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by Nyai Tuppi
November 13, 1999
People here have asked me why I am
concerned with what is said about the Castaneda group, well I don't care,
but that will not register. What interests me is the continual history of
genocide that is still an ongoing occurence in this area. Well before
Columbus, Natives had contact with the Taipo, Taipo being light skinned
nationalities and anyone who thinks of themselves when the derogatory term
'White person' is used. When I was in the kindergarden class, even then I
knew there were higher grades or levels to school. But as a Newe sosohni,
I, like many other natives was at first unaware that many levels of being
were possible. Natives didn't exist until the Taipo wrote about them, yet
they were not writing about natives, but about their idea of what natives
are. Some tried to preserve their idea of the levels, but most seeked to
eradicate most or all of the levels of native existence. Being that the
Taipo had its own levels modified, many of them were unaware that other
realities existed.
This is the core cause for the rift in the native communities. You could
have generation after generation of a present family on a reservation
unaware that there was anything spiritual about the tribe or any tribe.
Their known history has been continual physical struggle. I became aware
of this when talking to my American-Indian student counsellor, when she
asked what the medicine bag around my neck was. She is also one of the
main organizers of the Indian summer festival. I know different tribes
have different practices, but the lack of awareness comes from Genocide.
Her experience as an indian was bleak reservational life, as she said.
Some native peoples have spiritual practices on the rez', but it may only
be one or two levels, such as what they perceive as traditional
ceremonies. So when someone asks them about other native levels that have
been remembered. They naturally say its false, they never heard of
anything like that. If an elder spiritual interpreter went into the other
worlds and found a forgotten level, people here might respect his view,
but would ultimately consider it a delusion. Perpetual Genocide. If a
younger native did this, forget it, he/she would be a bullshit wannabe.
But this is one level to find other levels that my tribe and other tribes
have engaged in since long before the lost sister returned. As far as drug
use to access other worlds, I never needed or used it, but some do. But
because of the Genocide, many native peyote practioners today are
unwilling to talk about it anymore because the Taipo can only see it as
"There in that lodge just getting loaded" or "The drug is just instigating
an illusion". And many natives end up engaging in european and asian
levels of spiritual practice that are missing from their own tribes or
collective American-Indian's memories. They are not wrong for doing this,
they just do not have the ability yet to access the forgotten technigues
of their heritage. Now the obvious point of relevance here is this site is
seeking to continue the practice of erasing any levels that are being
restored. And Castaneda did it as well by hireing people to foster the
belief that the Don juan's tribe were the only ones engaged in those
levels, and hence his group were the only ones permitted to show the
levels, and this site takes it further to suggest that the yaqui never had
those levels, because they enquired of literature written about some yaqui
that had no generational memory of the levels. I'm not interested in the
Victor Sanchezes or M. Tunneshendes any more than the Castanedas. That is
not my point, I'm concerned about the restoration of lost levels of native
existence and the continual genocide against it. I can go on and on about
the different ways this is achieved, but I have a life to live. But the
intention of the Taipo to write down from their perspective Native
experience has always ended up a disservice. Even Castaneda's. A Taipo
seeks to understand a natives reality in the only way they can, by making
comparisons to their own. If I describe a situation where I had a mental
connection with a friend, Linda writes I'm engaging in Clairovoyance,
which has its own european ideas. And though they are basically the same
thing, there is elements to the term "Clairovoyance" that I am not
involved with, so there is a misunderstanding, and we are both speaking
english. Imagine an anthropologist with nothing but a catholic spiritual
background, and I don't just mean Castaneda, but all anthros' who seeked
to clarify native realities, speaking to a native who spoke a different
language and had different ideas and perspectives on whatever they
discussed. Fast forward to the last twenty years. You have people on this
site going to seminars, with all their erroneus ideas about natives culled
from books written by the Taipo about Natives, and their christian or
secular upbringings and no awareness of what they are really getting into.
This is where you have someone like Linda, with xian guilt, putting her
hands over her face, when someone like the blue scout says, 'you haven't
really changed that much'. There may have never been a blue scout, at
least not in the way they thought. Another explanation which is evident
from the books is that they don't seem to know whats going on, maybe they
really believed that this girl was not born in this reality because of
what supposedly occured, maybe in fact it was her energy body only that
was trapped there. Either way I don't care, I just know I'm still trying
out and doing some of the technigues in the books, as well as my own
tribes. But the Genocide advocaters will say, Bullshit, its all
superstitious nonsense!" I of course allow for the possibility of
fabrication, I wouldn't believe Castaneda's word anymore than I believe
Linda just happened to run into someone that knew Carol from acupuncture
class. That could mean what she thinks, or it could mean that Castaneda
and them really didn't know what was going on. Or it could mean something
else. But the books have many rings of truth, mainly the description of
the levels, so even if Don Juan never existed, I know from my own
experience that the levels are described in the native perspective, which
would be odd if it was all made up. Cultures all over the world have the
same levels in different perspectives, and though they are the same, they
cannot be completely compared. But once again I'm only interested in
Native restoration. That could be from physical worldly struggles to
universal and beyond levels. This site is one of those levels, be it in a
Taipo perspective, and it needs to be here. Tsaayu. The inimitable Nyai
Tuppi.
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