Week 35--in which the Miccosukee Nation shows us how to say NO

Beautiful Ones,

I didn’t want to write this Notes from the Field. I didn’t know what to say in a week with yet another slaughter of innocents with a barrage of assault rifle bullets. This should have stopped with Columbine in 1999. Or Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook. Or surely with Robb Elementary just two years ago.

But no, not in America. America, the home, not of the brave, but of the gun. In this home of the gun, an angry white man (or very rarely woman) can buy an assault rifle and turn up hours later at a school or a synagogue or a church.

And nothing is done.

This is not normal. It’s not even human. I remember reading a few years ago, that the Native peoples were shocked—horrified—that white colonizers beat their children. As I read that, I realized I was the one who was startled. I grew up hearing Native peoples labeled “savages.” That missionaries needed to teach them about sin, redemption, punishment and god. I went to a Catholic college named after one of those missionaries.

But the history books left out the details that almost all the missionaries were violent.

I was not taught that the First Peoples, who were here thousands of years before Europeans arrived, did not beat their children. I grew up, as you might have, with the whole “spare the rod and spoil the child” mentality promulgated in church, in scripture, in families all around me.

Did you grow up in a schizophrenic family that looked perfect on Sunday morning, but quickly reverted to anger, threats, yelling, and physical violence before the sun set.

I did. And so did many, if not most, Americans raised in Christian families. On my block, we knew the houses with the really scary fathers. But no one said anything. No mothers walked out. No children told the nuns what was happening at home. Why, even my brothers and sisters and I didn’t talk about what happened when dad got angry.

But there was one thing that did not happen: no children were murdered by an angry man with a gun. Not at home or at school or at church. I never went to bed worried about being shot.

But then President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy in 1968. And finally, the violence found my generation at Kent State in 1970. The pictures are still seared in my mind. I cannot imagine the terror embedded in the children who see their classmates gunned down. The children who go home with blood on their shoes.

We are living in a war zone.

A politically sanctioned war zone created by politicians held hostage by the gun lobby.

Why? Why don’t good people say NO?

Every other industrialized country has figured out how to manage who can buy a gun and what kind.

At first, my reaction to the heartbreak of watching another slaughter of children, this time literally while they were praying, left me feeling sick. Immobile. Helpless.

But then, I saw a totally unexpected headline:

Alligator Alcatraz, the dictator-in-chief’s prize punishment for immigrants, is closing.

Wait. What? It just opened.

Turns out someone said NO. And won!

The Miccosukee Tribe have lived in and loved the Florida Everglades since their Creek Nation ancestors in Georgia and Alabama fled to Florida in the 1800s to resist removal by the US government.

Photo of Everglades by Jeremy Huang Unsplash

I confess I didn’t know anything about the Miccosukee until this week. I live in Florida and know that the area on the Gulf of Mexico West of Tampa where I live was Tocobaga land. When the hurricanes bypass this area, everyone attributes it to the power of the sacred burial mounds of the Tocobaga. Other tribal nations in this area are the Seminole and the Manasota.

But it wasn’t until this week that I looked up the Miccosukee.

And oh am I glad I did. They, and all the Native cultures have so much to teach us. Here are a few facts about them that fill my heart with hope:

• They are fiercely independent—little as they are, they fought the US government and won!
• The Everglades is their home, their identity—they will not let it be a concentration camp
• The flowing rivers of grass are sacred—they fight for its protection and restoration
• They cherish their distinct culture and language—they know who they are
• They maintain economic self-sufficiency—which gives them the power to say NO
• They are a culture of artists—preserving distinctive patterns and materials
• They are a matrilineal culture—women have decision-making power

It's that last piece of information that made it all fall into place for me.

In ART 6 on Reverence and Devotion, we are immersing ourselves in the matrifocal Goddess cultures around the world, remembering that before Patriarchy, humanity lived in a Goddess-centric world.

Try to image a world with no male gods.
No commandments. No laws. No sin.
No punishments. No heaven. No hell.
John Lennon did; now it’s our turn.

In ART 6, we began in Crete which was the most advanced civilization of the time. For over a thousand years, Cretans lived in peace. There was no war and they made no weapons. They were a culture of artists. When English archeologists found the ruins of a massive structure larger than Buckingham Palace, they assumed it had to be the palace of a king. But in Crete there was no king, no male rulers at all. This massive “palace” was a cultural center for artists!

In our second immersion, we explored the universal symbols of the Goddess found around the world. Throughout tens of thousands of years in the Neolithic period, god was female, and all sacred symbols were of the Goddess.

Right now, I am preparing an immersion into the ice age caves where mysticism, shamanism, the labyrinth, and art itself were born. And I am discovering that some of the earliest cave painters were women.

It’s delightful to me to see the truth and power of the deep mystical discoveries we are making in ART 6 brought to life in front of my eyes by a small Florida native tribe.

How did 640 people find the fortitude to say NO to the autocracy that has barreled over universities, law firms, and media conglomerates?

Well, I think the answer is right in front of us in that list of Miccosukee attributes. Everyone I know is crying: What can we do! How do we stop this?

Consider the world we could create if we:

• Maintain fierce independence
• Fight what we know is wrong
• Recognize that this country is OUR home, not the current regime’s
• Fight to protect the environment
• Cherish our many distinct cultures and languages
• Maintain personal and collective economic self-sufficiency
• Cultivate artists and artistry
• Give women more decision-making power

We could stop school shootings.

That would be a good place to start.

Life is Fragile. Handle with Reverence.

Janet
PS: Registration for ART 6 on Reverence and Devotion is closed. But all previous ART intensives are available On Demand at a fraction of the cost. If you wish to be in the final intensive on Dragon next Spring, start acquiring the other WitchArts.

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