Indigenous Heritage and the drumbeat of  the earth…

The two-minute video above was taken in 1894. There are three separate clips that show when you tap the picture. It is unique in being rare and old footage of Native Americans drumming and dancing, accessing the drumbeat of the earth. It is also a testament to the lingering intricacy and total culture and traditions of a people who, by then, had faced near genocide in America by white settlers.

Lost Traditions

Each individual wears clothing symbolic of their way of life and for the purpose of the dance. Each one has preserved traditions that had existed for centuries, millennia even. This culture, now almost obliterated, is still treated with bigotry and persecution, four hundred years after the Pilgrims landed and stepped into the American wilderness, a landscape that did not belong to them.

It was not a shining hour for the European invaders — it was a travesty against life. One has to ask why. And no answer comes.

But one of my greatest heroes, Dr. Jane Goodall, was asked how she could feel hope in the midst of what was described as the planet’s race to annihilate itself, much of which she has witnessed firsthand. Dr. Goodall said she finds the good, and focuses on that. It is what gives her strength, and energy, and trust in the universal truth — that whether we know it or not, we are meant to discover how to live in harmony and with compassion.

The Great Spirit

There are powerful forces in Native American culture. These forces come out of immense reverence for the earth, for all of Nature, and for the Great Spirit. Native American traditional drumming, some of which is sounded in the video, has always been a way to express this deep connection.

Our world has let go of this reverence, not only for the planet’s ecology, but for its inhabitants. What is to become of us if we let things stay this way?

We are each responsible for the answer to this. What drives us to care, or not to care?  And if we do not care, do we understand why? It is vital that we do understand, for then we can change our perceptions, and see how to offer hope for our children and their children, onward into the future.

Not everyone wants or needs to be an activist. But everyone has the freedom to act in their own corner of the universe according to their values. It is a choice we always are free to make. So that is where our responsibility lies. Every thought we have, every word we speak, every action we carry out, helps shape this world into what it is and what it becomes.

Our Deep Connection with the Earth

Our heart — our physical heartbeat — is in direct synchronization with the pulsing — the drumbeat of the earth. This has been scientifically measured. It is no accident. We sense this for ourselves when we walk barefoot in the grass. We feel it when we enter the natural world in silence. We know this when we listen to the sound of a thunderstorm. And a thousand other times, we know. It is a knowing that comes from being willing to live in harmony with the earth and with ourselves. It is a form of living in a state of grace.

Ancient Healing

Should we return to plant-based healing remedies, to aligning ourselves with what Nature has to show and give to us, or should we embrace modern pharmaceuticals as the only true source of fixing whatever is giving us distress and pain? There are so many ways of healing promised to us–how can we know?

When it comes to health, the answer is that the kind of care people want has a lot to do with their outlook on life. What they choose to do must align with their belief system. In essence, the choice they make is the best one — for them. Telling someone who is adamantly invested in modern western medical solutions that they should turn to herbal remedies is not likely to be persuasive.

What Governs Our True Health?

Our health is governed not just by the physical symptoms we experience, it is directed by our minds and hearts. If people do not believe in something, it has far less capacity to benefit them.

Consider the placebo effect, usually dismissed by professional doctors as deceptive and useless. But is it? If someone believes they have taken a pill that will fix their sore throat and do not know it is just sugar, very likely it will heal their throat. If they believe the same pill is going to alleviate their allergies, it most often will.

What this tells us is that we are more in control of our health and well-being than we think. What our brain thinks is happening IS happening. Again, this is why staying with a method of health care that we believe in matters so much. We trust only what we choose to trust.

The Danger of Synthetic Medicine

However, for millennia the remedies of choice came from plants and were administered by herbalists, usually women, and by indigenous shamans. Alas, both were shunned sometime in the late medieval period and a mostly male-derived health care system has developed over the last few hundred years. This system has always been heavily controlled, sidelining or denigrating all other health care modalities. Women lost all access to the healing processes that they had used for thousands of years. (A telling outcome around the fact that men took over medical treatment and denied the usefulness of herbs can be shown in the witch trials of the 17th century both in the U.S. and in other parts of the western world, attacks against women who, among other things, practiced the old healing remedies.)

Eventually this male-dominated new wave of medicine, which has evolved into using largely synthetic prescription medications, encouraged people to believe they needed treatment by professional physicians for even minor illnesses.

Well, does it really matter? If the medicine gets invented or is found in Nature, so what? The answer is that there are very good reasons to look at the matter of healing with more attention to the results that occur.

Nature is the Greatest Healer

Nature, in fact, does everything better than we can. A plant has massive interconnected properties. When medical research isolates those properties, extracting just a few of them, they might be creating something useful, for a while. But it does not last long. Such extraction can often have side effects that cause severe, even lethal conditions for people. But in the societies familiar with the old remedies, the people creating the healing processes and mixtures used the whole plant or a major part of it, knowing the trace elements are also essential–it is the plant’s synthesis of all its elements that give it such intensive healing properties. Extracting only some of it does not offer healing of the whole system, just symptomatic relief.

But my purpose is not to persuade anyone to shift away from what they trust medically now. It is just to offer the possibility that there might be another way of seeing — and another way of healing.

Do Check Out the Film on Some Peaceful Ways of Healing

This recent three-minute film is by someone whose work I know well. At the very least, Nick Polizzi suggests we can look more closely into ways to heal ourselves with greater inner calm, and with attention to what we are made of, for we are as much a part of this Earth as the plants that feed and can heal us.

I hope you enjoy it.