SUPERMODERNITY
AND TRADITION IN ONE DAY
MIAMI
TO THE OMAHA INDIAN RESERVATION.
Hey,
Doc, said my Omaha Indian teacher, I don't know where Belgium is, but it does
not matter, I will never go over there.
Even
more importantly, he has no desire to go to Belgium.
Then
he asks, are you free this Wednesday night?
Yes,
when you are in the Reservation, while Indians lead busy lives, I have solitary
evenings and time to reflect on my days with them.
Come
and join us at the Inipi Ceremony, he invited.
His
world is contained in the rhythm set by his ancestors. The invaders who came
just 300 years ago to his territory are seen apart from himself and his people.
We
touch their world when we have to, exist there for the time it takes to deal
with them, but we live in our own world, he had told me once.
For
them, the cell phone and the Internet has not become the dominant factor in
their lives, they still visit each other and talk.
In
my first year of work with the Indian, I remember visiting an older Meskwaki
Indian, Wilson B.
We
sat on the porch of his house, for half an hour or so, without saying a word.
And
when I stood up to leave, the older Indian said to me,
That
was a good visit, come again.
Who
is really better off?
The
Indian who still keeps their ancient concepts of Time, Friendship, Solitude,
Thought and peace or the modern man, in search of all the above, tethered to
his iPhone, with greater liberty to travel, with interest to travel but cannot
travel, has greater opportunity to learn, to gain knowledge but has not time to
do so?
(ATTENDING TO THE PEOPLE IN RAPA NUI)
Boils
down to the same things again…
Decrease
your desires, from the Buddhist philosophy
I
don't know where Belgium is, but it does not matter, I will never go there or
Enhance
your desires, as in, Belgium sounds interesting, I want to add that to my
Bucket List?
Anthropologists
such as Sapir and Whorf (Linguists as well) wrote that there exists a
relationship between categories and language structure and the way human beings
apprehend the world.
But
Structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss and the theories of Gregory Bateson (Towards
an Ecology of he Mind, 1973) had observed that, among the Indigenous people of
the world, Levy-Strauss got his start with the Nambikwara in Brasil, in the
world view of the Indians, relationships count far more than actual objects.
Like
they say, Mitakuye Oyasin, we are all related.
Gregory
Bateson was married to Margaret Mead, the well-known American Anthropologist,
who did an excellent early anthropological study of the Omaha Indians!
This
concept of Relationship is exemplified in the difference in NETWORKING among
Indians and Non Indians.
Even
among the Non Indians, the value of relationships are shown in this phrase:
Tell
me who your friends are, I will tell you who you are.
As
always I am amazed at the similarities of all ancient philosophies and even
here one can find the similarities.
