Since April 25th, I have been on a ranch in New Mexico, enrolled in a three week Permaculture Design Course. As I drove from Provo, Utah to Las Vegas, New Mexico, I passed through a number of Native American reservations. Growing up in Orange County California, Native American issues were practically unknown to me. The native populations of the South Coast we all but wiped out by disease, slave labor, and forced integration. So, in traveling through many Native American reservations, I began to see that in many cases the third world we romanticize as being in Latin America or Africa is really in our own back yard. Conditions were squalor, and the air was filled with depression and hopelessness. How is it that my culture could simply roll over these first peoples with such reckless abandon?
I offer no easy answer. But when I arrived at the Wind River Ranch, I noticed there was a Navajo man in our class. I have been to Latin America, and have spent many hours in the presence of the First Peoples of Guatemala, but there was something very personal about being in the presence of a Navajo man. It was my ancestors that conquered his. During the first week of the course, we learned each other’s names, covered the course material, and dug our hands into the soft red sandy soil of a grass land flood plain. In our class discussions, the Navajo man would make long, slow, and deliberate commentary related to his people and to Native Americans in general. His insights were good, and everyone respected him; but I could not bring myself to talk with him. One day as we were both in the kitchen on separate tasks, he spoke to me in a quiet voice, asking where I would go next. I replied, and we started a conversation. At one point I told him about a friend that was doing her field work for her anthropology degree on the Navajo reservation. I told him that I was an anthropologist, and wondered what he thought of them. He took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. He was kind, and said that there were some that are good, but that some take without asking, and disturb things that were not meant to be disturbed. I asked how I, as a white person could be in closer solidarity with Native American movements. To this, there was no easy answer, and in response he began to recount to me his journey, one that would take him through a small kitchen in New Mexico, talking to an ignorant white kid from California.
He had grown up on the reservation. And as a young man realized that he had quite a talent for baseball, he could run fast and hit far. But whenever his team would play border towns—meaning towns on the border with the reservation—he would always ask himself why the other teams had bleachers, dugouts, clean uniforms, and nice equipment. All he ever had was a dusty field. He would ask his parents and his grandparents why, and they would simply reply that that was the way things were. Gerry had more questions, and only ever received “I don’t know” answers. All these unanswered questions led him to doubt the wisdom of his people. He began to notice how the blacks and the Latinos were treated by the whites, and began to understand. This was something he felt was real, and he began to direct his hatred toward whites, and started getting into fights. He showed me the scar on his wrist, his nose, and his eye brow. He felt that his situation was hopeless, and began to drink heavily. He was in and out of jail many times, and had to rely on family members to bail him out. At some point he began to tire of the never ending cycle of destruction that he had put himself in, and one night while in jail, made a promise to God that he would turn his life around in order to help others. He faced many trials along the way, but eventually gave up alcohol and drugs, fighting, and most of all hatred. He began to understand why things were the way they were, and began looking for ways to make them better.
The Navajo man’s pedagogy utilized his whole body and face to express the emotions of others, and to illustrate his frustration. I didn’t really get a straight answer to my question that day, but we had many more conversations throughout the two week course and the wisdom of his stories became apparent. Solidarity is understanding the other so that they do not seem so other anymore. It was teaching me his ways. He had taken a life that was destined for ruin, and turned it into one that was successful. He shifted from draining society, to regenerating it; a paradigm of consumption, to one of production. Which is illustrated perfectly by something he said one day in class when we were getting a little apocalyptic. My Navajo friend raised his hand and said: we may be surrounded by shit, but it is our job to turn it into compost. His life is a perfect example of what Permaculture is all about. Shepparding a society that is on a crash course with disaster, to one that is sane, rational, and above all sustainable.
One night we kneeled over stones and made hurricanes with our hands to make fire in the ancient way. In my mind, a hand drill was almost fictional, could anyone really actually do that? But he could, with large calloused hands he drew smoke from the charring wood beneath his drill and turned it into fire. When I tried it, well, there was less smoke and no fire.
One day when the class had planned a day hike to see some petro glyphs in a nearby cave, my friend decided to stay behind out of respect for the tribes that had left them. I approached him quietly, and asked if it offended him that we were going. He was kind, and said no, that for us it was a learning experience. But for him, he had been taught that there are places one must not go. That there are spaces that are sacred, a concern that must have been at the heart of his ambivalence toward anthropologists; they came in handy sometimes, but mostly they were just whites looking for an adventure, a place to dig, a people to study. Sacredness and boundaries really are foreign concepts to the Western mind, which is dominated by a history of frontier, discovery, and invention.
At the end of the two weeks, I was grateful for my Navajo friend’s wisdom though still unsure how to proceed. I told him that perhaps I could help raise some money for the ailing schools, or for the local baseball teams. He smiled and nodded appreciating the effort. As we said our goodbyes, I looked at him and said, ‘The irony of the situation is that for 400 years whites have been trying to save your people in one way or another. But when the shit hits the fan, it will be your people who save us.’ He liked this idea, laughed, and disappeared into his large Dodge truck.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Politics and the Spirit
Today I participated in a protest against the war in Iraq. It was not unlike many other rallies I have attended in Salt Lake City’s downtown. In the past, I have been skeptical of the purpose and effectiveness of anti-war demonstration, but today my mind turned to an experience I had during the summer of 2006 and the special circumstances of the Salt Lake City rally.
While I was traveling though Chiapas, Mexico during the summer of 2006, we happened upon a flyer that announced a Zapatista march and rally for later that day. We decided to attend, despite cautious feelings about being outsiders and avoiding trouble. The meeting place for the march was in a church yard and the march route was proposed and then agreed upon by all in attendance. Before we formed rank, an organizer offered a solemn and simple prayer. I felt real and sincere energy emanating from the protesters as we were welcomed and marched and sang protest songs in unison through the dusk-shadowed streets of San Cristobal. There were processions of indigenous women and mothers with children lashed to their backs and clusters of men in cowboy hats, brightly colored woven cloth and worn shoes; some were even barefooted. They marched in solidarity with another community that was being threatened with the expansion of an airport near Mexico City. The air was filled with feelings of urgency, solidarity, and hope. In Chiapas, rallies and protests have become a part of the social fabric, part of an ongoing struggle over life and death issues such as access to arable land, political representation, and social equality.
The Salt Lake protest happened to be during the LDS General Conference. As we marched down 400 south, our signs and slogans met the eyes of conference goers as their cars moped through congested streets. A few waved, cheered, or honked. The rest jeered, looked away, or laughed. I had listened to the first session of conference before coming to the protest and felt no spiritual contradiction in worshiping God with my fellow saints around the world in conference and raising my fist to oppose an unjust, ruinous, and costly war. I felt a longing for those feelings I had felt in Chiapas: urgency, solidarity, and hope. There was no urgency because the bombs are falling over someone else’s homeland. But they are our bombs. Our tax dollars paid for them. There is no solidarity because the Mormons scoff at the liberals and the liberals roll their eyes at the Mormons. Unfortunately, protesting the war is seen as a cultural activity. Only liberal peace-mongers protest because, in many people’s minds, there are certain kinds of people that protest, as if it were a pastime or a hobby. And those that do attend rallies are so steeped in post modern irony, that they can hardly take seriously the cliché of marching or chanting. But as I recalled that cobble stone church yard in Chiapas filled with bowed heads as we prepared to march down the streets of San Cristobal, my heart longed for a Mormonism that was more deeply engaged with the world from which it seeks acceptance. In Chiapas, politics and the spirit are connected.
While I was traveling though Chiapas, Mexico during the summer of 2006, we happened upon a flyer that announced a Zapatista march and rally for later that day. We decided to attend, despite cautious feelings about being outsiders and avoiding trouble. The meeting place for the march was in a church yard and the march route was proposed and then agreed upon by all in attendance. Before we formed rank, an organizer offered a solemn and simple prayer. I felt real and sincere energy emanating from the protesters as we were welcomed and marched and sang protest songs in unison through the dusk-shadowed streets of San Cristobal. There were processions of indigenous women and mothers with children lashed to their backs and clusters of men in cowboy hats, brightly colored woven cloth and worn shoes; some were even barefooted. They marched in solidarity with another community that was being threatened with the expansion of an airport near Mexico City. The air was filled with feelings of urgency, solidarity, and hope. In Chiapas, rallies and protests have become a part of the social fabric, part of an ongoing struggle over life and death issues such as access to arable land, political representation, and social equality.
The Salt Lake protest happened to be during the LDS General Conference. As we marched down 400 south, our signs and slogans met the eyes of conference goers as their cars moped through congested streets. A few waved, cheered, or honked. The rest jeered, looked away, or laughed. I had listened to the first session of conference before coming to the protest and felt no spiritual contradiction in worshiping God with my fellow saints around the world in conference and raising my fist to oppose an unjust, ruinous, and costly war. I felt a longing for those feelings I had felt in Chiapas: urgency, solidarity, and hope. There was no urgency because the bombs are falling over someone else’s homeland. But they are our bombs. Our tax dollars paid for them. There is no solidarity because the Mormons scoff at the liberals and the liberals roll their eyes at the Mormons. Unfortunately, protesting the war is seen as a cultural activity. Only liberal peace-mongers protest because, in many people’s minds, there are certain kinds of people that protest, as if it were a pastime or a hobby. And those that do attend rallies are so steeped in post modern irony, that they can hardly take seriously the cliché of marching or chanting. But as I recalled that cobble stone church yard in Chiapas filled with bowed heads as we prepared to march down the streets of San Cristobal, my heart longed for a Mormonism that was more deeply engaged with the world from which it seeks acceptance. In Chiapas, politics and the spirit are connected.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Provost, Provos and Provo
Provost: (1785-1850)
A French Canadian Fur Trapper. The first what man to see the Great Salt Lake. He narrowly escaped death at the hands of “savages.” Where Provo, Utah got its name.
Provos:
The radical Dutch counter-culture movement that exploded onto the European stage in the early 1960s which created virtual panic for the national government and local authorities. The Provos were a radical group of freethinkers; inspired by anarchism, Dadaism, and radical philosophy. They used non-violence and performance art called “happenings” to provoke reactions from the local police, working towards social change. The group was officially formed on May 25, 1965 by anarchist Roel Van Duyn and others who quickly began organizing around the international anti-war movement. In their brief manifesto they proclaim: "It is our task to turn their [the state’s] aggression into revolutionary consciousness." The group’s tactics are generally associated with “Situationism” and the work of Guy Debord, who authored Society of the Spectacle a Marxist inspired critique of industrial society’s obsession with consumption. The groups loosely defined mission was to break the strangle hold capitalism had on society through creative action directed locally. The Provos were a mixture of radical leftists, Marxists, street kids, and artists. Many were anti-work, and praised the writings of Paul Lafargue who penned The Right to Laziness. But most were more politically active, writing anti-monarchy leaflets, organizing demonstrations, and publishing a magazine. One Provo even landed himself on the city council in Amsterdam.
The Provos are most famous for their series of “white plans” of which the white bicycle was the most popular. The plan called for the prohibition of cars from the city’s center and the strategic placing of white community bicycles that would be maintained by the police. The group even donated fifty bicycles that they had painted white, but which were quickly confiscated by the authorities and the plan never materialized. Other white plans included the white chimney, which called for filters to be placed on all large smoke stacks in order to reduce air pollution, and other white plans that called for better health care for women, legalizing squatting, and disarming police officers. One plan even proposed that victims of car accidents be immortalized in the pavement by outlining their bodies in white paint. The so-called "traffic terrorism of a motorized minority" would thus become an ever-present reminder of the violent potential of the automobile.
As the movement grew, the police began to react more and more violently, which created a mystique for the group who were few in numbers but do to media coverage appeared to number in the thousands, which terrified government authorities. During the royal wedding of Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands to a German man who had been a member of the Hitler Youth, police expected a massive terrorist attack by the Provos, and over 25,000 troops were deployed! A newspaper headline even said “The Provos are Attacking!” The Provos ended up lighting off a few harmless smoke bombs, but the police reacted violently and images of the embarrassing incident were printed all across Europe. By 1966 political violence was at its zenith in Amsterdam, hundreds were being arrested, and demonstrations were made illegal. Eventually the group began to faction into more radical elements who supported the use of violence, and some who began to seek political careers within the system. These were criticized for institutionalizing the movement, and after 1967 most had gone their separate ways. The Provos dissipated into political and social obscurity. Today the Provos are survived by the Kabouters (gnomes) a leftist political party in Holland.
Provo:
The Utah city with 105,166 people. Most conservative city in America with over 100,000 people. 88.52% white. Home to BYU, the LDS MTC, and a host of other Mormon-specific acronyms (mostly surrounding dating).
A French Canadian Fur Trapper. The first what man to see the Great Salt Lake. He narrowly escaped death at the hands of “savages.” Where Provo, Utah got its name.
Provos:
The radical Dutch counter-culture movement that exploded onto the European stage in the early 1960s which created virtual panic for the national government and local authorities. The Provos were a radical group of freethinkers; inspired by anarchism, Dadaism, and radical philosophy. They used non-violence and performance art called “happenings” to provoke reactions from the local police, working towards social change. The group was officially formed on May 25, 1965 by anarchist Roel Van Duyn and others who quickly began organizing around the international anti-war movement. In their brief manifesto they proclaim: "It is our task to turn their [the state’s] aggression into revolutionary consciousness." The group’s tactics are generally associated with “Situationism” and the work of Guy Debord, who authored Society of the Spectacle a Marxist inspired critique of industrial society’s obsession with consumption. The groups loosely defined mission was to break the strangle hold capitalism had on society through creative action directed locally. The Provos were a mixture of radical leftists, Marxists, street kids, and artists. Many were anti-work, and praised the writings of Paul Lafargue who penned The Right to Laziness. But most were more politically active, writing anti-monarchy leaflets, organizing demonstrations, and publishing a magazine. One Provo even landed himself on the city council in Amsterdam.
The Provos are most famous for their series of “white plans” of which the white bicycle was the most popular. The plan called for the prohibition of cars from the city’s center and the strategic placing of white community bicycles that would be maintained by the police. The group even donated fifty bicycles that they had painted white, but which were quickly confiscated by the authorities and the plan never materialized. Other white plans included the white chimney, which called for filters to be placed on all large smoke stacks in order to reduce air pollution, and other white plans that called for better health care for women, legalizing squatting, and disarming police officers. One plan even proposed that victims of car accidents be immortalized in the pavement by outlining their bodies in white paint. The so-called "traffic terrorism of a motorized minority" would thus become an ever-present reminder of the violent potential of the automobile.
As the movement grew, the police began to react more and more violently, which created a mystique for the group who were few in numbers but do to media coverage appeared to number in the thousands, which terrified government authorities. During the royal wedding of Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands to a German man who had been a member of the Hitler Youth, police expected a massive terrorist attack by the Provos, and over 25,000 troops were deployed! A newspaper headline even said “The Provos are Attacking!” The Provos ended up lighting off a few harmless smoke bombs, but the police reacted violently and images of the embarrassing incident were printed all across Europe. By 1966 political violence was at its zenith in Amsterdam, hundreds were being arrested, and demonstrations were made illegal. Eventually the group began to faction into more radical elements who supported the use of violence, and some who began to seek political careers within the system. These were criticized for institutionalizing the movement, and after 1967 most had gone their separate ways. The Provos dissipated into political and social obscurity. Today the Provos are survived by the Kabouters (gnomes) a leftist political party in Holland.
Provo:
The Utah city with 105,166 people. Most conservative city in America with over 100,000 people. 88.52% white. Home to BYU, the LDS MTC, and a host of other Mormon-specific acronyms (mostly surrounding dating).
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