Mary rented “Trudell” from Netflix… we watched it last night. I have seen John perform a couple of times, and have long loved his poetry. Sadly, his poetry and lyrics are not easily available on the net, so we will not have the pleasure of sharing them with you at this time. (Hopefully John will put some of his stuff out there so people can get a taste of his work….)
His story is a strong one, with many twist and turns. Much is tragedy, and I ask you to rent or buy this film and share it with friends. It is very moving.
I have never met John but I did know his first music partner, Jesse Ed Davis. I met Jesse in Venice Ca, back in the 70′s, and talked to him off and on over several years. A gentle soul, and a wicked guitar player.
Lots of good stuff this time around,
Gwyllm
—
On The Menu:
The Links
Trudell Speaks
Super Kim!
The War on Drugs is a War on Consciousness
Navajo Country Poetry..
(All Photos of John Trudell from TrudellTheMovie.com)
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The Links:
Indigenous Environmental Network
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A little game being played…
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The War on Drugs is a War on Consciousness
by Carol Moore
I believe that a prime motivation of those waging the current “war on drugs” is to discredit and destroy any “counterculture” before it becomes the dominant culture. Religious fundamentalists have not forgotten the religious upheavals of the 1960s when millions of young people, often after using marijuana and other psychedelics, reading Timothy Leary or Alan Watts, or listening to “psychedelic” music by the Beatles or the Jefferson Airplane, rejected Christianity and Judaism. Even ministers, priests, nuns and rabbis abandoned their callings! Consciousness, altered consciousness, and higher consciousness rather than obedience, duty, and sacrifice became the prime concern of the new spirituality.
The response of Catholic, conservative and fundamentalist religious groups was to feverishly expand their efforts to enforce more fundamentalist views among their members and to gain greater political influence. While fundamentalists have lost many battles over abortion, prayer and pornography, they have found the government a willing ally in the “war on drugs”. For just as drugs, the counterculture and “consciousness” undermine faith in hierarchical religious authority, so do they undermine faith in political authority.
John Lennon’s “Imagine”, an anthem of the counter culture, asks us to imagine “no religion” and “no countries”. Lennon, a drug use advocate, was murdered by a fundamentalist Christian, a former fan, who knew how subversive and powerful this message is. In 1990, on Lennon’s 50th birthday radio stations worldwide played “Imagine” simultaneously to a billion people. All heard Yoko Ono say, “The dream we dream alone is just a dream, but the dream we dream together is reality.” The message is that we are not subjects of an authoritarian god or even natural law, but that we consciously co-create reality. Implied is the possibility of a diversity of realities.
Despite the crackdown on drug use, the belief that consciousness is not only the purpose, but perhaps even the very nature, of reality has spread through writings and practices of “new physics” aficionados, humanistic psychologists, and the new age, eastern religion, wiccan, and eco-spirituality movements. Their millions of advocates still lack a coherent and motivating philosophical synthesis or organizational focus. And while many of these individuals have used drugs, and still do, decriminalization of drugs is not yet a major focus of their thought or action.
However, as the horrors of the drug war mount and the injustices spread to all of us, the uneasy feeling that there is some hidden agenda behind the “war on drugs” grows among more aware and conscious individuals. Some of these agendas are scapegoating drug users for larger ills, excuses for racial repression and expanding government power, an outlet for militarism, and the desire of tobacco and liquor producers to squash potential competition.
However, a prime hidden agenda remains the suppression of an alternate religious viewthat consciousness is the nature and purpose of reality, that humans freely create their realities. Because psychoactive drugs are a means of quickly and effectively initiating individuals into this view they must be suppressedeven if it means punishment, incarceration and death for hundreds of thousands of people. But such is the nature of all religious wars.
Excerpts from Intoxication The “Fourth Drive” by Dr. Ronald K. Siegel. Article in the September/October 1990 Humanist magazine. (Later made into a book.)
History shows that we have always used drugs. In every age, in every part of this planet, people have pursued intoxication with plant drugs, alcohol, and other mind-altering substances…Almost every species of animal has engaged in the natural pursuit of intoxicants. This behavior has so much force and persistence that it functions like a drive, just like our drives of hunger, thirst and sex. This “fourth drive” is a natural part of biology, creating the irrepressible demand for drugs. In a sense, the war on drugs is a war against ourselves, a denial of our very nature…
Legalization is a risky proposal that would cut the drug crime connection and reduce many social ills, yet it would invite more use and abuse…Making some dangerous drugs illegal while keeping others (like alcohol and cigarettes) legal is not the solution. Out-lawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS.
In order to solve the drug problem, we must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk-free and, yes, as healthy as possible.
Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe drugs? It mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death?… Such intoxicants are available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use…We must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication.
Excerpts from The Natural MindAn Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness by Dr. Andrew Weil, 1985.
Human beings are born with a drive to experiment with ways of changing consciousness…The desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive…
The root of the drug problem is the failure of our culture to provide for a basic human need. Once we recognize the importance and value of other states of consciousness, we can begin to teach people, particularly the young, how to satisfy their needs without drugs. The chief advantage of drugs is that they are quick and effective, producing desired results without requiring effort. Their chief disadvantage is that they fail us over time; used regularly and frequently, they do not maintain the experiences sought and, instead, limit our options and freedom…
Altered states of consciousness…appear to be the ways to more effective and fuller use of the nervous system, to development of creative and intellectual faculties, and to attainment of certain kinds of thought that have been deemed exalted by all who have experienced them…(They) may even be a key factor in the present evolution of the human nervous system…To try to thwart (their) expression in individuals and society might be psychologically crippling for people and evolutionarily suicidal for the species.
Excerpt from book Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna, 1992.
The suppression of the natural human fascination with altered states of consciousness and the present perilous situation of all life on earth are intimately and causally connected. When we suppress access to shamanic ecstasy, we close off the refreshing waters of emotion that flow from having a deeply bonded, almost symbiotic relationship to the earth. As a consequence, the maladaptive social styles that encourage overpopulation, resource mismanagement, and environmental toxification develop and maintain themselves.
Copyright 1998 by Carol Moore. Permission to reprint freely granted, provided the article is reprinted in full and that any reprint is accompanied by this copyright statement and the URL http://www.carolmoore.net.
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Navajo Country Poetry…
Onion and Fried Potatoes
by Nia Francisco
My grandmother, my Nali
she always made us herd
our sheep and goats
before the sun rose high
over the highest mountain peak
We herd them towards
the mountain slopes
Cool summer mornings
birds chirping
goats nibbling at leaves
along our trail
My grandfather
he would hitch the dark horses
to his working wagon
I remember the dark horses
they were his best working team
They haul wood drag timber for him
He named one horse Bidi
and the other Liil’zhiin
Some summer morning
My nali man he would hitch them
and say we are going to lumber jack
up there in the mountain
where the pines are tall and straight
Those mornings
my grandmother she gathers
her pots and the food
Our grandparents would designate
where they would be
and we’d herd to that place
when we’re getting close
grandfather’s steady chopping
echoed into the mountains
When we’re getting close
the smell of the spicy aroma
of onions and potatoes frying
and in the distance
the cooking fire
would welcome us
My grandmother patting out
goatmilk bread over red hot coal
My grandfather he’d be sharpening
his axe sitting on pine needles
in the lacy shadow of oak leaves
and blue spruce trees
there beside him
he’d have several feet of pine bark
He’d diligently scrape the thin white
lining of the pine tree bark
and give it to me to chew on
the sinew like strings
tasted sweet
I’d chew it herding home
walking behind
the slowest ewes
I’d chew until I fell asleep at twilight
—
Moonrise, Hernandez
by
Jane Candia Coleman
(For Ansel Adams)
It is not night yet
but we stand waiting
for the moon to come
for the first thin slice
to deepen dark places.
Its quick leap
its sudden light
do nothing to dispel
our solitude.
There are needs in us
for which we have only silence.
If someone would photograph
this moonrise
we would show in the foreground,
head stones, sorrowing,
side by side.
—
She Had Some Horses
by Joy Harjo
She had some horses.
She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.
She had some horses.
She had horses with long, pointed breasts.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.
She had some horses.
She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making.
She had some horses.
She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.
She had horses who cried in their beer.
She had horses who spit at male queens who made them afraid of themselves.
She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.
She had horses who lied.
She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped bare of their tongues.
She had some horses.
She had horses who called themselves, “horse.”
She had horses who called themselves, “spirit.” and kept their voices secret and to themselves.
She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names.
She had some horses.
She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.
She had some horses.
She had horses who got down on their knees for any savior.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed as they raped her.
She had some horses.
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses
—
Canyon de Chelly – White House Trail
by Donald Levering/ for Chip Goodrich
snow at the rim
but our eyes’ descent
through millenia
of stone
to the river’s thread
below
catches the breath
being beneath the body
the feet can only follow
the steep trail
down
yet gravity
cannot keep Chip’s eyes
from rising
to eddies of sandstone
cliffs
as we achieve
perfect vertigo
at each switch-
back
near the bottom
the trail turns
fearful
melted snow
has muddied the path
through a tunnel
that banishes sunlight
and turns thoughts back
to de Chelly
in the garb of an
unclaimed ancestor
sergeant in Carson’s army
pursuing Navajos
between these steep faces
torching hogans and orchards
but finding no indians
until dusk
when a thousand campfires
mock us from the rim we walk away
from a billion years
of stone overhead
afternoon light
spills onto the canyon floor
cookstove smoke rises
through a survivor’s hogan
a million water-shoots
the winter’s growth
of willows
shimmer
the glint of water
seen from the rim
stretches before us
a frozen stream
imagine a freshet
with the verve
to cut such a canyon
its surface gleams
tenative crystals
winter lightning
in the ice
under feet
sliding above the current
by the grace of the gods
my eyes
people the pockets
of sandstone cliffs
with rooks
impossible
fossils
dinosaur eggs
how surprising
and how natural
the pueblo called
White House
appears
under a massive overhang
of red rock
like the nest
of mud daubers
a thousand years ago
Anasazi women
ground corn here
children played cat’s cradle
with willow withes
men smoked and watched
the falling of the daily
shadow from the south wall
across the plaza
what a place
for a human hive
the snowy rim
a season behind
this sun-facing adobe
my friend
meditates
I peel off layers of clothes
orange rind
and brush away
mid-winter flies
sheep bells
float through my drowse
the Navajo herder’s
clicking tongue
signals his sheep
from this house of ghosts
Chip
seems to
quit breathing
all solar plexus
he leans toward
the convex
overhang
under a hawk
hitching thermals
finally discerning
footholds
in the rock
to the rim
where the ghost
of a Navajo sorcerer
conjured apparitions
before the Spanish captain
camped below
who turned his troops back something calls
shepherd
or
swallow leaving the ruins
by the same trail
of armies
in dazed retreat upstream
past the looming monolith
s
p
i
d
e
r
r
o
c
k
where the weaver’s mentor
spider-woman
dwells
resting at the rim
we enter the long thoughts
of sheer rock faces
where swallow-nesting peoples
have hewn footholds
between worlds
the one a repeating
chronicle
of futile conquest
of the other
hidden in de Chelly’s
stone vaults
glimpsed in petroglyphs
where deer
imps
flute-players
dance
