This train of thought comes from reading a book I just got from the Oxfam Shop, called 'Original Wisdom: stories of an ancient way of knowing' by Robert Wolff.

I thought at first it was an anthropological book, but I suppose I should have looked more closely at the title.

The author purports to be the world expert on one select group of Malayan indigenous people, called 'sng'oi', whom he became close to in the course of some US Govt nutritional survey.

He tells a string of cosy anecdotes illustrating what noble savages these people are, and most of it could be just about true, though it stretches the imagination vastly to picture a people who wander about doing as they like all day, chewing on a root here and there, sleeping in a huddle in one of their communal stilt houses, waking to a dream-share and living their day according to the dream. (Oh, we dreamt about a strange flower. Shall we go and look for it?)

I began to wonder when he talked of always being met by someone every time he went to look for a certain village. These people didn't come out to sit by the wayside waiting for him to appear so they could guide him to the village. No, they were simply moved to go and sit there and when he showed up, they would realise that that was the purpose of their being there.

And when he got on to the 'you have special qualities and if you were one of us we would train you as a shaman, but you must choose' idea, I took a step back. I used to love this sort of stuff. Oh hey, these people manage to live without quarrelling or using money, why can't we learn from them?

But such books always seem to be leading up to some kind of special purpose and aggrandisement for the author. That I do hold suspect.

So I started looking for confirmation of this guy's validity on the internet. I searched sng'oi, and guess what, all I came up with were pages of links to websites referring to Robert Wolff and his book. So many people apparently accepting his authority at face value and quoting him over and over again. Not one independent source of evidence.

And reflecting on the book, I just can't see what use it is to me personally in my life - what exactly is the 'wisdom' it purports to express? If I could trust it to be a soundly researched documentation of a lost people, at least I could relate it to my own history. But I don't trust it, and I see all these other people who have swallowed it as perpetuating the hoodwinking.

And doing an irreparable disservice to indigenous peoples.

I think indigenous wisdom is an easy target for romanticising. 'Oh, once upon a time people used to just know the right things to eat, and what healing plants were right for each ailment, and they just accepted everybody without stigmatising, and everything was lovely, and we too could be like that' - no, they weren't, they didn't, it wasn't and we couldn't. That's my conclusion.

What practical wisdom for your life path have you received from indigenous people?

Look both ways before crossing the street.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Respect your elders.
Say please and thank you.
Be prepared for anything you say to come back to you.
Borrowing is only borrowing if you ask first.
Don't sell ceremony.

The last two apply to just about every popular-press book I've read about indigenous people, but nobody ever says anything about the practical things that are the same all over. I didn't get out of brushing my teeth to go looking for visions - these guys talk/write as if entire cultures lived highly mystical and spiritual lives 24/7 and had no feuds, backbiting, politics, or fun.


unsung

Don't eat yellow snow.

The guy sounds like an arsewad who is just banging on about some tribe no one has really heard about because he can and not many folks will know enough to say he's talking rubbish. And in the meantime...'many thanks to the dances-with-credit-cards crew for buying my crap in the misguided hope of spiritual guidance'.

What I tend to find when dealing with 'native peoples' (aren't we all native somewhere?..I find that a bit of a silly term), is that the wisdom they give is usually along the lines of stopping Johnny Foreigner from getting hurt or sick and it's usually accompanied by a lot of curiousity and a raucous sense of humour.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the recent "Tribal Wives" programme was that in addition to the conversations between the visitor an dthe tribe they also translated a lot of what was being said about her, most of which was either really touching or hilarious

I think the only things I've taken from indigenous wisdom is to do with my parenting style - co-sleeping, slinging, breastfeeding etc - which was our own wisdom once

That the spirit world I refer to is the same as theirs, just my eyes are different and my dancing is different and that the polite question 'do you mind' was nonsense and irrelevant and that it is one world. That you don't spend your whole day dreaming as there is plenty of other stuff to do, but when you do, it isn't separate. And later, that despite what people assume, men can enter 'womens business' and vice versa. Just usually they have no wish to!

Possibly. yes, for those of us who use the mundane as an entrance. But many don't.

But in the context of the 'noble savage' of the OP - OK, who does the finding of food, the preparation, the cooking, the finding of water and fuel, the looking after children, the teaching of children, the making of housing or other necessities... Most communities living (effectively) in the Iron Age have to spend most of their time sorting out food, water, housing, children, health etc. Who are these communities where every member can afford the leisure to do nothing except spend time with the Otherworld?

Not sure what you thought I meant or what you meant really Moonhunter. It was shown to me that in day-to-day living for many aboriginals here in Aus. that still have contact with the old tribal ways, even if living in town, the 'dreaming' for them is not separate from the mundane. And I was shown a way to experience that for myself which was part of my answer to the OP. It was through dance and rhythm whilst walking, shown to me by a female indigenous person and when I crossed over she recognised it and discussed with me. Not a lot different to the sort of 'corner of the eye' psychic perception some here have. It enabled me to be closer to my own 'dreaming' when doing simple things like my daily walk with my bow and it heightens my awareness of animals and other things in the bush at many levels. Liminal experience.

I'd say that most of my life i have been fascinated by what used to be termed primitive peoples. More the techniques for survival than the anthropoligical bit. Anything that has a touch of prehistory to it gets me all of a quiver especially indigenous/primitive technologies. Apart from the usual survival courses and primitive living weeks here and there i have always tried and still try in my own way to understand how, say, bronze age people might have interacted with their environment. Over the years through reading but more through trying it out i think i have picked up a few bits and pieces that have served me personally, nothing particularly revealing just an appreciation for the natural and, fruit of the primitive living weeks, an eye for how to enjoy living rough and a realisation that with knowledge and organisation life though still tough could also be comfortable.
This awareness, though it might of course be a false impression, enables me to do what i like doing a little closer to nature than perhaps i would otherwise have had the oppotunity to do.

On a humerous note. One concrete thing that one indigenous people has taught me was how much rubbish is talked about them (not all the time of course) and why not to believe everything you read. A group of australian aborigines came over here for some trad concerts. Reading their pubicity bumf they were the actual genuine article. Didgeridos and white nappies and paint and stuff. Everyone was queuing up to talk to them about their lives and did they really eat witchety grubs and stand on one leg and so on. It was quite funny, civilized white man talking to the ignorant savages (the documentary culture is wholly responsible for this i feel) . In the bed and breakfast the aborigines drank beer, watched TV, spent all day on the internet, bought stuff on e-bay, talked about dirt bikes and cars, mechanics, were to go to get some wi-fi equipment and top models and football and were generally about as pleasant to be with as an uncommunicative spoilt 16 year old. What i found funny was that they had more idea of how all these things worked and how to exploit them than i have. I have since wondered who is more primitive and now know the answer.

From the Hebrides: the devil makes work for idle hands.

Essentially, don't waste leisure time. I think my Granny had a lot of common sense.

Aren't we all 'indigenous people'?

If by "indigenous people" you mean "Johnny Foreigner with a darker coloured skin than us technologically superior white folk' then all I've learned is that they're cheating bastards who will not only make you look a fool in front of your friends, but break your heart in the process.

Rhiannon

That. Sorry, I was using shorthand again. I really shouldn't try to do that in postings, but this particular subject is one where I often compress things.

A friend once remarked to me that he wished he didn't have to work, as he would rather spend his life, as you might put it, Jape, in AA terms, dreaming. I agree.

But he, and his missus, and I, and a few others I know, find it all to easy to slip into dreaming. There is little difference between the 'mundane' and any other activity. Yes, some activities are dedicated and focussed, but they aren't always the best dreaming times. They can occur anywhere, anytime. Oh yeah, they're incompatible with the day to day work I have to do, which often requires high levels of concentration. But, in times when my soul goes walkabout, I find I can live with a foot in both worlds, even if the only chance I get in the working day to dream is during fag breaks. And ordinary everyday activities which don't require that level of concentration can become dreamtimes very easily. I don't have to be in a wood; even confined to a cityscape of concrete and glass, my soul is elsewhere.

That's a crude response, but a fair description.

My tribe taught me the survival skills needed to live in my world. Like others have said, we're all native somewhere.
BM
xx

Aye, and when you are growing up and then as an adult trying to make sense of life and what everyone around you is doing and why the fuck they are doing it, you gradually realise that what for you is the usual, is for them fantasy or escapism. Then as an adult and experienced in it and recognising cues and also, fortunately recognising others who to lesser or greater extent share the experience, view and meaning - then other adults who are just accidentally of different skin colour and culture look into your eyes and say: walk with me! And the schism grows and the power of it all is throbbing right through your whole body, the landscape changes and is alive, absolutely, conscious and responsive and the dark eyes are looking into yours and your souls are laughing and lightning crackling through your veins instead of blood .... and soooo much more
that is what I received Julai, was it practical?

Jape, I know next to nothing about Australian Aboriginal culture but to me they seem like a culture that runs alongside "modern" life. They've brought their culture with them as they movedon, but they still acquire the skills necessary for 21st century living.
Bugger I'm confusing myself here, and as I say I don't know much about them, but how many live in truly Stone Age way?
I mean, yes, if you dropped me in an Amazon jungle I'd be dead in 24 hours, but similarly, drop an Amazon tribesman in my village with no backup and he wouldn't last much longer. He could'nt feed himself, he couldn't keep himself warm. He be as confused by bright lights and cars as I would be by trees.
Australian Abroiginal culture is porbably unique in that it lives side by side with modern life and can't therefore be compared with more "primitive" cultures.
BM
xx

I doubt it!

An Amazon bushman would have hunting, building, firemaking skills as a matter of course. He'd bugger off from your village(after nicking some warmer togs off a few washing lines), find a set of trees and have a little encampment with some local animal roasting set up in a few hours.

He would also probably swear a lot at the crap weather.

If he made it out of the village before being mugged by feral teenagers he'd get splatted by a lorry on the A49. Then if he did make it to the trees he'd have some irate landowner set the dogs on him for making a fire. If he managed to catch an animal to roast it would have foot and mouth, TB or myxymatosis. If he survived all that he'd probably catch a chill frm the crap weather and cark it anyway.
BM
xx

I have faith in the bushman...

I'm really thick today I suppose BM, don't really know what you are asking me or telling me! I was asking Julai what she thought, as original poster, of my little rave. She asked what practical things we had learnt, I asked if what I learnt was practical.
I know the Aussie blackfella mainly live alongside the whites, and many are completely integrated. Many do live outbush though in families/tribes still and I don't see that using a 'ute or rifle is in opposition to their spiritual life. Few still live under a twig shelter but many still go walkabout and are initiated and taught. Didn't you watch Crocodile Dundee?lol
I don't romanticise the life of an indigenous australian. but I do know from experience that some still have a more immediate connection to 'dreamtime' and dreamtime markers than most do in the western world.
I have been fortunate to meet wise men and women of this old culture and to exchange, not just take, spiritual knowledge in a practical way that refers to both of our cultures. The elder I spoke with had no idea that witchcraft in UK was other than wicca which he had read about (and dismissed as whiteman nonsense in the most part) When I explained my understanding of Land, spirit, the realms and incarnate witch, and more, he was very pleased that we were so congruent in concept and practise.
I am not talking about some old bushman, I am talking of a tribal elder, and what might be called witch doctor by us, an astral traveller and teacher who was absolutely computer literate and a lawyer! And the woman is a weaver and artist selling internationally.
The modern Aboriginal is no more or less up to date than any pagan on this forum. I didn't ever intend my posts above to suggest I had had some amazing shaman pass on magickal knowledge. However their connection to their pagan ancestry, belief and practice is far more immediate than is ours. But no more relevant except to them of course.
I shall shut up now and go eat me dinner and try and get off this machine!

enjoy your dinner Jape!!

Does anyone else on this thread find the term 'noble savage' as objectionable as I do?

Just because people have a different way of life that we may consider to be 'primitive' doesn't mean that they are 'savages'.

Oh yes - it's a historical term, isn't it? I don't think it's used now in any seriously chauvinistic way. May be wrong though.

I LOVE 'dancing-with-credit-cards' - is it in common parlance or did you just make it up, Elswyth?

Lovely, Jape! I guess you're hinting that 'practical' isn't necessarily everything about life. True: if you are shown how to be, in a way of being that feels good and elevates your soul, that is of value. Enormous value. And it's a social experience, which is also of value.

Reading a book about someone else's experience, I'm sadly realising, is not of value in the same way. Irrespective of whether it is 'true' or 'elaborated truth' or a complete pack of cynical moneymaking bollocks, it can make you feel good reading it, it can make you feel you've found the ultimate answer. But the high you get upon reading the book is not of permanent value unless you can sustain it. Without a community, or a new skill, neither of which you get from reading a book, the euphoria fades into shadow.

I guess I was hoping for more from a book, namely, practical knowledge to bring into everyday life. Maybe even how to walk down the street in a dreaming way. Not how to do it in the jungles of Malaysia, but how to do it in Eastbourne, UK. How to actually live my life in a fulfilling way in a place where money actually does matter. The author I'm slagging off here, spent the whole book talking about the communities he visited and about his initiation, but not a sausage about how it changed his life when he went back to the mainstream, as he surely did.

I just watched the last show of the 'meet the natives' documentary I posted about recently. Those guys told us at the end - open your hand, share, then you will be happy. Pretty simple as a practical (if not necessarily easy) way of changing your life experience and mind set! The chief said, if I make you happy, I am happy! He also wondered why we didn't smile much ...

I'm not going to presume to tell you why you aren't fulfilled of course Julai, but you always seem pleasant and intelligent and kind. There isn't much more to life than that. Sometimes you seem in your posts to suggest you regret that there isn't more of the 'dreaming', the magick and wonder in your life, forgive me if I am wrong. All I can say is that some of us who do experience wonders wouldn't change it, but also we wouldn't wish it on any others. There is a dark side to everything, and the dark side of magick and faery and whatever we perceive, is just as enhanced and strange as the light can be.

I also know, from watching others achieve a breakthrough, that it can be done by some who have no existing predilection toward psychic or similar experience. It takes a step or two onto the crooked path, nights in the woods alone, contemplation and a fair bit of practice, or rather fortitude and determination. Maybe, just maybe, if you dance with the hares in the bright moonlight, the doorway will open for you hon.

Dear Julai,

Another indigenous person here. As far as I know, my people grunted and squatted their way up to this part of the world as the ice went back, and some of them probably haven't changed very much , but I'm proud of them anyway.

I've read a few of the kind of books you mention. One in particular has unfortunately stuck in my mind as much as it did in my throat whilst reading. It was called "Mutant Message Down Under", about some American New Ager claiming to have got on really, really well with Australian aboriginal culture, and I'm really annoyed that I can still remember so much of it .

For the most part, I think such books are tapping into a very deep rooted myth in Western culture that is looking back to a lost 'Golden Age' of peace, innocence and well being, rather than accurately describing indigenous cultures elsewhere on the planet. Particularly as such cultures are themselves likely to be in a process of destructive transition if they have Westerners poking around in them. It all seems rather like Pratchett's dictum that Wisdom is the only thing that looks bigger as it gets further away.

In one way, I think some of these books may contain a germ of truth, albeit a generic one. Our Western cultures operate on scales, and through mechanisms, very different from those human beings evolved to live within through most of our (pre-)history. We often suffer from feelings of disconnection, alienation, a lack of 'authenticity' in our lives, because most of us function as very small cogs in very large social & economic mechanisms that are very hard to get a grasp of in human terms.

A hunter-gatherer living within a small tribe may be a lot less comfortable than we are, and much more at the mercy of their environment than we (mostly) are, but their personal skills and activities will take care of a much larger proportion of what keeps them alive than any Westerner, and the rest of the social machine that sustains their life (in every sense) will consist of people they know well, and see every day. In a way, and I'm speculating, their lives may well seem a lot more relevant to who they are.

Dear Elswyth,



No disrespect but I don't actually find it objectionable because it's one of those phrases that always seems to say more about the culture of the person using it than about the people it's being used to describe. Whether that's Rousseau in the 18th C or even, more arguably, Tacitus in the 'Germania'. The use of a strange and exotic culture both as a kind of mirror to reflect back anxieties about our own society through presumed contrasts, and as a blank screen on which may be projected all kinds of assumptions about the 'True' nature of humanity.

Best Wishes,

John Macintyre

Ah. I remember that.

For me it happened in a Christian retreat house. I got persuaded to go, against my better judgement, and didn't manage to completely observe the silence for the whole 48 hours. But something happened. And, at the end of it, my one question was "How do I take this back into my everyday life?"

The retreat leader said: "Simple. Just listen the silence."

I guess I've been doing that ever since. Except there's an awful lot of things in the silence, and most of them aren't at all silent.

You're not thick, think I ended up not really asking you anything. It was rather late and I was tired... Although I think you've confirmed what I was trying to get at, that Aboriginal culture doesn't need to be indulged in whilst eating termites on top of Ayers Rock and playing a digeridoo It's part and parcel of modern life. It hasn't been preserved in amber as a "primitive culture".
BM
xx

not my invention and not common parlance either. The author Mercedes Lackey used it in her book 'Sacred Ground' (which is worth a read by the way )





Hello John, I never though you meant any disrespect. I agree that the term does tend to say more about the people that use it however to me personally, I find applying that kind of a term to someone based on them being different so alien. I tend to think that regardless of culture, language or geography, all humans have the same concerns. Everyone wants the best for their family and the people they care about, everyone wants to make sure there is food on the table, that they have warmth and that they are safe. All humans (unless there is something wrong with them (like sociopathy) loves. To my way of thinking, anything other than that is unimportant. The only real savages are people that have no love for others.

Dear Elswyth,



Fair enough. I suppose one reason I feel a bit more mixed about it is that at the time Rousseau was popularising the concept of 'noble savages', my own not-very-remote ancestors in the Scottish gaeltacht were regarded as plain old savages by most 'civilised' people. Given the nature of the 'civilisation' of the time, I take a wee bit of pride in that.



Agreed.



Aye, and that's a lovely way of putting it. All too often, 'civilsation' has simply meant the capacity to commit savagery on a much larger scale.

BB,

John Macintyre