How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth? - Highlights - TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE

Music & Dance: Musicians, Composers, Singers, Dancers, Choreographers, Performers Talk Art, Creativity & The Creative Process

“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And so are we fully understanding or do we have a full spectrum perspective of what tools of the Earth really mean? Like a bird we think has no intelligence. It just flies here and flies there, right? But we also understand that that bird is also using the tools as the tools of the Earth correctly or properly when...what does that mean?

Now, if you go deeper into Indigenous peoples, you can see the modernity and then so-called primitive people. You don't need to be in contact, in relationship, and in communication, have a language with all other life-technology taking us away from Earth because we feel like we're elite to anything having to do with Earth. That's why we want to go to a dead planet called Mars. So they're about controlling, getting you and all of us away from being magic...is how to use tools of the Earth properly. Not, you know, we should not abuse water, the air, the land, the food, anything. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth.”

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.