Archives for category: matriarchy
Newer Entries »

Birds

November 26, 2013 //
1

Fifth in the series on original Plains culture (matriarchy)

stellar

*

Birds

I had stated I would be giving away ‘medicine secrets’ in this series initial essay. Here is something almost no one knows or understands anymore.

The bird you have affinity with is the one that ‘talks to you.’ You can make a small experiment to determine this. When you walk in nature, allow your thoughts to be free, to roam where they will with no concentration to control. A little bit like daydream but no specified subject. If it happens there is a bird calls at that very moment a point is made, seen or discovered in your wandering thoughts, a sort of conclusion, this bird has just spoken to you (in the mind, not only the ear.)

The birds are the messengers who can pass understanding of events to you, to (among other things) know if a thought is correct.

If you can learn to do this in such a competence as to become ‘easy’ or ‘natural’ with the experience, it is the bird most often speaks to you, is your affinity. There you have it, how people were integrated to nature in times past. This is example of what had been ‘normal.’

To learn to accomplish this in practical reality would be difficult for many within the modern mindset. Men, particularly, would experience difficulty with this exercise in ‘female intelligence.’ The reason is, Judeo-Christian cultural shaping, mental stricture and taboo on the exercise of a feminine understanding of reality in Western Civilization (which has taken over the world.) In order for there to be a ‘rise’ of civilization, people had to come under the control of male dominated thinking or ‘hierarchy.’

Mosaic law is one example, where there is prohibition of sorcerers and necromancers, a crude demonizing of female intelligence to preserve the male hierarchy. Examples related to this sort of control would be (about equally) Saudi Arabia executing women as witches and western science panning any understanding of female intelligence that cannot be achieved via the constricted logic of empirical method; both science and religion are firmly rooted in a cultural system that fears and condemns or persecutes anything which threatens the ascendancy of male thought (and hence male hierarchy.) Civilization and ‘civilized man’ are both determined this understanding of the female ‘Nature’ is not to be acknowledged because it is a threat to male dominance. In the greater male hierarchy’s endeavor to suppress the feminine, the gynophobic Plato and the God of Abraham are peers, little different to the misogynist Confucius who serves this same purpose.

So, to understand the birds is tricky, it is important not to fool oneself, with how this works. The most common mistake (in the modern mentality) is when the bird makes its call, this can evoke another thought instantly from the self (not the bird) and you miss what the bird said, the thought the bird has brought has already been pushed aside by your thought and the real information is missed. This mistake is consequence of male oriented culture shaping the modern mind (regardless of skin color, we’re nearly all ‘apple indians’ these days.) Simply put, the alien (to original native thought process) ego won’t shut up and will be in your way. Why thank you, Jesuits and the boarding schools, for making the males, nearly all of us Native males, into modern whore-boys who, when we’re not busy chasing skirts while trying to get our dicks wet, only know how to run our mouths and cannot know how to listen. The consequence likely will be males who think they actually get this, are only hearing what their subliminal ego entity wishes them to hear. Those women with less male shaped mentalities, particularly those women less educated in science and least indoctrinated in religion, will have better outcome in overcoming the modern mentality obstruction, and more likely achieve understanding of this natural phenomena.

It cannot hurt to recall here, the modern ego construct mentality, considered normal in western culture,  is a construct which had been diagnosed and treated as a mental disorder in the ancient Plains culture. Modern Indians who most suffer from the modern mentality are least aware they suffer the problem and this is ultimate irony because it is those Indians who most loudly strut the proposed idea they are ‘traditional’ are those who most suffer from the modern mental disorder (and you can forget about the western anthropology program euphemistically named ‘native studies’ altogether.)

Another mistake is to expect you can discover something you wish to know with this. This second one is a mistake because it is not about what we think is important to know, but rather what nature (the spirit) thinks is important for us to know. This is again, the western culture’s male ego issue, unknown in the native past. This is why the point is made to NOT control the direction of thinking, for the process to actually work.

As for broadcasting versus receiving (the modern mind is stuck in broadcast mode and mostly cannot receive) et cetera, there is much, much more to know, but I expect this is challenge enough and will end it here, renamed ‘Birds 101’

 *

Essay 1 ‘Tobacco’

Essay 2 ‘War‘

Essay 3 ‘Women‘

Essay 4 ‘Conflict‘

Essay 5 ‘Birds‘

Related:

Life in Indian Country

Collected stories, folklore and anecdotes concerning my many years life with Blackfeet Indians and traversing Native American territories

Tags , ,
Categories archetype, culture, male hierarchy, matriarchy, parapsychology, philosophy, religion, science, shamanism

Conflict

November 23, 2013 //
0

Fourth in the series on the original Plains culture (matriarchy)

*

ismetpi001p1

^ Pierre-Jean ‘father’ DeSmet

“They [the Blackfeet] are plunged in coarse superstitions which brutalize their souls, they worship the sun and the moon and offer them sacrifices and propitiation and thanksgiving” -Pierre-Jean DeSmet, Society of Jesus (Jesuit)

Lying was not a common phenomena in the ancient Native American world. Likely this stems from the fact a high value was placed on interpretation of reality as accurately, factually as possible. Not only would this factual perception of reality through reliable reporting lend itself to survival in an existence fraught with danger, it would lead to a tendency to develop a high state of personal evolution.

There is a story of occasion where the Salish had captured a Blackfoot warrior, I do not recall his name, and tied him to a post at the center of their camp. The community then had gathered to witness his death by torture. The point of the torture was to see if this warrior could be made to cry, as he was slowly cut to bits. If this could be accomplished, it could then be reported back to the Blackfeet people how their warrior was weak when faced with death. It would never occur to the Salish to send a false report of the man’s behavior when meeting his end.

As it happened, this warrior fully being cognizant of the purpose of his death ritual, devised a strategy to circumvent the intended outcome. When the Salish man with first right to begin slicing him with a knife had approached and proceeded to cut and taunt the Blackfoot, the Blackfoot had kept his cool and returned insults as to be so vile, the Salish lost his temper and swiftly killed the Blackfoot in a rage. And this fact of circumstance of death is what was reported to the Blackfeet people.

The arrival of the Jesuits changed all this. If the destruction of the Buffalo had destroyed the Blackfoot nation physically, it was the Jesuits broke the spiritual back of the community. The Jesuits destroyed the lived truth of these people, destroyed the equilibrium between the sexes, destroyed the respect they had enjoyed in relation to each other as a whole and destroyed their spiritual relationship with nearly everything under the Sun. Here is how it happened:

It was inconceivable to the Indians a lie would be told by holy people. As Floyd HeavyRunner had precisely, correctly stated, this phenomena was exploited by the Jesuits, when using the Blackfeet women to make their inroad into the spiritual life of the community. It was the tempting (and subversive) idea if the Blackfeet community would embrace the Jesuit philosophy of only ONE man had to die, to correct everything in the afterlife, these women would be reunited with the many fine men they had lost to the extreme peril of historical Blackfoot existence, an existence that claimed a disproportionate number of men. The woman allowed the Jesuit Nicolas Point (sent among the Blackfeet by ‘Father’ DeSmet) to arrange the education of a number of children and in a single year’s time, with children taught Original Sin caused all of our world’s ills and this is the fault of WOMAN who is cursed, and that because ONE man died, you may be excused from taking responsibility for your own actions in this life, the damage was done. By the time these woman realized a great mistake had been made, it was too late. If these children had been killed outright per the native philosophy of eliminating any ugly life aberration, the Blackfeet would have been better off per their own cultural view, but the law of Blackfeet citizenship these new aberrations violated, in a paradox, prevented this. Nor would the consequence of not killing these children be seen immediately, it had to wait for them to grow up and see the infection mature.

The result had been, in a single generation, fratricide, it came to this; certain men had begun abusing women and became rapists, nearly unknown social phenomena in previous times. Subsequently, the worst of these among the Pikuni became exiles, they were pushed out and formed a distinct breakaway tribal entity. This in turn saw the group’s Pikuni men experience their women turning on them and become killers of their husbands, when the Blackfoot women’s warrior tradition in egalitarianism became socially inverted (these Blackfeet families know who they are, it’s not important to identify them by name here.)

This preceding is but early example of what occurred on a society-wide scale, with the badly damaged larger Blackfoot nation forced onto reservations and the subsequent kidnapping of entire generations of children into missions for education. Life became a lie and the law of Niitsitapi as had been known and practiced for countless generations, had become largely dead.

It was the great priest of Okan, Brings Down the Sun, made it his life mission to correct these mistakes in the Pikuni people. Recognizing the new Christian way could not be rolled back, one compromise he tried to make was to advise women to begin to submit to their husbands, but this was not easily swallowed by the women. What finally happened was, a compromise of Okan and other Blackfoot practices pursued distinctly and altogether separately from the Christianity forced onto these people, one might belong to both but they were carefully separated, never mixed. But these were never again Indian people in any sense close to what had been, lying and abuse of women has become a way of life in the case of by far too many Indians to count. And since the forced mission education days, the added curse of inter-generational pedophilia has gained a foothold as well. Of course the Jesuits will NEVER take responsibility for having wreaked this havoc, they can always arrange to be ‘forgiven’

“Christians are the meanest people on Earth” -A Blackfoot Holy Man

All that said, my experience has been, because of the unique traditions which had survived in small pockets, I discovered some of the finest, most brave, generous, kind and ethical people in this world, whilst living among the modern Blackfeet.

*

Essay 1 ‘Tobacco’

Essay 2 ‘War‘

Essay 3 ‘Women‘

Essay 4 ‘Conflict‘

Essay 5 ‘Birds‘

Related:

Life in Indian Country

Collected stories, folklore and anecdotes concerning my many years life with Blackfeet Indians and traversing Native American territories

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Author, corruption, crime, culture, Law, male hierarchy, matriarchy, philosophy, religion, shamanism, social responsibility

War

November 17, 2013 //
0

Second essay in the series on original Plains culture (matriarchy)

War

The sa-ar-si (Sarsi, Sarcee) people don’t like their Blackfoot name. It means something like ‘doesn’t listen’ or ‘stubborn’ in a sense a native grandmother would be irritated with an out of control child. It never bodes well to irritate the women.

There is one clan of ‘Sa-ar-si’ that claims no Blackfoot descent (due to their pure luck of absence from the area during a particular incident) in the history of the tribes the outsiders never hear about because “Us Indians don’t air our dirty laundry in public” as one Blackfoot had put it to me. So these people stereotyped as ‘noble red savages’ are burdened with more typical human frailties despite the romantic view. Maybe certain Indians are not proud of everything that has happened in the case of the Sa-ar-si, and perhaps they just don’t care to share history the outsiders would not understand, in the case of the Blackfoot.

Related to this ‘suppressed’ history and attending underlying behaviors, there is an incident of a grandmother’s discipline of a male Pikuni (southern Blackfeet or Piegan) child that stands out in my memory. Indians allow children to learn from making mistakes, and one of the biggest mistakes you can make, is to piss off the women. This little kid (by his own admission, when relating the story to me as an adult) was a real terror who simply would not listen. After the ‘fourth’ warning from an old lady (his grandmother), she suddenly grabbed this four year old by his ear and pulling him to his toes with iron grip, she shoved her large buckskin stitching needle through his outstretched ear and kept him like that for a long moment while she explained to him the practical function of learning to listen.

Sort of like the Cheyenne women who guarded and refused to allow Custer’s body to be mutilated, but put their buckskin sewing awls through Custer’s ears, so he would ‘learn to listen in the afterworld’ (to his own words, Custer was related to these women by a child he’d had with a woman of the Cheyenne southern branch and had promised he would never make war on his relations, the Cheyenne.)

When the Sa-ar-si people encroached on Blackfoot territory, they not only refused to listen, they were misbehaved. The record of this is sketchy but a few things are known. The Sa-ar-si broke away from their main group in the north because they had no choice in the matter. A small tribe cast adrift in hostile territory which does not belong to them, is invariably a group of miscreant exiles. They had been expelled.

Reinforcing this is, when they necessarily entered into a hostile relationship with the Blackfeet subsequently, the main group in the north did not come to their aid. The Blackfeet finally, after the ‘fourth’ warning, killed every Sa-ar-si male from puberty and up, every one of them (except for an extended family group that happened to be absent.) After, the Sa-ar-si women were given Blackfoot husbands, Blackfoot Sundance (Okan) and were told ‘now you can stay.’

When the one small group of Sa-ar-si who’d been absent showed up and discovered what had happened, they had no choice but to adopt the Blackfoot cosmos, with a decision taken ‘I guess we had better behave, we see what happens to people who don’t listen.’ For whatever reason, this  entire event had been engineered at the insistence of (ordered by) the Blackfeet women, the Sa-ar-si must have done something that really made the Blackfeet women angry.

Pointing to the practical aspect of matriarchy, the Sa-ar-si, although now entered into the Blackfoot cosmos via Okan and Blackfoot tipi designs reflecting this, a requirement of residing in Blackfoot territory, they did not adopt Blackfoot language because it is the women educate all the children to the age of puberty, at which time the male children are exiled to male society. Thus, the Sa-ar-si kept their distinct identity but now as a related people and hybrid cultural entity.

Previous to this, there was a near identical reverse circumstance relating to the Blackfeet and Crow. The ‘Small Robes’ were an expatriate Blackfoot speaking band, belonging to the Crow tribe. They had no choice but to adopt the Crow cosmos to occupy Crow territory, excepting language. Because they had been rehabilitated as Crow Indians and because of the indisputable rights of women in matriarchy determining they would keep Blackfeet language, the relationship to the greater Crow tribe in relation to the greater Blackfeet tribe, was one of circumspect enemies with a great deal of respect. They recognized they were related. It was the women of both tribes, determined this relationship. In the present day, if you go to a meeting of the Crow council, it is yet clear who runs the show and it’s not the men. These people had been allowed to keep a more traditional form of government (likely their reward for being ‘army scouts’)

If it was the women who sent the plains nations to war, and it certainly at times was, no Blackfoot man wished to endure the public shaming they would receive from the women if they did not do so, so far as the women would, in extreme case of male reluctance, sometimes threaten to make up their own war parties and the men knew this would be followed through. It was also the women made these men humble themselves in a case of a (senseless) war gone wrong, such as when the Amskapi Pikuni (South Piegan branch of the Blackfeet) became embroiled in a hard hitting war with the Atsina (Gros Ventres, Arapaho speaking former allies.)

This war had begun with a patent male stupidity, some members of the old Mutsaix (previous incarnation of the Crazy Dogs, the old Brave Dogs warrior society) had made fun of an Atsina warrior ritual and this caused a war of male pride. When the Blackfeet women had become utterly exasperated with it, as a war that simply went on and did not wind down, they intervened and the Blackfoot males were forced to adopt the ritual they’d made fun of, as an honorable gesture to bring peace with the Atsina. This is the ritual dance you see to this day, at the Blackfeet Crazy Dogs society events.

Raven

The ‘mythical woman’ who humbles the Blackfoot male

*

Essay 1 ‘Tobacco’

Essay 2 ‘War‘

Essay 3 ‘Women‘

Essay 4 ‘Conflict‘

Essay 5 ‘Birds‘

Related:

Life in Indian Country

Collected stories, folklore and anecdotes concerning my many years life with Blackfeet Indians and traversing Native American territories

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories archetype, culture, matriarchy, philosophy, psychology, religion, shamanism, Uncategorized

Tobacco

November 16, 2013 //
0

First essay in the series on the original Plains culture (matriarchy)

Tobacco

“The ones who complain and talk the most about giving away Medicine Secrets, are always those who know the least” -Frank Fools Crow, Lakota

I’m glad Frank stated this, because I am going to give away some ‘medicine secrets’ in this essay of what is intended to become a series (in which I will be giving away more so-called ‘medicine secrets’)

First off, there were no ‘secrets’, only a reluctance to share knowledge with people who live stupidly. In today’s world, where the majority of MANKIND is living  stupidly, including many so-called ‘traditional Indians’, the native principle of paradox comes into play. That is to say, when an old habit has come to be counter-productive, the old habit must be turned on its head.

The old native world was never ‘traditional’ in present day context or in the way people seem to think this definition applies, because the native reality was fluid, dynamic, evolving, the dream changes. New dreams revealed themselves and life adjusted accordingly. Within this context, there were some immutable rules, including exceptions to immutable rules! The rules of ‘tobacco’ were not an exception except in the case of a law-breaker chief, an accepted (but rare) phenomena. So, turning this all on its head (again) I will point out the rules of tobacco should be kept in the old way, mostly without exception. And these rules are not what many people might think.

The ‘Sacred’ is Sensual

So, tobacco goes into a pipe, correct? Well, not in every case. But in the same moment, yes, it all does, or should, sooner or later. Am I speaking in metaphor? Maybe, it all depends on how far ‘tobacco’ has taken you in understanding or negotiating reality, which is multi-layered, multi-faceted.

300 years Jesuit poisoning of Native American mentality might jolt some of you (Indians particularly) when I point out the stone appendage jutting out from beneath the bowl of the MAN pipe is your boner (that’s right, a man’s erection.) A woman’s pipe does not ‘sport’ this. So right off, sex is integral to the ‘sacred’, which has absolutely nothing to do with those modern cretans or so-called Medicine Men or Holy Men who use the power of their position to gratify themselves sexually, by preying on their female students. In fact, ‘traditionally speaking’ men did not have female students until a woman had reached menopause, and then only if a woman wished to exercise her ABSOLUTE right to enter into the male knowledge. Men did not, DID NOT, on the other hand, have any ‘right’ to enter into the women’s knowledge but only arrived there by invitation of the elder women and this invitation only extended to man reaching the women’s knowledge in a limited way and was highly restricted. Got that? The point is, this was matriarchy (which is different to matrilineal, don’t confuse these two.) The main point of these initial paragraphs are to point out the rules of tobacco originated with the women, and the man’s pipe (ancient tribal law for men) originated with women. A woman might exercise her right to smoke a man’s pipe but a man had no right to smoke a woman’s pipe. A woman smoking a man’s pipe is not recommended in these modern times because most women would not know (have the cultural teaching) how to properly do this (something where even the men often come up short, regarding the present times.)

Recalling an old Indian healer stating “the only worthless person is someone who cannot appreciate a good joke”, I’ll close these initial thoughts with a real life joke I pulled on a ceremonial leader; he is gay, no big deal, celibate gays were among our tribes most effective shamans, historically. This guy was sitting outside his sweat lodge, cleaning his man’s pipe. When he began to suck on the opening where the stem goes, to clear it, I told him, “No, the other end” and he snorted his laugh through his nose.

If you are a so-called ‘traditional’ Indian and you have a problem with these preceding paragraphs, well, indeed you do have a problem, it is called a Christian cultural mentality, pointing to the Jesuit poisoning of your cultural understanding.

The Rules of Tobacco

The ancient native world was separated into what I will call the ‘heavy’ (when the women sent their men to learn, to be healed, to war, the hunt, to council and to perform ceremony) and the ‘serene’ (which is supposed to be everything else.) Tobacco is central to the ‘heavy.’

  1. Modern people seem to think they can own a native person of knowledge (get what they want) by giving tobacco when in fact in the old way, the person you give tobacco to, actually owns you. Lets’ do a hypothetical circumstance with healing, learning or ceremony employing the old rules, as I have both witnessed or participated in, many times, here is example of seeking a healer:
  1. In the old way, when approaching a person of knowledge/healer (man or woman, if a woman is the healer you employ a woman’s pipe you will not smoke with her if you are a man, this is set in stone, if a woman recruiting a male, the reverse is generally but not always true), you bring certain gifts, typically ‘smudge’, a blanket, prints (uncut cloth) of specified color(s) and you have to ‘catch’ them. If you can catch them (find them, if they know you are coming, it is perfectly permissible to hide from you), they will sit and you must kneel and plead your case. To initiate the relationship of healing, ceremony or learning, et cetera, the prints are to acknowledge ‘spirit’ and the blanket is about ceremonial respect for the earth, or ‘sitting on the ground.’ This must be acknowledged with gifts. The tobacco itself is communion and the ‘smudge’ (typically sweetgrass, proper cedar or a special pine) is communicating through spirit.
  1. If the healer accepts (they are not required to) the pipe you have pointed at them, wedged into the blanket and prints, they OWN YOUR LIFE. You have already failed in your own knowledge to solve the problem by this time and this is why you seek out the healer. The healer will perhaps give physical remedies (especially if a medicine woman, less typically a man), and look at your life, make some changes and return it to you with a new rule or set of rules (the anthropologists might call these ‘taboos’ but they really don’t have a clue.) And you MUST live this, to honor what you have set out to do. This same ceremonial surrender is required to initiate finding a teacher, a trained ceremonial sponsor or person (for the duration of the ceremony beginning with the ‘acceptance’) and much more.
  1. What you see today, simply handing tobacco to someone, to get what you want, is patent bs. How this came about is likely mixing up the ‘giving tobacco’ ceremony (utilizing the pipe) with the sincere native ‘thank you’ gift of tobacco to someone you felt grateful to for some reason.

All that said, if you had example of someone come in looking for an elder, perhaps to ask advice, you might see something like this: an old woman in a room apart, talking one on one, alone except for the one other person. A new arrival might ask ‘are they smoking’ which is an inquiry into whether they are in deep discussion or ‘council.’ It is a figure of speech alluding to more formal proceeding on a larger scale of ceremony. If the answer is ‘yes’, they will not invade. Maybe that person only brought tobacco. This would be like ‘thanks in advance’ and is only permissible within extended family or intimate associations with close relationship of longstanding and does not apply to interaction as pertains to formal learning, ceremony and healing. And there is so much more… things are not as they were and ‘traditional’ in the modern day is a complete misapprehension of reality in too many cases to count. If by chance you know how to submit yourself to women and are culturally in contact with some strict old ladies who are willing to kick your butt until you can get it right, count your blessings… because you might become a real Indian in authentic sense of ‘traditional’

Bageera

My life of many years, it is truly good-

*

Essay 1 ‘Tobacco’

Essay 2 ‘War‘

Essay 3 ‘Women‘

Essay 4 ‘Conflict‘

Essay 5 ‘Birds‘

Related:

Life in Indian Country

Collected stories, folklore and anecdotes concerning my many years life with Blackfeet Indians and traversing Native American territories

Tags , ,
Categories archetype, Author, culture, matriarchy, philosophy, shamanism, Uncategorized
Newer Entries »