Indigenous insight for a better world
In these blogs we’re hoping to reflect not just on the content of what each of our speakers said but also how they said it - where their perspectives arose from, what influences they drew on, and how they stood in relation to their own thoughts and experiences. What seems particularly striking about Donna is the clarity with which she could distil deep wisdom and insight. This, we might speculate, requires a deep level of knowing of herself, of the ideas she was speaking to, and of how to relate these ideas to and with others. This knowing is something she herself spoke to in her talk and is emerging as a critical part of the work we are doing - thinking about where society’s “knowledge” primarily originates from and is shared by and how we can gain confidence in trusting our own knowledge and our capacity to make new knowledge together.
Connecting
Indeed, this is where Donna started - with the idea of connecting to our own knowledge. The importance of connecting with each other, our planet, and the truth of our interdependence has been a recurring theme in our conversations but here Donna was talking about another form of connection - connecting our conscious selves to our innate wisdom. Donna talked about how we know what is right, but the structure of modern society tends to make us forget this knowledge.
For Donna this seemed to be about the preference for “rational” thought and logical argument which leaves little room for emotional knowledge or instinct. But we could certainly take this several steps further. Because modern systems of governance limit the extent to which we as individuals are given the space or encouragement to do ethical inquiry - these are matters for the state to decide and impose through rules, laws, and, if necessary, the use of force. It’s a symptom too of a large bureaucracy in which responsibility seems to lie with no one, disempowering each individual in the system.
How do we get back to a point of knowing and trusting in ourselves and leaning in to our creativity, intelligence, and care in our relationships with others? One very obvious point of hope from our conversation with Donna was the idea that this is not about creating new knowledge - though that will be a product of what we do - or even of changing people as such but a process of re-knowing what is already there.
Finding balance
Donna explained that she felt it was important for her work that she balanced spiritual knowledge with practical application. She said that she didn’t want to be purely an advocate for Maori healing techniques but also a practitioner - someone who knew that world intimately and kept using and applying her knowledge.
While this was a personal reflection for Donna, there are some important lessons we might draw from it more generally.
First, the commitment to continual learning and refinement. That is not only an ethos that we want to ensure is carried through in our work but also out into the world. There is always a danger that in the “market of ideas” there is a motivation - present across the private and public sector - to have the answer to a problem. The reality is, knowledge can never be definitive. The ethos needed to meet and manage systems collapse is one which allows new ideas to bloom and adapt, not have us travel headlong down one path that promises the world, only to lead to failure.
Second is how that learning is done for Donna - by cross-pollination between her work. Again, this is not something that, for many, seems possible. More often than not, most of us are schooled in the idea of having a single career, built around a specialism and the deepening (but crucially not widening) of one’s knowledge. Not only is this highly limiting for the individual, it’s also making us less equipped to build a good society. Creativity comes from bridging disciplines, ideas, and approaches - an ability that risks becoming less and less familiar.
Diversity
Indeed, diversity - and flexibility - was another major theme of our conversation with Donna. She emphasised how much poorer society becomes - in all ways - when it becomes rigid, fixed in ideas about how people should be or contribute and when we try to fit our individual natures to suit certain norms.
This is, to some extent, at the centre of how a modern economy works - our freedom is always limited by the fact we have to perform certain actions (earning money) in order to survive and live well. It’s especially so in unequal societies where we spend a great deal of time looking up and down (how am I doing relative to others?) rather than out. It’s also likely a symptom of modern ways of living where the ways we travel, communicate, work, shop and so on can - if we allow it - isolate us not just from other people but from entire communities, cultures, and histories.
How do we unblock this? Likely though many of the themes we’ve already encountered: building connection in community, art and storytelling, and giving people the tools, permission, and spaces to act out of empathy. Undoing fear is also going to be central - and while the financial precarity cannot be ignored, care, support, and other forms of resourcing can give people room to breathe - and in that room, to create and imagine.
Time
As in our conversation with Gretchen, the concept of time became a major point of discussion. This seemed to emerge on two levels.
On the one hand there is the need to step out of time as we live it right now - to find ways to break from the habituated ways of living to see and consider them with fresh eyes. Retreats offer one way to do that - but we also need to make retreats in people’s lives as they currently are, not just something people can do for a few days or a week at a time.
But there is also the necessity to approach time from a different perspective more generally. It is fair to say that many of us live according to minutes and hours. But imagine if we were in a society where we looked at time in decades and eons - imagine how differently we might relate to our own lives and to our planet? Is there a way to encourage a great stepping back?