, this is not the historical timeline, we're seeing the emergence of have an idea of a unified, great spirit, whether you're Lakota, whether you're Navajo, or whether your other traditions, whether you're Su, whether you're Pueblo, whatever, at least in the Native American tradition, you start to see the emergence of the idea that there is one unified sort of entity, which is the high spirit of things. Now, let me make an important distinction here. Even if Native Americans have the notion of a great spirit or a holy wind, it doesn't mean you should think of that great spirit or that as a circumscribed deity. Okay, now, what do I mean by circumscribed? What's your brain naturally go to?

Right? circumcision? What's the other one geometric?

That's right. circle means around. Okay. So the incision would go around, that would be circumcision. circumference would be around, and so to circumscribed so what's to scribe what describing scribble right? So to write around something to circumscribe something would to be put boundaries around it and define what it is when you name something you circumscribe it, that is Jessica. That is Billy, that is mine. So we circumscribed things in there very focused, and individually. So this is a very different, like when we talk about in the West, when we talk about things like a law, or we say things like Jehovah, or God, or the Christ, or whatever, you're thinking of a more circumscribed entity. There it is. Not that you know where it is. But that's the way you're thinking you're thinking of a closed contained entity. Because that's how we talked about people. That's very different than a diffused reality, like a vapour, or gas. It's very difficult to circumscribed something that is permeating all of reality, you follow. So even though they have this transcendent phenomenon, or some kind of thing that goes above everything else, or rises above everything else, or is present to everything else, doesn't mean it's a skirt, circumscribed thing, you're not going to go there and find the great wind, it's a substance, or it's a reality that's diffused through space and time you understand what I mean by diffuse, not DEFUSEDIFFUSE, diffuse, like spread, okay? So that's an important distinction in your brain is not to be thinking in terms of, oh, there's the great wind or there's the Great Spirit, it's this sort of thing that sort of permeates. And what you'll see is when we start talking about structures, this is why the sweat lodge starts to make sense. Right? And this is why smoking makes sense. Right? You have a vaporised substance. If you sit in a sweat lodge, whatever those things, those toxins, those things that have kept you from being in harmony with the world around you start to vaporise, and if you share the sweat lodge with someone else, there's a bonding experience between we share the same air or the same steam. Right? So steam becomes a kind of mental, we're not really mental, it becomes a physical image of this notion of sharing in a spirit, because we're wrapped in the same cloud of sweat, and aura. Does this make sense? So things are interchangeable, which is Wi Fi, smoke this and then hand it to you and you smoke this, we're participating in the same spirit. Does that make sense to you? Okay, so it's very different than us thinking about, we think of interacting with divinity, especially in the West through our brains. Right? You do this when you pray. It's Twitch and whatever. It's like you're somehow connecting to the cloud of divinity. And it's like connecting to your mind, you don't think it happening here. Of course, it's very different in the, in the Native American worlds, that makes sense. I just don't want to get your brain off on the wrong step. To begin with. We also start to see the emergency of a hierarchy between city, a spirit and multiple spirits. And the Native American tradition, you don't always see necessarily this great wind or this,

or this great spirit, or whatever the supreme

reality is, is not always the thing that's interacting with the earth, or interacting with the people, it's lesser spirits. And so for example, in some of the Native American creation, storeys, or cosmology, you have an ancient deity that creates the world, but also creates divine ancestors, or sacred ancestors or Immortals. And those ancestors are passing on what the Great Spirit or the transcendental

reality

created and passing it down to the people start to

see it administrative hierarchy. Deuteronomy, when I say administrative hierarchy, it's like we would have a governor but then you have multiple people that do the governor's bidding, right the Ministry of Defence or