Part 2 interview with An(n) Alter Ego (Annae)

First I want to skip to the end of my notes, and then return to where i left off in part 1.

Dreds and Nursesquitos

On this elder white man’s dreds, of which one is quite unusually large and thick around, he says he got ’em originally when he was able to listen to what George said. “George?” i asked. “Yeah, Chief Dan George, who sometimes haunts me!” His Chief Dan George-“accented” voice starts to come thru into his own voice and that’s how he knows when George is around. But what got the proverbial ball rolling was a white guy who went by the name of “The Peace Wizard”. This guy passed on recently in his 80s, and pretty much rite up to his passing, he was known for walking around Salish territory with an oversized PEACE sign which he carried without much else. Our visionary was wandering around in some big woodz when he got a notion to “go back to the parking lot and look” and followed it. Walked back down the trail, across the river, about 1/2 mile back, and looked into the empty parking lot. “And in just a minute or so, there went his first glimpse of the locally well-known wizard! “It was getting dark and i thought he wouldn’t get any rides that late in the day, with hardly any traffic, so i invited him over to my camp spot. Smoke a little 420 with me and hang out. Well, he’s sleeping outside, so i chose to sleep outside of my tent –and WHOA!” He’s GLAD he did! “I was opened up to a whole new world!”

Because a medium-sized squirrel (he thinks) slowly began stalking up to him while his back was turned, and then, of all the uncanny things, “got up on my head and ACTUALLY BEGAN WEAVING MY HAIR!” To be fair, there was a smallish dred already started, which had begun growing, he thinks, due to his private desire to have it cover over a sensitive spot on his head. “But that squirrel was the one who brought THE WEAVE!” And when the critter (whom he never saw) was done, what did it do? “It put its tiny hand on my shoulder!”

And from then on, Annae has slept whenever they can, beyond the confines of tents! Finding that it’s mostly mice who weave and add weaves to their hair, tho an occassional medium-sized squirrel also visits. Annae has another story about going back to the original place to have the local critters “DO my hair”, but that time they did something wowfully different! But the clincher is, escaping the tyranny of tent life!

And this is where the “Nursesquitos” come in.

“If you don’t have a tent and sleep in the open, you’re apt to experience mounting numbers of mosquitos visiting for a free meal.

“I hate using toxic cancer-causing bug goop/spray,” so they began experimenting in places where they didn’t think the mosquitos would have diseases. “I think they’re more diseased around sewage plains, known homeless areas, and campgrounds, which i avoid like the plague. But of course, as author Harriet A. Washington exposed, the feds like to unleash tainted mosquitos for their severely alienated jollies and alleged scientific pursuit of weaponizing nature. “There was another library book I read back in the early 2000s that had a chapter about “war in 2010″, but i lost track of that book and haven’t been able to find it since.” Basically, it spoke about future war being made to look “as tho nature did it.”

But anyway, Annae has experimented, and noted that they only get some strange breathing issues when around Indigenous rezes, or around well-known ‘radical’ enclaves. “Like just this last spring when i was bikin around the Blackfeet Rez.” But this is where Mullien comes in: “That wild plant, smoked or made into a tea, clears up my lungs every time i’ve had problems! So too when I think I had covid once!”

Annae “got 420’d up” the first times they experimented with “Letting the girls have their way with me.” The girls being NURSEsquitos, in their mind! (only females are known to bite humans) “I mean, if you ‘get’ the pattern of settlerdom’s hype against experiencing nature meaningfully, you have to wonder if MAYBE the mosquitos (and other biting insects) are actually like Slugs!” That is, CLEANERS of the forest. “Cleaners” being the kicker. So Annae wonders if mosquitos might actually be TAKING TOXINS OUT when they are in their natural, unmolested (by secretive feds) state!! And they have been going with that hypothesis for quite a number of years!

“Sure, I still squish ’em from time to time, like when they start overwhelming me. Then i like to have a bug-net to back me up.” But, it’s become a pattern of 420-induced intuitive listening that returns Annae to exploring an endurance of the pain (“the little bites are like having several tatoo artists working on you”) from the initial pin-prick. “And some are getting pretty big, and I can actually feel their tiny teeth (?) and THAT gets too unnerving, so i usually squish those ones. Maybe those are the c.i.a.-soaked ones,” Annae is not certain. But the bigger they get, the more Annae wants to try frying em up!

Now returning to where I left off from Part One:

Moving beyond Left-centric (and Europeon centric) confines, away from perpetuating demonization and war:

“World Indigenous excellences (W.I.E.) can teach us about escaping the perpetuation-loop of demonization, EVEN of the oft-flailing (i.e. drunken) oppressors and their oh-so-strategicly-challenged ideas about Everyone Else (planted in them from an early age, of course!). Escaping such perpetuation of war SOLVES THE PROBLEM!

“But the ‘Left’ (and ‘Right-wing’) are like the auto industry, they go only for incremental so-called “change”, and then play the Shell Game of Polytricks to keep anything from truly evolving. It’s all very so-called “scientific”, you realize, when you read authors like Christopher Simpson (book: The Science of Coercion) or Jeremy Seabrook (in globalization.icaap.org Vol.1, number 1).”

Didn’t we already mention this in Part One? Well, repetition is good!

Q: The ideology of the ‘Left’/’Right’ a colonial french model.

A: Actually, post-revolutionary france. But that’s ‘revolution’ for you, as Russell Means spoke about –you just go around in a circle. They circled away from open tyranny and into cammoflauged tyranny perpetuating itself. As long as our DIFFERENCES can be the only focus. But what if we focus on our COMMONALITIES? What if we steep ourselves in demystifying state coercions and all that, while focusing on commonalities? On meaningful community?!!

“The imposed ideology (imposed upon elites as well! –as KIDS!) does NOT want us all to start empathizing with each others’ trajectories!! Because they’re ALWAYS worried that IF we do, THEY will be SCAPEGOATED along with their whole families, like European history shows over and over.

“Only world Indigenous (?) folks (including pre-Roman Gaelic, Gauls, etc. as well as others, like Tibetan) dare speak this, it seems. “Looking behind” intensities (Lakotah), not taking shit personally (Toltec), trying to puzzle thru to MUTUALLY-beneficial solutions (world matriarchy)! While not tolerating tramplings and off-balance violence –EXCEPT IN FANTASY approaches to KEEPING poetic bridges WITH challengers! Comes back to the old addage “Dissent Welcome!” posted at the entrance to any community that is strong-enough!

“This is how we could be having loads of fun instead of loads of dreary ideation of stupidity! Imagine if we began making our own meaningful media, say, an anarcho-Star Trek show regularly on youtube?! Make sit-coms of union worker families and the polytricks of corporate sneaks! Etc.! Deal REAL all the way! And build up meaningful culture, WHILE OPENLY DEALING WITH THE COINTELPROgrams that seek to try to undermine and block us!!

“That is, systematically demystifying would-be bullies and their limited Funding and status once no longer needed! But NOT excluding them! Simply promoting that they join up with, first a dialoging-circle, and then possible acceptance into a ‘lodge’ of their (and our) ongoing choice. Where are these lodges? They are becomings within existing strong communities. Communities that feel strong enough to take on a few challenging persons, from youthful rebels to known spooks! To both impart their community knowledge AND learn from dissent!!

Q: Where do you get your inspiration from? How do you obtain these visions?

A: Well, it began when i was sleeping in the Unknown over many weeks or longer, while back-country backpacking and then bicycling. And then the 420-thing, and psychedelic shrooms, also helped open me up.

“But what made the most difference, i think, was listening to the suggestions of ‘the spirits’ (a.k.a. their intuition), to ART MYSELF. This ‘artiNg myseLf’ thing was basically a direct action/social intervention strategy –OF NOT GOING SILENTLY–while using creative intelligence to reach across ideological boundaries.”

Annae proceeded to “art themselves” as a form of vision quest, I think. They’d visit unsuspecting small towns, local forests, college campuses, big cities, you name it. Annae would do “mobile art shows” in their own form of “rodeo clown” regalia(h)!

“I was endangering myself, i thought, when i went out into those unknowns, and so i got to thinking that my wilde outfitz were really a form of regalia, something i would like to be wearing when/if i might be killed!”

Quite a “Big Step” for many settlers who want to uncolonize, to go beyond the Known of settler ideological corrals at all, much less venture out with ‘crazy’ notions to do almost a ‘super hero’ angle towards everyday folks.

But Annae has been “flabbergasted” because they have NOT been attacked, and usually even ignored by the cops! (Tho Annae knows hiz ‘Rights’ and often uses them even when groups like the ACLU say that ‘we’ no longer have any ‘rights’, “BECAUSE cops took an oath in their training; cops are still trained to have the Constitution on their minds, and they are often surprised in a positive way when one invokes their ‘rights’ at all. “On the street, in the moment, this makes all the difference!”)

Sure. Annae’s white privilege cropping up there?

But cops cannot always see Annae inside the regalia. So maybe there’s a grey area.

Only one time that Annae recalls were they were secretly shot with a hornet, somehow.

“But that was only once in my many –over 15– actions!” Mostly Annae would get “cat-called” by drunken men, but never much more. In Boston, one guy played like he wanted to fight, but soon moved on, when he realized i wasn’t playing along.

“I always showed up in sudden, unannounced style, no “P.R.” work or flyers before. It was PLAY. And working on my self-psyche process. And spirituality, due to the going into unknowns aspect. I’d jump in, loose all my “depth charge” flyers (full of root-oriented info not easily found) and then leave. Not getting involved in local politics, nothing like that.”

Q: Similar to that guy you like to mention, from the 1940s-1960s. What was his name?

A: Saul Alinsky? Yeah, Saul Alinsky-like in the basic idea of that author’s anti-racist confrontational nonviolence, i.e. “Mass Jiujitsu”. Tho most seem to say that we should go for Aikido instead of jiujitsu, as Aikido is supposedly less about violence and domination than jiujitsu. But my understanding is that jiujitsu users merely make use of the momentum of the aggressor in creative ways, not necessarily war-stuck. Where Aikido…well, I don’t frankly know!”

Q: You have no formal educational degree but some “clawledge” (college). Mostly an opportunist of public resources, not paying shit, while enjoying privileges designed for use by upper class folks.

A: Many universities are still quite open, even tho many seem to have curtailed the free use of their computers, these days. Their libraries are still open for self-educational pursuits, and the students, well, i love doing art shows specifically for them!

Q: You’re pretty interesting for a white man in his 50s. Queer-informed, uncolonizing hiz creativity while living hiz visions as much as they know how. What can you share with us about your idea, say, of real power?

A: Well, the first one that comes to my mind is what happened when i was solo bikin thru Hopi/Dineh territory, i forgot what year. i was going that day for the area of Tuba City, “AZ” and it was hot and dry even in the early spring when i went. i was still a large hill away from that rez town and i recall seeing what looked like a big storm way off in the north; well, i thought TO MYSELF, ‘wow, i’m glad it’s not where i am!’

“Next thing i know, A STORM appears OUT OF NOWHERE and holy sheeee-it, it gets HUGE very quickly, with all kinds of lightning and wind, and i was rite on the leading edge of it. And a Native dude stops his car and yells in the rising wind, asking: “You’re not riding towards THAT are you??” And i said ‘no!’ i was just positioning my bike that way, i think it was, because i could prop my bike up against a small bush and have a bit of protection, while i rested. The driver then took off but soon returned, and suggested i ride down to Tuba City with him (my gaydar went off for this 2-spirit’d man), and i wish i had in retrospect; becuz i might have had a really fun time gettin to know these NDNZ, y’kno?

“But i told him, i wanted to RIDE the long-anticipated DOWNhill! And regretted that once i found that the road was far from smooth and “easy” and very bumpy and challenging! Not fun!”

So Annae went with hiz intuition. Which then took hym to an area without trees or even shrubs, where no signs forbade hym from entering.

Annae made camp fo rthe night.

Q: Then what happened?

A: I noted that the storm was moving my way, even tho most storms die down at night in my experience. I had been looking at my favorite constellation, The “Barking Tuna” constellation, named after the shape of a favorite college radio MASCOT that is a “Tuna fish” in Black Lace. And i spoke my desire to keep looking at that constellation, which i had only just noted, and which i don’t often get to see, to the approaching storm! And in so speaking to the storm, in my intuition, i managed to avoid the main THRUST of the storm!”

Of which Annae learned later, had pelted at least one tent camper and fellow cyclist in a town about 20 miles away, with gusts full of gravel!!

“One or more spirits still blasted at my campspot for a few minututes, seemingly dancing around in a whirlwind, buffeting my belongings which i had intuitively tied up in case they got blown away (might find ’em easier). Then they left me alone to look at my fav star shape!”

Mayhaps that storm spirit had never heard of a human asking, without fear, to look at a star constellation before??

“I think it was the ‘even keel’ pyschicly, the non-Fear, that may’ve both surprised and miffed the spirit challenger who had rep’d the storm. Plus the fact that i was sleeping in the open without ANY ‘cover’. I’ve seen similar such spirit winds before, seemingly calculating to surprise and psychicly “knock” the usual suspects, only to then be surprised and kind of “knocked” themselves!!”

Like a time in northern “california” (Yurok area?):

“i was sleeping in tarpology on the coast, not far from Mendocino. And a spirit wind comes prancing up, shaking the sides of my tarps, but then suddenly dissipating upon seeing that i had one wall NOT up!! One area that did not have a wall! Seemed to surprise that spirit wind into sudden silence! And the scary storm approaching left me alone!!

Q: Okay, we’re approaching the end of this rather long interview, Annae, so let me get something off my chest, so to speak. Like, what makes YOU think YOU’RE so important and worthy of our (NDN) acceptance?

A: Well, world Indigenous folks recognize the values of one’s visions, one’s ‘dream’. We/they will challenge you/me, surprise ya, even prod ya, but if ya ‘hold fast’ to your heart-felt intuition/spirituality, all can see the value. Metis and white-looking guys like me take the risk of being directly and even cynically challenged. And that’s part of what we prepare for. i’ve dealt with that kind of thing in a variety of challenging scenarios. One that comes to mind was when AIM allowed me to join a sweatlodge one night after i waited a long time, and i found myself in a lodge headed by a woman whom had been especially volatile towards me from the beginning (i figured she had been given my intel by the usual hypesters that plague me).”

Annae had joined up with one of Dennis Banks’ Long Walks, starting in the Bay Area/Ohlone territory. They were then at a sacred ex-military base-turned Indigenous traditional college, a few days away from starting the main walk. Annae had been carrying some NDN paraphernalia (heh) that a 2-spirit friend had given hym, left it there, and found it missing when they returned.

“So this lady AIMster began pouring some REALLY hot blasts on the fire. BUt i didn’t run out in fear, as she might have wished for, but instead, saw in my mind/spirit, how all that firey, searing HOT somehow brought out my wings!”

That is, Annae got a vision of large, angel-like wings spreading out from hiz back!

“I’m not a christian –i’d walk WITH christ if they ever show up–not follow! Christians are followers of christ. But it has been put so deeply into me that i find myself falling back into that paradigm when faced with overwhelm. Similar to the time that a chief and a religious-seeming Native got me going to my knees!”

That was back in the early 2000s at a pow wow in michigan/3 fires territory, when Annae had entered a city pow wow in their own style of regalia.

“I had texts stuck on my regalia(h) which was a big no-no for the pow wowers, and was leaving it after secruity challenged me, when this guy with religion written all over his vehicle approached me and i found myself flanked on each side by this female chief and him. And the lady chief wanted to know if i was trying to “make fun of” her people. And that’s when they were able to “MAKE ME” fall to my knees to say that NO, that was NOT my intent!! And to explain.”

And that was a form of power Annae had not encountered before!

Then there was what happened in Eugene, OR:

“In that curious town known for anarchist uprisings, there was a concerted SPOOK (covert action agent) effort to apparently counter what they seemed to assume was my ‘activist’ intention there. So this metis (?) female spook and her Native-looking female co-hort “OUTED” me with an open verbal challenge at the late end of a hippie music celebration [at a place called “Whirled Pies”], and seemed to EXPECT me to cower and take flight (spooks love chasing their mice). But i didn’t.

“And then the metis-possible blonde-haired woman, i found, had published a large stack of a sensualphobic-pushing and perpetuating newsprint Native paper–a one-shot, i later learned–chock full of c.i.a.-style hype against a whole side of the truth that is being systematically suppressed in the bigger society. Apparently to counter some assumed-wicked intention i had, or something along those lines!

“Later, i’d see her at the regional Rainbow Gathering nearby, showing smartphone pics of me (apparently) to Rainbow elders in a curious attempt to hype them up against me. But there was nothing illegal, and so used to such hyping of emotions, the elders dismissed her without batting an eyelash. And refused to join her in trying to chase me out! (the ‘gladio’ try to isolate we who dare stand up when few others dare)

Gladio is a word Annae picked up during the self-education process. A heavier word for what Philip Agee called “the jackals”, or in general dissident parlance, the “spooks”. The well-paid (for now) dupes of statecraft used to try to scare dissent back into more easily manageable places.

“This spook was working overtime to try to trap me in various ways, i recognized. Paranoid i am, and yet, learned a lot from authors like Brian Glick. She went further, certainly involved in one aspect of the State’s move to crush Rainbow Gatherings, “finally”, but i’ve probably taken up too much space already.”

Q: So, with all of that experience, you seem to be saying that you’d bring serious praxis to Indigenous stands?

A: That and my “radical honesty”. And creative flair. And exuberance for life and REALLY living. And…

Q: Well, THAT should whet your appetite for the next (?) interview, eh?!

A: Yeah, so i’ve been on a WILD ride, like i said. And even tho i continue to be a target for usually only psychological pressure (perhaps due to my not being armed), with threats coming a little more intense (i.e. a recentish one Told me i would only have one day to live if i ever become famous) –like i WANT to be ‘famous’ so that they can more freely attack! NAH!–and crank calls a norm for my ma, well, i keep ‘at it’ (standing up strategicly somehow), creatively. Such as some comix i put out to certain groups. Or the article i wrote up demystifying this war on one aspect of homosensuality that statecraft needs to keep ‘under wraps’ for reasons that i think i now ‘get’, even tho those reasons are lost and stuck in war.

Q: So this is why you remain solo, 99% of the time.

A: Yeah, what already beseiged nation wants MORE trouble? Rite? I ‘Get It’. And yet, to stay solo and aloof and atomized, that just ‘plays into’ the meta-war-game that these koyanisqatsi’d-challenged dupes push!

Q: It’s a quandry for sure. But you’ve found meaning in W.I.E., like no other approach, not even only-anarchist approaches, and thus you stay around in this life, not taking yourself ‘out’. And wanting to stay around here –including becuz of your ‘mutt’ status–where it’s not so easy to pick a ‘homeland’ and return.

A: And the part of me that’s allegedly tied to my DNA-connection with the Blackfeet, tugs at my ankle to keep returning to pow wows and the like. (There are so many levels to pow wows!) This part of me that DOES keep an influential role over my other nation-spirits!

Q: Tho you’ve had surprising experiences in Ireland?

A: Yes. But.

Q: Any last words? (so to speak)

A: Thanks for the EGO strokes!!

Well, this is where i end this for now. Inputs of all varieties welcome!!

Q/A with Ann Alter Ego

various questions coming to me over a few years of putting this together….

song being shared in background: “You got the love I need….” Then, “Who’s gonna show him the way?”

Wow.

So i’m with someone calling themselves, rite now, “An(n) Alter Ego (“Ann AE”, i’ll call hir, or how about Annae!, a.k.a. “A” as in Answerer). I’m “Q”, the MC of this. Annae’s pronouns are: hiz, hee, hym, hir, they.

Annae is a friend of mine, over quite a few years. Annae was not allowed to be listed on the unsettlingamerica blog, and was surprised. I will try to put a photo up that hee used on hiz blog (visionary4evolution.wordpress.com) at the time. A “psychedelic Lord of the Flies” “masque” representing the totally marginalized (?) desert wild pig, known as the Javalina (Have a leen ah).

Q=MC of this interaction. I am typing this from notes made.

Note, i put this interview off for at least four years. Go figure.

Annae wants to be remembered, as they are getting up in age (approaching 58! i thought hee was much younger, say 30s!) and unsure of when it will “be their ride showing up” (to paraphrase the late John Trudell, about passing on). Especially in light of having various levels of spooks firing off threats and etc.

Alritey! Spirit just tripped me OUT (again!) when i seemed to lose the pen i was using, and got all anxious about that! Turn on a light and WHOA there it is, right in a place i had only just SEARCHED!!!!

Q: Ever get that kinda challenge?

A: All the time.

Anyway, we both think that speaking up at this time is a good idea. So more folks may hear out this apparent ‘metis’ man. I encounter hym this time as hee tries to adjust hiz radio antenna to get a good signal on the East Bay Area’s ‘World 1 Radio’ on KECG. They’ve got themself some kinda NDN rig, btw. In fact, hiz life feels pritty uncloned and uncolonizing, rite down to hiz humble:

“When i’m trying to make some ends meet, i’ve learned, over and over, i have to HUMBLE myself, first! Folks, “Normal, Everyday people” are STILL that much IN TUNE with their intuition, (even when they won’t admit it!) that they won’t show interest in my art UNLESS i’ve gotten into a humble, more balanced space!!!!”

Annae is really LIVING their visions, too. The outphitz and visionary texts they made over the years “depth interacted” with diverse folks in over 15 cities, and counting. Since 2003, when hee began broadening out from merely a single issue focus. All while hee was “dropping out.”

“I was already internationally OUT for that single issue, and had achieved a somewhat notorious position, when i began practicing for life ‘underground’. That proved ‘pre-scient’ when someone began legally attacking everyone in the group i had been involved with”– just for having our names on the list of their publication! “A real COINTELPRO-like operation, or at least something very much like that!” Dragging activists’ resources out for long legal harrassment, tends to take the oomph out of building social movements, a lesson from the 1960s/70s realities.

“So, the attackers couldn’t apparently find me, even as some of my colleagues lost their homes, trying to put enough money to fight that shit!”

“So i began dropping out by a FLUKE! And, wow, what a ride. Not for the faint of heart! All the psychic and psychological challenges i have been enduring (nothing physical yet), certainly have built up my resolve! To keep on going just like Martin Luther King, Jr did.”

Trippy-ass “anti-copyright” art hee makes, btw. Have you seen it around? Hee makes it only by the light of day, while sitting, chairless, on “MomEarth”, no “Normal” home, even: “Tarpology, usually, nowadays! Ever since i realized that escaping tents allows for dreds to be made!!!!

No heat, no electric (did get a $21 REI garage sale solar panel awhile back), no plumbing (diggin holes), no internet (duzn’t even own a computer, except for the one hee stashed about ten years back, re-found it recently, but mildew apparently disabled)!

Heez been living “outside of the settler corral” more and more since back in 1982-83 when hee first began “tasting it” in a serious way (hee thinks that an art car, with black fire on the sides, which he drove around the country in 1989, and then a similar one in the late 1990s, may’ve inspired the name behind the band BLACK FIRE, when some one of them MIGHT have seen the car by chance!). 1982, tho, is when hee first began seeing THE POTENTIAL of living freer, when doing a solo bicycle ride at age 17 across hiz home state. Then in 1983, during a 360day transnational ride, and especially in 1985-86, at age 20 and 21, experimenting with such free while bikin from ‘The Aijiganiing’ to ‘Aleyeska’ (a.k.a. Alaska), 4,800 miles. “But 1996 was the year i went in with BOTH feet.”

Annae recalls the first person who met hym when hee got to hiz final destination in “Aleyeska”, a 59-year-old Inuit man “whom i got to know so meaningfully that i not only made art for him, but put it on a sweater and gave it to him!” before hee left after about a year there. “We used to hug everytime we saw each other! And i used to see him kind of ministering to the other Inuits on the street, often drunken. “He’d drink with them, but try to help them! Help them get in touch with their traditional values!!”

“I remember one time when i wanted to help him, but he had me help one of his more drunk buddies. How did i help? i helped by taking him back to my little rented spot and cook him up a good meal! No religion, no hype from me, just being a human being! Another Native guy i reached out to, saying i’d take him to eat somewhere, couldn’t believe it when i actually did this!”

Very naive to Native realities at that time, at least he was reading the apparently autonomous publication “The Tundra Times”.

Annae got to know quite a few Native folks up thar in the far north and hasn’t stopped since. “I look back at the closest friends i had in highschool, and they were all metis or full-blood. Even tho i never heard conscious discussion on that topic, we had something going on intuitively, i guess.”

“A deeply marginalized aunt of hiz, long character assassinated by all the groanups, told me that she found, in a DNA test, that we are RELATED to three possible tribal nations. She picked the Blackfeet, and somehow obtained land and a cabin in an apparently lovely part of the Blackfeet Rez! I remain a bit skeptical, but open-minded.”

Oh, big deal, Annae’s Native too. Naive whites hoop and holler in celebration, until they recognize the reality. But, a’course, the celebration is (?) about feeling connected, after all. Feeling to be a part of the “LaNd”, and then knowing they have ancestral connexion! Knowing it in their heart, and then, wow, here comes settler technology “proving” it. Ahem.

Hiz earliest recollection of how hee got into this NDN stuff was at age 8, as a member of the “Indian Guides”. “They gave me a name: Wise Owl. It was an Algonquin-oriented focus, and at that age i was VERY moved to be a part of that.”

A more daring Kent Nerburn?

Q: So, you’ve felt a connexion with Indigenous folks for a long time and now you think you’re doing something about it, not merely consuming the spectacle, another culture tourist for stupidized settlers to gaggle at?

A: –Well, that’s what ya get, i think, when ya don’t have any connexion with Mom Earth. When ya’v spent a lifetime restricting yourself from what yer afraid of. But if ya approach life via something like ‘mutualist strategies of protection via enrichment, wow, life opens up AMAZING doorz! The more levels you re-discover/remember. But due to long-reigning European-centric Beliefs, we’ve been separated from even our memory of life ‘beyond Thunderdome’ so to speak.”

Q: Hee refers to the Mad Max movie, #3 (?), where Thunderdome brings all the violent people from a dystopian future to what world elites want everyone to think (like them), that violence and struggle is all that awaits any kind of disaster or meltdown or crash.

A: Visions i get started rather smallish –coming up with regalia for actions i felt it was important to carry out, and then building up and seeming to get grander, and more meaningful!

Q: You write on one of your sites about dressing “up” in a surrealist way that observers don’t yet know how to think about. Their ‘leaders’ and professional influencers haven’t yet taught them How To Think about you?

A: Yes, it’s the basic input from Harry Hay, an early visioneer of the Gay movement (1950s), before it got trapped in Assimilation priorities. The visions basically complement what John Trudell promoted late in his life: the power of our creative intelligence. I think i actually inspired him to use the word “creative” in there, btw.

Q: You’ve read widely…

A: Admittedly, largely unconscious of the toll wood pulp books are having on our ecosystems, world-wide. Hemp, the viable alternative! Tho i’ve had trouble locating paper sources for em, except online. Then it’s not so easy to find a photocopier that can successfully have their ink sticking to the hemp paper, i’ve learned, via trial and error!

Q: And your adventures close to nature have honed your abilities….

A: Where to begin? Well, i’m mostly self-taught on this ‘alt’ stuff. Rainbow family (welcomehome.org), sure, but b4 that, it was about putting myself and my creative intuition out there more and more, informally. Independently and autonomously.

Q: Most conscious oriented people might assume you’d live QUIETLY in the underground–

A: But i learned from jewish writings around the Holocaust, to NOT GO SILENTLY. And from world Indigenous, to ‘go’ (to other lives beyond ‘this world’) LOUDLY and CREATIVELY! Shining the spirit of the gifts i’ve been given to others whom might be in similarly solo-stuck and self-teaching!

Q: You endured many years of having to suppress a side of who you are, and that informs you in a basic, kind of foundational way?

A: Yeah!

I’ve been a target of psy ops for decades, as well. Maybe even since i was a kid, as my father was known to be a semi-radical highschool teacher in 1970s Flint, MI. And whom appears to have been targeted himself by the MK-ULTRA program while he was in the army in San Francisco. And my ma gets almost continuous crank calls.

The last time i was particularly challenged was by a spook, outwardly seeming to enjoy his Misery-stuckness when he Told me that if i ever get ‘famous’, i’d have ONE DAY to live. Funny thing, if i wasn’t already a bit famous, he would never have been deployed at me, eh?

Q: Then there was the standing threat on your life, from a complete stranger, to not return to Montana, which you just recently returned from!?

A: Ah, yes, my aunt was the one to uncannily share this threat with me, after i had told her why i really thought her brother, my uncle, would not take a DNA test! The people she hangs out with in her small Montana town….probably merely Trump supporters, trying to build up the ‘civil’ war threat, who believe that anyone “from” a big liberal town, where i wrote to my aunt at the time, is a strategically-challenged Liberal asswipe!

Q: You just spent 10 days bicycling over there, including into Browning.

A: And maybe i should have told some of the people i met, but i didn’t. they have enough problems from crazy white folks, i figure!

Q: You’ve said your art is inspired by Klingit/Kwakiutl carving and art.

A: yeah, i was 15 when i first truly saw their depth! And began applying that style to settler norms all around me. Like, drawing a car in that style.

Q: Then, years later, when some street Natives invited you to a pow wow.

A: That was like 2008 or so. Turns out that a Native street woman (a regular drunk) i had a surprising connexion with was herself Blackfeet! She shared a name of her connexion when i told her i would be walking with Dennis Banks in the Long Walk. Not knowing if she’s still alive, i don’t feel free to share that name and further identifying info here.

But i was exploring creative social intervention beyond the bounds of settler Normalcy since around 1993, when i was at the height of my single issue focus. Going into regular Unknowns in d.c. and minneapolis, mn, wearing my improvized regaliahz, and challenging Gay Assimilation-oriented survival beliefs! With an electronic bullhorn and long-meditated-on “yell cards”! The culmination of which challenged even YOUR settler-church-planted beliefs and assumptions!

Q: Yes, a doooozy, for sure.

A: I’ve been called a “radical’s radical” for such provocative daring.

Q: I can see why. Root of the root, ay?

A: Well, touching its heart, for sure. But to even speak of such could get your blog shut down.

Q: Continuing neocolonial realities….

A: The bottom line of each of our (including unwitting settlers) experiences of unjust suppression is that the stupidized tyranny/elite running things has itself been hoodwinked into believing in the NECESSITY of each insane suppression. Anyway, they don’t want to be involved, its just that they cannot avoid it! And their ambivalence shines thru in their severely alienating policies!

Q: Sidenote: wow, the typing i’m doing has become really slooooowwww. Weird! Same old again….

A: I think of sharing with your readers some of the whistleblowers, but what would be the value? What can i share that might inspire already woke folk?

Q: Try us.

A: Well, Jeremy Seabrook in Vol.1, #1 of globalization.icaap.org. And how about Carole Gallagher’s cofee-table -sized book, AMERICAN GROUND ZERO? Or COMMAND AND CONTROL about the MANY close calls of nukes almost going off!

Q: But you don’t wish to call them “evil”.

A: No. And i think that’s the design (?) or mistake of leftism, post-left anarchy aside. i think that the SEVERELY ALIENATED, and even their “elite” schooling and the Machiavellian-like ideology that is pushed on them, is IMPOSED. Coerced and otherwise wheedled into and upon them, as kids!!

(FIRST PART ENDS HERE)

“Pests” are really like pre-contact Indigenous, I think

(Note: this is a re-blogged post from the site: https://unsettlingourselves.wordpress.com with a little editing and a few comments of my own)

Think this through! We settled/encroached/encroach. We don’t even engage in any kind of ritual or even a simple “hello” towards local critters when we “make our homes” in whatever fashion (as refugees or as starry-eyed backwoods cabin-makers). And then we just automatically think of local critters whose homes we swept aside as “pests”!

WHOM we then think nothing of “eradicating” in any way we can! And OF COURSE, we forever JUSTIFY why we do as we do!

So how different is this kind of attitude to yesterday’s attitude towards ALL Indigenous folks???

Our entire settler cult-ure has Normalized this sort of thinking!

Personally, i’ve been having an “attitude adjustment” ever since i had a “run-in” with a particularly plucky little Mua-Diib (for those of you familiar with the film DUNE, recall that the MOUSE people were called Mua-Diib); probably a young teenaged mouse, i thought at the time, by its size. i somehow had my attention gotten when it suddenly appeared from my back room (in the vehicle i was living in at the time) and ran straight at me, ears flaring, like a tiny elephant! Almost inviting me to stomp it. But i was so taken-aback by its wild method, and the fact that i had been increasingly turned off by the “normal” way of thinking about “pests” (and had killed way too many, in my mind), that i finally listened!!!

The same thing came up a few years after that when i was living in Tennessee while house-sitting for a winter. i had gotten sick of killing them with so-called “quick-kill” mousetraps (a few times they weren’t killed “quick”, you know), like everyone else in the little community i was near, and decided to begin experimenting with alternatives.

The alternative i came up with? Putting my extra scraps in a distant place, where they could all munch on such to their heart’s content, without me being woken up by their munching, and such! And the great thing about this is, it might well re-build the local ecology, as coyotes and other mouse-eaters would visit when they needed to, and help keep the population down.

(….)

(see the rest of the article at the blog!)

What do you think? I think it’s a great idea! Pros and cons invited.

Note, this all reminds me of my experiences of how settlers’ dogs (trained to protect area gardens and lands) frequently lead in the continued killing or maiming of Indigenous animals, including going quite freely and far into supposed wildlife refuges, which have no real way of protecting the wildlife. I have seen this stuff personally and have tried to act to block it in various ways.

1 Guy’s View of the 2017 Orygn Rainbow Gathering

The following comes from a guest writer, “Character Assassinated”, whose blog, visionary4evolution.worpdress.com, where he would have published this, has apparently been hacked and the author can not access it at this time.

(note: This article was written in two drafts, and then was re-typed with limited time constraints. Whatever you get out of it, great.)

The apparent reality of humanity’s grimish predicament was brought home to me, recently, when I attended this year’s national Rainbow Gathering in a mountain range near John Day, Orygn. To begin with, I heard lots of peace-oriented folks complain about the problem of “the agros” (a.k.a. “dirty kids”), and how they didn’t seem to have a clue about how to “stop” the problem of people unsettling their liberal asses in ways that did seem “a little” overboard, even by this streetwise unhoused person. Secondly, the numbers of attendees seemed way way down for a project as long-running as the Rainbow Gathering, as back only ten years they used to have at least 20,000 attendees for the full week, while today, it seems that most come only for the 3^rd-5^th or thereabouts, and someone at info thought there were only 5,000 attendees this year. So what is going down?

A lot of people pointed to “the dirty kids”, a.k.a. Gutter Punks, and their ilk (heh) as being the reason for the apparent mass exodus away from Rainbow Gatherings. Perhaps those who own the political police know better, and we’ll find out in a future FOIA file. Perhaps these owners of the political police decided that someone had to “up the ante” against a pretty strong community of people that has been able to survive all sorts of bullshit from the feds and local cops for the last 40-some years?

After all, the Rollback dictum (since around 1975) pushes all political police to not to allow meaningful community to even germinate, much less bloom, seeking to block such challenge to the status quo before it can even gather momentum. (source: see the intro to Necessary Illusions, by Noam Chomsky)

Perhaps certain privileges have been allowed since most of the attendees have been kept (?) to remain mostly white folks  (i.e. not to just come in and arrest everyone, as I thought might happen in the context of a trump whitehouse). What with the latest evolvement of successful respectful practices between Rainbows and a Burns, OR area Indigenous (Paiute) nation, this would likely be “too much”, and the political police had to “raise the stakes” even more than usual?

So on the one hand, yes, it does seem like the political police, the new COINTEL, the truly fooled and tooled, have “gained” a foothold and are finally “effectively” fucking with the peace-seeking visionaries of the Rainbow project. On the other hand, I do not know for sure what is REALLY happening! (HEY!) So the following is merely my feelings, my intuition, my praxis, and the reality that I’ve been “around the block” a few times. Including being a “vet” of gatherings and Rainbow community since 1991.  So I compare the patterns of political-police-seeming activities deployed my way before attending the gathering with my experiences and others’ during the gathering.

Meeting the strategically-challenged head-on

I might have been smarter to have met these folks intellectually (“head-on”), but my intuitive spiritual path led me firmly in the direction of observation ..and listening (but not responding). A kind of passivity and yet not; after all, just my mere presence sent shock waves to those who tried so hard to intimidate me from even going at all! So I met their eyes, but I refused to play into their “playful” and not-so-playful provocations.

Were all the detractors and “agros” politicized police/feds/ corporate agents? Or were they a mix of formal and informal agents (say sex offenders sufficiently maligned so that they would take what jobs they could get?)? Or…perhaps even more insightfully, a mix of the usual covert actors working to “drive a wedge” between and exploit all differences, with a mix of folks with very real symptoms emanating from very real insanities due to experiences in the institutions of Alienation, Inc.?

And what about the Rainbows’ own “Warriors of the Light”? A powerful group on the face of it, and yet, if they believed that they alone Have the Light/truth…would they not be just as bad, at least in the basics, as the fooled/tooled warriors of the State?

Granted, I had entered into this year’s Rainbow community with intrigue surrounding me. Right from the start, when I first made contact with Orygn folks, I let it be known that I am a “constroversial” figure, but I didn’t explain further. One Rainbow elder took me in for over a month without knowing much more than I was homeless and seemed amiable enough. We got to know each other pretty good, but my secret got the best of him in the end, I think, and he kicked me out on a misunderstanding, perhaps tired of my “beating around the bush”.

Well, I told him of the (“devoutly normal”) society as a Nazi society, and in that context have to be very careful who I come OUT to…. So I ended up not coming OUT to him really, but touching on the subject with someone else, instead.

And then I took that mystique with me, going so far as to approach Info/Rumor control camp at the gathering with the truth that I am a walking rumor….and to please ask ME before assuming anything. I never fully explained, but I don’t think I had to (anyway, everyone seemed to learn of my notoriety soon enough –and such does follow me everywhere I go, I find). Notably, I remain within the law on the most pointed parts of this truth (that could get me put away for life), while choosing to try to speak “nonsilently” for sides of truth that are being rendered nonexistent in the ongoing pogrom to wipe people’s memory of the value of informal intergenerational solidarity.

So, yeah, I was already a target, and I knew it. And I also know that to have tried to speak about it at the Gathering was not only strategically foolish but would play into the hands of those who seek to finally crush the Rainbow Gathering spirit. So despite a few provocations, I remained mum. In other ways, such as around my visionary ideas, I spoke freely, yes, and that made all the rest of the bullshit quite worthwhile.

Psychological difficulties?

Granted, as I touched on above, way-out-of-balance psychological difficulties also have curiously been allowed to run more and more rampant –most notably around dissident communities or in the downtowns of cities– apparently without meaningful response. For example, if one decides not to trust (or is a survivor of) bio psychiatry, who can they turn to? It seems like groups like Eugene, Orygn’s own www.mindfreedom.org have been successfully maligned, into merely scholarly approaches these days…Oh, there’s the amazing CAHOOTS project (which acts as a 1^st-responder group before the cops are called, for street-type issues, see: http://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots/ ); and my understanding is that they do not force people into the biomedical psychiatric model…instead working to truly (?) help in other ways, such as with the White Bird Clinic.

So what happens? You got more and more people dealing with their difficulties in living via self-taught ways of doing things. Surrounded by more and more people who are being taught to ignore them at all costs.

And at the Rainbow, this all coming “to a head”, where liberal-types (superficially-challenged peace-wagers) get a taste of the truth –that “the crazies” WILL NOT “go silently” as is the Middle Class meta rule pushes for. At Rainbow, at least, they have a chance to get up in the restrictive-protection-oriented liberals’ face!

Of course, the political police certainly seek to exploit this difficulty, and you know they must be deploying some of “the crazies” in varying ways (even if that’s just rounding a bunch of angry crazies up from a large city and bringing them to the gathering and then setting them loose; ed’s note: I personally would like to see someone demystify this better, anyone?).

So to me this state of affairs has an invitation in it that we would not normally see when not at a gathering. The invitation is to really get to work on creatively intelligent ways we may respond.

One Rainbow participant thought that having the gathering last a month might be one approach; because it’s hard to create truly viable alternatives in only the span of a week.  Sounds interesting to me!

Also, the late Indigenous champion, John Trudell, really put it in the heart with this: “In the reality of many realities, how we see what we see affects the quality of our reality.”

Think about how most alleged peace-wagers will react to all of this challenge. More and more they will seek “closed doors” and higher and higher expenses in order to keep off-balance intensities OUT. This is “protection via restrictive” means. They will believe they are protecting themselves, but not see that that tactic only seems to work when force is held in reserve.

On the other hand, the Rainbow gift-way teaches me that its heart is more about “protection via mutualist strategies of enrichment” instead of restriction. I think this approach makes much more sense, because of the possibilities that accrue in the context of more human, more authentic, non-adversarial/non-dichtomous responses. Non-adversarial-style responses such as seeing “the crazies” as proverbial “Little Johns” blocking the way of “Robin Hood”. And if we engage in a little physicality (because some people just DO NOT trust anything except such!) with such “Little Johns”, we may well find a whole lot of sanity just underneath all the crazy cammo! What do you think?

So the challenge then becomes with whose ability do we respond? Social science-stuck values that come with our Rollback programming (post-1970s, all got that), or a more anarchistic set of values?

Sample challengers

A) When out of seemingly nowhere (or was his HQ “Tea Time” camp?) a short guy sporting a nationalist leather jacket (reading “ENGLAND” on the back) approaches me a little too close-up while I hang out around Eugene Camp (after everyone else has taken down the camp). He is able to get “too close” via the cammo of appearing to be oriented to “NAMASTE” (which I’m not especially conscious of, but which he seemed to think I might be), only to whisper threats, and then knock me with his fist right on my chest. I took it unwaveringly (tho privately I wondered if it was one of those “Kill Bill” (movie) punches where you get two steps and then you die), and as he walked away, I yelled at him that such would not stop me from getting into the middle of fights in the future (which I have a semi-suicidal tendency to do, I find, over and over). Thus I responded in non-sequitor to his non-sequitor (or at least it seemed to me).

(Notably, he apparently did this type of action towards various people, as one person told me of something like that happening to him, and another said that the Tea Time camp guy was “mean”; the context, the Tea Time camp folks blasting various horns thru-out the night, every night, in an apparent intention to keep all the peace-niks and their families as off-balance as possible, and possibly “see their true colors” more readily…?)

B) Meanwhile, on another side of camp, closer to Tipi Village, some “mean woman” (said one female observer) in the Montana Mud kitchen vicinity apparently worked overtime to yell obscenities and be all kinds of agro thru-out the night, much to the chagrin of peace-niks and their families.And yet, on the morning of July 4, right up to noon, there was amazing quiet just like the Rainbow focalizers sought, and even the OM went off pretty well (tho I would like to see at least one inner circle organized so to enhance the sound of the inner circle together with the outer circle!).So it felt like a mystery and maybe a mystery more magick’L than the middle-class-values-planted in ME wants to egoicly admit!Magick’Ly wradical’s wradical even, in the case of what one elder holding space at Tipi Village told me about “the madhouse” of the nextdoor neighbors heavy drinking and such carrying on. Unsettling the peace-niks, for sure.What can we possibly learn from all of this? Well, for one thing, I think more and more people are lacking solidarity experiences in their lives. And another thing, more and more people are being duped into not seeing “crazy behavior” (a.k.a. unreasonable) in its quite sane/reasonable context. Symptoms are not our enemies, they are our friends. To allow free expression of symptoms is a good thing, even tho it smashes up against the Liberal ideal of “a peaceful camping adventure”.

Perpetuating rigid dichotomies only perpetuates rigid dichotomies!

This brings up something I’ve been wanting to share for awhile: Even when such symptoms are perpetuated by folks we assume are Only Oppressive (i.e. covert actors tooled by the State), how do we KNOW that oppressors are not still oppressed (even as they oppress)—by their mindset! The mindset that gets forcefully passed ‘down’ to even them! And which they still Believe in, amongst all others, even as they foolishly work to undermine THEIR OWN INTERESTS.

We do NOT allow people to crush or trample others (except consensually, heh), and yet ALLOW for symptom-exploring and consciousness-raising efforts and ancient solidarity villager recovery! “Good Peasant, Bad Peasant” style and beyond  (source: https://visionaryhumanity.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/good-peasant-bad-peasant-some-ideas-for-interacting-with-tyranny/ )! Up to our dared imagination, I think!If this isn’t clear enough for you, that’s your problem. If you can get something out of this, that is my intent.

The bottom line for me in writing this up is to promote that antiauthoritarians realize the value of exploring the daunting challenges being visited on such a long-running antiauthoritarian visionary project like the Rainbow Gatherings.

To conclude, given the vibrancy of the Rainbow spirit, I cannot help but to wonder if all of this controversy isn’t in fact a “grand illusion” or “movie” (the latter used by Rainbow folks in a way I have yet to fully grasp, I think!) that is meant not only to reach caring people’s hearts, but also force them/us to think deeper than we’re programmed to think! I can certainly imagine some kind of meta construct like this, especially amongst such long-time stoners. Getting us to think that they are about to be crushed, as a device (?) to inspire Rainbow newbies (and other somewhat clueless folk like me, heh) to put in their better best!!!!Well, it is possible!In this “yank and splash” (yanking our proverbial neckties, and splashing us with the ice cold water of reality not bullshit) routine (?) we are CHALLENGED in serious ways to PROVE our peace mettel, our alleged great visions!!

Imagine this: Folks like “agros” and other survivor champions of hard-core are sick and tired of bullshit peace so they’re veritably “calling out” all the alleged bliss and testing it.

Programmed in soldier-ese, they’re on the one hand being duped to out-fight an entity (i.e. Alienation, Inc.) that has perfected that kind of stupidity and similar Misery Loves Company.

I say, hear out John Trudell where he speaks of out-thinking those, whom “in their legions, do not have permission to think (only to follow orders),” and how this state of affairs “starts to even out the numbers.”

Grand “movie” illusion or not, any would-be visionary or budding (r)evolutionary, if they’re “Worth Their Salt” should very much experience at least one Rainbow Gathering national in their lifetimes. And if you go armed with serious consciousness, you’ll be that much more capable of finding mutually liberating solutions bringing sure gifts not only to an apparently besieged visionary community, but to yourselves as well!

Waziyatawin, re: her initial challenge

Back when a friend of mine read over the manifesto”Unsettling Ourselves: Reflections and Resources for Deconstructing Colonial Mentality” it was Waziyatawin’s and a few other voices which touched his heart the most (and shook it up!). He shared some notes with me, which are excerpted below.

Re: How Minnesotans Wrested the Land From Dakota People, from What Does Justice Look Like? (page 12)  and, especially Understanding Colonizer Status (page 151 )

Here is that settler’s response of late:

“i think i better see, now, what she was saying. They are put into the COLON of ‘colonized’ and ‘colonizing’, while settlers and such, while threatened with such, usually only experience the COLON at the end of their lives, when they are marginalized elders, (i.e. of nuclear-ized family trajectory). Settlers ARE privileged with oppression, but not colonization. We are oppressed in myriad –blocked in diverse ways from voicing our independent feelings and HEART. Even when we want to see a mutually-beneficial outcome ALL AROUND (including the war-mongers), the FEAR-STUCK MUST Follow Orders. Becuz they Know No Better.”

What do YOU think?

powerful quotes from an Onkwehonwe

The following set of quotes comes from the 2005 book Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, by Gerald Taiaiake Alfred. Excerpts from page 130.

“…constructing one’s identity and life strictly in opposition to the colonizer is another form of white man worship. All of these are false representations of the Onkwehonwe heritage and struggle. All of them, from the soft and passive legalist to the hard-core guerrilla fighter, demand on the part of Onkwehonwe an abandonment of our rooted identities and the adoption of one that is consistent with a submissive culture or a foreign culture. To fight against genocide, we are told to arm ourselves and take vengeance…. To fight against economic oppression, we are told to become capitalists and to live for money. To fight against unfair laws, we are told to become lawyers and change the system from within. None of these paths is our own! And none of them are capable of liberating us from colonialism with our Onkwehonwe spirits and identities intact. They demand that we surrender our true selves to become what it is we are fighting against….

“All of these submissive or foreign ways….are predicated on a dualism of one sort or another, locking us into a perpetual relationship with the force we are opposing….Any success at armed resistance, economic development, or in the law, in fact implies a profound defeat in the long run for Onkwehonwe.

Check out more of what Taiaiake has to say on youtube or at his website:

https://taiaiake.net/

Hey settler, you call yourself a ‘NATIVE’ American?

Needed to get rid of some old papers and found a few gems….

….A little thinking-things-thru for those who think of themselves as “natives” to north america. It’s kinda roughly done, so if you want to re-write it, or add this to something you’ve been wanting to put toghether for your own blog, feel free!

A) Knowing nothing of local flora, labels food and medicinal plants as “weeds” and “pests” and uses imported absolutes to suppress them so they can have “peace”. Eventually poisons ground water and all surface water with broad-ranging consequences to not only all wild life, but their own lives (and the lives of their grandkids, and so on).

B) Knowing little to nothing about local wild life, labels such “pests” and does not even try to listen to their gifts; being unable to even imagine such “crazy” and “irrational” things! Will not share their resources (i.e. gardens) and believes such critters should stay “in their own” truly nonexistent lands.

1) Gardening: Imagine one garden “just for” the wild critters, and your own garden(s) fenced off. Such would allow “weeds” to freely grow, and you might plant some other succulents that you know the wild critters like. (What do YOU think?)

 

C) Not recalling the true inclinations of their “own” domesticated ‘pets’, they see nothing wrong in letting them freely chase, hound, and kill (often without eating ’em) wild life thru-0ut said wild-life’s alleged “protected” areas…proving that the wild critters have no true land-base truly to themselves.

i’ve noted that this is changing, as settlers are more and more being excluded completely from refuges (not a good thing, but i can see why), at least near cities. In more rural areas, such “wildlife refuges” are often situated right next to all kinds of macho Bubbas (and their angry, flailing, armed teens) with their dogs hyped up to protect them/their land (often killing wildlife as a consequence to such training, even when not directed to do such). i recall one place, in SE WA state, where a FIRING RANGE was right next to such a “refuge”!

D) The need to “mow” one’s grass. Yes, it “makes sense” to cut grass around your immediately-used areas, but to mow everything? Doing such merely because it is a Capital Rule of Settlerdom? And the whole idea of having the monocrop of “grass”, which feeds right into the interests of all those waiting to exploit, i.e. using monocrops means depletion of the soil, quite quickly, and then the need for all those crazy Monsanto products (a whole other ball of poison wax!) and the like.

i thought i had more on this in my notes, but i guess not. No, wait, i’ll have to look around!

 

a vision for anti-DAPL challenges

i’ve been thinking about this strategy for a long time, and it makes sense to me. Let’s see what you think.

If and when the police are ordered to begin beating water protectors, the line of veterans willing to stand is certainly one powerful way to psychicly bridge with the adversary and their minions. So what might other approaches, in similar veins be?

What if people began “arming their desires” much more creatively? If they’re going to HAVE TO get beaten up by the municipal soldiers, why not go through that from the vantage space of their heart being put into it?

So….what if affinity groups began dressing in ways that are sure to maximise public empathy (as they get knocked around by batons)?

What if some of these ways included wearing faux fur outfits resembling teddy bears and that kind of cuddly-looking type animal? The intent would be to reach people’s heart-strings, after all. To expose the brutality with images even more endearing or hard-hitting than expected.

Imagine lines of different heart-string-pulling groups, wearing diverse outfits, all getting beat up, on live TV. What kind of effect might this have? If we’re going to have to get beaten anyway, why not approach the whole thing a lot more creatively, to bring out our SPIRITS!

Pros/cons anyone? (and feel free NOT to discuss it here, but in your own networks; i’m just an idea guy..:)

Badass Champion Critter Shows Its Pipsqueak Power!

i had a whispery premonition that wouldn’t go away as i returned recently to my camp semi-late lastnight. Something “out of the ordinary” was up when i returned! i thought for sure it was a friend who’d finally taken me up on exploring my invite to get away from the noise of the city and enjoy relative quiet, but no!

As i neared the entrance of my lean-to-like camp, the unconscious feeling grew larger, and i poked and prodded a small stick in, wondering if anyone was inside.

Well, next thing i knew, something challenged my entrance as i pulled back the sash into my spot, lunging once and then a second time with a small weasley/nasally grunt. i backed off in surprise and gave it plenty of room. Slowly approaching again from an off-set angle to the entrance, explaining my need to get back into my home, i whacked the side of my space with my stick, wanting to scare the critter off. And then, wondering at my martialism, changed my counter-aggression, as i realized that the critter could easily be a “sign”, spiritually. And i began calling it Elder, and apologized for executing a wouldbe violent response, all the while calling out to it that i just wanted my home back!

As i crept up at less-direct (and more defensible) route, i said these words, centering myself back into more of a respectful way. By the time i got back up there again, it had taken off, i was glad to find (tho later i carefully prodded my sleep-bag to make sure!).

(This situation, one of falling back first on violent self-defense (with a stick) when faced with Unknown intensity, and then more centered to where i would rather be focused– coming towards situations with a more spiritual approach and wanting to learn– seems to be a continual pattern, moving me to understand that it DOES take a lifetime to re-learn/remember decolonizing interactions!)

i thought sure, at first, that it was a large Raccoon. But upon reflection, it seemed like the size of it was like a small muskrat, but the territory wasn’t right…So, was it a GROUNDHOG??? Or maybe it was “merely” one of those badass squirrels! (whom DO seem to be my spirit animals!)

i never did find out (at least not yet). It could well have been a squirrel, bunching up its tail as fluffy as it could, but then again, this happened after dark, and folks tell me that squirrels don’t run around after nightfall. Hmmm, so what was it? Perhaps i’ll find out in coming days!

Other encounters

Some kind of critter, maybe as big as a coyote, has also been sitting behind my lean-to-like campspot, eating stuff more often of late. It’s pretty nifty, as long as it doesn’t start trying to break in! (i have been sharing food scraps nightly, and as the response grew, i began putting the scraps further away from my spot, to keep them from over-running me (tho i like having them hang out on me from time to time, too). This works a lot better, i find, at least for my spirituality, than doing what most settler people do, when thinking nothing of killing such “pests”.)

The night previous to this latest experience, i had somewhat of a surprise as well. Right as i said some sacred words (which i use to hail stealthy-sounding approachers), i thought for sure something/someone threw something into my space, via my “window”, knocking into me (rather lightly). Immediately after that energy (it was almost pitch dark), something made a noise outside as tho running thru low underbrush, but only twice. Then it stopped. i listened for a good half-hour, not making a sound.

Only after a good long time of listening carefully and thinking about it, did i come to the conclusion that a food bag that i had put up in my “rafters” (not really, but kind of like that), had suddenly fallen. But did some kind of outside critter MAKE it fall???? Perhaps!

Perhaps it had decided to launch itself from a perch above my lean-to, slide down the roof, and then stop when this motion made the bag fall, only to run in a straightline away, over the low bushes, a second or three later.

To note, early when i first began encroaching (yes, i did say that) on the spot (about 2 months back), having set up the camp for a week or three before i actually moved in, to see how things went, some animal made its voice heard, seemingly warning me to not encroach any further into this particular forest (and beyond a cursory exploration, i did not). But that call wasn’t in “anger”, more like “a heads-up”. Nine times it spoke its voice-call, and i didn’t hear it again.

Yeti?

Local hermits think there’s a Yeti (a.k.a. Sasquatch) in the area, but i haven’t experienced anything of that intensity. More likely, just the usual uninformed settler mind trying to scare people… i did smell, quite strongly, a bear once, while walking a trail that had been severed from routine travel due to ice-storm; trees down across the trail everywhere, and slow-going for walkers. And think i saw it in the distance, covered in iceyness. And then heard it later that night, responding to a bunch of dogs yelling at it with a single, plain, bear-like commentary. But it never openly visited me.

Many years of no probs

i’ve  been living free for many years now and have seldom experienced this sort of stuff; then again, i’ve only wintered over in places four times, out of over 30 years of experience. And that might be the clincher: Wild folk acting in the context of their systematically reduced refuges and the colder-than-normal climate (here)…

Oh sure, plenty of mice get in and chew on things they need, but nothing like a critter actually staying around after hearing me approach. And this all just a little ways beyond city limits (where less police harassment and/or media-hysterified-locals  is likely); but i  have also been on the borders of true wilderness as well.

Oh, sure, it’s well known that bears and cougars stop by from time to time around here, but i seldom even hear them. Except for the bear voice i heard…

Another time

One time, back in Odawa Nation country, i fool-heartedly set up a camp for a few nights smack dab on a well-used trail. i knew it would be an inconvenience to the locals, but i could find no other halfway decent spot! Well, later that night, the strangest-sounding voice i EVER heard, spoke out, challenging my presence. i thought it HAD TO BE a Wolverine! But it turned out to be something like a Fischer Cat, i thought, after listening to this video.

What was it up to?

Anyway, soon after experiencing this BADASS champion critter get up In My Face directly (for once!), i got to thinking of the movie Caddyshack, where that one Gopher totally messes with Bill Murray. Tho small, that critter had some balls! (the POWER of the pipsqueaks!)

It turned out it did not piss all over my stuff, nor did it even “get into” my food (some of which is not “protected”), nor did it even chew anything! So what was it doing? Maybe it was doing a version of Goldylocks and the Bears, the squirrelcritter being Goldylocks…heh heh. Sleeping soundly on my sleepbag until i had the audacity to roust it from some Great Dream…NO WONDER its reaction!

“You STUPID human! I can’t BELIEVE you WOKE ME just at THE BEST PART of my dream!!!!”

Or

“You dumb settler fool! Your Yoda i am, to TEACH you here i am and come at me, you, like i’m some sort of PEST! Sheesh! Skywalker NOT taught this time!”

🙂

Tillamook has no Indians?

Awhile back I was hanging around Tillamook and one time I was taken aside by some settler guy who told me that “there are no Indians in Tillamook”. It felt like a veiled threat, as I was living outside of town in the woods at the time. Understanding that the history of the area includes forcefully kicked out Indigenous families, I had to wonder what this guy was getting at.

Would it be a good idea to stop in with a group of Injuns (heh) and see if they might rouse up some bigots? Just wondering….

…..Been thinking about sharing this experience with y’all for a long time now…..