Welcome to front and center, from political battlefields to cooperative playing fields. Hello, I'm Michael Maxsenti. And before I turn it over to my partner, Steve Berman, to make a proper introduction. I just wanted to say it is only fitting that we are having this conversation today on the first day of American Indian heritage month, Monday, November 1. Steve, please take it away.
Well, thank you so much, Mike. And welcome Glen. Our guest today is Glen Aparicio Perry PhD, is a writer, educational consultant, international speaker, entrepreneur, with a vision to reform thinking and education into a coherent, cohesive whole. From 1999 to 2011. He organized and participated in the groundbreaking Language of Spirit conferences, bringing together native and Western scientists and dialogue. He is the founder and past president of the seed Institute, currently runs a think tank and regularly moderates dialogues. In addition to his current book, original politics, making America sacred again, he is the author of The novelists award winning original thinking, radical revisioning of time, humanity and nature. He also does a podcast circle for a podcast called circle for original thinking. Welcome, Glenn.
Very good to be here. Thank you.
Sure. Well, you know, as Michael said, You are the third guest in a row, speaking to our indigenous heritage, what's been left in on what's been left out? We had Shauna Bluestar Newcomb, who referred to the doctrine of discovery and domination code, and her antidote, the reverence code, we had Thom Hartman speaking about the lost indigenous culture of Europe, and how that impacted the conquest of the New World. And what he refers to as the witchy. With Chico culture, the Native American term for the taker mentality, he ends by saying that we must integrate ancient indigenous knowledge with modern understandings. And so here you are, today, Glenn, to speak to us about exactly the the interweaving of the native and the European to produce the American. Your book, original politics is a deep dive into how these two cultures intermixed over the course of two centuries. So why don't we start there, tell us about original politics, and why you wrote the book.
Thank you, why I wrote the book, the way that all projects start, I make prayer, you know, I, I make a prayer to the ancestors. And I asked them what they want me to do. And sometimes what they asked me to do is rather daunting. But if the request is clear, that's what I have to do. So that's really how original politics came about. I had already written the book original thinking, which was more of a philosophy of, it's really the philosophies that I had been absorbing my entire life, and particularly inspired by, as you mentioned, in the bio, the the Language of Spirit dialogue series that brought together native elders and Western scientists. And then, you know, so that book was a statement of the philosophy now it's more like I think the calling was to put this philosophy into action in the real world. And we tend to think of politics is a real world phenomenon. And of course, people have very differing ideas about politics, but But no matter what your slant is, your politics is about trying to get something done, and it's about some trying to get something done. And so, that's how it came about. And, and then also, what really kicked it off for me and I wrote about this in the preface, was, I was taking a train trip across America I'd been invited to present at a conference called honoring are the ancestors of ancient America, which was a conference of anthropologists and Native Americans. And I'm neither but I was invited by my dear friend Susan Stanton, who I've done workshops with, she's a Native Hawaiian, and Mohawk ancestry. And she invited me. And she also encouraged me to take Amtrak to come to her place in Illinois. And I did, I hadn't taken Amtrak for years, I used to live in Woodstock, New York. And there, I would take Amtrak into Manhattan all the time. But so I took Amtrak and it's, it's a, it's a very slow and allegedly way to go. And I was going by myself, so they would arrange for you to have a meal, you would have to make a reservation for your meal, but they would assign you other diners, sometimes I would be with a family of three or something. But on this one occasion, I got assigned to three people who are all traveling separately. And one was a, a strong Trump supporter, who was from Lawrence, Kansas. And the other one was a gay African American poet from Albuquerque. And then there was a Native American. And they couldn't be more different in their political views. But I saw that as a great opportunity. And I asked them, you know, what is the sacred? I asked them a dialogue question, which is something I'm familiar with doing. And I asked them, What is the sacred purpose of America? And why do you think your candidate will fulfill that? And the most interesting thing happened because we all had to eat. So you know, we had a very civil, interesting conversation. And the gay African American poet, who was a Bernie Sanders supporter, actually considered Bernie Sanders too far to the right. I mean, he couldn't have been, you know, but he started to get along with the Trump supporter so well, that it almost freaked me out, because they were really getting along very well. And, and then, at that point, I came in and, and tried to elucidate some differences, perhaps. And it was just very engaging. It was also heartening, because the thing is, people can have very differing points of view. But if you can, if you can listen to each other, for the purpose of understanding, which is really the principle of dialogue, rather than just reading your reply as an argumentation or debate, then there's always an opportunity for growth for learning. And, indeed, that's what it was in the Trump supporter, you know, and was an intelligent man who just simply thought that the system was so corrupt, that he thought Donald Trump was the perfect person to go in there and kind of bust things open. And then, and he thought that would bring about a solution. And I don't really disagree with him in a way that is,
is I think, what, what tended to happen while Trump was president, but this was in the summer of 2016. So at that time, most pundits predicted that Trump would not be elected president. But in fact, he was. And I'll just stop there. That's the That's the origin of the book. And the book really was a search for the sacred purpose of America. And how can we achieve that?
Well, you know, I'm very curious, I ask you that, you know, what you found out and and particularly, in the interactivity between the native peoples of this country, and the the settlers, particularly from England, I don't think many people know about that hidden history of how our system actually developed over that almost 200 year period of time, between the first settlers into the American Revolution, and our and our government.
Yeah, well, two things. One, something I left out of the book which a Dutch friend of mine immediately brought to my attention, was the fact that fact that it wasn't just the British that the honus shoni or Iroquois were interacting with, in fact, it was the Dutch who were in control of New York and that area in north of New York City, which was the hone in the shoni stronghold. So of course, Manhattan, was very much originally a Dutch colony. And there's, there's some good books about that. But, but long before that, you know, I mean, there have been explorers coming to the new to the new world, but they would come and go, and it really was that first colony, that 1620 Plymouth colony that stayed bringing women In children with them, that obviously got the attention of the Indians. And this was something they watched very carefully and they actually watched from afar. They didn't interact right away, the, the Plymouth Colony lost a third of their colony or more that first winter, they were starving, they were really struggling. And then, this one native brave, who was known as us, Somerset, he strode into the, into the, into the village with one arrow that was headed and one that was unheated. And he walked very confidently into the village. And he was walking right up to the encampment of where the women and children were. And then a bunch of soldiers stopped, stopped him in his path. And they thought that he was being aggressive, but he turned to them and he said, Welcome, Englishmen. Welcome, Englishmen. And those are really famous words. And in he had learned a little bit of English, he had actually learned it from his friend who was known as to quantum and known to the, to the settlers as Squanto, which we've all learned about in history, who knew even more English because he had been kidnapped and and spent almost somewhere between seven and a dozen years in Europe, before he managed to free himself and get back all the way across the pond. And he was there and he knew English perfectly. But the one that they sent as the ambassador was Somerset, and that's just the beginning of a partnership that was formed and a 55 years of peace between the Narragansetts and the colonial settlers. It doesn't mean that it was peace in all the land, by the way, they actually had an alliance that have military alliances, and they, they they fought the P quad in 1636, and almost vanquish them. And I mentioned in the book that I think it's a really interesting piece of poetic irony. Then in the 1990s, the P quad, open at that time, essentially the world's largest casino, outside about 90 miles outside of New York City at the same time, where Donald Trump's casinos were faltering at Atlantic City. And Mr. Trump was not amused. And, and he, he observed, he wasn't actually wrong in this observation that the that the P quad, the complexion of the P quad didn't look like the stereotypical Indian because in fact, they were almost vanquished in 1636. And so the remaining P quad have taken on a different complexion. And, in any case, the real point of what you're asking about Steve, is that for 150 years,
the Europeans, European settlers, I would just call them Euro Americans. They were living side by side with Native Americans. Now, I live in New Mexico now. So I'm very blessed that I have ample opportunity to interact with Native people. But back then, it was like 100 times more, more likely that you would be encountering native people all around you, you know, and that was, and so that occurred. And often, you know, too often in history, people talk about colonization, as if it was a one, just as a one way event. And the reality is, although in the long run, it did turn out that colonization was tremendously destabilizing and tremendously debilitating to Native Americans for a very long time, really up for 200 years for 150 years leading up to the formation of the Union and the first 50 years of the United States of America being formed. Native populations were relatively stable, and they were very much interacting with the colonial settlers on a nation to nation basis. And they were critically important to the founding of the Country in so many ways because you know, whenever you have cultural interchange, it's not one way. It's not that the Europeans were all of the Enlightenment mentality and they convince the native people to be that way. Not at all. The native people showed a different kind of way of living, to the European settlers. And Ben Franklin famously said, and you'll have to apologize for the the choice of his words, but I want to explain that too. But he said, he said that any any European that has tasted savage life, we'll never go back to our way of living.
And that sounds like a completely racial slur. And perhaps it is. But it also is an indication of the word the way the word savage changed in history. So you know, 200 years ago, or 250 years ago, that were really meant only wild and untamed, wild and untamed. And so it wasn't necessarily a complete racial slur. It was obvious to the Europeans, that native people were more comfortable. In the wild, though, if you look at the very origin of the word wilderness, in in European languages, it has it's a separation between human and nature, and the wild is something to be afraid of. But indigenous people don't really think like that the wild is a place of blessing and wholeness. And that's actually at the core of a difference. But I guess my point is that some Europeans, or like Roger Williams, who predates Ben Franklin by 100 years, and learns five European languages, he becomes very familiar with native ways of being very familiar with the wild. And, and actually learn he gained some very valuable insights. Roger Williams is the progenitor of what later becomes the separation of church and state, which he, he really offered as a way of protecting Native people, his friends, because he didn't want the church to overrun them with their ideology. And he said that, you know, that proselytization of religious values was soul rape. That's a Roger Williams said. And so he, he very much protected native people. He was very beloved by Native people. That's how he was given. When Roger Williams was thrown out of the church, basically, he was given what became known as Rhode Island, it was called first the Bay of Rhode Island then, and he established a colony there that a whole bunch of misfits, let's say, Baptists, Quakers, Jews of the time, also were welcomed in to this colony. And it became an alternative culture, and probably is to some degree to this day today. So in short, yes, there was a very strong cultural interchange. And it's only natural and in 150 years, there was, but everything shifted. When Ben Franklin who had been a treater a printer of Native American treaties between the the British government and and the, the native tribes, when Ben Franklin was invited to become the Indian ambassador to the Haudenosaunee (a name translated as the “People of the Long House”), or more commonly known as the Iroquois. And he was asked to be that because it was really critically important that the British government established a military alliance in the French and Indian wars. And that's where everything shifted. And I'm going to turn it back over to you, but I'm happy to explain about that in a minute.
It's up. Glenn, one of the things that I really wanted to to ask you to give us a sustained, but deep dive into is the influence of the indigenous tribes on the thinking and formation by our founders and our framers of the government. Few people know, because it's been whitewashed out of all the history books. They focus on Anglo Saxon and And the Bible as in the in the go back to the Greeks and the Romans, but almost an a totally exclude the impact of the indigenous tribes and the forms of governance that they had learned and that they had used for eons of time. Can you please give us the, the explanation of as much as you can have the influence of the indigenous tribes onto our founders and framers?
Yes, I'd be happy to and I'll try to do it as succinctly as possible. But you know it and I love your choice of words. There's there Michael, whitewashed, so I think that was probably pretty accurate. So, in fact, you know, almost picking up where I left off, I mean, it's Ben Franklin becomes the Indian ambassador to the Iroquois Confederacy. And because of that, he he formed a friendship with Chief Canasatego. The Onondaga chief, and that friendship alters the whole path of history. Because it's, it's, it's, it's the Onondaga Chief Canasatego, who addresses the colonists on July 4. It's interesting, it's July 4, July 4 1744, exactly 32 years before the Declaration of Independence is signed. And he tells the colonists that they should unite like the five fingers of one hand, that they should never fall out with one another, that they should form a strong Confederacy, as the Iroquois had. And in fact, the Iroquois Confederacy, by some estimates was as old as 1132 ad. So it had been enforced already for more than 500 years before this event happens. And so Chief Canasatego urges the colonists to unite. They don't do so right away. But then there's a 1754 Albany conference that's called that brings us a lot closer. And it's in that time that that Ben Franklin and Ben Franklin is really the pivotal player in the in the whole formation of the nation really, Ben Franklin proposes that they form a government that's based similarly to the Iroquois government. And the Iroquois government was they didn't have a written constitution in the way that we think of it. Their history was kept on wampum belts. But they did they did have a something known as the Great Law of peace, which which is the way that their government was run. And their government had a lot of similarities to what later became the United States of America. These things are not they're not coincidental. In it when the United States actually is formed after they formed the Continental Congress. Ben Franklin is the principal author of the Articles of Confederation which are really closely aligned with the Iroquois great law of peace. Ben Franklin proposes a Grand Council there's only one legislative body in the Articles of Confederation. It's a Grand Council. And Ben Franklin proposes 48 members for the Grand Council where the Iroquois had 50 members. And there's a very, there's some very interesting things in the Articles of Confederation that got lost when we when we actually formed the US Constitution. For one thing, all the politicians in the under the Articles of Confederation worked for free They all work for free. They did it at a public service. The same principles still applies in Native America today. As far as I know, all the tribes that I know that that appoint a governor of the of the Pueblo or tri general is a volunteer position for one year. Now, in a few cases, it's been changed in modern times, like where I live in Albuquerque, San Diego pueblo. Instead of appointing an older man as their, as their governor, they once appointed a younger man named Stuart pizano, who actually served five years and he he actually brought forth their their casino and golf course. And it never would have happened if they had stayed with their normal system of a lie. Man serving the one ceremonial year. But in any case, normally speaking, that's the way it is. And elders serves as the, in the, in that position. And, in fact, when the US government started, that's what we did. Now, here's something that, uh, blow the mind of your listeners, and they'll probably think I'm crazy. But they, but they, you can look it up there were presidents before George Washington. Okay, let me explain. So the Articles of Confederation were, they were ratified in 1781. And in 1781, France and Morocco, both recognize the United States as a new country, France is really our oldest ally, you know, so they, they immediately recognize the United States as a country. And between 1781 and 1789, the United States was operating under the Articles of Confederation. It's only after the US Constitution is ratified in 1789. That we go under the US Constitution, but the way US history is taught. They teach school children and they teach adults to that the Declaration of Independence occurs in 1776. The US Constitution is ratified in 1789. As if nothing happened in between, well, something did happen if the Articles of Confederation was very closely based on native ways of governing, completely complete public service by the politicians, they work for free. They all served limited terms, no more than three years. And, and the president, the president, which had that title, served a one year term, and the president, the president of the under the Articles of Confederation, by the way, so you don't think I'm crazy, is rightly distinguished from the presidents that came 1789 afterwards, because they're totally different. So the Presidents under the Articles of Confederation had no real power. They just like a Native American Chief, derive their power from the council. So the legislature legislature had the power but they but the President did do something John Mason, who was the first president of 1781, first president after the Articles of Confederation have ratified, he designed the Great Seal of the United States, which has been used by every president since. And, and the Great Seal of the United States. They brought in Ben Frank, Ben Franklin contributed a lot to the Great Seal of the United States. Because because of what happened with Chief Canasatego. So let me backtrack a little bit with the story. Remember, I was telling you about chief Canasatego, saying to the colonists that they should unite like we did, you should be a strong Confederacy, like we were, we are, well, Chief Canasatego handed Ben Franklin, a single arrow in 1744, in front of all the, all the all the colonies, the representatives of the colonies. And before Ben Franklin could do anything with an arrow, he took it back, and he broke it over his knee. And then he reached behind him and got a sheaf of arrows. I don't know if it was 13 arrows, but it was a sheaf of arrows. And he did the same thing. He went to break it over his knee. But it did not break. And the meaning was plain to all it was clearly that there was strength in numbers, strength in numbers. And so Ben Franklin never forgot this. And when it came time to design the Great Seal of the United States, he proposed that in the left talent of the eagle, the eagle would hold a sheaf of 13 arrows. And that's, of course, the way it is to this day. And Ben Franklin by the time of the Constitution convention, he was an old man, he was enfeebled with gout and kidney stones. And so he didn't really have that huge role in the US constitutional convention. He was he was respected and revered, but it was the upstarts that Alexander Hamilton, who was 28 at the time of the US constitutional convention and Madison was 32. They were the ones who pushed for the Constitutional Convention. They were the ones who wanted to radically reform the office of the presidency to give the president more power. But you should. Everyone should realize though that as much power as the first presidents got they They gained power over time because the Founding Fathers tried to limit the power of the US President. And in fact, they gave to the US Congress the the right the sole right to declare war. But the US Congress has added abdicated that responsibility, and they haven't declared war since 1942. Even though we've, we went on to get in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. These were wars, but the US Congress never declared war. So they were officially called conflicts are something. So, yeah, I hope that helps.
It does. Thank you. Before we go on, I'd like to also your book, original politics, which I think is is a an important and good read for anyone. Let me if you will read from a summary, if you will, a brief, original politics, making America sacred again, to recreate a whole and sacred America, it is important to piece together the Forgotten fragments of history that are currently keeping the country divided. Just as a traditional Native American Potter begins a new pot with shards of old pots, to honor the ancestors and bring the energies of the past into the present. Original politics, reassembles the nation as a whole, out of the seemingly disparate shards from our origins, the most significant forgotten piece is the profound effect Native America had on the founding values of this nation.
Huh, thank you, you know. The reason why I wrote that synopsis of the book is because I was profoundly influenced by some patterns. Dolores Lewis Garcia and Mr. Lewis Mitchell, who are the daughters of the great Potter from Akuma. Lucy Lewis. They're the ones that taught me that, you know, whenever they make a new pot, they begin with the shards of an old pot. So really, what they're doing is they're bringing the they're bringing together the old and the new in a timeless creation of original beauty. And that's really what the nation of the United States needs to do now, because our original roots are sacred. Our sacred purpose as I see it, anyway, inspired by Native America was unity in diversity, unity and diversity, the acceptance of different points of views, the acceptance of the integrity of the difference. Sometimes I like to use an example of sacred mayonnaise, if you will, you know, mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is an emotion, it's an emotion. So everybody knows that oil and water can't mix we say. But in fact, in certain emotions, oil and water are held in a balance, so that the integrity of the difference is respected. The same thing has to apply for women and men, for Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Native Americans and Euro Americans, and all the other Americans that have come to inhabit this land, as we embraced our sacred purpose of unity and diversity, increasingly over time, so So that's the, our sacred purpose. But we've been, we actually have been successful mostly in achieving that sacred purpose, but we had a long way to come to go. I will give the Founding Fathers a lot of credit for the phrase in the preamble of the United States Constitution, which speaks of moving toward a more perfect union. It's not a coincidence that Barack Obama that was his favorite phrase, he would repeat it constantly. Because I'm sure Obama was obviously aware that in the founding of the nation, it was a nation founded on slavery even enshrined in the US Constitution, and he was an African American man serving as the US President. So of course, he highlighted the phrase moving toward a more perfect union. And for good reason, because when we founded the nation The Founding Fathers they didn't directly eat, they gave the power to the states to set the voting laws really. And then what happened was the states with some exception, all voted in a way so that the the the power defaulted to white male property owners. There were some weird exceptions, by the way, including New Jersey. And it's funny like in Hamilton they talk about anything can happen in New Jersey, well in New Jersey until 1807. Anybody who was a property owner, be a male be a female, or be they a person of color, could vote and could vote. And in the colonies, by the way, before the United States government was formed, people of color or women could vote if they were property owners. But anyway, basically, for the most part, only white male property owners could vote when the nation was founded. Andrew Jackson comes in in the 18 in 1828. And he gave the vote, it was actually considered progressive. He gave the vote to white males who didn't have property that was actually progress. And then you have to wait till the civil war before African Americans get the right to vote until 1924 Before Native Americans get the right to vote. And, and women only get the right to vote nationally in 1920. But there are some weird exceptions like Wyoming gave the right to vote to women in 1870.
You know, it's not a cut and dried thing. But in general, there's an arc and I agree with what Theodore Parker said and Barack Obama and Martin Luther King like to quote that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. So I think that has been happening in the United States. But there are definitely times where there are severe backlashes the 1850s was one of them. Where we had a third party, the American Party, which was better known as the Know Nothing Party, which was a party that that sought to exclude Quakers Jews, and and those that had recently immigrated, they were an anti immigration party. They actually placed 100 people in Congress, 100 people, never a president 100 people. But they did have a relatively short run, and they fell apart because of a quirk of fate, really, the Whig Party, the Whig Party had a had internal debate over what to do about slavery. And it divided into two factions. And one was pro advancement of slavery into new states. And one was against advancement of slavery in the new states, which Abraham Lincoln, who was a Whig ends up in the party that is against advancement of slavery in the new states. And that becomes the republican party of Lincoln. And the Republican Party is formed in 1856, exactly 16 years after the official formation of the Democratic Party, even though we think of the Democratic Party is going back to Andrew Jackson. It was the Democratic Republican Party then it was actually both was called the Democrat Republican Party. Then they finally dropped the Republican in 1840. So that became our our modern Democratic Party. And the weirdest thing, guys is that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were formed for the exact same reason, they stated, they were formed to offer an alternative to the other party, which they identified as the party of aristocracy.
Very interesting. And you know that that brings us to where we are today. One of the things that you've written about is the differences between the Western culture and the native cultures. And this may be a time to bring those together in Reunion of some kind. What are those profound differences and how might they be woven together?
Well, I thank you for that question. That's a really appropriate question. I listened to some of the foundational interviews you done already one with Charles Eisenstein was terrific. I listened to the young woman I'm blanking on her name now that Shawna speaking about the Reverence Code and moving away from the Doctrine of Discovery. Charles, of course, is talking about moving away from the story of separation to embracing a new story, and trying to move away and, you know, from dehumanizing the other side. And I think that's it's very, very important truths that they're getting at. And we're more familiar with Charles work from and, and what he's speaking about the story of separation in a different way, I've been speaking about the same thing. So I tend to focus on what happened a little over 600 years ago, in the European Renaissance, when the invention or perhaps it was the reinvention of linear perspective and art. And what that did was, that actually created a worldview, it's really a world view, because we begin to see the world through that lens is not just something in an art painting. So, you know, linear perspective became the way we saw the world so that we, we would speak about, you know, things that would happen to us in the near future, or things that would happen to us in the distant future, we see we're looking out on a landscape and things that are near to us, we we think of in time, this is how we shifted the way we looked at time. Because before then we looked at time, the ancient Greeks looked at time as unfolding in the energy of a circle, Aristotle, Plato, they all looked at it as a circle, all cultures looked at time as a circle. And the way we looked the way we created time, I mean, it came from astrolabes and sundials. And then you know, and then watches that all moved in a circle the way the sun moved. It's, but but when we invent linear perspective, and we start thinking about the future, as ahead of us, which actually, the ancient Greeks thought the opposite, they thought the future was behind them, where they didn't have eyes to see. And the past was ahead of them where it had already manifested. But I know that freaks people out sometimes, but that's the way the ancient Greeks thought. So as soon as we think everything's ahead of us, then we try to predict and control it. And that's the core of what Charles Eisenstein has been talking about, for so long the story of separation. We have embraced this story so much, that we see everything as separate. And, and I couldn't agree more with Charles or with indigenous peoples, who have long understood, that we are actually created of the elements, we are the light, we are the air, we are the water, we are the Earth.
Davinci understood this, and he was quoting the ancestor of the ancients when he talked about this, you know, the, you know, that we are the microcosm of the macrocosm, all the ancients who spoke about this, and the, including indigenous peoples, who tend to speak about it more today, understand that we are the earth. And, you know, I often think of it like this, we're so much closer to a plant than we realize. I object to the phrase, you know, somebody is a vegetable, you know, talking about plants have living consciousness, and they also they emerge, everything that is born is born in the dark, and grows toward the light. Everything. We're humans are born inside our mother's womb. But we grow up when we are born we grow toward the light. Corn is considered very sacred by Native people because it's really a grass and it grows like a two legged it grows up. So that's one of the reasons it's sacred. In fact, Shawn secretario, Who's the youngest son of grandfather, Leon secretario, did a whole doctoral dissertation on corn and Native education right down to the where you get the corn pollen and the tassel, you get the tassel like you graduate, you know, you get up there you know, there's such a similarity between corn and and humans. It's It's pretty amazing. That's why in native stories, corn and humans co evolved. So in short, A native worldview and a native way of operating politics would include the natural world because it's obvious to indigenous mind, it seems to me, you know that we are radically interconnected with all there is and that's the that's the reason why the Lakota speak of Mitaka Mitaka. Johansson. Me takeaway? Oh, yes, and we are all related all our relations, all prayers can end with that. Because we are all related. You know. And I'm not a native American blood myself. My mother, though is a my, my mother grandmother on my father's side is Basque. And so they're European indigenous, I was blessed to grow up with my grandmother, in my family home. So it just felt like coming home to me to hear a native world view that understood that everything was radically interrelated. And when it came to politics, it was a way of planning that included the natural world. And that is, it seems to me critically important, if we're going to survive in the West, we have to recover that, because we understood that in Western culture once.
Take the blame for that. I'd like to focus now, if you will, on how we can move forward from from your learnings, I know you have started and are heavily involved in what you've created here, the Circle For Original Thinking. So the Circle For Original Thinking, as you stated, "It is the mission of Circle For Original Thinking is to seek out the Deep Origins of contemporary thought, in order to remember and restore heart centered wisdom for humanity, and all our relations on earth." And the vision of Circle For Original Thinking, is to "Restore thinking to its origins and full spectrum, in keeping with the way nature thinks the purpose is to shift and shape thinking towards wisdom and wholeness, and to bring this heart centered wisdom into contemporary society." Would you elobrate on that?
Thank you for that. And, you know, it's a pretty radical statement to speak about how nature thinks because most, mostly in the Western world, we would never imagine Nature thinking, but that's the way I intend to conceive of things. And, and certainly indigenous people act that way. Well, we do a dialogue circle when at seed, Leroy, Little Bear was the moderator. And we would have an opening to the east. And the reason we had an opening to the east, and it could have been to the west, north south, but in his traditions to the east. The reason I have an opening is because it was believed that we're as dialogue participants were trying to be a conduit to nature flowing through the room, thought itself is alive, thought is moving. Where does thought originate from? I mean, and that's a lot to do with the first book I wrote original thinking. It originates in nature, you know, that's its source. That's why you know, the new field today of eco psychology is really on to something really important. And some of my favorite people in the world. Dave Abraham, one of them, you know, is an eco psychologist, really, because he's tracing the origin of thought to nature. He's understanding that all of nature speaks all of nature speaks all nature's alive. Other people I really have great respect for like soggy Ashton bud Henderson is head of the native Law Center in Saskatoon and involved with the Terra lingual organization, which is tracing the origin, the connection between language thought culture, all of its interconnected, it's all radically interconnected. But somehow in the West, we've come away with a different idea. And we've thought that we repo we presume that thoughts are inside my head, thoughts inside Steve's head thoughts inside Michaels head, and that we're and it's a freak, it's very unusual if we're able to read somebody else's mind, but it's not really like that it's a thought is alive and moving between us it's a field we create, like Rumi speaks about it's a field of interaction, you know, and that's where we're, that's where we're dancing there. You know, so, that is so important that that we realize this in the police realm. Because as long as we don't realize it, we're going to keep keep enhancing polarization, we're going to keep thinking and de unionizing and demonizing the other side that thinks a little bit differently, when the reality is quite different is that we're all aspects of the hole, we're all contributing to the hole. And, and a conservative view is really necessary for a liberal view, just as necessary as a liberal view, because there's two energies in nature, you know, when to progress and when to conserve, you need them both, you need them both to be I have a holistic view, and they need to be in relative balance so that they're so that each one keeps the other one in check. And I wrote about this a lot in original politics, including reading about Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, and the way that they played off each other, they each complete the other, you know, and that's the way that it ought to be. That's the way it ought to be. And, and I'm worried about our nation now, frankly, because it's very out of balance. It's very out of balance. And, and we're at a point where our very Republic is threatened. But that's another story. Maybe that's too far off where you want to go. I turn it back to you guys.
Steve?
Well, I think that that, that that's exactly what the what the condition is right now. So if we were to if we were to wrap this, if we were to wrap this around one thing, looking at the current condition that we're in this, this separation, where obviously sites are not listening to one another. If nature had a voice, what would nature say? What would nature speak into our current condition? By the way, I enjoyed the chimes nature has been chiming in.
Yeah, well, you're making me feel like, you know, your question is almost reminiscent of, you know, the Zen monk that ready to give a speech and he opens his mouth, and then a bird sings? And then, you know, that's the whole speech, he doesn't have to say anything else. You know, it's, I mean, how does? How does a single human talk about what nature wants to happen? I mean, I think that as much as is possible for myself, I, I do try to try to align myself with what is unfolding what's already unfolding. Nature knows where it's going. It's kind of up to us to try to feel into that. And then it's just like the Daoists speak about then where we're, you know, I mean, it's, it's almost too tightly spoken about go with the flow, but there is a flow there is an unfolding, something's unfolding. If we are going with that, it's obviously going to happen more easily. If we're going against it, it's going to it's we're going to meet resistance. And too often human beings try heroically to do things that are just human. And really, the power is in nature. And if we can align ourselves with the power the way it's unfolding, we'll do better. We have to do that in the political realm. And that's really more of a conservative viewpoint, honestly, you know, because that's the way Edmund Burke would have thought about it, you know, that nature has an unfolding capacity. The liberal point of view is more the progressive push progress, push progress, but that is also part of nature, nature has growth, nature has growth, nature has progress. But it also it goes in a circle that progress so it's you know that a seed is planted in the ground, the roots go down, so you go from seed to route to bud to fruit. And that's why my favorite quote in the whole universe came from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said that all are progresses and unfolding, like the vegetable plants, you first have an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge. As the plant has root, Bud and fruit. trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurt you. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe. So the reason why Emerson's quote is so brilliant is that is least the way I interpreted this This is the way to coordinate your really your gut feelings with your heart. And with your head. It's two people try to, to prematurely use their head, we do need to use our head, but we also need to use our gut and our heart, you know, because all of it is interconnected. And and in fact, I do believe the Romantics were correct to try to counterbalance the enlightenment that was moving too quickly toward the, the rational view as everything, and modern conservatives that understand that the heart is important, that's really an important voice. The rational mind is very important, but it has to come after there's engagement with the world, from a gut level immersion in the world to a heart level, then your head comes in. And it makes sense because, you know, if you let that if you let the, the rational mind run free to freely, you have things like the creation of atomic bombs, which it's only like, after it happened, that some you know, that. Oppenheimer, you know, realizes, Oh, my God, what have I created, you know, I become the destroyer of worlds, you know, Einstein and others, are really deeply saddened over over what they've unleashed. And it's super important to have wisdom, leading, and, you know, native tribes. I don't want to make a too big a generalization, but a lot of Native American tribes had a balance between wisdom and action that often had the Women's Council where the wisdom Council, and the men's Council where the where the where the, the ones that enacted action in the world? Well, that, to me seems like is a really good balance, you know, it's a really good balance, because you need wisdom to come first. And then you need action on the world. And let's face it, I mean, we will never gonna have in the US Congress division, like, like native tribes have between Women's Council men's Council, but we, but women and men do interact a little bit differently. And men are really good at getting stuff done in the world really good, you know, but we need direction. So the, and the women can be really good, because women traditionally and not traditionally, biologically, are more aligned with the unfolding nature, you know. And when we gave credence to that before the Gregorian calendar, we ran on a lunar calendar, you know, because we understood that, that women were in tune with the unfolding of the month and enhance the year, you know, and I think that's a good way to go. Frankly, we really need to see the wisdom of women, and then, and men need to be able to operate from that wise perspective, then let the men get stuff done, because we're really good at that, but only when it'll work best when we're working from wisdom first.
Here we are, supposedly in the Age of Aquarius, and the sign for Aquarius is a man with a with a vase full of water, and that water is feminine wisdom. So the idea of where we're supposed to be right now, if astrology is has anything to say about it, is that we have that the man actually recognizing the value of feminine wisdom. And that's what Aquarius is all about.
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Thank you for that.
And maybe that will lead us to the dawning of the age of reunion. Yeah, that's where we need to go and transition from the age of separation to the age of reunion. And Glen, I couldn't thank you enough for the work that you've done. The books that you've written, and your continued work the circle for original thinking, to help us move forward together and reconnect all of the wisdom of the indigenous world with the modern thinking so that we can move forward together. Steve, anything you'd like to wrap with before I finish?
No, I think I think this is, thank you so much, Glen, for all of that perspective, that the value of the feminine wisdom, the value of nature, particularly at a time when the dominant paradigm seems to be very mental, based on the religion of science, and that intuitive aspect, is the seems to be the missing wisdom. As we watched the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Allah, the Mickey Mouse cartoon that's that we're all familiar with from Fantasia not knowing what he doesn't know, and, and so on. So we have to bring in that deep knowledge. And I really, really appreciate your perspective, historical Canva looking toward a more more beautiful future. So thank you
The beautiful future that our hearts know as possible. I think that's yeah, exactly. And it's just, it's very possible. And what you're speaking about really gets to the core of it. It has a lot to do with reuniting feminine wisdom with masculine wisdom. And recognizing that that holistic approach is what we need to bring. Yeah.
Thank you again, Glen. And to audiance, we hope you found this conversation enlightening, and invite you to follow front and center. If you can please support our work by subscribing so that Steve and I can continue to pay our rent and continue with this work, From Political Battlefields to Cooperative Playing Fields. It's a long journey. Let us go there together. Thank you. Thank you guys.