Native Wisdom for White Minds

INTRODUCTION
 
 
O Great Spirit, who made all races, look kindly upon the whole human family and take away the arrogance and hatred which separates us from our brothers.
—Cherokee Prayer
 
A prayer for our oneness. This position of oneness is where most Native peoples begin, and it is always done with prayer. Everything is done with prayer.
 
For the past several years I have spent large blocks of time with Native peoples and most especially Native Elders. Intuitively, I knew this was what my mind and my soul needed.
 
I came to write this book as a white mind struggling to heal and find freedom.
 
It was many years ago that the concept of a “white mind” came into my consciousness. The first time I remember thinking of the term white mind was when I had the honor of getting to know Frank and Kate Fools Crow. Frank Fools Crow was a great Ceremonial Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Lakota people. Frank Fools Crow became a very important person in my life, and his influence and impact on me have continued to grow long after his death. Some of the most powerful ceremonies I have ever experienced were with him.
 
After one ceremony that was of particular importance to me, he sat and talked with me. He told me that in his first vision quest, he had learned that he was to bring healing to the white people and he felt that he had failed. He then said that he was giving this responsibility to me. I remember thinking, Of course you couldn’t heal the white people, regardless of how powerful you are, because it takes a white mind to understand white minds. They’re quirky.
 
I then promptly forgot everything he’d said to me and anything I’d thought at the time—although occasionally the term white mind would resurface. Lately, though, when I’ve been sitting with Native people, the phrase you white folks often comes up. I began to see that this meant something more subtle than people of the white race. You white folks did mean white people, of course. However, I also began to realize that “you white people” was referring to the whole perspective of Western culture and to the white minds trained in and wedded to Western civilization.
 
Native people know that white minds see, conceptualize the world, and think differently than Native minds. As Herb Kawainui Kane says, “Primal cultures are essentially much alike, as proved by the universality of their myths; but worldviews, beliefs, and attitudes of primal societies are so fundamentally different from those of the modern Western society that what may be perfectly logical to one group may seem bizarre and incomprehensible to the other.”
 
I have found what Herb Kane says to be true. Still, it is so difficult for white minds to really perceive these differences and appreciate them. This is because white minds are trained to believe that there is only one right answer, one right way of perceiving the world—and that singular way can only be mastered by minds trained in the Western scientific method of thinking. Unfortunately, Western culture’s way of training our minds has resulted in closed-system thinking.
 
For example, in a closed system, white minds set up their world in dualisms. It’s either this or that. Black or white. Right or wrong. This is a very limited and limiting way of thinking. In fact, I’ve found that the use of the word but usually sets up a dualism. For myself, I try to use and instead of but to help my mind break out of the dualistic form. I’ve tried to do this all through this book. Test it out for yourself. See what your mind does when you read an and where you think a but should be.
 
Why are we so afraid of acknowledging our white-mindedness? Why is there a seeming underlying shame in identifying ourselves as having a white mind? Why do we have such difficulty admitting we don’t know and understand everything? Perhaps, part of the reason is that we’ve been taught that Western mechanistic science gives us the key to unlock the universe, and if there are realities for which this key does not work, those realities must simply be thought out of existence. This process of thinking that which is not understood out of existence is characteristic of a closed system. White minds, seemingly, only feel secure in a closed system.
 
White minds are often ruled by abstract intellectual constructs that get in the way of our accessing our universal minds or spirit. A white mind has been taught to break down its world into component parts in order to try to understand how things work. White minds reduce and isolate. They don’t readily move into wholes or universality. They are hierarchical and mechanistic, and see nature as a force to be tamed and used up with no regard for the future. They cannot understand that they are a part of nature. They cannot see that nature is one with all of us—a gift to be valued and sustained. White minds often have to destroy to understand or to accept what is.
 
Let me say here that it’s not only white people who have white minds. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s blacks often spoke of “Oreos”—people who are black on the outside and white on the inside. Native Americans speak of “apples”—red on the outside and white on the inside. In the South Pacific, it’s “coconuts”—brown on the outside, white on the inside. We rarely hear these terms today because Native peoples the world over are beginning to meet and share their wisdom with each other. White minds have difficulty reflecting upon themselves because they’re trained to believe that the way they think is the only reality, and that they are the only reality. Yet, most of us have the capacity to transcend our white minds. We simply need help from outside ourselves to be able to move beyond our own limited views, and to reflect upon ourselves in a meaningful way.
 
Today, our white minds are proving destructive to ourselves and to our planet. Yet, growth, change, and healing are still possible. It means listening with open hearts and open minds to other voices, other perceptions, other cultures with which we share this earth of ours.
 
WARNING: THIS BOOK MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR ILLUSIONS!
 
What is being offered to us by the Native peoples in this book is not just another form of political correctness. Being wedded to appearances is so characteristic of Western culture. So many of us want to get an intellectual idea of change and not really change the way we see and the way we live our lives every day. What we’re being offered is the opportunity to move from white minds to global minds. We’re being offered the possibility of moving out of the cave of white-mindedness into the waters of planetary wisdom.
 
So often, I’ve heard Elders from a wide variety of Native people say, “Our legends and myths have told us that a time would come when it would be necessary for us to share our wisdom and knowledge, and that time is now. They say, “Our legends tell us that a time will come when our wisdom and way of living will be necessary to save the planet and now we have decided to speak.”
 
This is an impressive message—and all the more remarkable that this same message is coming from so many diverse peoples the world over. I find it incredible that these people are willing to share with anyone who will truly listen—even if the listener comes from a culture that has tried to annihilate them. Their concern is much broader than societal grudges, customs, or politics. Eddie Box, a much revered Ute Elder and medicine man, shared with me what one of his Elders had told him: “And he said when you get rid of that anger and resentment toward whites for what they have done, everything you ask with His name [the Creator] will come to you—no difficulty. Because you have built a compassion inside of you to the human race of the world. See, that is what they [the old Elders] were talking about.”
 
So, now that we know that white minds aren’t bad minds—they’re just one way of trying to be human, are you ready for Native Wisdom for White Minds? This is a book that dares you to be uncomfortable. It offers you the opportunity to grow beyond the limitations of our most cherished illusions. It asks you to participate in conceptual blockbusting. It offers you reintegration at a soul level.
 
If you’re ready to move from only experiencing life at a personal level to experiencing life at a universal level, this book is for you. It’s a book for people who want to explore, create, and confront their isolation and loneliness of the soul. A book for people who are willing to trek in the desert of their separation so that they can move into feelings of connectedness and oneness at a level they may never have felt before.
 
As you sit with this book day by day, you may find your white mind expanding into unknown territory, as I did. This book can support the process of your shifting into a different way of being in the world. It offers you nothing less than a spiritual revolution—a revolution of mind, a total transformation of worldview. I have personally taken the journey I am now inviting you to begin. Over the years, I have sat with Native Elders and been welcomed into the homes and lives of Native people the world over. Just being with them has enriched my life so much. As I began to experience spiritual and emotional healing that I could never have imagined before, I realized that I needed to share this wisdom with as many other people as possible.
 
I want to make clear that I have had no need to delve into secrets that Native people are not willing to share. I do not need to know their secrets—their rituals, their ceremonies, or their hidden ways of healing. While I have had the honor of participating in some of their ceremonies and rituals, my experience in many of them is much too private and personal to share.
 
White minds tend to seek out ceremonies, rituals, or magic as a “fix.” They don’t seem to understand that they cannot use these “secrets” in some mechanistic way. For when this knowledge is not deeply grounded in the worldview of its own culture, it loses all meaning and power. To experience this larger, more inclusive worldview takes time, and patience, and participation. It cannot be learned as an intellectual exercise.