Native American Month continues

What does "Native" look like in the US of A?

Native American Heritage Month | Indigenous L.A.: Cultural Revitalization

[Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM)] Nov. 18, 2020: The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County are proud to join the nationwide celebration of Native American Indian Heritage Month in November. During this month, and throughout the year, we share stories from past and present and recognize the thriving Native community of Los Angeles County. Join the conversation on social media by sharing your own stories about Native American history and culture by using #NHMLA and #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth.

Los Angeles celebrates Indigenous’ Peoples Day before Columbus Day | VOA News

(Voice of America) VOA is funded in whole or in part by the American government. Oct. 14, 2024: Since 2019 the state of California officially celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of the federally recognized Columbus Day, which falls on every second Monday in October. VOA’s Genia Dulot visited the celebration at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, that drew around 2,000 people.

ABOUT: Voice of America (VOA) is the largest U.S. international broadcaster [and a propaganda arm particularly during in times of war, which is all the time for the past 200 years of our history], providing news and information [and a goodly amount of disinformation when a desired outcome is aimed at] in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of 236.8 million people. VOA produces content for digital, television, and radio platforms. It is easily accessed via mobile phones and on social media. It is also distributed by satellite, cable, FM and MW, and is carried on a network of approximately 3,000 affiliate stations. Since its creation in 1942, Voice of America has been committed to [psyops and misleading the American taxpayer and foreign enemies by] providing comprehensive coverage [and spin] of the news and telling audiences the truth [as the CIA, Pentagon, and White House wish the public to see and interpret it]. Through World War II, the Cold War, the fight against global terrorism, and the struggle for freedom around the globe today, VOA exemplifies the principles of a free press.

Shamans of Alaska and Kamchatka (video)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Isuma.tv; Awakened Indigo

Shakyamuni (Central Asian shraman from Scythia/Indo-Sakastan, modern Afghanistan) thangka with enthroned Vajrayana Buddhist/Bon lamas, Tibet (Earth-Spirit/flickr.com)

Dancing shaman holding a traditional trance-inducing drum (Hamid Sardar-Afkani)

Scene from "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen" (isuma.tv, a website dedicated to indigenous media from around the world with over 2,600 videos in more than 46 languages).

Kalmyk Buddhism: "Shaman Reality: The Other Side" (Christophe Carlier/flickr.com)

(RT) Smoking Beauties: Kamchatka, Land of Stone TorchesEigunichvan National Folklore Ensemble of Kamchatka performing at Festival du Houblon, Haguenau, France, August 18th, 2015.

Shaman masks (oakleafcontracts.com)

Eigunichvan was created by Svetlana and Serguei Beliaeva Kutynkavav. The women wear dresses with Manchu accents sewn into the skin. Through dance the youth reconnect with their history, imitating nature, celebrating life: a bear attack, whale hunt, childbirth, the beauty of the tundra, love, particularly the "gaga" dance, the sacred bird that plunges into the sea and comes back to land. These dances are like prayers expressed in symbolic codes. Dancers are dressed in coats and reindeer skins with traditional "torbosa" shoes made of sealskin. They change with the rhythm of the drums.

Animist Tanya Tagaq: Nanook of the North

Sometimes accompanied by an accordion to build a bridge between tradition and modernity. Perched on the edges of the North Pole, the Koryak communicate with unseen spirits through dance and music. Meanwhile, the sacred reindeer tirelessly seek out lichen and moss under the snow. On earth human life is difficult, but with the help of shaman guides, faithful humans are able to continue their long journey over the snow.

The shaman, like a "Bear-Man" (Almas/Sasquatch) merges with the natural world (HSA).

We cannot live here, exist here. We can only live and coexist with reindeer. The shaman-led Mongolian Duhalar people depend on reindeer like Sami of Sweden (Hamid Sardar-Afkhami)

• VIDEO: Shamans of the Amazon (DMT/Ayahuasca)
• Graham Hancock: Elves, Aliens, Angels, and Ayahuasca
• VIDEO: Terence McKenna on Sacred Plants as Spirit Guides

Ayahuasca is a medicine, not a drug of abuse.

A day-long workshop at Claremont College in Southern California addressing the Jung Society of the greater LA area, was an unusual setting to instruct and enchant a group "with a rich inner life" that was not necessarily psychedelic. McKenna stretched to accommodate Jungian fans. McKenna's plant psychology scenarios meander through symbols dear to Jungians including Jung's theory regarding UFOs. Do UFOs originate as psychic projections from our own minds? Also explored are the mysteries of time, nature of language, techniques of ecstasy developed in non-Western societies to navigate invisible worlds, and the role of hallucinogenic plants. McKenna is the author of Food of the Gods, Archaic Revival, and the 9-CD set True Hallucinations, an underground classic (Sound Photosynthesis).

Modern Native throat singer, "Animism" (video)

Crystal Quintero, Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Tanya Tagaq (Q/CBC)

The Buddha had blue eyes? It's not so rare in Central Asia extending south from Gandhara/Afghanistan north to Kalmykia/Russia to the Far East of Buddhist Siberia, North Asia

A little bird told me, and it wasn't twitter. We are all interconnected (No Strangers)

Q's Jian Ghomeshi speaks with Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq about her new album, "Animism," and how she went from being a self-taught throat singing vocalist, honing her skills in the shower, to collaborating with the likes of the Kronos Quartet and Björk. Indeed, it was her lack of formal training that attracted Björk to her, says Tagaq, adding that the Icelandic artist didn't think she was "supposed to" sound a certain way. That's a perspective Tagaq shares.

• CBC Music: First play of Tanya Tagaq's Animism (free)

• 

  Inuk Tagaq reclaiming Nanook of the North

  Animism? (from Latin animus, -i "animator, soul, life") is the worldview that all entities (animals, plants, inanimate objects and phenomena) possess a spiritual essence. In the anthropology of religion it is used as a term for the underlying belief system or cosmology of some indigenous tribal peoples, especially prior to the infiltration of colonialism and organized "religion." Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, the term "animism" is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives -- so fundamental and taken-for-granted that most animistic indigenous people have no word in their languages that corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion"). More

Shaman medicine (thefederationoflight.com)

"I like to live in a world that's not supposed to be. Or it's just there already as it is. It doesn't have to be anything, you know, because we put a lot of constraints on ourselves everyday in this crazy society," she says, adding that she gives "zero sh*ts about what people" think about her -- even as a trendy rave dancer -- but instead respects herself, her instincts, and her emotions. "And I every day do what I can to be a good person.... That's why breath is so important; it's the common denominator."  More

• VIDEO: Tuvan throat singing of shaman Mongolia
• L.A.'s HAIM shows off Himalayan throat singing 
• Vancouver's Push Festival: From Throat Singing to Puppets
• Science: Native Americans came from Asia
• Afghans and Chinese beat Columbus to America
• Ancient skeleton in Mexico reveals Asian DNA

(GSS) "Tantric Choir": Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist lamas of Gyuto chant in the Mongolian style of Bön "medicine men," shamans, and nomadic reindeer herders.

Standing by her #Sealfie: Manitoba's Tanya Tagaq addresses the controversial anti-Ellen campaign. Despite the considerable backlash after posting a photo of her daughter beside a dead seal, she supports native hunting and "being a part of what you [kill to] eat" (CBC.ca).

KARMA IS A B-TCH: When the "hunter" becomes the hunted, guilty of killing then mauled for it by another "hunter" in the samsaric wheel of survival. (LOL? Schadenfreude?) Don't kill.

Front line climate change: tiny Tuk

(AP) TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories – Caught between rising seas and land melting beneath their mukluk-shod feet, the villagers of Tuktoyaktuk are doing what anyone would do on this windy Arctic coastline. They're building windmills.

That's wind-power turbines, to be exact — a token first try at "getting rid of this fossil fuel we're using," said Mayor Merven Gruben. It's a token of irony, too: People little to blame, but feeling it most, are doing more to stop global warming than many of "you people in the south," as Gruben calls the rest of us who fill the skies with greenhouse gases.

They're feeling climate change not only in this lonely corner of northwest Canada, but in a wide circle at the top of the world, stretching from Alaska through the Siberian tundra, into northern Scandinavia and Greenland, and on to Canada's eastern Arctic islands, a circle of more than 300,000 indigenous people, including Gruben and the 800 other Inuvialuit, or Inuit, of the village they know as "Tuk." More>>