Indigenous Peoples’ Day

It is fitting that we who inhabit this land of North America should set a day aside to honor the history and culture of its Native inhabitants. The descendants of European culture in particular - the ‘white man’ as the Natives would say - have always had much to learn from them, from the moment Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas 534 years ago to the present day. I myself remain only a student of Native wisdom, but I can say with confidence that among the crucial lessons they have to teach is the very simple one that the earth is the mother of all and should be honored as such, and that all species on this planet are therefore our brothers and sisters. This idea is not entirely alien to the white man. Saint Francis of Assisi and his followers knew it, and weren’t shy about honoring Mother Earth among the various aspects of creation. The modern scientific Gaia Theory also harmonizes beautifully with it (this Theory, named after the Greek goddess of the earth, postulates that our planet is a self-regulating system, and in that respect exhibits a key characteristic of life, as a whole). The white man and his globalized, technocratic economic system has yet to learn this lesson. We fancy that we are separate from the earth (not to mention from each other) because we can move freely on it, control it, extract things out of it, dump garbage and waste back into it and annihilate other species seemingly without repercussion, etc. This is all illusion. We land-dwellers are all swimming in an ocean of air - carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, plus trace elements; and air is our umbilical chord. Few things are more obvious than that it is wrong to destroy other species and pollute the environment, to which all are connected. We still lack the will to stop doing it. The leaders of this nation should go to the leaders of the Native nations, kneel down before them, and ask them for counsel on how to better honor the earth, and particularly this continent that was stolen from their ancestors. In the mean time, we can hear the wisdom and spirit of Native culture embodied in their music. I recommend the music Navajo-Ute flautist R. Carlos Nakai, and that of the late Robert Tree Cody, featured in this playlist (the image is of Sitting Bull, the Lakota chief and medicine man, and himself a songwriter):

Percussionist Will Clipman collaborates with both the aforementioned artists in three of the albums included in this nine-plus hour collection. The final album, released last year, is essentially a modern sonic creation myth for percussion and Native American flute by Clipman and Nakai. While not sensational or attention-grabbing, this music demands a different pace and mindset - one of contemplation, humility, and openness. There are no hooks or earworms, but there is serenity and vitality.
There are of course many other lessons that Native Americans have to teach us, besides the proper understanding of the earth and our relation to it; and it is obvious that the white man himself has had his own wisdom to teach (how to mass-produce textiles and circumnavigate the globe, for example), but after many decades of unreckoned injustice, it is time for us to listen and learn. This opportunity has been before us since European explorers discovered this land, and it remains before us still. Chief Red Fox’s prayer for the Native nations deserves to be remembered on this day: “let the wealth of their heritage be preserved as a vital force in the world, and not entombed in museums or consigned to oblivion.”