Rooting Indigenous Wisdom

Nov 11, 2024

Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy. Your letters for ^ekophilosophical health in the Anthropocene.

Today’s letter was inspired by currently being a beta-tester of the timeless wisdom academy which brings indigenous and ancient wisdom to the world - specifically from the Kogi. The Kogi are an indigenous ethnic group living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia. They are descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization and are known for their deep spiritual connection to nature and their way of life that emphasizes ecological balance and sustainability.

As far as I can tell, Anna Reisch and Lucas Buchholz - the founders of the academy - are doing fantastic work to help us understand and root indigenous wisdom.

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of integrating indigenous wisdom into the environmental movement.

This recognition is grounded in compelling reasons: despite representing less than 5% of the global population, indigenous communities protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity in the forests, deserts, grasslands, and marine environments in which they have lived for centuries.

What distinguishes these communities is not just their ability to survive but also their capacity to thrive within functional societies marked by strong social bonds. They also seem to live in profound harmony with the more-than-human world, unburdened by the pressures of modern life.

As Lucas Buchholz writes in his book about the Kogi (freely translated from German):

Something I have repeatedly observed is that the Kogi do not show any signs of the inner struggle we often experience when trying to motivate ourselves. I never got the impression that they have difficulty getting themselves to do something. I interpret this as a harmony between the life they lead and their original thoughts about living, with no internal conflict. Why is it that we often know something would be beneficial and help us progress, yet we still don't do it? What does this issue of implementation say about our knowledge economy?

This passage has stuck with me for years. I want a philosophy that lets me experience life like that. Martin Buber suggests that the path towards showing up with your whole being is a process of resolving fragmentation and straightening yourself out. Inner fragmentation is commonplace in daily life. When we say or do one thing, but feel another, we are out of alignment with what we are experiencing.

The way Buchholz described the Kogi, they experience life in alignment - with themselves, and with the more-than-human world.

It’s this alignment that a healthy ^ekophilosophy should offer.

An idealised representation of this existence can be found in the movie “Avatar.” The Na’vi are deeply embedded in their environment, their mind actually seems to extend towards and into the environment. They are so tuned in to life, that they are able to do what seems usually impossible: jumping in great heights from one tree to another, knowing that they will be held, that they can trust in the world.

There is actually a phenomena of post-Avatar depression. It’s not really a medically recognized condition but rather a term coined informally to describe the experience of some individuals and their feelings of sadness, longing, or a sense of loss after watching the movie. The movie’s portrayal of an idealized, harmonious, and ecologically connected world resonates so strongly with certain viewers that they feel a sense of discontent or even depression when returning to their everyday lives, which may be perceived as less fulfilling or disconnected from nature.

from the movie Avatar

To some extent, I can relate to this feeling. It underscores the cultural longing for a way of life that seems deeply appealing, and for good reasons. Our world is in need of alternative ways of knowing, being and acting in the world. One that does bring us into alignment.

Many Indigenous cultures embrace an animist worldview that imbues the entire universe with vitality, deriving meaning and wisdom from the natural world - plants, animals, and landscapes, seeing the world not as a collection of lifeless atoms but as a vibrant entanglement suffused with life and meaning.

Moreover, indigenous knowledge systems have stood the test of time, having evolved over generations. They contain traditional practices and wisdom about sustainable agriculture, resource conservation, and environmental stewardship that have proven effective in maintaining ecosystems.

Yet, despite the potential, there is a challenge in integrating indigenous wisdoms. Just as we can’t expect plants to thrive when uprooted and placed somewhere new, a philosophy can’t be uprooted and thrive when planted elsewhere without nurturing. A philosophy, taken out of context, is not practical.

As Gordon White writes

“Indigenous Australian knowledge is alive and responsive, not rigid and fixed. When westerners problematically seek to learn from ‘indigenous wisdom’ we typically expect antiquity when what we should be ‘learning’ is adaptability and continuity.”

Taking indigenous philosophies without re-rooting them in our western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) world - as Henrich calls them - might help to a certain degree.

Still, their knowledge won’t flourish if it’s not adapted to the soil and the environment it lands in. Just as plants, philosophies have to be rooted in the environment. They need to be contextualized - of time and space and relationships.

“Indigenous, oral intelligence is place-based intelligence, an awareness infused by the local terrain.” David Abram

How then can indigenous philosophies grow roots in our backyards? What are the nutrients philosophy needs to thrive? How can the spores from indigenous philosophies impregnate ours?

Nourishing the Spores of Indigenous Philosophies

There are two main challenges for indigenous philosophies to root and flourish in our WEIRD world.

Embracing Existential Transformation

Our profound philosophical disparities with indigenous wisdom necessitate a significant existential transformation of our ways of knowing, being and acting in the world to integrate their perspectives into our Western worldview.

This transformation, despite the romanticized notions of a deep connection with the more-than-human world, can be intensely discomforting. It involves letting go not only of our individual identities but also the illusion of control and human exceptionalism. We need to acknowledge our humble origins in the earth and our eventual return to it.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

It’s much easier to quote indigenous wisdoms and to claim their validity than it is to embed them ecologically. Rooting indigenous philosophies first requires rooting ourselves in our ecological niche. This process demands unlearning the sensory limitations imposed by late-stage capitalism and realigning ourselves with our local environments. However, this endeavor is neither swift nor necessarily enjoyable.

There’s a common misconception that returning to ecological awareness is all about pleasurable experiences like forest bathing and appreciating pristine beauty in perfect harmony with the more-than-human world. But rooting into our environment, can be an incredibly uncomfortable experience. Only through existential discomfort can we tune into our ecological niche.

Embracing Existential Discomfort

So, rooting indigenous wisdoms requires that we let go of our often deep seeded identities as individuals.

We are not confined by our bodies boundaries. In fact, on an atomic level, it is difficult to distinguish where your body ends and where your environment begins.

In reality, our sense of self is intertwined with others. This isn’t just philosophical; it’s practical. Every breath we take incorporates elements from our environment, such as dust and pollen. To rejuvenate our lived experiences with embedded ecological-ness, we must expand our perception of self to encompass these intra-species relationships. Physical boundaries are superficial, everything overflows into everything else.

As we become more aware that our bodies extend beyond our skin’s perimeters and into our ecosystems, we recognize that our actions, like polluting rivers and harming the soil, harm our own bodies. Gaining a better understanding of ongoing environmental harm and its direct impact on our interconnected web of lived experiences is more challenging and, frankly, scarier than individual pursuits of wellbeing and happiness.

When we lean into our ecological embeddedness and expand our notion of self accordingly, our sense of happiness begins to transcend its contemporary socio-cultural construct. Our perspectives on pleasure and pain undergo radical transformations - we cease to find pleasure in what harms.

Embracing Other Ways of Knowing

“Knowledge, the reimagining of power should be based on knowledge that includes all life; that which is immeasurable, embodied, sentient, fertile, indigenous, non-Eurocentric, decolonial, and feminist - Sensuous Knowledge.” Minna Salami

Lastly, rooting indigenous knowledge is less about integrating the knowledge or wisdom itself - although undeniable valuable in so many ways - and more about how those people came about this wisdom. Or in other words, it is about practicing philosophy (practicing the love of wisdom). To show you what I mean, I want to share this longer passage from the book Restoring the Kinship Worldview.

“Since the age of six, I’ve known how to get “out of my head.” As one of the last Unangan (Aleut) to experience a true traditional upbringing, I was allowed to walk the six miles from the village out to the bird cliffs, even as a very young child. In my six-year-old mind, I decided that the only difference between those birds and myself was that they drew upon a vast field of awareness rather than an intellectual thought process (although I did not use such words at the time). I wanted to be like a bird, so, after months of effort, I developed the capacity to maintain this state of “awareness without thinking” for several hours at a time. That was when the magic happened: I could sense many things I’d never experienced before, and my world expanded enormously.
“From then on, I understood how Unangan people received their spiritual instructions for living, principles that had helped them sustain their communities for thousands of years: reciprocity with all living things, humility, respect for all life, honoring Elder wisdom, giving without expectation of a return to self, thinking of others first, and many more.
Such spiritual principles for living did not come from logic or thought but from a much deeper source of wisdom, which our Unangan culture referred to as the “heart.” When Unangan Elders speak of the “heart,” they do not mean mere feelings, even positive and compassionate ones. “Heart” refers to a deeper portal of profound interconnectedness and awareness that exists between humans and all living things. Centering oneself there results in humble, wise, connected ways of being and acting in the world. Indigenous peoples have cultivated access to this source as part of a deep experience and awareness of the profound interdependency between the natural and human worlds. To access it, you must drop out of the relentless thinking that typically occupies the Western mind.
When accessed, this portal provides the inner wisdom that keeps us in right relationship with all of life, thus ensuring our long-term survival and well-being, individually and “collectively. Our fallible thought processes regularly deceive us. Yet, when guidance or information comes from the heart, it can be relied upon and has impeccable integrity. . . .
And the most dire reversal is that now the mind tells the heart what to do instead of the mind following the heart.
Still, when you access this heart center, you must have great courage to follow what it is telling you. Sometimes that feels like jumping from a cliff. But when you do, you will never regret it. Once you have accessed the heart, you enter into the vast field of awareness in the company of birds and connect in a deep and profound way with all living things.

Genuine transformation is often accompanied by discomfort. Our brain can’t differentiate good from bad; it can only differentiate between comfortable and uncomfortable. It’s why we do things we objectively know are bad for us and confuse them for feeling good. We don’t want what we want, we want what we’ve known. So rather than opening up to know differently, we seek the best of what we have already known and risk using indigenous wisdom as nuggets of knowledge, instead of a process for generating wisdom.

While indigenous philosophies offer invaluable insights for regenerative societies, it’s crucial to avoid idealizing it as a simple wellness retreat to “the wild”.

As Gary Lachman in Caretakes of the Cosmos points out, our romantic conceptions about indigenous peoples untouched by modernity’s evils, tell us