Native American ceremony, L.A. (video)

Xochitl, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Ananda M., Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly

Native American Buddhist Spirituality: LIVE event, Los Angeles, Feb. 22, 2018

Why don't Native Americans talk about ceremonies or allow filming and photography?

What can be observed in many Native American "ceremonies" or formalized rituals would be labelled, in terms of European theories, as "sympathetic magic." Today Gregg Braden would call it the Isaiah Effect, the power of gratitude, the Law of Attraction, bringing into being by thanking the universe (or the Great Spirit) for something as if it were already the fact. We can call things into being with our bodies, emotions, minds, and words.

Blacks (Olmecs, Aborigines, Africans?)


Are Mexicans Native Americans?

I may look white, but I'm a Latina.

The real answer is that they can be but are not necessarily. A "Mexican," it seems to us, is a Native American (indigenous, original, aboriginal, "Indian") mixed with European, usually Spanish (imperial Spain, Iberian Peninsula), by rape and oppression but not only by these means. Some Mexicans, those people born in Mexico, are pure Europeans. There are tons of them in the state of Jalisco.

Other Mexicans are not called "Mexicans" by Mexicans but are usually referred to as indigenas ("indigenous"), and they are very oppressed, just as they are in the USA.

By the way, Mexico is not called "Mexico" but rather the "United States of Mexico" or United Mexican States (Estados Unidos Mexicanos) because it is a former colonial empire of Spain that became its own country after previous Mesoamerican and Central American "empires" ruled and displaced one another (Aztecs, Mixtecs, Toltecs, Olmecs), with the Mexica tribe getting the upper hand in the end to give Mexico its name.

But most Mexicans are mestizos, "mixed" or "blended." The confusing part is that Europeans from Spain and the Iberian Peninsula brought so much racism and racist thinking that the divisions can hardly be sorted out now and they, apparently, cannot be reversed and erased. There are the pure whites fresh off the boat (Peninsulares), who fancy themselves the highest caste, the landed who are white and born in Mexico/the New World (Mestizos), the Rubios (blonds), the Hueros (pale skins), Morenos (brunettes), and so on.

Peoples' History (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz)

All of these names (and many more like Mulattos) are documented in murals showing how far from pure European or "white" one is on the scale -- with no return for blacks (Negros), who must remain inferior even after many generations of washing out blackness. It is shocking and unbelievable, but ask people from Mexico who actually ever lived in Mexico.

American-style European racism, prejudice, shadeism/colorism (the lighter the skin tone the superior and more desirable, the darker the more inferior and less desirable) -- and least implicit bias (unconscious bias that colors our perception) -- is alive and well throughout America. ("America" is the name of a continent not of the USA, which properly speaking is either North America or more likely a part of Mesoamerica or the region above South America and Central America, with Canada as the real North).
 
Blacks (Olmecs, Aborigines, Africans?)