Glenn Aparicio Parry HIGHLIGHTS Final 11 01 21

Michael Maxsenti19min

Glenn Aparicio Parry

00:24

Thank you. Why I wrote the book? The way that all projects start, I make prayer, you know, 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.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

00:53

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 have been absorbing my entire life, and particularly inspired by, as you mentioned, in the bio, 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. So I took Amtrak and it's, it's a, it's a very slow and leisurly 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 readying your reply as an argumentation or debate, then there's always an opportunity for growth for learning.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

03:36

The book really was a search for the sacred purpose of America. And how can we achieve that.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

03:43

The 1620 Plymouth colony that stayed bringing women and children with them, that obviously got the attention of the Indians. And this was something they watch 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 Englishman. And those are really famous words and and he had learned a little bit of English, he had actually learned it from his friend who was known as Tisquantum 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 a military alliances, and they, they they fought the Pquat in 1636, and almost vanquished them.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

06:19

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 convinced 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 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, will 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, they were more. 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.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

09:36

In short, yes, there was a very strong cultural interchange. And, everything shifted when Ben Franklin, who had been a treater a printer of a 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. As Ben Franklin becomes the Indian ambassador to the Iroquois Confederacy. And because of that, he he forms 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. 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, 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 talen of the eagle, the eagle would hold a sheaf of 13 arrows.

Michael Maxsenti

13:47

Your book, Original Politics, which I think 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."

Glenn Aparicio Parry

14:48

The reason why I wrote that synopsis of the book is because I was profoundly influenced by some potters, Delores Lewis Garcia and Emma 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.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

15:33

Our sacred purpose as I see it, anyway, inspired by Native America was unity and 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. And 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, 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.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

16:58

A native worldview and a native way of operating politics would include the natural world, because it's obvious to indigenous minds, it seems to me, you know, that we are radically interconnected with all there is. As long as we don't realize it, we're going to keep keep enhancing polarization, we're going to keep thinking, and de humanizing and demonizing the other side that thinks a little bit differently. When the reality is quite different, and that we're all aspects of the whole, we're all contributing to the whole. 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, in relative balance so that they're so that each one keeps the other one in check.

Glenn Aparicio Parry

18:02

It's super important to have wisdom leading. 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 were the were the, were 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 in the world. We really need to see the wisdom of women and then an men need to be able to operate from that wise perspective, 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.

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