ThinkLady: Indigenous culture

“A Native American taught me that the division between ecology and human rights was an artificial one, that the environmental and social justice movements addressed two sides of a larger dilemma. The way we harm the earth affects all people, and how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the earth ... The movement has three basic roots: environmental activism, social justice initiatives, and indigenous culture's resistance to globalization, all of which have become intertwined."

Our fate will depend on how we understand and treat what is left of the planet's surpluses -- its lands, oceans, species diversity and people. The quiet hub of the new movement -- its heart and soul -- is indigenous culture."
-- Paul Hawken, "Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming"

Thirty-nine Native American tribes make their headquarters in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has the second largest Native American population of any state in the nation. Oklahoma's history, culture, its heart and soul, indeed it's very name is indigenous. As Paul Hawken notes, the quiet hub of this vast and vital movement growing throughout the world known by many names -- social justice, environmentalism, transition, regeneration, resilience, sustainability, localization -- it's heart and soul is indigenous culture.

On April 13, 2009, the first episode of a five-part PBS series, "We Shall Remain," premieres on OETA. The provocative multi-media project comprised of five 90-minute documentaries spanning 300 years, tells the story of pivotal moments in U.S. history from the Native American perspective. The series represents an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers that involves Native advisors and scholars at all levels, and illustrates how Native peoples valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture -- from the Wampanoags of New England in the 1600s who used their alliance with the English to weaken rival tribes, to the bold new leaders of the 1970s who harnessed the momentum of the civil rights movement to forge a pan-Indian identity.

Resources include an extensive Teacher's Guide for social studies educators. Air dates are shown below.

Spread the word, watch, listen, reflect.

We Shall Remain

All times shown CST.
Episode #1 -- The Mayflower, April 13, 8 p.m., encore 9:30 p.m.
Episode #2 -- Tecumseh's Vision, April 20, 8 p.m., encore 9:30 p.m.
Episode #3 -- Trail of Tears, April 27, 8 p.m., encore 9:30 p.m.
Episode #4 -- Geronimo, May 4, 8 p.m., encore, 9:30 p.m.
Episode #5 -- Wounded Knee, May 11, 8 p.m., encore, 9:30 p.m.

A very erudite quote from Prince Charles below posits the many crises we face are rooted in an inner crisis of the soul. I totally agree. The Transition movement makes this point eloquently by addressing the need for outer and inner Transition, with the inner transition being a different way of moving and being in the world deeply rooted in Permaculture design principles.

"When we hear talk of an 'environmental crisis' or even of a 'financial crisis,' I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us. So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen."

The Prince of Wales made these comments in a recent speech on Islam and the Environment at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University. Matt McDermott at Planet Green, wrote an excellent assessment of the Prince's speech on Planet Green today, and notes the prince "brings up some themes which continue to be overlooked by the mainstream of the green movement, tragically." Right on Matt!

McDermott writes:

"What hits exactly the right note for me is the Prince's accurate identification at what really lies behind our twinned and ongoing environmental and economic crisis-as-norm. It is constantly searching for external solutions to problems to the exclusion of considering that, at the least partly, the issue is internal to humanity. Put plainly it is always attempt[ing] and expecting the world to adapt to our desires, rather than adapting ourselves to it."