Educatedindian, quoting you here again:
While I agree very much with networking on similar issues, I've never cared much for the idea of trying to find similarities between very different traditions. It's too easily transformed into the pseudo shamanism ideas of people like Michael Harner, that it's OK to exploit any tribal tradition because somehow they're really all the same.
Now belonging to the "1/4 Native club", the view from this point gets quite interesting, since I know a few in the area where I currently live, area which is very traditional.
One of the 1/4 peoples here is a
Cree, a relatively recent migrant from Canada.
Because this area is so traditional, Aboriginal culture here is still very strong. You don't need to "interview" traditional people about the culture, all you need to do is to "point your nose into the wind"; - so to speak, and you start to recognize it.
It is an open secret, maybe one could say.
(Though if I personally do see and experience something, I think I know but am not absolutely sure, then and only then will I go specifically to ask).
The thing that really struck me about this Canadian newly immigrated man, was how not previously knowing anything about Aboriginal culture, he, from the moment "go", was so "tuned" into it seeing it and recognizing it, the same way I do.
What's more, I might be walking in town, and the image of him would just pop into my mind very vividly, and the next thing, there he is coming towards me, round the corner. And this was happening like all-the-time.
So what was it, that he and I had in common, that's what I wanted to know !
Why is he one of the
"invisible" people as well; - knowing
"the open secret", when majority of people do not see nor recognize any of this Native spirituality happening around them.
He doesn't publicly advertise himself as Native American, in fact he hides it, and in a multicultural society he just looks like any mixed, maybe "Asiatic" descendant person, and his profession has got nothing to do with "selling Native American spirituality". Yet now that I know, his Native Americanness comes through everything he is and does. The fact that he was hiding it was the confusing part.
The same happened with my mum when my parents came to visit me here. She doesn't know, and I didn't tell her on purpose any of The Aboriginal stuff here. Yet, she started straight away recognizing "sites" (public access, not marked) and "events" (and of what kind) that had taken place .
But all this doesn't mean, that all of a sudden we, nor the Cree man for that matter, would start playing as being an Australian Aboriginal person, one doesn't have to, and there IS a boundary of respect in these matters you do not cross, unless specifically invited for a reason.
Educatedindian, there certainly are "similar issues" Native peoples all round the globe face, but as to "trying to find similarities between very different traditions" .... well, this sounds like "conceptual talk", my take on it is more on the line of
recognizing and perceiving similarities from everyday Reality, because there is something
within you yourself, that is able to reflect it.
One of the similarities I experience in ordinary daily life is, what is called:
Dadirri"Many Australians understand that Aboriginal people have a special respect for Nature. The identity we have with the land is sacred and unique. Many people are beginning to understand this more. Also there are many Australians who appreciate that Aboriginal people have a very strong sense of community. All persons matter. All of us belong. And there are many more Australians now, who understand that we are a people who celebrate together.
What I want to talk about now is another special quality of my people.
I believe it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called dadirri.
It is inner, deep listening, and quiet, still awareness.
Dadirri recognizes the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call "contemplation".
When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again. A big part of dadirri is listening.
The contemplative way of dadirri spreads over our whole life. It renews us and brings us peace. It makes us feel whole again.
Quiet listening and stillness - dadirri - renews us and makes us whole.
My people are not threatened by silence. They are completely at home in it. They have lived for thousands of years with nature's quietness. This is special quality in our lives. It is born in our culture.
My people today recognize and experience in this quietness, the Great Life - Giving Spirit".
Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann***************************
Ok. One needs to "conceptualize" it in order to speak of it, but the
essence of this, what some Aboriginal people call
"Dadirri" was taught to me in my own culture from a very early age. And
recognition of it
goes both ways, that is the beaut part of it. And the rest just unfolds naturally.
You know what you know,
from within, and what you don't know from within, that is something you then cannot perceive reflected in Reality, no matter how much conceptual data about the similarities you study.
A.R.
