Indigenous Wisdom (1)

I recently returned from New Mexico, having spent most of the month of October there leading a vision quest. Most of that time I was in wilderness without any connection to the Internet, so I haven’t posted in a while.

I was there over Columbus Day, recently relabeled and repackaged as Indigenous Peoples Day, and I want to address some of the assumptions — mostly incorrect — that people make about human nature and are then projected onto indigenous peoples.

The concept of the “Noble Savage” was inspired by the European colonist’s discovery of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. Popularized by Swiss philosopher Rousseau and adopted by the partisans of the French Revolution, it asserted that humans uncorrupted by civilization are selfless, peaceful and serene, and morally superior to those who inherit all the troubles – violence, wars, greed, and anxiety – that are the products of civilization.

At the time, this challenged and competed with an older stream of thought that all humans had dark impulses that — if not tamed– resulted in a brutal and savage life, and proper childrearing involved training the intellect and fostering a healthy respect for authority.

A year ago, a friend of mine posted “Happy Indigenous Peoples Day” in early October, in which he told the story of Columbus’s meeting with the Arawak (or Taino) people, and his evaluation of them as a noble, friendly people, who would “make good slaves.” His post represented the tendency to see Europeans (white, civilized, colonists) as morally evil, and the indigenous people as noble and good.

But Columbus first encountered the Arawak people because they had been driven north out of the Lesser Antilles by the Caribe Indians, a warlike group who raided, captured, and otherwise preyed upon the Arawak, torturing, killing, and eating the men and taking the women as slave wives to bear children who were considered delicacies. Somehow, no one ever holds up the Caribe as bearers of Indigenous Wisdom.

Today many people seem to have a hard time accepting the shadow sides of human nature — whether that be greed and self-interest, or human aggression and violence. We want to see these qualities as aberrations, things which could be weeded out if … we didn’t have capitalism, or practiced better child rearing, or weren’t infected with the scourge of racism. But the data doesn’t support this position.

The evidence actually shows that peaceful clans in the indigenous world are rare and are considerably outnumbered by more warlike and deadly bands. The Yanomamo of the Amazon rainforest were committed to continuous warfare and raiding, and men who had more kills we’re rewarded with more wives (and hence, more offspring). In Samoa, Margaret Mead found the more warlike tribes generally inhabited the better and more arable land.

And John Perkins, who lived among the Shuar (the last headhunters of the Amazon) for many years, has spoken about how — when the Ecuadorian government outlawed their constant warfare — their population increased dramatically to the point where the jungle could no longer support their traditional way of life. In other words, living in ecological balance was dependent on a constant state of conflict.

I’m not saying this to disparage indigenous culture or indigenous people. My life has been positively impacted in major ways by North American native teachers – Sun Bear, Wallace Black Elk, and Raymond Stone — who I have studied or spent time with, and I honor and respect other teachers — like Brant Secunda — who was adopted into the Huichol lineage and now shares it with the wider world.

I do take issue with the denial of human nature and trying to reshape humanity while turning whole classes of people into good or evil. That is a recipe for totalitarianism, whether it be Nazism, Marxism, or something else. Marx taught that “the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary,” while Hitler spoke of “the will to create mankind anew.” Each epitomizes an unwillingness to accept human beings as the complex and shadow-filled beings they are and a desire to condemn and eliminate a whole group of people — races for Hitler and classes for Marx — to purify humanity.

One can love and respect indigenous wisdom, a wisdom that works for and within the world indigenous people live in! We can also affirm and respect civilized wisdom as expressed in the mythologies and philosophies of Greece … the sculpture and paintings of Michelangelo … the plays of Shakespeare … the mathematical-scientific brilliance of Einstein … and the political philosophies that have led to the never-before expressed freedoms of speech and expression we take for granted today.

Wisdom (along with temperance, courage, and justice) was the cardinal virtue of the ancient western world. A rich and soulful life was the result of practicing the virtues that led to wisdom. And wisdom is what works in the world in which you live. If you’re reading or listening to this post you live in a civilized world, and it is a wise choice to practice those virtues – like gratitude and hope – that bring us joy and can make us resilient and strong.

~ November 1, 2023