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Trigger warning—this conversation has the potential to make you mad. It also has the potential to wake you up. It carries great medicine, if you let it. If you are uninterested in such an affair, move on. If you are open and your heart is willing to see the many-selves dancing about, take a gander.
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In this 9th installment of the God is Red series, Taylor Keen (Omaha / Cherokee) takes us deep into his book, Rediscovering Turtle Island. We look straight at the American habit of loving the “passing Indian” while resisting Indigenous knowledge when it asks us to change how we farm, worship, and govern. The reckoning hurts. It also heals. Its a big and deep conversation…
Learn more about Taylor’s work HERE.
Purchase Rediscovering Turtle Island HERE.
Transcript
Taylor Keen: 0:01
And when the last red man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the white men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe. And when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of pathless woods, they will not be alone. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages are silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning host that once filled them, and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people. For the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:10
Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to the eighth episode of the God is Red series with my dear friend, my brother, my mentor, Taylor Keene. In this episode, we’re talking again about his book Rediscovering Turtle Island as we walk chapter by chapter through the text. In previous episodes, Taylor and I yarn, we dialogue quite well, bouncing ideas back and forth. This episode, Taylor falls into a rhythm, a flow state, uh, and is basically just a treatise on indigenous thought, on indigenous spiritual mores, and so much more, uh, especially as those mores inhabit this land, this American continent, in view of uh sociocultural beliefs, but also political standings and what these mores, what these ways of being, this kinship with Earth as Earthlings uh looks like in the American political system, in the American, you know, economics of of today, and so much more. We are quite excited to release this episode uh today of all days. It is Monday, October 13th, which is Columbus Day, popularly so-called, or Indigenous Peoples Day, unpopularly so-called. Uh, today we we celebrate the Indigenous peoples of this land. And uh I think Taylor does an amazing job taking us through that celebration, its heartache, and its joy. And so with that, let’s jump into today’s episode with Taylor Keane. Taylor, it’s uh it’s so interesting. You and I were just talking about this, and I don’t know, I think it’d be an interesting way to start up this conversation as we dive into the fourth chapter of your book, Rediscovering Turtle Island. When we started this podcast series, I think I was open. I think you were open as well to seeing where it where it went and where the fluid yarning and dialogue would take us. And uh maybe we were gonna do two episodes, three episodes, four episodes. I don’t know what episode this is, I think it’s eight or nine or something like this. And uh it’s it’s so interesting. After every time we publish an episode, we just see subscribers and reviews and everything changes, regardless if it’s positive or negative in terms of numerical values. Everything changes. And the interesting thing, not just watching the up and down, as you call it, the reckoning, which I want to talk to you about. That’s so good. Um that’s not the only interesting part. Something that I’ve recently witnessed in terms of a trend is the first episode that you and I shared, the you know, the first episode of the God is Red series here. Let’s say there’s 10 listens, whatever the number is. There’s 10 listens. And then episode two is nine listens, and then episode three is eight listens, and then episode four is, you know, and it keeps decreasing. So there’s a gradual decrease in radiation of listeners as more and more of these episodes come out. And it, of course, is plateaued, it’s not like there’s going to be zero at some point. Um, but when you look at the content of our first episode, I get so many people reaching out that listen to episode one, and they’re just in love with it. Theoretically, the American spirit is in love with the Indians, the Native Americans, the savages in the wild woodlands. We see this in history, we see this in the way American history is written, we see this in the fiction of James Venomore Cooper, and uh, you know, all of these other books. Um, but it’s interesting when you actually get to witness it in the modern day. I don’t think people have bad hearts, but I think it’s very easy for an American settler, somebody like myself, to look at the indigenous ways or the pre-colonial kinship worldview or the traditional ecological knowledge or place-based wisdom or whatever phrase people come at this with and see this theoretical beauty. And then the more you sit and the more you listen to people like you, brothers and mentors and wise people giving us this information, it’s easy to see it as the secondary information, just like the intellect over there in some tower or some book or something. But the second you start to interact with it, it becomes difficult. Like uh, I’ve received many, it’s interesting, I’ve received many reviews in the early weeks of people just their lives are so impacted. The first one or two conversations are so life-changing. And then I see them a couple weeks later, they unsubscribe, you know, from the podcast because we’re talking about agriculture, we’re talking about ways of being, we’re talking about religion and spirituality and loving earth as our mother, not like our mother, as you said all those weeks ago. And that’s something very difficult and hard. And um, and as we walk into this fourth chapter of your book, Rediscovering Turtle Island, which is all uh encompassing the idea of living red, it’s the you know, the chapter titled Living Red. Um, I don’t know, I think it’d be really interesting to begin this conversation just with one, the acknowledgement that theoretically this is really interesting to a lot of people, but physically, from a heart perspective, it’s also very challenging. We see that in the numbers, we see that in the conversations. I feel that myself. And um, and then number two, I don’t know, I would love to get your opinion on these things. Um, because as we look at Vindaloria’s work, especially in this chapter, you you work with a lot of Vindaloria’s words. Um, and I know we’ll be discussing them, and the whole series is based upon his book, God has read anyways. Um, but there’s a steady um call to co-remembering or helping the quote Native Americans remember their old ways so that we all may live anew, so they all may live honorably, things like this. You have that ethos, and so startling people and then pulling them in seems to be something of interest. And yet it seems that the modern American settler type heart is almost acting in the reverse, like two um batteries counterposed.
Taylor Keen: 7:38
Well, first of all, brother, uh, thanks for having me on again. And I’m finding that these conversations um are very important, um, not only just for me and you as we’re feeling our way through America and his view on indigenous peoples. Um I think you frame this, you know, uh aptly and truly truthfully that there is a romanticism around indigenous peoples that pervades the American mindset and it needs to keep itself tidy and clean, that American perspective. Um it wants to keep indigenous peoples in this nice tidy little sandbox that looks just the way that they want it to. And it doesn’t want us to be smart, it doesn’t want us to be angry, although I don’t think I’m angry at all. Um I’m a student of history, I’m a student of the truth, and most Americans are uncomfortable with that. They want their myth of Thanksgiving to be true, they want their agriculture to be better, and they want their civilization to be superior. And anytime indigenous thinkers like myself challenge those things, it makes people very uncomfortable because they don’t want to look at themselves in the mirror by themselves, I mean America and its history. Because when you look at the history, it’s brutal. And it’s an important topic because until American people truly grasp their own history, and I would say now is an even more important time, as we see the president of the United States wanting to whitewash history again. And so this reckoning on your podcast, and that’s what I view it as, um, as long as we’re talking theoretically about loving the earth and everything’s very topical, I found that to be true in my own life with conversations. This whole notion that is romanticized is as prevalent as it ever has been, in my opinion. There are very few people who could truly stomach reading Ned Blackhawk’s work, for example, or Rebecca Nagel’s work. Um, I I find Ned Blackhawk’s recollection of American history so unsettling that it’s hard for me to read it, and I know it’s the truth, and I know most of the stories, but when you put it all together in such a short amount of time, um it is very unsettling. But that’s what America needs to be unsettled on this topic to truly understand what has transpired, lest we forget and do it again.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 11:28
The rediscovery of America, uh Ned Blackhawk’s book here. You can see how many sticky notes are all over it. This was you’re difficult to read, for sure. Unbelievably difficult. I think I think you’re right about the romanticism. Not that I uh agree with everything said in the book, of course, but Richard Slotkin’s book, The Regeneration Um Through Violence, uh, the mythology of the American frontier, um, I think he says it so well in a point where he says it’s this romanticism, this love affair between these colonial settlers and the passing Indian spirit that really is what pulled America on, right? But in in order to really have that, that, that, that substance, that structure, that architecture of the American spirit, which became the American political system and the American dream, there has to be a romanticism with Indians, but it has to be with passing Indians. That is to say, we love the idea of them, but if they were to be, that idea is to diminish. And so, of course, it necessitates genocide and land, um, removals and all the things that we’ve here talked about. Um, but that that that’s a good point also that you’re bringing up with the idea of theoretical um intellect and in terms of the quote Indian problem um that we have discussed and unpeeled in these conversations that you get into here in your book Turtle Island, Rediscovering Turtle Island, um, which we will talk about that, of course. Um, but it’s just the idea of we it it’s so easy, um, I think, especially from the perspective that I come from, to dismiss the practical reality for the theoretical beauty of the quote, savage of the wilderness. Right. Um it’s good for Disney channels, it’s good for children’s books, it’s good for James Fenimore Cooper, right, to praise the last of the Mohicans during the uh very tumultuous eras of the 1750s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Uh Willa Cather, I’m sure you’ve you’ve read or know people who’ve read Willa Cather’s works, Old Pioneers and things like this, celebrating the idea of this American pioneer spirit and these empty western lands, the early prairies, I think is what she’s writing about, Kansas and other places that you know very well. Um but it keeps that Indian problem, that savage of the wilderness in the theoretical plane, something that Vine’s work challenged me. Like when I first, the first book I ever read of his was Custer Die for Your Sins. And I I threw it at one point. I’ll be honest with you. I was reading it and I just threw it. Like I was just, it was heavy and hard and um it was challenging. And then God is read. A native view on religion. Oh, that one uh it’s painful. And and I think that’s the the healthy thing in a previous conversation. You and I talked about how to move forward, why to move forward, in which ways do we move forward. And um I mean, I think you said it so aptly, which I can only paraphrase now, but it’s to have conversations like this, it’s to feel that pain and then move forward together with a different spirit, with a new spirit, maybe an ancient spirit. Um, and so it is interesting that as we dive into this eighth or whatever episode of this God is red series, that we get to start it with the dismissing of the theoretical. Because to truly live red, as this chapter begs us to question what does that mean? What does that look like? And obviously you write so much about it here. I think we have to get past this theoretical plane, this idea of the savage, you know, noble savage of the American wilderness that is on the one hand, uh necessary for American evolution, but also the demise of which is also necessary for American evolution. I’m really excited because I think talking about this chapter as we are, to some degree we’re going to be repeating some of these thoughts. Um, but I’m interested to go maybe just a little bit deeper, and uh I have the full intention of making some people mad with this one. Um you bring up the Omen Farmer and Agrarianism and and all of these things, which I really look forward to to talking with you. So thank you again for being with us.
Taylor Keen: 15:54
Thanks for having me.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 15:56
Where where do you want to begin? I I really want to jump into agrarianism and the omen farmer because that pisses me off. But I don’t want to assume that you want us you want to start there. Do you have anything you want to start with before we jump into that?
Taylor Keen: 16:10
Sure. I’d like to talk about my relationship with Vine’s work. And um I did get to spend an afternoon with him. I’m very um honored that I was able to do that. I was in my late 20s and I had uh just come back from a corporate jot of a few years over in Europe and was stuck in very rainy cities. And um I remember the year that I was living in London, there were 13 days of sunshine. And when I finally had the opportunity to come back home, I I wanted two things. Well, a few things sunshine, uh, the ability to go fly fishing, and to be around the native intelligentsia. And uh there’s only one place that fits that bill, and that’s Boulder, Colorado. And um eventually I met my lifelong mentor, uh Dr. Deward Walker, and I’m gonna write, I well, I’ve written extensively about him in my second and forthcoming book, and just the impact that Deward’s work had on me. Deward is the chair emeritus of anthropology at CU Boulder and one of the good anthropologists, and I had never met one before, uh, one who was not pompous, one who was quietly supportive of indigenous rights, broadly speaking, uh, on a national level. His his work around the American Indian Religious Freedom Act is paramount and um literally protected our uh religion when the Bill of Rights uh does not apply to indigenous peoples. I know that’s uh odd to say and uh odd to have to comprehend as an indigenous person, but um our freedom of religion um was not uh protected. It was around the ceremonial use of peota. That case was in the 1980s and we lost. And uh the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was a legislative band-aid to protect it, and DeWord had a lot to do with it, as did my uncle uh Walter Eco Hawk and all the other folks over at the Native American Rights Fund. And it was through Deward that I got to meet uh Walter Ecohawk Sr. and John Ecohawk and eventually Vine. And uh I talked about this in chapter four, Living Red. I was um I’ve I’ve had so many questions from non-Indigenous peoples about indigenous thought and our relationship to the environment. Like we were discussing, so much of it is just um sort of topical and um, you know, um certain mindset of people will they’ll say, your people had it right, Taylor. They knew how to live in balance and in harmony, and this this sort of fairy tale perspective. Um like you said, it’s made for Disney movies. Um and I I don’t um discount that harmony and balance because you know indigenous peoples have been on this continent for tens of thousands of years. We’ve discussed this before, but the discovery, rediscovery of uh footprints in white sands in Mexico now goes back to almost twenty-three thousand years. And when you look at European uh settlers coming into the Americas, it it you know, good at the tops we go back seven hundred years. The United States is not even two hundred and fifty. So um if ancestry has anything to do with the relationship with the land, um then the indigenous perspective should be uh honored, respected, and we don’t see that respected in so many ways. Um the topical perspective is just to ignore it. Um agriculture is probably one of the easy examples to point to. Um European tilling methodologies came in, caused the dust bowl, displaced so much carbon from the soil, and we’re still doing it. Um the Three Sisters methodology, which we discussed before on this podcast, um, is right there. Um but the American farmer refuses to acknowledge that its methods are not as good as indigenous methods. And going to that whole topic of Thomas Jefferson’s yeoman gentleman farmer um was the dream, and then and the dream was that that was the best way to displace indigenous peoples. Um previous episode we talked about Thomas Jefferson and the as the architect of dispossession, and uh that’s that’s very troubling for American patriots to hear. Um often people will ask me if I’m anti-American, and I say, to the contrary, I’m extremely proud to be an American. Um I view myself as politically conservative. I’m an indigenous patriot. I love this country and I love the freedoms that we have, but I also know the truth. And it’s it’s an ego thing, is what I’ve come to discern after many years thinking about this. That uh that the descendants of European settlers hold so tightly on to this myth of manifest destiny. Um someone sent me a little blurb from the New York Times about uh the Department of Homeland Security tweeting a uh a famous image, um, American Progress. With the the lady in the air. Columbia. Yeah. Yeah. And she’s floating across the plains and in her wake as settlers on wagons and uh I don’t remember if there’s bison in there, but I know there’s no indigenous people.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 24:07
I think there’s there actually might be indigenous peoples on these horses running away to the top left. I would have to look at it again. It it it it would be better if they were not there. Um it doesn’t paint it lightly.
Taylor Keen: 24:22
Yes, there are there are indigenous peoples. You’re you’re correct.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 24:28
It’s like the Massachusetts Bay Colonies flag. There’s a Dutchman, I guess, um, standing on top of an indigenous person on the flag, uh 1630 something, I think it dates back to, and out of its mouth. This is on the flag, I’m sure you know this, but there’s a thought bubble that says, please come help us. It would have been better, maybe without that.
Taylor Keen: 24:59
But that perspective is alive and and well still. And it’s just um it’s embracing untruth. Um and as uh an indigenous American patriot, I still love this country even after I know the truth. My father was a veteran and I come from a family of warriors who have served, and we’re all quite proud of that. So that’s why I think these topics are so difficult. But back to Vine for a moment. Um write about this in chapter four, but um, when I first read Custer Died for your sins, um I thought it was a protest work. And um I think it was around that time that I was living there and got to Meat Vine. I was like, I I better start really studying his stuff. And that was the first time that I read Goddard’s read, and it just went over my head. I just couldn’t figure it out. And um I picked it back up again in my 40s, and then it finally began to sort of make sense. Um I’ve got some quotes in there which I I would love for us to go through um because they were so profound. But what I began to realize from Vine’s work is one is how we think about time. And he said the European mindset is very linear, meaning there’s the past and then the present and then the the future. And at least in times past, it was very easy to gloss over aspects of history, to simply not report them or to conflate the stories into something more palatal, which is probably the most common result of American history. There’s some truths and some untruths. Some exaggerations and an embellishment for sure. Um but now with perfect information and artificial intelligence, you can ask anything and find out the truth. And I encourage your listeners to be curious and to ask questions. Um I think I brought this up before, but when I was on Steve Ronella’s Meat Eater podcast a few years ago, we were discussing Thanksgiving, and at one point um I had to speak up to Steve and I said, you know, most of the Thanksgiving story is a myth. And um he responded about the way that I expected him to. He was uh referring to the myth in a positive light that he can, you know, share annually with his children. And I said, It’s it’s not true, the version that you’re telling. And he said, Can’t we just keep some things? And there was big long silence, and I knew whatever I said next was gonna be important, so I quoted the good book and said the truth shall set them free, Steve. And I I I think that’s important for everyone. Um it doesn’t change anything by looking at the truth. Vine’s work um explained to me that the indigenous mindset is um circular in terms of time. That uh in a sense the indigenous mindset is um some have called it fatalist. We accept fate as it comes. Um when you’re a vanquished people decimated by primarily disease, um you don’t have any other choice but to accept. And that we believe in prophecy. I think we’ve talked about the seventh generation prophecy multiple times, but at that point of um Contact and being vanquished started the sixth generations of suffering. And I say this every time the Lord knows we have suffered. And with the coming markings, we began in 2001, and the fourth albino bison being born in 2007, that marked the seventh generation. Indigenous people think of ages and generations and fires and um and the one that we’re in now is a very positive one for indigenous peoples, although I’d say right now, most there’s many Americans who don’t want to be in America. But for indigenous peoples, uh oh gosh, I remember this is a very um deep story. Uh I don’t know if it now, but I find myself in New York City on 9-11 and witnessed the second plane hitting, or heard and felt the first one. Um and um basically stayed to help. Um I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t get out of there, so I stayed and helped. And I was uh at the Ford Foundation, and after all was said and done, we basically set up a war room there and um made sure that all their people were accounted for and taken care of. They lost some on flight 93. Um it was a you know brutal day in American history, and I remember um I was uh actually there to interview for a job, which was quickly forgotten amongst the whole mess of things. And when we got everyone sorted out, um the um food and beverage staff would not leave until they had done their job for the day, which was basically to feed us. And eventually um the man in charge that day was Dr. Melvin Oliver, a wonderful man. And um when he heard that, he looked at all of us who were there helping and said, Well, you heard what the lady had to say. I guess we’re all gonna go eat. No one hadn’t even thought about eating all day. This was probably 6 p.m. or something like that. And um Ford Foundation’s a nice place. Um sort of the penthouse where the where the dining room is, and I’ll never forget it. It’s all glass on the outside, and it had a golden tint to it. And uh for those that recall 9-11, uh, it was an absolutely beautiful day out. And I remember, of course, through the glass the towers hadn’t long since fallen, and um you could just see the smoke blowing out across the Hudson. And um in the in the age of uh perpetual forest fires, we know that smoke makes the most amazing sunsets, and that’s what I saw. And I remember um perhaps this was in poor taste, I still don’t know, but while we were at dinner and eating, um I felt compelled to bring up the reason why I was there um not to talk about getting a job, but to talk about the plight of the American Indian. And um the woman that I was interviewing with, she was the head of all the program officers. I was that was basically what I was there to do was to help educate them on indigenous issues in America. And as I was bringing up a lot of these problems, you know, she didn’t want to hear it. And uh I remember she said something very poetic because she just didn’t want to go there after everything that had happened. And um I’ll never forget what she said. She looked at me and she says, I can’t do this. Not while Rome is burning. And uh this is the part that I’m still not sure whether I should have said or not, but I know this is hard for everyone. But this is what it’s like to be indigenous all the time. This is what happened to us and continues to happen to us. Um obviously I was not called back for another interview. Um but I I wasn’t trying to be mean, I wasn’t trying to be pompous, I was being truthful with myself that those sort of things because I I I recall, so I just came back from uh where I grew up, um Talqua, Oklahoma, uh capital of the Cherokee Nation. When you know all that history, it’s so troubling. Indian territory was supposed to be Indian territory, supposed to be our own state, and all the corrupt founding fathers of Oklahoma wouldn’t allow that. And through um collaboration with the United States and the federal government, um, basically um through the Curtis Act, et cetera, but it became illegal for the five civilized tribes in Oklahoma, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muskogee Creek, and Seminoles to govern themselves. It was deemed against the law. And uh we lost Indian territory and became Oklahoma. Ironically, it’s a Choctaw word for red earth. Um and um that was 1907, and in a short 10 to 15 years came the uh depression. And um my father was born in 1934, and I remember at a certain point studying about the uh depression, and I remember asking my dad what was the depression like, and he said it was the same bleak world that had been there since he was born. And it was probably gonna be the same way after the depression was over. And uh that was very sobering for a young person to to hear that. So, yes, um the indigenous mindset is somewhat fatalist, but we’re in a very positive time now, the era of the seventh generation, because it’s a time of hope and cultural revitalization. Umcioeconomic indicators for indigenous peoples have never been stronger than where they’re at. The um everything bottomed out in the 1950s, and gosh, life expectancy was probably ten to fifteen to twenty percent less for indigenous peoples. Um teenage pregnancy rates, suicide, everything was incredibly high, and we’re coming out of that now, so there’s a lot to be thankful for. The important part about the seventh generation prophecy, and I know that we’ve discussed this before, but those indigenous children born after 2007 and until they have their own children, they that whole era is the seventh generation, and our prophecy says that they’re the ones who are going to be ready for indigenous knowledge, which is why I wrote the whole book in the first place. Because I got schooled by um a friend and fellow author we were working on a scholarly paper together whenever the seventh one was born, and I was brutally uh informed that I was supposed to be a teacher and I didn’t know all of my stories, and that’s how the book came about. But the other part of the seventh uh generation prophecy is that uh that all those non-Indigenous youth born after uh the birth of the fourth bison in 2007, they’re the ones who were going to be ready for indigenous knowledge. And that was the real reason behind not just writing the book, but you know, specifically this chapter. Um I had to gather my thoughts. Uh I I know that at some point um rediscovering Turtle Island, uh, volume one will be impactful to young indigenous peoples. And in the same way that Vine’s work has touched you and I, the words of John Trudell, um, the work of Dr. A. C. Ross, we’re all related. I don’t know if we’ve talked about that yet. Um we need to. Um I’m I was remiss in the forward to Turtle Island to give any credit to Dr. Ross’s work, but it has such a profound impact on me. Um, 35 years later, you know, I want to give him thanks. I want to go meet him. Uh we can talk about his stuff in a little bit, but I know that uh that at some point these podcasts are gonna get to the right people and back to the topic of the reckoning. And I think it’s such an appropriate term. Um because the people that are churning out of this podcast are not who this podcast is intended. These words, these conversations are for the seventh generation. Because that prophecy says that they will be the ones who are ready for indigenous knowledge. The other ones are not, and that’s who we’re churning. So if you’re about to unsubscribe, it’s okay. You’re not the ones that need to hear this language, you’re the not the ones who are ready for it. But at some point, the ones that are ready will hear these words and listen. It’s terribly important work, brother.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 42:22
Yeah. It was uh so interesting. Um last Friday, uh a dear friend of mine uh was traveling through the United States, um, him and his partner, both indigenous of a couple different cultures, and they had just come out of Sundance with a Lakota in South Dakota, I think. And um they texted me and they said, Hey, you know, can we come to your place for a while? And I said, Yeah, picked him up from the air uh train station actually that night, and they stayed here for ten days, I think. And uh and it was so cool because our children, who were obviously homeschooled, um f you know, land schooled kind of, got to partake in all of these gifts and musical instruments that they had created and all of these things they weaved at at Sundance and all these other things, and they brought a lot of the Sundance medicine, and and our children just ate it up. And it was just natural, like to the point where I felt like the outcast. To some degree, I felt like the outcast. It was just so natural for the children to play these. We made uh we processed a goat and uh they made bone flutes in the old customs, and so they hollowed out the marrow and the bones, and they dried out the bones, and they they picked uh staghorn sumac and walnut halls and poke poke berries and all these other you know, dyes, natural plant dyes, and they rendered them down and they soaked the bones, you know, in the in the dyes, and then they drilled holes in them and they practiced, and now the kids walk around with these little goat leg bone flutes, and it’s and it’s so cool, so cool. Or they took uh uh cattle antlers, you know, horns, and um, they hollowed them out and they they built these really cool large horns and they drilled holes in them and they learned how to do that and sing up the sun and sing down the sun and all of these really cool ceremonies. And the children, they just looked alive. It was the most special ten days, I think, of uh my parenting life, I think, just being able to watch the the kids be guided in things that I never could have taught them. I don’t have this information, I don’t have this knowledge or experience. And uh and then when they left a couple days ago, the kids were just they just cried for the whole day. They just walked around playing these little bone flutes, and it was it was special to see, something very special, something that I think uh an adult would have to have worked slowly into, whereas the children ran splashing headfirst into it. And um it was special to see. I think um thinking about your chapter and integrating what you just shared and maybe also another uh a following conversation about this yeoman agrarianism. I mean, Ned Blackhawk writes about this. For some reason, I have it starred in his book, uh, The Rediscovery of America. Um, but he talks about, I’ll I guess I’ll just read it real quick. This is on page like 221 of his of his book, but it says the availability of land and its cultivation by small-scale farmers explain the rise of popular sovereignty and the participants participatory freedom of representative government in many ways, according to De Togville. He’s back on the podcast, I guess. The land itself is the land itself possessed republican virtues. The American soil, he writes, absolutely repelled territorial aristocracy. What he goes on to write is this idea of uh the European concept of open land, to some degree was the founding bulwark, the mudsill to use American language from another epoch of tumultuous history, the mud cell of American progress and manifest destiny. When you think back to that image that you that you shared earlier of uh Columbia, the the mother progress floating in the air with a telegraph or electrical wires in her hand and the native peoples running away or the bison running away or whatever the symbology is. So much of what America is, um, or at least so much of what American history has predicated on, is this idea of empty land. It’s what the yeoman, I think yeomanry agrarianism is what it requires. It requires available land. Um but it in your chapter, you write about, and and and this is just to intro this so that you can fill this in for us. You write about the earth as our mother. You call it the bonds of blood and bones. Something that um you were talking about the difference between the linear European heart and the circular native way or indigenous way, something that I also think is I think a lot of European settler colonialism looks at empty land from a human perspective. But when I read your words here in chapter four, I’m on page uh 51 and beyond in in the book, if anybody is following along. So much of this is talking about um Earth Mother first uh and foremost, and then humans following. Could we talk about the idea of open land from the indigenous concept? Is land ever open? Maybe that’s a fine question to lead into that.
Taylor Keen: 47:51
I think terms like that are misleading. Um back to um John Gast’s 1872 Picture of American Progress and Lady Uh Columbia, um she’s been largely forgotten in the American mindset. Um but nothing uh captures these notions of manifest destiny better than that that image. And she’s carrying a school book. Probably gonna represent the arrival of education. There’s a golden star on her forehead bringing the light to the darkness of the West. I’ve never noticed that. Wow.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 49:13
Yeah.
Taylor Keen: 49:14
Um to save the land from the savages that were there. And it’s that notion that it was an open wild wilderness. And for those listeners who have read uh Charles C. Mann’s 1491 and 1493, uh Charles is a dear friend. He wrote the forward for rediscovering Turtle Island. And he so aptly um describes that it uh was not a wilderness. I think uh last podcast we did, I quoted uh Chief Luther Stanning Bear. Um this time I want to go forward with uh another analogy that Vine put in God has read. And I start by quoting myself here from the book. Is it so daring to acknowledge the special relationship between the earth and the bones and blood of one’s ancestors? Would the mother not know her progeny? Would not our souls which are immortal, while our human vessels are not, recognize the land that sustained them and all of the other immortal souls. To quote Chief Seattle in his retort to the signing of the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854. To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred, and their resting place is hallowed ground. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in the days long vanished. The very dust upon which you now stands responds more lovingly to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season will love these somber solitudes, and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the white men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of pathless woods, they will not be alone. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning host that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds. The year again was um 1854. And um the setting for that was um it happened in many cases. Chief Seattle was so eloquent, of course. I don’t think I need to say anything to translate what he said. Um, but but the setting was the uh Indian agent was fighting with Chief Seattle, and was basically telling him sign the treaty. You all are gonna die, anyways. And that was his response. So powerful. And and the thing, you know, that we’re not bringing these things up to make somebody feel bad. Those words are so beautiful and haunting. But what I want your listeners to understand is this is not a condemnation of your ancestors. This is a part of American history, it belongs to all of us, and the truth shall set us free. We often um you ask me to give a blessing, and one of the things that I always say, and there is something that I learned um trying to save the demise of a marriage, and um setting was in a church. Um, but it really wasn’t religious per se, but the whole notions was to move forward in life, you have to forgive everyone, you need to accept the uh forgiveness given, and then you’ll be free. That’s why I think these conversations are so important. What we’re doing is forgiving others. I always uh love to bring this up. We just um at the full moon in August, the Omaha’s uh always have our harvest celebration. It’s it was meant to be a very complex ceremony, and uh but as we enter the sacred circle for our war dance, uh there’s um oftentimes uh a forked stick that is stuck in the ground as you enter, and all of the participants are supposed to touch it. And they often will give instructions that it’s a um burden pull. They say, leave your burdens at the door, and then when you leave, and they say this in a joking manner, if you feel that you need to pick them back up, you can, or you can leave them there. My grandmother used to tell me when I was a teenager and just really get in into our dances, they’re sacred. And she said, when you’re in that circle, um have a kind word to say for everybody. Even your worst enemy, go up and shake their hand. And I said, Grandma, why would I want to do that? And she said, Well, grandson, just remember that everybody has someone who loves them, needs them, and counts on them. Just remember that. So when we talk about living red, I try to share these things that I’ve encountered in my life. As I grow older, the days are still long, but the years go fast. As a young father, I want you to remember that. But all of this um conversation about open land and everything else, it’s it’s it’s uh this goes back to the previous episode in the founder’s dilemma of America. It makes it easier to gloss over the truth of the past and to make it into a um an honorable parable. Where in actuality most of it was not honorable. For all the treaties engaged with the tribes in the United States, every single one of them was violated by the United States. And um, that’s my proof for anyone who gets ruffled feathers over me saying dishonorable acts of the United States. That one alone is the United States wasn’t good to its word. And I think you aptly said it just a little while ago. Um the American dream needed land. And who had the land? The Indians. Difficult topic. But yes, there is a notion of um the relationship between a people’s whose blood and bones have been interred into the body of Mother Earth that she knows us. And why is it important again to have these conversations? If we’re ever gonna make things right and just with the American Indian, America needs to acknowledge that it needs indigenous peoples to make this land whole again. That’s why this conversation is so important. Because European descendants haven’t been here long enough for the earth to know them. Here. But we have. We’ve discussed this before. And if we have indigenous listeners, um there’s the notion of blood DNA that I can attest to when one’s heart is in the right place and your mindset is open, and you’re humble and you do the work, whether it’s indigenous agriculture or storytelling or writing books like I do. Maybe your ancestors will help you seek what you seek. To find what you seek. And who knows what’s in our quote junk DNA, end quote. But uh there’s knowledge in there that um I think anyone can argue we we need all the help that we can get if we’re gonna if we’re gonna survive and thrive here as human beings on this planet. So we need each other. That’s the one simple truth I’ve come out of all this work and research and writing is we all need each other. It goes back to our original saying we are all related. I wanted to take a minute just to honor um Dr. AC Ross. His book came out in 1992 and I was living um outside of uh Portland Maine um little town called Bath I worked at Bath Ironworks and um I was building war machines during the day I needed something else to think about. And um I lived at a former commune um it was a gatehouse to Morris Mountain beautiful area.Anywhere where granite meets the ocean is stunning and um I believe uh the property was owned by Bates College one of the educational institutions and um some of the um original inhabitants of the commune meaning real hippies still live there and um it was a very wonderful place and um one of my sisters there um he drew a whitehead she gave me a copy of the book and um AC Ross uh the the story very much would uh seem to parallel some of my own later on I didn’t know it at the time but um Dr. Ross is Lakota and um got his PhD in Jungian psychology and um starts comparing the two um that was the impetus for my bringing up the topic of um Atlantis and rediscovering Turtle Island volume one um he um just asks a lot of questions why are there so many commonalities between peoples um elsewhere around the world and indigenous peoples he examines uh chakras and how that uh relates to rituals like um sweat lodge and sundance and what you know chanting in unison and as we sing in the sweat lodge what that does to open up chakras etc and uh ultimately then he’s pointing out that um whether red yellow white or black we’re all related and it’s not just the humans but to all the plant and the animal nation so I owe Dr. Ross’ uh words and thoughts um I owe him much for what he gave me when I was 23 24 and in a large part it’s it’s such a beautiful book it’s just asks so many questions. I think it’s out of print now but you can still find it it’s such a neat piece and we don’t have um video on these podcasts but behind me you’ll see two copies. One is um so dog eared in the spine that all the pages have fallen out on their own so I had to get a second copy so if I could actually read it or hand it to somebody don’t keep it because this is the only one I have left that I can that doesn’t fall apart. But um and I I bring this up just as we’re discussing Vine’s legacy of course always um like I said 35 plus years later you know I’m paying homage to Dr. Ross and who knows 35 years from now I’ll probably be long gone and someone’s gonna be on some futuristic blog or something and they’re gonna talk about my book and my buddy Daniel and our conversations that’s indigenous thought that’s how we think it doesn’t matter that I’m not gonna be here anymore unless I live to a hundred doesn’t matter what matters is that we have these conversations and that your listeners are present and they grow along with us. In my teachings at the university I’m I’m getting softer as I get older find myself sharing lots of wisdom with my students and in the first day I was you know explaining to them what I teach is corporate strategy and entrepreneurship and mainly the strategy. I teach her a capstone course at my university so it’s the last big class they all need to take it’s sort of ceremonial and meant to be fun and hard and um to grow is what I want and as one of my students asked on the first day a very eager young man. And I was talking about personal growth and um fighting perfectionism meaning they all think they have to have a perfect grade to I was telling them no nobody cares. Maybe if you apply to grad school they’ll care but and even then maybe not and so they said what’s uh question was so is that what you want for us is that your favorite part of the job is to see our growth and I said absolutely that’s what we’re supposed to be doing as human beings is to help each other grow and the difficult part of growth is what we’re talking about examining the the truth and other mindsets again this is not about me trying to say that the indigenous perspective is superior because I don’t believe that any people’s ways are superior. We’re all human beings anatomically regardless of the color of our skin um we’re the same all of us and that you know the difficult part of growth is facing hard truths but I want to emphasize to your listeners the beauty that comes out on the other side you get past the childish anger or I don’t know what I mean I don’t understand the emotions of why listeners unsubscribe. Is it just so difficult to hear the truth they just don’t want to do it and they’re like oh unclick I don’t think it’s anything more complicated that but if they just would have hung with us get to the other side. Yeah when this all started Living Red I was trying to figure out what I thought um in the second installment of Rediscovering Turtle Island is entitled Finding the Divine Within and I really attacked the framework of settler colonialism because it’s rooted in anger um trying to remember what the catchphrase in is um resist um desist I’m I can’t remember what the but it it it will keep us in an angry mode and I know why it’s doing that it’s trying to counterbalance the prevalent mode of you know back to the painting of uh gassed American progress it’s fighting that mythos that um I get it but we have to get past that as indigenous peoples and all Americans we have to if we’re stuck in that it’s us and them and that’s not the way that it’s supposed to be it’s supposed to be us together and I feel like that’s where we’re going with this journey uh that’s why it is it’s a reckoning if if your listeners can hang with us this far we get to the other side where there’s freedom and we understand it together. And you don’t have to have a guilty conscience just forgive yourself understand the truth forgive your ancestors forgive what has happened pledge that it will never happen again and we move forward as a unified America it’s really hard for people to get past those initial waves that’s what’s happening with the reckoning on your podcast they don’t want to have to face the truth that’s that’s the long and short of it that’s why they’re unconnected they can point a finger and say oh they think they’re smarter than everybody else that’s not it at all you’re not listening. Yeah it’s hard for Americans to listen even just saying that I know I piss people off all the time I need to be better listeners.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:11:06
Yeah American exceptionalism demands a very closed ear a big mouth and closed ear I I think that’s pretty generalized but I think it’s pretty true.
Taylor Keen: 1:11:18
I often have you know you were just mentioning your friends who went to Sundance and ceremony and spent a lot of time around ceremonies and oftentimes um you know come across visitors to there and I but I always tell non-Indigenous peoples is it’s always the same. It’s age old indigenous wisdom. I know that this is not your ways but if you’re around indigenous peoples be all eyes ears and little mouth and it’s really hard for many people to do that. But that’s the indigenous way any of our ceremonies will require sitting there and listening for hours upon hours upon hours. And that’s what all Americans need to learn how to do be patient. We talked about Indian time Indian time means there is no clock things happen when they’re supposed to happen the non-indigenous part of me really struggles with it sometimes. It’s like be on time but you know um I um got to celebrate my mother’s uh life in the past year when those things happened you know we have our our ways and the Omaha’s uh we we have awake for four days um someone always has to remain with the body line in state all night and so everyone from the family and friends have to has to take a part with it and I knew as soon as uh her temporal body passed we were preparing her for the journey of the souls to go back home her soul to go home and our teachings are around um my mother was um one of our last fluent speakers of the of the language and uh soon they’ll there’ll be no more fluent speakers probably um although you never know um culture can be very resilient maybe there’s pockets of families and peoples who still will help us carry it on and everyone in our tribe has to be diligent about trying to learn it I still am a student all the time of it. And um but once those things kick in you know then time is irrelevant other than the fact that you know the sun rises and sets and the moon rises and sets and you go to the next day. But there’s something to do in all of those and most of which um just required me to be present uh at her wake when people will come for visitation and um as I grow older I know that those are the important things in life those people that came during that time are the ones that really care about me and my family. And you just sit there for hours and talk with people and help them as they’re mourning as well and the way that I describe the ceremony is um there will be no more tears because at the end of it when it comes time to say the final goodbye um we the Omaha’s do everything um sacred and when talking to God we use tobacco that’s what it’s for it’s not to be misused and um I presented um my uncle the the rogue man who presided over the funeral and the wake um presented him tobacco to start the process and it ends with uh on the fourth night um with him giving the tobacco back to me and I make the final prayer for my mom’s temporal body um our belief is that uh when the temporal body expires then the soul goes everywhere that it wants to journey to my mother taught me that um whenever I go out and about um travels stay in hotels or people’s homes or whatever at the end unless I’m for sure that I want my spirit to journey there when this temporal body expires then I have to call my Indian name in our language and tell it to come with me otherwise that part of the soul will travel back there. And that’s what my mom’s soul was doing during our wake her clan is the earth and bison clan black shoulder uh in Quesebay uh that’s uh the words our language for it and she carried the name of uh now we say dengei which means she’s not here anymore um but the rights of her clan we lit a fire for her um so that when her soul got done journeying it knew where to come back to and with that final tobacco that my uncle smoked and then gave to me uh for that final prayer the tobacco smoke carries uh the prayers to God and uh basically what I had to say in our language was uh mama it’s time it’s time to go home don’t look back and uh with that I felt her soul leave and uh I can only imagine the the beauty of what it felt like for her soul to be free and to make the journey back home hopefully your listeners uh will uh appreciate uh these kind of conversations because um it’s not and we have the tough part of our conversations but this is where you get to on the other side of some of these beautiful stories of the indigenous world and um like I said we start this conversation with the topical narrative around American Indians you know that were you know flower children in harmony with nature and there’s butterflies everywhere and we’re bare chested and war pain on our cheeks. But the reality is the story that I just told you that’s what our world is like it’s beautiful we’re dealing with the same hurts and pains as everyone else the loss of a parent the wisdom of the tribe understanding the cycles of the seasons and the sun and the moon and measuring time that way. I think it would be important for every American to spend some time with indigenous peoples in ceremonies because once you finally give up that anxiety over I have to be here at this time and do this and do that everyone should feel what it’s like to be free from that. And that’s what you find at our ceremonies you just visit and talk and learn ask elders questions. We just need to there’s wisdom in all these teachings that will set you free. You can call it fatalist if you like but you’re not burdened by all the pressures you know we all make mistakes forgive yourself don’t punish others for making mistakes because you’ve made them too I think that’s where we get lost in a lot of life judging one another so it’s wasted effort
Fantastic listening. Thank you