I've always been fascinated by the striking affinities between commoners and Indigenous peoples, as well as their significant differences. Both are keenly aware of life as a deeply relational phenomenon -- one that Western capitalism, science, and market culture don't really understand. Both see commoning as a baseline for mindful living and presence, a process that can help transform the world in positive directions.
And yet, while Western and Indigenous commoners share many values and practices, native cultures have subtle traditions and understandings that go back centuries, often millennia. They've grappled with some very different and dire challenges, including generations of horrific settler colonialism, genocide, and other traumas. Not surprisingly, Indigenous cultures are determined to reconstruct their cultures and, with the help of moderns willing to listen, heal the Earth.
So while ancient and modern commoners may share a disdain for capitalism, ancient wisdom traditions bring much more gravitas and insight to the challenges we face than, say, politicians and political parties. That's certainly hopeful because personal transformation and cosmological narratives can be catalytic and lead to much-needed, broader transformation. There's a need for new bridges between Indigenous and Western ways of knowing. Humans will need to ground themselves in the Earth if they're going to learn how to arrest the planet's climate breakdown, and live more fully.
For all these reasons, I was excited to talk about these topics with Yuria Celidwen on my latest episode of my Frontiers of Commoning podcast (Episode #57). Celidwen is an Indigenous scholar whom I met two years ago at the Garrison Institute, a center for contemplative practice in the Hudson Valley in New York State that also seeks to spur transformative social action.
Celidwen is a native of Indigenous Nahua and Mayan lineages, born into a family of mystics, healers, poets, and explorers from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. She describes her childhood as having "one foot in the wilderness and another in magical realism." Until recently, Celidwen spent years at the United Nations, supporting international humanitarian efforts to implement Sustainable Development Goals, with a special emphasis on the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the rights of Nature.
Currently Celidwen is a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Psychology, where she studies self-transcendent practices of contemplation in Indigenous traditions and the “ethics of belonging.” As a senior fellow at the Othering & Belonging Institute at Berkeley, she explores how mindfulness, heartfulness, and compassion can promote planetary flourishing.
I spoke with Celidwen to learn more about her recently published book, Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Foundations for Collective Well-Being. The book identifies seven key principles found in Indigenous cultures worldwide that can help people overcome isolation, nourish healthy relationships and well-being, and ultimately, heal the planet. These principles are: Kin Relationality, "Body Seed," "Senshine," Heartfelt Wisdom, Ecological Belonging, Collective Well-Being, and Reemergence.
Celidwen argues that the modern mindset may aspire to well-being, but happiness is "only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and to our living Earth." The heart of regenerating ourselves, and the Earth, lies in our relationality.
Our podcast conversation spanned diverse topics. We talked about misunderstandings among Westerners about what "Indigenous" means, and the power of contemplative mindfulness to break down harmful modern narratives about the world. We talked about the need to communicate more deeply with each other and Gaia, and indeed, the limits of language in communication.
Celidwen noted that human beings, as part of the living Earth, are co-participants in creating life with it. So why not listen more deeply to what Gaia is saying? "The Earth is trying to speak to us through all of us," said Celidwen.
"All the different voices [we hear] are her own voice, but expressed in different ways. We are meeting each other, and finding each other, and discovering that we have way more power than we are led to believe. So those stories that keep us isolated? We are shedding those stories, and we are taking and reclaiming our right to make our own stories the way that we want. And that's where the commons comes in!"
These remarks reminded me of my podcast conversation with Stephan Harding of Schumacher College in May 2022, in which he argued much the same thing: We must learn to listen more closely to what Gaia is telling us.
Flourishing Kin is refreshing because it draws on ancient Indigenous wisdom in trying to address entirely modern challenges as well as age-old human challenges. “What’s been overlooked [in modern times] is the Indigenous perspective of relationality,” she says. “It is the understanding that happiness is only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and to our living Earth.”
You can listen to my podcast interview with Yuria Celidwen here.
Recent comments