White, European or Human Nature dispossessed

White, European or Human Nature dispossessed

Please read this to the end this is not a defence of European exploitation but a recognition for the need to be indigenous-led.

I found this very interesting article by Lyla June, some of which I cannot feel. That lack of feeling I have to accept, but I will keep trying - see later.

Lyla is mixed race, mother Dine (Navajo) and father from Dallas – using Lyla’s term European. The article is concerned with Lyla reclaiming her indigenous roots, reclaiming that her European part was also in the past indigenous. Because she was Dine she could feel her indigenous roots whilst travelling in Europe – mountains of Switzerland etc.

I can connect in part with this. Since my upheaval, following the path has very much connected with Nature. There was all the displaced walking as a child, the Peak District, university by the sea, when stuck in London holidays in Nature, living in Brighton on the Downs, then travelling Africa, Oman, Bahrain – not so good, Chengdu – the same, Lagos – the same, then retiring to rural Thailand. I do not have Dine spirit, I cannot feel the Earth although being possessed by Gaia is my latest meditation.

Much of my adult life I have felt the historic pain of being white and European, guided by my path it inspired my activism. Not to belittle the impact of European colonialism I question whether that white and European inhumanity is noted because it is most recent, and because it was genocidal in the US, Australia and New Zealand. Maybe I should also be critical of Spain in Latin America (see Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galleano), but I have not examined Spanish colonialism so much except as the Spanish gold funding the establishment of the British Empire (with the attempted indigenous genocides in the US, Australia and New Zealand).

I am comfortable with the term European cited in Russell Means’ important talk, but I feel it is important to examine the context of this term. Am I defending this because I am white and European? I don’t think so but …. that is a fair criticism. In the Manual Ch6, I began with accepting the European assessment but then looking at human evolution there is a different picture. That picture is migration. But having a migratory evolution (Smithsonian) does not explain, it only observes over evolution.

What we can observe is human nature, the way people are, and they are not migratory. People like me travel, but in travelling I observe people wishing to remain in their culture (that was not me). That is the essential of human nature that I wish to note here.

But there is another aspect of human nature that I wish to observe. Historically leaders have accumulated wealth, and I trace this accumulation back before the Roman empire (that Lyla referred to). And I trace it to beyond Europe. There is wealth accumulation amongst African leaders, Indian leaders, in the Middle East, in the Far East. That is not simply a contemporary phenomenon, in other words this accumulation was not as a consequence of European contact. In the series Africa for example, Basil Davidson examined the wealth of history of their civilisations, and how Europe destroyed them – a similar theme was develop by Walter Rodney in How Europe underdeveloped Africa. But in both cases they were not defending civilisations whose rationale was to protect Gaia, it was not a defence of Gaia wisdom – indigenous wisdom, it was a defence against racism, the European propaganda mechanism of making Africans inferior attempting to legitimise their racism colonialism and exploitation.

Being white and European is the latest extreme example of exploitation but its patterns can be seen in human evolution. But here is the rub. These patterns are not seen in all cultures. There is a pattern that exists across all cultures, it is human nature not to migrate, that migration is a cultural consequence. However the pattern of accumulation of wealth in leadership is not seen in all cultures, and is recognisably not so in indigenous cultures. For those cultures (indigenous), such obscene wealth is a crime against Nature. I want it to be recognised that indigenous cultures do not have the accumulation of leadership wealth because they live in harmony with Mother Earth – Gaia. This is indigenous wisdom.

Here is the pattern of human nature that I am putting forward. It is human nature to remain connected to the land and culture that they were born with. Leadership within most cultures have taken accumulated wealth and ensuing power as a symbol of their leadership. To accumulate their wealth they have enslaved their peoples to accumulate wealth for them – in the modern day this is wage-slavery where most peoples in the world are forced to work for money in order to consume thus enabling accumulation of wealth for their leaders; in most cases now those leaders are now the oligarchy - the 1%. To enable this accumulation the peoples of the world have been dispossessed from Gaia, they have been forcibly disconnected from Gaia, possessed by money, by a consumption culture that fails to see the importance of Gaia, fails to see that they are destroying the very being that gives them life – Gaia. Apart from indigenous cultures all of the world’s cultures participate in this economic model of profit, accumulation and destruction of Gaia led by the neocolonialism of the white and European.

This last sentence gives us the direction for change. As the destruction of Gaia is not part of indigenous wisdom, it is that wisdom that can lead us away. There needs to be an end of accumulation for accumulation’s sake, and a need for a process of decumulation not only of wealth but also of people returning to a lifestyle that is in harmony with Gaia. Who recognises harmony with Gaia? So this decumulation needs to be led by indigenous wisdom. An economic model needs to return to fair trade – equivalent to barter. Profit in itself is not unreasonable so long as production are in harmony with Gaia, and those profits help people to live in harmony with Gaia.

To return to Lyla June. She can feel the connection with her ancestry in Europe, I cannot – I am dispossessed. My analysis, my path, can identify the need for indigenous wisdom, but it does not have the feeling Lyla June has. That is why the way forward is to be indigenous-led, the way forward is being Gaia. To begin that people need spirit, need to follow their own paths, unite with being Gaia; they need pathtivism, for example.

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