WGEO

“Standing at the River, from the Road”

 By Linda Bergeron

 

Standing at the river, from the road ~

It’s in-con-se-quen-tial if your eyes are closed,

And you’ve opened your senses to the world.

 

Watching from a place that is afar ~

When you know a river, you can see it anywhere,

Even when the fog is thick you see it still.

 

            The rocks are always at your feet,

            The skirmish on the bank is small;

            In the great adventure of grav-i-ty

            The long shared feast is best of all.

 

Being-in-the-world’s the place to be ~

Quieting the self to hear the message in the wind,

When you’re standing at the river,

                                    At the river, from the road.

 

 

[under the influence of a bluegrass music festival, and the early morning hour in Denali at Kantishna, “the meeting of the rivers”]

I came to understand that, looking at societies and even people in general, there are basically those who are earth-based and those who are not. In simple terms, there are those who appreciate the gifts of survival and living that come directly from the earth and respect them enough to protect them, and to teach their children about them.

And there are those, ‘civilized’ to such a degree, that they live out their days not in the context of the earth, but of buildings, social institutions and packaged realities.

After this insight, I was reading a Jack Weatherford [professor of anthropology] book, which carried the reader from the formation of continents, through the various ages of man and the important division of foragers and farmers. I was struck with the simplicity of this concept of the diversion in the path of men, and where it led.

And then the phone rang and I was talking with a friend of like ponderings. After we parted, I returned to the keyboard, intent on not dropping the thread of thoughts I had earlier. Since I was reading another book on and off, I noted its influence. Oh yes, a little background: I have been re-educating myself on the aboriginal experience on the so-called North American continent since late 2006, taking the time to review what current school textbooks on American history look like these for middle- and high-school students, and digging incessantly deeper into source documents and eye witness accounts while visiting regional sites [northeastern corner of OR counties; western Central Idaho – all Nez Perce homeland].

“Thoughts brought up by reading (mostly) from Weatherford’s Savages & Civilization, with topical checks into Johnson’s History of the Jews:                      

HISTORY [which enlightens the topic of Christianity]                                     

• School history: does not describe – favorably or extensively – about non-Christian science, art, unbiased politics or literature, etc.
• Suspicion: farmers thought they had to work harder than foragers [Old Testament taught they should toil and suffer] – while foragers played and enjoyed life more; farmers had more stress, required more specialty…..Qs – Did they become angry? Were they coerced to be/remain farmers? If so, by who? What?
• Farmers/Domesticators
  • don’t allow for nomads
  • ‘squeeze out’ nomads and foragers
  • cut up geography with ‘owners’ and ‘conquerors’
• word: colonize (v.) from Fr. colonie; Latin, colonia, colonus meaning husbandsman, from colere, to cultivate…………….[sadly interesting]
• you-are-your-language (p. 132)….modern: other countries want to learn English,  may be a very good language since naturally derived from all other languages….
• An earlier insight: people are earth-based or not-earth based
  • earth-based : loves and appreciates and works with
  • non-earth-based: struggles, holds grudge (afraid to be angry at God when they should be angry at their religion – not the same)

EDUCATION in America

• If teachers are asked, “Why don’t US students’ world history classes include as much about Canada, Africa & S.America (and other nations) as it does western civilization? Some likely answers: “So much history to cover, they’ll get more if they go to college;” ….and all those who do not go on to college, but still vote and raise children?
• What is not said – western civilization history is ruthless, disturbing, in conflict with religion – so ‘we can’t teach the truth’
• Not unrelated: I remember as a high school student who was very familiar with the library shelf, that those Dewey system areas for Medicine and Law in the late 1960s were always empty; I wondered, why?  It didn’t take me long to consider that Doctors and Lawyers had hold of and a monopoly on  the information
• What Oregon education [the only one I’ve studied] provides is a diluted, incomplete and misleading history education; as a library worker who watches the incoming catalogues and constant advertising, a new suspicion: mainstream textbook publishers are as controlling and narrow as the rest of the media  
• “Still worried about Infidels” – mainstream educators and historians continue to present history from the deeply ingrained western viewpoint – even the secular ones don’t realize it; and I am reminded of Professor Jim Craven’s concept – the cloning of ideology.

 

Excuse me while I get back to burning leaves.