Hi Friend,

"Maybe what I really want for Peoples Day is to rest," an Indigenous elder said to Krissy and I at the end of last year's Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations. We had all been part of a multi-day gathering that included public and private ceremonies, walks, meetings, talks, performances, networking, dances, and workshops. A lot of it was amazing - there were  moments I knew I would remember for decades to come.

And several of the elders left exhausted. Krissy and I wondered - what's the impact of an elder putting all this energy into an event for mostly non-indigenous people on that elders own community and family back home?

This is part of a bigger series of questions….

What does it mean to honor? To celebrate? What types of gatherings are helpful  in actually shifting consciousness? What is the role of public doings, and performances (both in person and online)? And who is bearing what types of physical, logistical, financial, and emotional labor?

When these  intersect with a moment in the calendar such as a public holiday, another question is: how do we use the calendar to honor different aspects of our culture... and what does it mean to "honor" and to "celebrate" much of anything through the calendar?

First a quick review of indigenous peoples day…. Indigenous People's Day itself arose as largely as a rejection of Columbus Day, as well as a desire for something in the secular holiday that recognized and honored indigenous peoples.

Columbus Day, first  celebrated in 1792 to mark the 300-year crossing of Columbus, became a federal holiday in part because of a movement led by a few well-connected Italian Americans who had felt that Italian Americans were consistently marginalized by the rest of mainstream American society (which at the time was even more of a  dominant white American society than it is now). There's some truth to that - and it is an experience that many immigrants experience. Columbus, himself originally Italian, was an easy "hero" for them to latch on to and to uplift.

As I'm sure those reading this newsletter know, their hero was someone else's dreaded enemy: one of the archetypal Bringer of Bad Things.

The shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day is, based on my ongoing research into how calendars shape consciousness, a critical shift in the larger work.

That larger work- another big big question- is in shifting American and global consciousness about how we answer that critical question of, "Who are we," a question that influences everything from national budgets to land use policy to how we adapt to a changing climate to the stories we tell our children.

So what actions - symbolic and substantial -  can shift our collective? Any answer will be running up to how the public engages with any three-day weekend: that rare chance for a generally overworked population to take some off time/play time. and: what does it mean to "play" together.

Right now, I'm in the midst of a lot of work that is related to supporting shifting consciousness. I'm in the final stages of developing a new graphic (with the help of a dear Indigenous colleague) showing how the Doctrine of Discovery intersects with different historical timelines - hopefully it will give another visual means of thinking about the violent impact of the Doctrine of Discovery, which was part and parcel of Columbus'. I'm also in the final stages of a new mini-booklet on the links between the Doctrine of Discovery and Climate Change. 

Both the new diagram and the new booklet came about because of some of the work I was putting together during my time as one of the co-teachers in and on the theological council for the Mother Law course offered by the Land Justice Futures.I was invited into that space (and had the ability to do this work for it) due to the last seven years of teaching the ReMembering Course, which itself drew on over five years of research.

I started teaching the ReMembering Course, which is all about decoding the Doctrine of Discovery in part because of how many indigenous folks said to me, both directly and indirectly, 'You need to learn and teach/share/embody a different history. you need to understand where you come from and where we come from and where this moment comes from in a radically different way. You engaging with these histories differently will help us work together better."

I continue teaching the ReMembering Course in part because that sentiment is still true..... and also because I see the profound and consistent difference it makes in people's lives and their overarching spiritual growth. I now see the work of ReMembering as critical to spiritual formation and to adult seeker's ongoing spiritual development. So far as I can tell, that's true because how we relate to these shared histories/these shared timelines informs how we relate to the present moment and thus to the future. In other words: this is not about the past.

Our next ReMembering Course is starting soon. To learn more, you might want to join our next Info Webinar - on Tuesday, Oct 15 and Oct 22 at 1 pm EST.

I've also been supporting one of our clients in a small fundraising campaign for relief from Hurricane Helene. Climate Change is a direct result of colonization, which in the Americas is directly connected to Christopher Columbus.... and the consciousness of "take all that you find (people, plants, animals) and use it for your own material profit", aka, in his own sentiments, "gold is next to godliness."

We've gotta shift that consciousness. Patterns of extraction might look like "getting rich" in the short term (for a few people) but, as these Hurricanes show us, not keeping ourselves in balance with Mother Nature and believing the false narrative laid out in the Doctrine of Discovery is very very expensive.

I'm also working with a team to put together a report encouraging investors to invest in Indigenous entrepreneurs, and analyzing some of why this has proven so hard to do and some of the barriers standing in the way. This is part of a workshop that we are putting on for the impact investment conference, SOCAP. (Let me know if you are into these ideas/questions … or if you will be there yourself).

And Krissy and I have  been debriefing gatherings, especially between Indigenous and settler folks, that we've been going to in the last year or so. 

Certainly, performances are important.

Getting a bunch of people who have been historically pushed to the fringes into the center - can be helpful in disrupting certain kinds of power dynamics.

But it is still a fringe/center paradigm. And it doesn't take long before it feels like another horse and pony show. The "show" doesn't change power structures or relational dynamics.

I used to do a lot of research into performance vs participatory forms of expression - especially in music as it relates to regeneration/sustainability.

It is a set of theories that applies to many elements of life. for example, collective/group singing is a radically different experience than listening to a trained opera singer's solo. In both cases, music is shared, and people can get 'swept into it' in either scenario. Weeping might happen either way. Memories that last a lifetime can be made either way. Someone might share something that stays with you and changes the course of your work either way. But the two experiences are also very, very different, and they uphold different ways of being with our bodies and with one another.

One of the downsides to the advent of radio was the accompanying decrease of folk songs: people stopped singing as much in their every day life. They just turned on the radio. These days, we put in a headset and stream. Either way, we might be tapping our feet, but we aren't singing together. It's a vastly different somatic experience, and the brain responds differently. That lack of collective singing actually did shift how our bodies, minds, and spirits are able to harmonize together.

Which is not to say performance is, in and of itself, bad (the extent to which we are always performing our own identities is a discussion for another day). But it does something different.

We live in a society that tends to favor performance over participation in a lot of areas of life. And so it's not surprising that a lot of the gatherings around indigenous peoples day lean into performances.

Which is saying a lot more about the prevailing cultural modes of production than it does to shifting consciousness.

None of that is going to tell you what you should do this Indigenous Peoples Day. Which is not my job, anyway!

Instead, I invite you to think about different forms of performance and participation.

For those of you whose work includes putting on events, then think about 'events' vs 'ongoing processes of engagement.' About how events themselves (in my immediate case, a workshop within an annual, global, 3-day conference) are put together - what's the pre and post-process that is going to further the wider and deeper movement that is why you are doing all that darn work, to begin with?

I'm pretty sure we need both - they serve different purposes and meet different people at different places.

And then ask - what kind of participation are you wanting to enter into?

Maybe that's signing up for the ReMembering Course.

Maybe it's financially supporting any of the amazing indigenous led media production houses, non-profits, and life-support-giving initiatives out there. Buying (more) books by indigenous authors (I just put in an order for "Playing Indian" - it's a classic that’s been on my list for years and came up again last week).

Maybe you will hear or encounter an awkward land acknowledgment. You might want to then send that organization/person/your boss/yourself our little booklet on land acknowledgments.

Maybe it's calling us up, and saying, hey, I'm not sure what my next step is on this path, here's what I'm thinking about, can we talk about it?

'Cuz one thing I know is that we need to balance individual and collective discernment.

As for us -  I hope we will get to connect with some of our Mohican friends who are in the area this weekend - another advantage of Indigenous Peoples Day is that it helps garner funding to go to things like enabling Indigenous peoples to visit their homelands.

I'm pretty sure that Krissy will get to do some resting.

I hope that those elders who want/need to rest will get a (too rare) chance to do so.

And I will say some prayers to the lands and waters and peoples of this land. 

Which I do… all the time.

So…Performances have their value. Gatherings and events can be really helpful. 

And it is the ongoing, everyday work, the processes and the programs, and just day-to-day living - the work that happens behind the scenes, out of the limelight. Or, even, in the circle of everyday sacred living, where the limelight and the dark corners of the theater are not particularly important…those circle dances where people come in and out of the center and the point is not who is in or who is out, it's about how the spirit moves for everyone....

That's where so much magic keeps happening ….in ways that can be regenerative for everyone.