What finally turned me back toward the older traditions of my own [Chickasaw] and other Native peoples was the inhumanity of the Western world, the places--both inside and out--where the culture's knowledge and language don't go, and the despair, even desperation, it has spawned. We live, I see now, by different stories, the Western mind and the indigenous. In the older, more mature cultures where people still live within the kinship circles of animals and human beings there is a connection with animals, not only as food, but as 'powers, ' a word which can be taken to mean states of being, gifts, or capabilities. I've found, too, that the ancient intellectual traditions are not merely about belief, as some would say. Belief is not a strong enough word. They are more than that: They are part of lived experience, the on-going experience of people rooted in centuries-old knowledge that is held deep and strong, knowledge about the natural laws of Earth, from the beginning of creation, and the magnificent terrestrial intelligence still at work, an intelligence now newly called ecology by the Western science that tells us what our oldest tribal stories maintain--the human animal is a relatively new creation here; animal and plant presences were here before us; and we are truly the younger sisters and brothers of the other animal species, not quite as well developed as we thought we were. It is through our relationships with animals and plants that we maintain a way of living, a cultural ethics shaped from an ancient understanding of the world, and this is remembered in stories that are the deepest reflections of our shared lives on. Linda Hogan
About This Quote

"A large amount of the world's knowledge was developed before the dawn of history. For example, all of modern science was developed through the study of nature. The study of nature means that humans are studying the way things work. If you ask a person to tell you what green is, he will give you a very specific answer.

The problem is that these answers are not always correct, but they are based on experience. We can see green plants, but we cannot always see green colors because there are other colors that are invisible to us, for example infrared light." "'The Earth,' I said, 'does not speak English.'

Source: Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women And Animals

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