One thing I’ve learned over the years of participating in indigenous ceremonies and living with and traveling with my Navajo relations and all my associations, is that we cannot truly understand another culture when looking at it through the lens of our own culture. This is a key aspect of culture that I feel most anthropologist miss. Academia is its own culture and when academics “study” indigenous people they are really just assessing another culture through their own value system.
This is also a key disconnect in the drive to shift corporate culture—that we cannot truly understand a new or different organizational culture when assessing it through the lens of our present culture.
Over time, very gradually, by giving myself over to the indigenous teachings, ceremonies, and culture, I began to take on their value system and to adopt a view of the world from the indigenous perspective. Most fortunately, I never lost the ability to look at the world through the eyes of the culture I grew up in and was trained in in the corporate world, and so was able to write Shift, speaking to the business minded while conveying some of what I learned from the indigenous realm.
That said, I intentionally did not set out to write a book or be a person who preaches how I think people should specifically do things from an indigenous perspective, and would not feel comfortable speaking as a mouth piece for indigenous people in that regard. Rather what I have learned from the elders, the medicine people and the ceremonies, is that indigenous culture offers us a different way of being. And it is in this different way of being that our values will shift, and from our values shifting our culture will shift, and then our outward results will shift as well. This truly is the process of culture shift.
I don’t think it is for me to say what an appropriate percentage of profit is or is not, or how specifically we should work together, because those would just be my opinions. Instead I endeavor to show a different way of being, a way of being that celebrates values and engages us in a continual process of deepening our values, and then from this new way of being each individual will find their own path to creating the kind of work or project or company they wish based on their deepening values.
The over arching message from the indigenous wisdoms is that we exist in reciprocity with all life, human and non-human, and that the Earth herself is a living thing, and that we are living in reciprocity with all of this. It’s like raising teenagers who start to buck when we begin to place increasing responsibilities on them. We as a society are bucking this responsibility to steward the health of the Earth. Modern prevailing corporate culture is in its adolescence, in the sense that it says we should be able to continue doing what we are doing and merely focus on profit (which is an inward focus much like a teenager who doesn’t want to clean up after themselves). A more mature corporate culture would say that our businesses are extensions of the people who comprise them, and that they are human make ups in which we need to care for one another (which is an outward focus more like a wise adult or an elder).
What stewarding the environment or taking care of people looks like can be many things to many people. The work I am most interested in doing is catalyzing a shift in thinking and being so that we may collectively see ourselves as interdependent with one another and the environment. With that shift in thinking and being, the methods, tactics and strategies will evolve naturally.
I appreciate your words here Glenn,
I see this “cognitive dissonance” or disconnect as you state is the result of an inability to see through this lens and has a cost. Each culture has its burden to carry or as I like to say its price to pay for being born of that particular culture which brings the other aspect of gaining a “shift” in perceptional reality.
As an indigenous person I know that each day reports flood in of the lasting effects of culture or “way of life” being “mined” from the human being. It is this association of suicide, generation trauma and separation from the connection to land that create the yearning to remember who we are as true humans and each day I petition the creator to show me as a song we sing says, ” you showed us once who we are…..won’t you do it again”. It is in this remembering process that I find my authentic demonstration or contribution to society.
Sacrifice of time, money or what poses the most difficulty to let go of an old idea always requires a replacing or exchange of something old for something new. The true challenge lies within as to whether I will pay this price or if I find enough value to make this sacrifice. The ability however comes from me individually as you state however is sustained through spirit, or if you will is born of spirit and therefor is paid in spiritual reward or demonstration.
It is through my understanding of my name, clan and tribe that I find my role in this process so as to create balance in this process as we all have our work to do, yet I do not do your work nor do you do mine. I can ask you to help me build a house or take out the trash, however the ability to contribute to a spiritual work must be accompanied by my spirit. I must acknowledge and demonstrate where I am and not somewhere I am not, sometimes it is my experience where my knowledge supersedes my demonstration level in this delicate balance of making a contribution.
These maps or visions to accomplish individual or group change often are born out a deep and earnest need for change and often are paid for in advance, and require more payment as I or we move through them. I agree whole heartedly that if this world or environment is speaking to us with a message it is saying it all humans and as all different races and colors we must respond with those roles as groups and colors of people therefore finding this interdependence or balance in the rhythm of existence.
So cultural lens…….the tree would never look through the lens of his friend the bird to do his work, rather the tree continues to do the work exactly and precisely as the creator has written on his fabric and being and he can do no else. As I have learned all creation remembers and fulfills its roles…..it is only us humans who have forgotten those directions written on our fabric and being ……….so I say and ask …..lets remember together once again…..
mii’iew ( thats it)