00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to the show. Everyone this is Chris Webster usually the producer of the show and well at least the guy who sits in the background and just listens and is entertained but today as you've heard in the past anytime I come on that means it's going to be Allen and I and Allen is going to be telling us about something. He's. Research studied written is interested in something along those lines and today we're going to talk about amberindian amerinian per perspectivectivism right? and we've talked about this actually this perpectivism concept. In a few episodes with Johnny Valdes that we just had not too long ago. We can check those out and we'll probably link to those in the show notes and then also if you just search perpectivism on the apn website. You can see some other ah podcast related to that topic. And if you want to follow along. Ah Alan's got actually ah a pdf. Well it's ah it's a powerpoint but I'm going to put it in as a pdf in the show notes and you can check that out download it and kind of follow along as we go I don't we're not really going to call out slide transitions or anything but it's it'll be a nice little reference. Do you have while we're listening to the show. So. 00:55.71 alan Power fights. 01:09.64 archpodnet Alan Why don't we start by just defining for the audience who may not be aware of this relatively academic term perspectivism. What do we mean by that. 01:15.87 alan Um. 01:20.00 alan What I'm trying to talk about is that the the western industrial perspective they call it cartesian logic is rather linear. It's based on science. It's based on certain principles that we espouse. Believe that there is a you know a reality to life and that ah science can in fact, test this reality and examine it and we can come up with different theories and different facts about the nature of the universe. The nature of our life and that is the way. Things are and we like them that way and they seem to be logical and and dependable and able to be ah tested and proofed but that is a very different way of thinking completely than most indigenous native societies. Throughout the globe and and you've probably you probably have had some familiarity with this haven't you Chris. 02:23.28 archpodnet Yeah, well I mean I've interviewed a bunch of people and talked about different societies past and present around the earth and and everybody really does see things differently. In fact, I got to bring this up because we just interviewed ah Susan Milbrath and Elizabeth Baccadano and they are co-editors of a volume on I'll find it while I'm talking about this but we've we basically just interviewed them about a new edited volume that they've got out and Elizabeth did an entire chapter on frogs and toads because it's about beasts and birds and things like that and yet. And how they're represented I know in mesoamerican culture and and it's just some of the things that just floor me like we we think we understand some things about rocker but there's so much we don't because like for example, there's a there's a symbol like when you have a frog effigy or or carving or something like that down and. 03:00.43 alan Ah I. 03:03.80 alan Yeah. 03:15.50 archpodnet Ah, some areas of Mesoamerica she was working in like I think central um America area. Um not the maya but south of there and these frogs have like a water symbol on their stomachs and for a long time people didn't really know what that meant they might thought it meant it's just like okay frogs are in the water. Great. That's that's what that means. But on further studies she she really got into the biology of frogs and certain frogs in that area absorb water through their through their stomachs through just per permeable stomachs. They don't really drink it. They just absorb it and the native americans not native americans the um, the aztecs and and the people down in that area. They knew that. 03:45.85 alan Absorb it aha. 03:50.81 archpodnet They knew that the biology of these frogs. They didn't call it biology of course but they'd watched them enough to know that hey this is going on here and then they would use that water symbol on other things that would represent sort of the the absorption of water if you want to say say it like that and I just it's fascinating to me. How much the perspective as we're talking about of Native Peoples um was just influenced by their surroundings and how much it's not these days you know with us I mean it is to some people but we're influenced by other things but they were influenced greatly by their surroundings. Yeah. 04:22.10 alan Very very different, very different So to start off to kick it off what what makes I guess this Amerindian perspective or even global. Indigenous perspective different is there's this intimate and direct connection between these people and their environment people and their environment. What I mean by that is the land. The animals, the plants, the Cosmos, the natural world and the celestial universe is. 04:44.76 archpodnet You. 04:58.70 alan Integrated and unified and connected to the way in which they process and deal with life on a daily basis which is very very different from the way in which our culture today. 05:10.62 archpodnet So. 05:16.34 alan Is because we're so divorced from that we're so ah, segmented and partitioned and insulated. Don't you agree. 05:23.60 archpodnet I Do yeah I Very much agree. 05:30.81 alan So I think for someone just a standard Run-of-the- Mill Academician or anyone else trying to understand or appreciate or develop some ah you know if understanding of what. Native people are trying to Communicate. It's rather difficult to appreciate or understand that I would say coming from our particular you know perspective. Um, since contemporary industrial people. 05:56.56 archpodnet Yeah, for sure. 06:08.31 alan Are literate. They are looking for words. They're divorced from contact with this environment. We get our food from the Market. We buy our meat at the Butcher. We get our water from the faucet We tell time by a clock and a calendar that is so so different than. Then anything. Ah, even even close to the way in which native people process the world our homes and offices are insulated heating and air Conditioning. We look at the heavens we often cannot see the star filled sky due to light pollution other considerations. We. Ah, we even really recognize the ah. 06:37.98 archpodnet Over. 06:45.96 alan Patterned movements of the stars. The moon and the sun and when I've talking to talk to people about that I talk about a yeah you know, winter solstice or summer solstice and they go Well what is that right? So this is this is all. 06:53.50 archpodnet Spread. 07:04.30 alan Part and parcel of we're just scratching the surface. So ah often native people are connected tethered to the landscape. They know every nook and cranny every hill every every drainage. Every spring every River Every every rock is part part and parcel of their knowledge and we're a mobile people and we're We're not connected to the local geography where we we move about the planet and. 07:28.82 archpodnet Ah. 07:33.50 archpodnet Right. 07:40.94 alan We don't have a hankering or a association with a particular geographical point on the landscape that is very very different. Um, go ahead. Shoot. 07:50.90 archpodnet In and and I think the the interesting thing about that is though like you're right, Native Native peoples in general were just intimately aware of their immediate surroundings and probably the region you know within within reason. Ah, you know within walking distance of course and everything around there and while we don't have that intimate knowledge of our surroundings. We have an incredible knowledge of the rest of the world that that native people just simply didn't have like we know about other cultures in other countries and you know could probably point them out on a map and it's it is a different perspective I wouldn't say it's a worse one but it's a. It's a different perspective. You know we're aware of our place in the universe like physically not just you know metaphorically and spiritually. 08:33.19 alan Right? If you have right? if if you have Amerindian Perspectivetivism We've got transc culturaltural Pers perspectivetivism. That's that's the terminology where we're getting into a global ah environment and interconnecting with the world on a digital. 08:38.62 archpodnet Sure. 08:48.45 archpodnet Oh. 08:51.81 alan Platform But if we but if we take a you know step back these Native American these indigenous religions and religious ideas sometimes are looked upon as primitive simplistic, silly naive, etc, etc. But. 09:08.55 archpodnet Ah. 09:11.72 alan Remember that even our so-called major world Religions Christianity Judaism Islam often incorporate the exact same spiritual ideas and religious metaphors having their origins or analogs in ancient indigenous religions. 09:25.50 archpodnet Yeah. 09:30.16 alan So the centrality of sacrifice the propitiation to the divine. The cycle of birth death and rebirth a covenant of formalized relationship and agreement or contract with a creator prayer intercession. Metaphors of light and darkness priests and ritual specialists ceremonials firstf fruit rites think about confirmation. Baptismism Barn Batt mitzvah quiignierres marriage funerals, etc. So we're not that far afield from these. 10:00.75 archpodnet Ah. 10:08.18 alan Very different ah platforms if we try to ah capture or appreciate the parallels. How's that. 10:13.96 archpodnet Um, yeah, that's true. 10:18.15 alan The concept the concepts of ritual sacrifice singing dancing oral tradition covenants of light and darkness flesh and blood ritual priests this intermediaries these ritual costumes these ceremonial instruments. Ah you know, even this thing about caves as portals and. The supernatural and entrances to the ethereal Realm They're not so different from some of the things we've talked about in in various religions, especially especially with catholicism I don't know why but Catholic seems to have hankered on to. 10:43.70 archpodnet No, they're not. 10:51.17 archpodnet Ah. 10:56.82 alan Some of these principles in a way that some of the other religions have not but I'm sure that if you look at Buddhism and others they have this you know a similar kind of a um connection. Um, when you're talking about these cultures and we're talking about. 11:05.14 archpodnet Me here. 11:15.98 alan Pre-agriculturalists which of course is most of the period of time when we're dealing with archeology Subsistence. You know making a lifeway finding proper food was a direct result of the energies of women and men on their households. They only eat what they were able to Harvest or kill and if there was a drought or a bad season of fire or ah or some sort of key economic plant such as pinon or Acorns or some other staple crop and it failed they were in they were facing death and Starvation. Oh. 11:48.74 archpodnet Oh yeah. 11:55.32 alan Large game animals of course could be hunted. You're talking about bighorn sheep Antelope elk deer moose etc. But they're not so easy to to acquire not with the kind of technology that was characteristic of most of our. 12:14.31 archpodnet Yeah I think so and I think with that. Let's go ahead and take a break and come back on the other side and continue discussing this topic back in a minute. 12:14.78 alan Prehistory would you agree.