Blog Posts

Cultural Appropriation Queen

10/28/2014

REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

This book is a complete fabrication! "Coming Full Circle" is a fictional romp through Lynn Andrews’s fantasies and so-called “teachings” driven by her delusional need to be a guru for other white people. The Indigenous women she claims to know are tokenized and essentialized, and it is highly unlikely that within the reality of colonization and dispossession, any Indigenous woman would be interested in tolerating the white-privileged presence of her "transcendental" high-priced New Age narcissism.

The narratives of so-called “wisdom” as recounted by the fictional “Sisterhood of the Shields” sound more like the rehashing of various New Age ideologies than genuine Indigenous Knowledge (with the needs of Lynn Andrews squarely at the center of each encounter). Did it not occur to Lynn Andrews that the Indigenous women of Hawaii, Alberta or Guatemala would have their own Indigenous Knowledge, and would have no interest in spouting New Age nonsense? And did it not occur to Lynn Andrews to research the authentic cultural traditions and IK (Indigenous Knowledge) of the various groups she claims to know? Her glaring lack of scholarship, underhanded racist statements, Eurocentric white perspectivism, and cultural appropriation are just a few of the monumental problems with this ridiculous fiction that is being passed-off as fact. For the sake of solidarity with real Indigenous people and their real challenges in the real world, please boycott this book!

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

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"Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

10/28/2014

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

Edited by Activist-Educator Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Nishnaabekwe), Lighting the Eighth Fire is a radical collection of new writing by First Nations scholars that focuses on reclaiming the "physical, political and psychic spaces of freedom." These brilliant essays cover a wide range of issues touching on the current resurgence of Indigenist principles, culture and tradition; the protection of the land and earth-based knowledge; and the decolonization of Indigenous Nations from the Canadian state.

As Simpson says in her introduction, "It is about following our own intellectual traditions that are strongly rooted in ancestral values, knowledge and philosophies, and to work with traditional governments and Knowledge Holders." The authors explore ways to honor cultural and political values, and to uphold Indigenous integrity in daily life with the practice of language, ceremony and teachings. The community-based style of writing found here is not often recognized by academia, but the voices in the collection will resonate with Canadians who have an interest in justice and learning about Indigenous solutions to the problems caused by Settler-Colonialism, which is ongoing.

We have all been deeply affected by colonization, which seeks to commodify resources and annihilate the land, to separate us from our spiritual connection to the natural world, and to lose the love and trust of each other in the process. In his moving "Opening Words" Taiaiake Alfred (Kahnawake Mohawk) prefaces the anthology by saying, "In offering us strong words about ways to reconnect to our lands, cultures and communities, these good minds are teaching us more than how to recover; they are teaching us how to survive and be Indigenous. It is immensely gratifying to witness the regeneration of ancestral wisdom and the rebirth of the warrior spirit that the words in this book represent."

"Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and
Protection of Indigenous Nations"
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2008

Pegi Eyers is the author of "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

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"Occupation Nation" by Chet Singh

10/28/2014

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

It is always exciting to see new forms of literary and poetic expression morph and evolve, such as the flourishing of spoken word performance and dub poetry in Canada. A phenomenon that arose in Jamaica in the 1970s, dub poetry is a powerful artform that layers the style, rhythm, chants and drama of poetry with reggae, funk, jazz, fusion and other forms of experimental soundscape. That there are more dub poets in Toronto today than anywhere in the world (next to Jamaica!) is a marvellous comment on a city that embraces and celebrates cultural diversity. Considered “subversive” by some and “essential activism” by others, dub poetry is primarily concerned with political commentary, the critique of current events and social justice issues. One of the best artists in the genre is Chet Singh, Lakefield resident and college professor, who has released his 6th compilation entitled Occupation Nation, a brilliant weaving of much-needed decolonial reality-speak and innovative dubs.

Born in Jamaica, Singh is founding member of the renowned Dub Poets Collective, former board member of the Ontario Arts Council, member of the band One Mind, and recipient of many awards for excellence in teaching and leadership. In addition to his many achievements, he is recognized as of one of the pioneers of dub poetry and spoken word in Canada. Embracing both the creolization processes of the Caribbean and the diverse cultural landscapes of Canada, he uses the metaphorical force of music and poetry as a continuum of his human rights activism. Singh not only seeks to expose the fiction of a “post-racial society,” but also explores the normalization of dominance, racism and injustice, and shows how the silence or denial from the majority makes all of us complicit. As the title suggests, themes of occupation are the focus of Occupation Nation, with tracks on debunking settler colonial narratives ("Madawaska"), the oligarchy-generated propaganda that continues to manufacture “the other” ("Among the Bombs"), our domination of the natural world, which is also a form of occupation ("Highway 115"), and the gentle reclaiming of our authentic eco-selves ("Natural Nature"). In step with the fire lit by the recent Idle No More movement, Chet’s poetics remind us that First Nations, subordinated through imperialism and Eurocentric pedagogy, have been engaged in the monumental work of resisting the Settler State for centuries now, and the struggle continues ("Red Canoe").

A collaboration of top-notch producers and musicians add texture to the solid foundations of Chet’s poetry in Occupation Nation, and for those unfamiliar, the intellectualism and social justice agenda of dub is definitely worth exploring. As the Dub Poets Collective website states, “dub poetry is not a cultural ornament. It is a vocal instrument of social engagement.” Even though Chet Singh continues to challenge the destructive ideology of Empire by “speaking truth to power,” he remains optimistic that equity will unfold, that humanity can do better, and that “there will be no peace without justice for all of us” ("Map of Violence").

Chet Singh

Watch the YouTube video for Occupation Nation >HERE<
Chet Singh and Occupation Nation on Tumbler >HERE<
Chet Singh and Occupation Nation on MySpace >HERE<

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

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The Hopi Survival Kit

9/10/2014

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The Hopi Survival Kit:
The Prophecies, Instructions and Warnings Revealed by
the Last Elders

by Thomas E. Mails

REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

Thomas E. Mails was chosen by the Hopi Elders to deliver their prophecies and warnings to the world. These millennia-old prophecies address the contemporary crises such as environmental degradation, fraudulent politics and unhealthy technology that have the potential to lead to collapse and massive change. Additional instructions are given by the Elders on averting disaster and acquiring spiritual equanimity. Survival is hopeful for the people who are connected to Earth's rhythms, those that blend with nature and celebrate all life. The material in The Hopi Survival Kit is fascinating and the keepers of this wisdom are beyond reproach, and the value of the traditional Hopi worldview is without question equivalent to a World Heritage Treasure.

However, Thomas Mails' delivery couldn't be more jumbled, pompous or paranoid. The rhetoric, tedious opinions and manipulative language found in The Hopi Survival Kit do not do justice to the beauty and truth of these ancient teachings. If only they had been presented concisely with a clear progression of ideas, not as a miscellany of bad metaphors, constant repetition and finger-pointing. Mails' claims that elements of Christianity are identical to Hopi cosmology are ridiculous - as if a culture in a different time and place could not have developed a completely unique and original relationship to the Great Mystery! Interpretations of a divine order or Creator without male monotheism, hierarchy, patriarchy or control DO exist.

I wish it were otherwise, but the significance of the Hopi's message is compromised by Mails' inept writing skills and his lack of objectivity. In the book he discusses his own erratic writing style (!?) and claims that expediency is the only thing required for the delivery of the Hopi message, not competent writing. Well, I disagree. Concise unbiased writing can give a book credibility and the potential to reach far more people. Perhaps a re-write by a brilliant First Nations author would give the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) of the Hopi the wider exposure it deserves! It is time for IK to be highly valued, held sacred even, for these Hopi teachings can contribute to the restoration of sanity to the human race, and balance to our entire Earth Community.

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

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Lioslaith: Last of the Painted Ones by George C. Myles

3/23/2014

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

In our quest to recover sustainable lifestyles and return to an authentic connection with the Earth, it is helpful to examine our own ancestral knowledge, and how the cultural wisdom of Old Europe can benefit us today. Those of us in the Celtic diaspora have a wealth of pre-colonial histories to draw on, and fragments of the Old Ways can be found in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man. From myth, folklore and the oral tradition we learn that our ancestors lived in balance with the natural world, and that their wild egalitarian souls gave rise to flourishing tribal societies. Fictional accounts are an important part of this reconstruction such as Lioslaith Last of the Painted Ones, that bring to life the ancient ways of the mysterious Picts, whose territories ranged over what is now Scotland.

The various Anglo-Saxon, Briton and Gael tribal divisions are well-known to historians and genealogists, but tracing the Pict society has been more challenging, due to their abrupt disappearance from the historical record through displacement or assimilation. By locating the coming-of-age story of the young woman Lioslaith during the critical decade in Scottish history (836 AD) when the Pict reign was drawing to a close, author George Myles does a remarkable job of developing authentic characters and portraying Pictish lives and challenges. Little is known about the Picts during this transitional time, when the Norse were invading and colonizing the Hebrides, yet Myles elaborates on their integration with their land base, their villages, clan systems, roles of women, herblore and healing, woad tattoos, ogham stones, rituals, agricultural projects, warrior societies, Dunadd, the Whitecleuch chain, the legend of the Wicker Man, the battle of 839 and the Treachery of Scone.

Bringing the reader under the captive spell of the Old Ways, the story of Lioslaith Last of the Painted Ones is a joy for all those seeking to re-connect with their heritage, and affirms that good historical fiction can be another way to root ourselves within our ancestral traditions, and reclaim our sacred relationship with the natural world.

www.lioslaith.com

This review originally appeared in the Spring Solstice 2014 edition of "The Link" www.the-link.ca

Pegi Eyers is the author of "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon.

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The Cleft by Doris Lessing

11/18/2013

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

the Venus of Willendorf

With the passing of Nobel prize-winner Doris Lessing into the spirit world this week, we are reminded once again of her literary genius in storytelling, which transverses the multiple worlds of ideology, allegory and imagination. In defiance to the hegemony and dystopia of Colonialism, she once claimed that all people "are being manipulated by great social currents," and her deconstructions of Empire were legendary. Lessing refused to allow the Queen to declare her a Dame of the British Empire, because - in the author's words - "There is no British Empire."

Written in 2009, The Cleft is an alternative origin story for the human race, a speculative look at how ancient peoples became divided into female and male genders, and developed individuality and free will. I find the primordial world evoked by Doris Lessing, and her hypothesis that the female gender predated the male, fascinating and believable. (Spontaneous conception - why not?) Known as parthenogenesis, in addition to the Virgin Birth of Christ, there are many examples throughout history of women conceiving and giving birth without male participation or fertilization.

The Cleft sets the scene "in the beginning" when the cultural group was female, an amorphorous, chthonian mass, living in and out of warm caves and rocky pools at the edge of the sea, a soft-edged, slow-brained tribe focused on feminine reproductive cycles and animal sensation. The interplay between these ancient humans and the elemental forces of earth, fire, water, and the wild nature spirits around them, is poetic and inspiring. The appearance of baby boys ("squirts") into this ancient matriarchy brings the missing principle, the active "yang", that actuates the potential of the feminine, into the world. That these female creatures were generally obese ("their flesh all about them in layers of fat, shapeless things lolling about, sea slugs enclosed by skins of jellified water") makes me think that Lessing may have stumbled upon a scientific fact, that there must be an ancient "obesity gene." This would explain why some people cannot lose weight no matter how hard they try! The Cleft allows us to speculate that the flabby, waddling, manatee-like "Old Shes" may be the ancient Ancestors of those descended from a particular DNA pool or region of Old Europe.

Lessing employs a classic framing device to give voice to her story. During Nero's rule, a Roman senator who is also a historian is working through "a mass of material accumulated over the ages," pertaining to a prehistoric all-woman tribe. Unfortunately, I have a problem with this narrator - how could such a compassionate, humble, perceptive and sensitive man be a product of the militarized patriarchy that was Rome? Impossible, I am thinking. However, by a master of speculative fiction, myth and fable, The Cleft is a fascinating read, especially for those who study ancient matriarchies and/or honor the Divine Feminine.

The Cleft is available on Amazon ~

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Amazon.com
Stone Circle Press

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Children of the Creator by Cliff Standingready

4/1/2013

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

In our work as Allies in solidarity to First Nations, it is important that we check our privilege and paternalism at the door, and listen to Indigenous voices. We have a collective moral responsibility to learn about the social issues, to listen and respect, and to make decolonizing space for Indigenous history and the rich counter-narratives that exist across Turtle Island. One of these powerful voices is Oshawa resident Cliff Standingready, whose memoir is an up-close survivor's account of the brutality of the residential school system, and a personal narrative on overcoming trauma and alcohol abuse. Taken away to residential school in Brandon, Manitoba as a child, Cliff was forced to abandon his Lakota culture, his freedom and his identity. A visceral, instinctual and emotional recounting of one man's experience with dehumanization, anguish, death and loss, Children of the Creator is written subjectively and in-the-moment. Cliff is honest, and as he says "humble before the Creator", as he describes the life lessons and insights he has gained on his healing and spiritual path.

Forced to deal with racism, the colonial agenda and the legacy of genocide all his life, at the heart of Cliff’s story is the tracing and recovery of his identity as an Indigenous person. His childhood exposure to the sacred teachings of his people, and the redemptive, healing power of traditional ceremonies are points of reference to which he returns again and again. His many powerful mystical visions and synchronistic experiences continue to inform him, and connect him to his ancestral traditions and the divine spark in all beings. A true storyteller, Cliff reminds us of the interconnectedness of creation, to have a reverence and respect for all life and a balanced harmonious relationship with the Earth. A work of great courage and insight, Children of the Creator has deep meaning for us all, and will wake us up to the fact that institutionalized racism and injustice still exists in the Canadian Settler-State.

“As a result of this consciousness, we could come together as a community. The truth is that every human being, no matter who they are, is sacred.”
Cliff Standingready, The Oshawa Express 2010

Children of the Creator is available from the author at cliff.standingready@yahoo.ca

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Amazon.com
Stone Circle Press

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Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future edited by Melissa K. Nelson

3/31/2013

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

For millennia, Indigenous societies have acted as the guardians of the web of life, and as keepers of the Original Instructions - ancient wisdom that holds all life on Earth as sacred and animated by spirit. As the environmental movement continues to link with First Nations resurgence, Indigenous people are emerging as today’s leaders. Professor Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Director of The Cultural Conservancy, has edited this powerful collection gathered from the Bioneers Conference, a leading-edge forum of influential environmentalists and social visionaries. More than 30 contemporary Indigenous leaders such as Chief Oren Lyons, Winona LaDuke and John Trudell share their knowledge on topics as far-ranging yet intrinsically connected as community cooperation, resource management, and spiritual education. The root cause of environmental degradation seems to be humanity's disconnect with the natural world, as a sentient being and sacred place. The voices in this book focus on re-imagining the world, and restoring ourselves after the fragmentation of colonization. We have all been colonized, and we need to remember who we are and to experience the sacredness of all life. Whatever the ethnicity or religion, a set of Original Instructions can be found at the heart of all traditions. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the creation of a new and more ecologically sound worldview, one that will sustain our society in an era of tumultuous change.

The Bioneers
www.bioneers.org

The Cultural Conservancy
www.nativeland.org

Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Amazon.com
Stone Circle Press

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REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

The Hopi Survival Kit:The Prophecies, Instructions and Warnings Revealed bythe Last Eldersby Thomas E. Mails

REVIEW BY PEGI EYERS

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The Hopi Survival Kit:
The Prophecies, Instructions and Warnings Revealed by
the Last Elders

by Thomas E. Mails

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"Ancient Spirit Rising"