16. INDIGENOUS SCIENCE

INDIGENOUS SCIENCE TEACHES THAT ALL THAT EXISTS IS AN EXPRESSION OF RELATIONSHIPS – ALLIANCES AND BALANCES BETWEEN ENERGIES, POWERS, AND SPIRITS.

The second day began with a conference call. The evening before, David had explained to those of us who didn’t know him that Leroy Little Bear, a member of the Blackfoot tribe in Alberta, Canada, would join us for an hour or so by conference call. David explained that in the 1980s, he had begun exploring the more fundamental questions about quantum reality and the way our society had become separated and abstracted from nature. David was looking for a fresh approach that would help him explain his view that all nature, indeed the entire universe, is alive and vibrant.

David was in his study suffering writer’s block – nothing would come to him. Suddenly a book caught his attention – Touch the Earth, which contained nineteenth-century photographs of Native American elders and leaders and included some of their speeches. As David began to read the first speech, the telephone rang. The person on the line announced himself as Leroy Little Bear. For over twenty years, David had unconsciously sought contact with a subtle and ancient culture, and now it was reaching him by telephone. For an instant, it felt to David as if one of the images from the book had sprung to life and was actually speaking to him.

Leroy was calling that day to invite David to a conference in Alberta where native elders and indigenous scientists would meet Western scientists to explore their different visions of reality. Leroy was a philosopher within his Blackfoot traditions, but was also well acquainted with Bohm’s writings and the emerging view of quantum reality.

At that meeting were Iroquois, Blackfoot, Cree, Haida, Navaho, Hopi, and Creek people, two aboriginal women from Australia, and several Western scientists. That was David’s introduction to the “indigenous approach to knowing and being.” This encounter led David to write Blackfoot Physics, a book that was riveting for me to read in light of my conversation with Bohm in London.

David’s book is an account of his discoveries in the years since that first conference in Alberta. He compares the myths, the languages, and the perception of reality of the Western and the indigenous peoples. What David reveals is an astonishing resemblance between indigenous teachings and the insights that are now emerging from modern science – including our understanding of ourselves, of different ways of knowing, and of the universe and our place in it. Here is my synthesis of just four of David’s many discoveries:

• Quantum theory stresses the wholeness of all phenomena and the interconnectedness of nature. Indigenous science also holds that there is no separation between individual and society, matter and spirit, or each one of us and the whole of nature, and that wholeness is inherent within all of life.

• Bohm spoke of the implicate order, or enfolded order – an order in which the whole is enfolded in each part – as being a deeper physical reality than the surface, or explicate order, which is immediately perceived by our senses. In a similar way, members of the Gourd Society wear a necklace of mescal beads in which each bead symbolizes the cosmos and reminds them that each object is enfolded within the whole; indeed for those who wear it, it does enfold the universe and bring them in direct contact with all of creation.

• In modern physics, as Basil pointed out at Pari, the essential stuff of the universe cannot be reduced to billiard-ball atoms, but exists as relationships. Indigenous science teaches that all that exists is an expression of relationships – alliances and balances between energies, powers, and spirits.

• The leading-edge thinkers in physics – including all who were assembled in Pari – suggest that nature is not a collection of objects in interaction but is a flux of processes. The whole notion of flux and process is fundamental to the indigenous sciences.

After having read David’s book, I was really looking forward to our call with Leroy. Lee Nichol, who also knew Leroy very well, took care of making the connection on the speakerphone. David and Lee greeted Leroy, introduced him to the group, and asked us to go around the table introducing ourselves by first and last name and telling where we lived. When we had done this, completing the circle, there was a brief pause. Then Leroy simply said: “I see you all there. Good to see you.” There was a knowing silence in the room. I thought to myself, “He’s not kidding! He really sees us.”

We had a wide-ranging conversation about language (“I can talk Blackfoot all day long and not use a noun – only verbs. For us, everything is process and action-oriented”); time (“Beyond two days, everything else just is”); and the indigenous mind (“Our mind tolerates paradox and ambiguity because this order is closer to our inner structure of reality than a more mathematical form of logic”).

A number of us had questions, which Leroy answered directly and concisely. Toward the end of our hour together, I told Leroy how powerful the wilderness retreats and solos I had participated in over the years had been. He mentioned that many nonnative people are drawn to the power of nature as a way of changing consciousness and that people all over the world have developed techniques for shifting consciousness. What really matters, he said, is not the state itself, but what the group and you do with it – how you act. In an indigenous context, the group has a great responsibility to the whole of society, especially to its harmony and balance.

With that, Leroy said his goodbyes.

At the break that morning, Tahir and I took a short walk up to the top of the village. We sat on a bench in a little park just outside the window of our meeting room. He commented on Leroy’s opening statement to us: “I see you all there. Good to see you.” We knew that Leroy meant this literally; he had not lost the ancient capacity to naturally communicate over long distances. Tahir commented that this is entirely consistent with Bell’s Theorem and an interconnected universe. Then I told him about a similar experience of a friend of mine, Lynne Twist, a veteran global activist and fundraiser, living in San Francisco with her husband Bill, a highly successful businessman and investor.

The story began in 1994 at a time when Lynne was responsible for managing fundraising operations in forty-seven countries for The Hunger Project. She was a founding executive of the Project in the 1970s and helped build it to a global movement to get at the root causes of world hunger – “why we would be living in a world awash with food, and yet 40,000 people a day are dying of hunger and starvation, most of them children under five.” It wasn’t a food problem, a distribution problem, or a human development problem, she and her colleagues determined – solving any of which would be a noble undertaking – but “it was a breakdown in the consciousness of the human family that we would allow so many of us – mostly children – to go hungry.” It was, in Lynne’s view, an issue of integrity. “We have gone numb to our relatedness to one another.”

In 1994, Lynne and a colleague, John Perkins, a noted author who had worked for years in the Amazon rainforest with indigenous people there, traveled to Guatemala with a group of philanthropists who intended to work in the highlands of Guatemala with the Mayan people.

One night Lynne, John, and thirteen others from the group of donors met with a Mayan elder, a shaman, who was working with the Mayan people in that geographic area. They were sitting in a circle around a fire (one of the most ancient of social structures) at midnight, participating in a shamanic ceremony. John, who spoke Spanish and some Mayan, interpreted for the shaman, who instructed everyone to lie down with their feet facing the fire and close their eyes. The shaman began chanting and drumming, and Lynne fell into a kind of deep trance or dream state. In the dream, she became a huge bird flying over a vast unending forest of green. At a certain point, she, the bird, saw disembodied faces of men float up from the forest floor. They had orange geometric paint on their faces and yellow and red feather crowns on their heads. They called to her, the bird, in a strange language. Then they floated back down deep into the forest. A number of times they appeared and floated up to her and spoke – and then disappeared again into the forest.

At that conclusion of the ceremony, everyone sat up, and the elder asked each one in the circle to share what the experience was like. At her turn, Lynne told the story of her dream. When the elder heard about her dream, Lynne said that he gave her a strange look. Then her friend John said that he had experienced a similar vision.

When the elder had completed the ritual, he asked Lynne and John to remain. He told them that their vision was not a typical vision, but that they were being communicated with. They were being called, and they needed to respond.

John and Lynne talked after the elder left. Lynne was upset because none of this made any sense to her. It was an amazing dream, but she didn’t know what to do with it – she just wanted to dismiss it.

John was very direct with Lynne: “I have had a lot of experience with the Shuar people of Ecuador, whose neighboring people are the Achuar. Lynne, the facial markings and headdresses tell me these are the Achuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon.” He explained that the Shuar had been in contact with what we call the modern world for thirty years. The Achuar had had almost no contact, but they had told the Shuar that their dreams and visions had revealed to them that contact with the modern world would inevitably come, but that it might come in a dangerous way. John said, “The Achuar are calling for us. I know who they are and where they are. I have wanted to take people into Achuar Territory for years. We have to go.”

“No,” Lynne said, “I have huge accountabilities in my work to end world hunger. My life is filled with critical commitments in Africa and Asia. I can’t even get my arms around this. I have never been to South America. I don’t speak Spanish. I know nothing about the Amazon. There’s no way I can go to the Amazon with you.”

They finished their work in Guatemala and agreed to talk again when Lynne returned from Africa. She flew directly to Ghana where she had a board meeting, and John went back to the Ecuadorian Amazon to work with the Shuar people.

Lynne’s board meeting for The Hunger Project was in Accra, the capital of Ghana. She told me that she had been sitting at a large conference table, and that “all the faces around the table were Ghanaian – blue-black, as you know most Ghanaian people are. There were two women and seven men talking around the conference table.

“Suddenly, bright orange geometric face paint began to appear on the faces of the men. It was incredible. No one seemed to see it but me. Joseph, it’s as if you and I were talking, and suddenly a banana began to grow out of your head, and we both just kept talking as if it weren’t happening. If you saw it, and no one else said anything, you would think you were going crazy – as I did.

“I started to shake, so I excused myself and went to the lady’s room. When I came back, everyone looked normal. They were still talking. Then it started to happen again – orange geometric face paint began to appear on the faces of the men. I really thought I was losing my mind. I was shaken and terrified. I excused myself, saying I was sick – which I actually thought I was.”

Lynne then went upstairs to her hotel room, packed her bag, and caught the next plane back to San Francisco. On the plane, sleeping or waking, she saw the faces all the way home.

When Lynne arrived back in San Francisco, she shared the story with her husband, Bill, who was empathetic but sort of detached. “It was the only response he could have, she said. I had already begun to dismiss it and really didn’t believe it had happened. But then I started to have dreams night after night that were exactly like the vision I’d had in Guatemala.

“Then the vision started showing up in the daytime. The final straw was when I was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco to Sausalito. Just as you get inside Marin County, you go through what is called the “Rainbow Tunnel.” The visions started coming to me in the tunnel, and I couldn’t see. I couldn’t drive. When I got to the other end of the tunnel, I pulled over and just started to cry. Later, I talked to a therapist and tried all sorts of things, but the visions wouldn’t go away.”

She said she finally called John Perkins, who was still in Ecuador. There was no Internet back in 1994, so she sent faxes and voicemails to his home in Florida. Finally, when he returned home, he found not only Lynne’s faxes but also faxes from his Ecuadorian friend and adventure travel partner, Daniel Koupermann, who had worked with him with the Shuar. Daniel said he had paddled his canoe into Achuar territory with a Shuar indigenous man who protected him so that he could meet with the Achuar leaders. Daniel had been searching throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon, looking for a place to build a remote Eco-lodge in the rainforest and had begun discussions with the Achuar.

“The Achuar are reaching out to have people from the modern world come to them,” he told John. “They want contact, and they want to initiate it. Come as soon as you can. They are asking for twelve people from the modern world to be the first they interact with. Here are the criteria: bring people who have global voices and open hearts, people who know that the rainforest is a crucial ecosystem for the sustainability of life. These people must respect the way of the Shaman and be ready to hear what the indigenous people have to share with the modern world.”

Lynne and John then realized that they had to do this. Lynne took leave from her work with The Hunger Project and together John and Lynne organized a group of twelve people who met the criteria. Her husband Bill was her first choice, and a number of other very special people were included. They went to Ecuador and met with Daniel Koupermann, who led them on their journey to the Achuar.

“We flew to Quito,” said Lynne, “and from there we traveled through the Valley of the Volcanoes, then down the eastern side of the Andes, down the Pistaza river canyon to the beginning of the Amazon basin, which stretches across the entire continent. We then flew in a military plane into Shuar Territory.” At that point, a Shuar pilot took them, three people at a time, and dropped them off near a river in the remote Achuar Territory.

“Once all twelve of us got there,” said Lynne, “it was starting to get dark. And then, there they were – the Achuar leaders with orange geometric face paint, and yellow and red feather crowns on their heads.”

She said the Achuar put the twelve of them and their gear into canoes and took them to a camp – the site where the Eco-lodge was to be built. They met there for days.

Lynne said, “The Achuar elders did, to our knowledge, what no indigenous group has ever done: out of their deep concern for the growing threat to their ancient way of life and their recognition that the roots of this threat lay far beyond their rainforest home, they actively sought the partnership of committed individuals living in the modern world.” In what was a monumental life-decision on their part, unthinkable before this encounter, Lynne and Bill left their work to become the cofounders of the Pachamama Alliance. Pachamama is a word from the native Quechua language of South America, combining pacha, meaning “earth” or “nature,” and mama, the nurturing goddess of wisdom and spirit.

The population of the Achuar nation is about 6,000 people who occupy nearly two million acres of pristine tropical rainforest in one of the most biologically diverse regions of the world. The first initiative of the Pachamama Alliance was to implement an integrated resource management plan for the Achuar Territory, which was a great success. The goal of this master plan is to ensure the long-term well-being of the Achuar lands and culture.

“As I understand it,” I said to Tahir as I finished the story, “Lynne’s experience mirrors the way Leroy Little Bear was ‘seeing’ us. When you have access to that interconnected web of being, time and space are irrelevant. You can see – call it ‘remote viewing,’ if you wish – and sometimes you can even communicate.”

Before Tahir could respond, David and Basil walked by, suggesting we reconvene because Lee was preparing to present.