Looking Back

No time for writing or reading. My life is full of carrying mail for the post office and Little League baseball.

So Another quote from the beginning of The Souls Code:

"It was Karl Marx, I think, who once proposed that evolution be studied in reverse, with an eye firmly fixed on the evolved species while glancing backward for hints."--Jerome Bruner, In Search of Mind

Website Discovery

I just ran across this website. It sums up a lot of the way I think in new and creative ways.

I especially like this essay and excerpt:

Rule No. 7 - You are allowed to compete with other species for food, but not to wage war on them.

As Daniel Quinn points out in his book, Ishmael, lions may not like the hyenas that compete with them for food and territory and will sometimes pick fights with them, but lions don't organize all-out, genocidal war against hyenas as you humans do against any species that dares to eat "your" food, with your pesticides that indiscriminately poison everything that comes near "your" crops, or your "predator control" programs that seek to exterminate the bears, wolves, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, hawks and eagles, etc., that occasionally prey on "your" sheep, cattle, chickens, etc.

What you humans fail to realize is that trying to deny competing species access to the food that you claim as yours alone can only lead to eventual ecological devastation. The other species that compete with you for food exist for very good reasons: Because biodiversity helps preserve ecosystem stability and health (see Rule 5, above) and because they form an important part of the food chain. Just one of many examples: Wolves do not just eat "your" sheep or cattle, they also eat deer, and the extermination of wolves in much of North America has therefore led to widespread ecosystem damage due to the severe overpopulation of deer in such areas as the northeastern U.S.

This is one of the reasons why Timberwolves were wiped out in the State of Wisconsin during the early 1900's. It would be nice if atleast the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources would acknowledge this.

I don't think there is any argument that can stand against the rule quoted above (In other words The Biological Law of Limited Competition as talked about in the Ishmael Trilogy).

Identity Crisis

This post is inspired by this amazing post by WildeRix titled: The Inhumantiy of Animals.

So you want to know why we are so unhappy?

Do you want to know why at the end of our day the feelings of disctontent, anxiety and incompleteness stop by to visit?

We have forgotten who we are.

Now it's time to take a look at that scar.

And remember who we are.

We are the Seventh Generation. (Click on the song titled: Crazy Horse *)

*Crazy Horse, the opening track on Bone Days, for instance, deals with the Indian belief that we are intrinsically connected to the earth.

"One does not sell the earth that people walk upon - we are the land? How do we sell our mother? How do we sell the stars? How do we sell the air? … possession, a war that doesn't end…" (from Crazy Horse, John Trudell, Bone Days, on Daemon Records, 2002)

"I think we wrote Crazy Horse, well I wrote the lyrics to it in 1988-89, somewhere in that time-frame," recalls Trudell. "Well actually I wrote the lyrics for a project called "Oyahte" which came out of Europe, out of Paris, so I wrote the lyrics for that project … Jean Richard was producing it. He and a man named Tony Hymas (keyboard player, Jeff Beck Band).

"I wrote these lyrics and Tony and Jeff Beck made the music to go with these lyrics, so it was a whole different performance. So whatever agreements were made on that, were made on that, but I had these lyrics that I wanted to use within my own style. And so right around the beginning of 1990, we came up with the music that we have for it now, and we've been performing it live since then. It's just that we've never got around to recording it until now."

Native themes...for everyoneAlthough many of his songs are written with and around Native themes, Trudell is quick to note that he writes his songs for all people - and these days, with the world "being turned into an industrial reservation, the next Indians are a different colour than us. The next Indians are their own citizens," says Trudell.

"When Bone Days came around, I thought that what I wanted to do with this particular CD is - I wanted to open it and close it - Crazy Horse at the beginning and Hanging from the Cross at the end. I wanted to open it and close it specifically around Native themes.
" I wanted the opening and closing song to be straight, up-front that this is Native. And everything in between, I wanted it to reflect that it could be any person. The story that goes on in between, inspired by Native but not limited to Native experience." (Rest of interview HERE.)