Ancient Futures

What can we learn from Pueblo Indian culture?

NOTE: August’s Intuitive EcoWriting Workshop, Writing Your Edges, is Tuesday, August 27th 5-7 pm MT. Registration closes tomorrow, August 23rd. More info below.

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Looking to the lessons of the ancient past can help to guide us toward a more sustainable future. I break down here some of the wisdom I garnered from my recent visit to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (IPCC) in Albuquerque. The IPCC is owned by the 19 Pueblos and governed by the 19 Pueblos District at the former location of the Albuquerque Indian School. It is a large museum with multiple exhibits educating visitors and celebrating the Pueblo culture of New Mexico. The main exhibit beautifully unveils and interprets some of the key tenants of pueblo life in “time immemorial.” I found this portion particularly inspiring and considered how some of these values could play a role in my life today and an environmentally balanced future. I took some notes so I could share them with you:

Live in cycles.

This value seemed to be one of the most prominent ideas of the Pueblo culture. Theirs is a cyclical existence, including rituals and ceremonies revolving around the seasonal calendar. As a neo-pagan myself, this practice felt very familiar. Each season, each moon cycle, I celebrate with my community the changes in the ecosystem and within ourselves. Even in my Jewish culture, we celebrate the changing seasons with different holidays, generally revolving around the agriculture and seasons in Israel instead of wherever we are living, but seasonal all the same. However, the Pueblo people are much more integrated in their seasonal lifestyle, especially since they live off the land. Spring is a time for planting and irrigation when ceremonies revolve around animals and plants that are reawakening. The summer is filled with feast days and tending crops with family. The fall consists of harvesting, as well as drying and preserving foods for winter. Winter is a time for hunting, storytelling and honoring the animals. Consider how living with the seasons might increase your appreciation for the land and your deeper understanding of your reliance on your habitat?

Land is sacred.

The Pueblo Indians understand that their land was given to their ancestors from the beginning of time and is sacred and must be cared for. They established their homes around sacred sites such as mountains, rivers or cliffsides. They honor these sacred sites and the land in ceremony, dances and prayers. A Puebloan person always has a sense of their place in the world, a home they can always return to no matter how far away they may travel. Americans who are not Native, may struggle with this sense of connection to their land because their ancestors are from somewhere else. However, a collective understanding that the land is a sacred gift to be cherished instead of a resource to be exploited, would greatly transform our treatment of our environment.

Dancers performing for visitors at the IPCC

Honor ancestors.

In daily prayer, Pueblo Indians honor their ancestors. They know that they owe all their traditional ways- teachings, language, rituals, guidance-to their ancestors. They understand that by honoring their past, they honor their future and future generations. Praying for those that have gone on, those here now and those yet to come, is a way of honoring the cycle of life. Many cultures continue to honor their ancestors in different ways. Honoring ancestors not only gives us gratitude for all that they did for us to make it possible to be alive, but it also helps us to remember that we will one day be ancestors too. How do we want to leave the planet for our descendants? How do we wish to be honored? For our legacy of sustainability or destruction?

Water is life.

Water is essential to survival for the Pueblo Indians. Water feeds their crops and nourishes the animals and plants that they subsist on. Especially as desert people, Puebloans honor and respect water. At the Taos Pueblo, they own the entirety of their watershed. The Red Willow Creek is clean enough to drink out of and they do. No one outside of the Pueblo people are allowed to touch the river water in or upstream from the Pueblo. Their connection to water as a part of their continued existence runs so deep that they would never consider polluting their streams. There is no disconnect for them between the water they drink and the river that cascades down the mountain. How would our relationship to the way we treat our water systems change if we took all our water for cleaning, cooking, drinking and bathing in buckets from the nearby river, instead of turning on a faucet?

Song and Dance is Prayer.

This value is found in many ancient indigenous cultures and is something that modern people have largely forgotten. The beat of the drum is like the beat of the Earth’s heart. The beat draws together the people who raise their voices in song and call in the dancers. The dancers call to the Earth with their music and movement showing their gratitude for the love and support they receive from Creator. Their dances honor Earth’s resources. They pray for balance, healing and well-being for all living beings. They dance with the seasons, and they dance for what is needed to exist—rain, corn, and animals to hunt. Praying in this way embodies their connection to all of existence and recalls a time long ago when there was no separation. Do you ever feel an ancestral desire to dance wildly under the stars and sing deep bellows from your navel like a howling wolf? What stops you from doing so?

Storytelling.

The languages of the Pueblos are oral and was never written down. Stories were passed down from generation to generation to guide beliefs and actions. Stories teach people where they come from and how to treat all living beings. Stories are healing. They are also used for entertainment. Through stories told around the fire in the darkness of winter, the Pueblo culture has been preserved. What are the stories we are hearing in our modern world and what are they teaching us? Can we change those stories to ones of love and respect?

Balance.

The Puebloans believe that balance is created and maintained in everything by respecting the Earth’s cycles. Since the Earth provides everything gifted from Creator, it is important to keep a sacred balance when cultivating and gathering resources. Our own over-culture has very much stepped away from this understanding and this is primarily why climate change exists today. Our systems have grown too big, and we have lost the ways that show us how to keep balance. What will it take for us to return to balance?

Sharing Love.

Thanks to the Earth providing all their needs, the Pueblo Indians feel that they can share their love with family, community and the whole world. There is no scarcity when Creator is always providing. Following the seasonal rituals and ceremonies consistently brings community together and renews them spiritually. As close-knit communities and social beings, a great emphasis is put on respect, love and understanding between all people. And they always have a sense of belonging because of their ties to land, family and community. They believe that all beings are interconnected and deserving of love and respect. Imagine a world in which all cultures believed this and lived this belief. As it was written in the 2000 Earth Charter, “Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.”

I’m not trying to idealize any one culture, but there is so much we can learn from indigenous cultures that have continued to preserve their Earth-based way of life. Pueblo Indians especially have so much to teach us because they have remained on their land for over a thousand years (at least, based on carbon-dating, but they see their connection to the land as even older than this). They fought for their right to continue to occupy their land and though there are 19 currently, there used to be many more that did not survive for various reasons, including colonialism, war, drought, etc.

Environmental activist, Joanna Macy, said, “Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning.” In this Great Turning, can we create a new value system more closely aligned with the one outlined above and if so, could we truly turn the tide of climate change?