Transcommunality: From the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect in the Context of Cultural Diversity - Learning from Native American Philosophies with a Focus on the Haudenosaunee
1998; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-641X
Autores Tópico(s)Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity
ResumoNtunnaquomen awassiishmattapsh yoteg, kekuttokaunta. (I have had a good dream, come sit by the fire, let us talk together.) - From the Algonkian language of my Masachuseuck (Massachusett) Native American ancestors, adapted from R. Williams (1936). So [the Peacemaker] passed from settlement settlement finding that men desired peace would practice it if they knew for certainty that others would practise it too. But first, after leaving the hunters [the Peacemaker] sought the house of a certain woman who lived by the warrior's path which passed between the east the When [the Peacemaker] arrived, the woman placed food before him and, after he had eaten, asked him his message. carry the Mind of the Master of Life, he replied, and my message will bring an end the wars between east west. How will this be? asked the woman, who wondered at his words, for it was her custom feed the warriors passing before her door on their way between the east the word that I bring, he said, that all peoples shall love one another live together peace.... Thy message is good, said the woman, a word is nothing until it is given form set work the world. What form shall this message take when it comes dwell among men? It will take the form of the longhouse, replied [the Peacemaker], in which there are many fires, one for each family, yet all live as one household under one chief mother.... They shall be the Kanonsionni, the Longhouse. They shall have one mind live under one law. Thinking will replace killing, there shall be one commonwealth. - The Message of the Peacemaker the Mother of the Nations, during the creation of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy, adapted from Wallace (1986). Indigenous peoples the Andean world today define this moment of redefinition through the concept of Pachukutiq - literally the turning about of the times. In Quechuan Aymara thought it means a change of direction. - Guillermo Delgado-P (1994) Introduction A major problem of the 21 st century will be the crisis of diverse, often-competing social/cultural identities among people uprooted by corrosively powerful global economic combines. This crisis will be significant not just itself, but because it has the direct consequence of undermining coordinated resistance the destructiveness of global systems of power. In an era rushing toward mindless materialism, propelled by powerful, unfeeling economic syndicates that uproot both body soul, more more people will seek refuge compartmentalized forms of social identity. However, the search for safety such sealed compartments is by itself largely illusory. Fragmented, isolated, unknowing of, or hostile to, one another, such isolation leaves people more, not less, vulnerable the very forces of destruction from which they seek escape. Yet, the strong desire for rooted affiliation is not the source of the problem. The real difficulty is not that people desire such grounded affiliation a culture, religion, community, cosmology, or philosophy. Rather, as Simone Well, writing the dark days of exile from Nazi domination, observed her book, The Need for Roots, to be rooted is perhaps the most important least recognized need of the human soul (1952:41). The real dilemma we face is the lack of constructive mutually respectful interaction among those diverse settings, rather than the diversity itself. Confronted often confounded by a crushing, globalizing monoculture, supported by willing national elites, imposed from the core regions of economic power, we are for the most part not becoming better-connected peoples despite mass communications. Instead, we are being broken down into ever more atomized elements subordinated as mere uncommunicating parts of mass culture. …
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