Indigenous Knowledge

Notes from Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

”We wanted to find a pattern that was common to all different groups, a process that could be used by anyone to come to Indigenous Knowledge productively and without doing damage.

We had four questions:

What can we know?

What do we know?

How do we know it?

How do we work with that?

The answers we found were as follows:

What we can know is determined by our obligations and relationships to people, Ancestors, land, Law, and creation.

What we know is that the role of custodial species is to sustain creation, which is formed from complexity and connectedness.

The way we know this is through our cultural metaphors.

The way we work with this knowledge is by positioning, sharing, and adapting our cultural metaphors.”

What is my real body?

"I can lose my hands, and still live.

I can lose my legs and still live.

I can lose my eyes and still live.

I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms and many other things and still live.

But if I lose the air I die.

If I lose the sun I die.

If I lose the earth I die.

If I lose the water I die.

If I lose the plants and animals I die.

All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than is my so-called body.

What is my real body?"

• Jack D. Forbes

Lakota Wisdom

Honorable Harvest

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.

Ask permission before taking.

Abide by the answer.

Never take the first.

Never take the last.

Take only what you need.

Take only that which is given.

Never take more than half.

Leave some for others.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.

Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.

Share.

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.