The Thanksgiving Address (the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen) is the central prayer and invocation for the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora). It reflects their relationship of giving thanks for life and the world around them. The Haudenosaunee open and close every social and religious meeting with the Thanksgiving Address.
It is also said as a daily sunrise prayer, and is an ancient message of peace and appreciation of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. The children learn that, according to Native American tradition, people everywhere are embraced as family. Our diversity, like all wonders of Nature, is truly a gift for which we are thankful.
The destruction is ongoing, certainly, but there are plenty of us who see what's happening and are working to slow or stop it. What happens next is up to all of us.
Thank you, Bryan. I'm not sure you need either a beacon or a compass, since you've guided many of us who brought our writing about the real world here to Substack. My work owes a deep debt to your encouragement.
Thank you for this insightful essay as well as wonderful quotes and reading suggestions…especially Kimmerer’s books. I would add to the list “Sacred Instructions” by Penobscot author Sherri Mitchell. We have the wise ones to instruct us on how to establish an EARTH FIRST MOVEMENT. The time is now!
Dear Jason, thanks for giving my little boat a shove out into the current. It swirls about in a back eddy most of the time. I love your work because you say the 'p' word. When I was a bit younger I used to say the 'p' word in polite company. In the company of people I respected. It never went well. Eventually I ran out of company, polite or otherwise. I hope you have better luck with your generation.
David, your writing is wonderful in the fullest sense of that word. You pilot a very sturdy little boat, even if it sometimes feels rudderless to you (as writing often does). As for my scribbling, I feel compelled to say what needs to be said about what is right before our eyes, but gussy it up a bit to help the medicine go down. (My metaphors here are stumbling over each other...)
You seem to have found ample and perfect company in your walks there. Say hello to it all for me, please. Be well.
Great article and I really like your repair rule. Just telling a few folk their repair bill will shake them up no end. Not sure about the getting better part. Education, democracy, primary health, and many other basics… fair enough. But 9 of 100 still in extreme poverty and 76 in poverty suggests it’s a very western perspective of progress. Today’s 9 of 100 is 720 million people.
Thank you, John. I do know what you mean about the "getting better" part. Several billion more people in, on average, somewhat reduced misery doesn't feel like a homecoming parade. And, as I noted, the cost is (or will be unpayable) at the rate we're going. But we have the tools and means to sharply improve much of this. We're just not doing it.
Superb. So enjoy your writing and insight. Hopefully, society will evolve beyond the insanity of our current situation, as it did beyond Hitler, but maybe not before our demise.
"Don't be one person." And this is the effort so many of us writers are endeavoring. To bring attention, awareness, to our actions and their consequences. By doing such, our singleness expands to two, then three, the ...
Feels like we are presently living in some sort of alternate universe. Inside one of Aesop’s fables he might have written around 620 BCE, but tossed it aside because he could not come up with ‘the moral to the story’. Who will be the Bard to someday tell this tale, and will the truth ever be a part of the story. Thank you, Jason . You always send me deep into contemplation. Though I don’t always agree with Roger Waters, his lyrics to his song Amused to Death , is an interesting read; “…We watched the tragedy unfold We did as we were told We bought and sold It was the greatest show on earth But then it was over We oohed and aahed We drove our racing cars We ate our last few jars of caviar And somewhere out there in the stars A keen-eyed lookout Spied a flickering light Our last hurrah Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows Grouped around the TV sets They ran down every lead They repeated every test They checked out all the data on their lists And then the alien anthropologists Admitted they were still perplexed But on eliminating every other reason For our sad demise They logged the only explanation left This species has amused itself to death No tears to cry No feelings left This species has amused itself to death…”
That's all well said, Lor, thank you. And thanks for bringing Waters in too. It does feel sometimes like we're in slow motion, watching (from the inside) the school bus crash, because the driver(s) are asleep at the wheel or arguing about who's in charge, not realizing that gravity is always in charge.
Clear-cutting must be the stupidest and most blinkered land management tool ever invented. It was stupid when our long-ago Neolithic ancestors did it, and it's still stupid.
As for loneliness... have you read The Celestial Hunter, by Roberto Calasso? It's a very complex, multilayered book, but one of its central theses is that at one point in our history, man became the only animal to hunt without touching its prey, thus precipitating our separation from nature.
It is always hard to imagine how anyone can look at a clear-cut and think, Yeah, that makes sense.
I have not read Calasso. I'll take a look. It's an interesting thesis, though the hunters I know might say that there are many points of contact with their prey, both while stalking and after death. But the larger point feels right on, that our tools have separated us further and further from what's real. We're now at a stage when the tools are becoming more important than we are, esp. in terms of their impacts.
Thank you, Marilyn. That's what I'm aiming for, and the numbers are trending slowly upward. But my work is probably too heavy and too long for really large-scale readership. It's something I think about often.
new here after seeing A Green County Garden in January: Bumblebees.
I’m afraid to delve into to this piece- the absence of political content, albeit content I agree with, was my second favorite thing about the article.
My favorite thing was the fascinating story of how a bumblebee makes an incredible life journey.
This is a profound essay - a way forward, embracing the wisdom of all our kin. Thank you!
Thank you very much, Heather.
The Thanksgiving Address (the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen) is the central prayer and invocation for the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora). It reflects their relationship of giving thanks for life and the world around them. The Haudenosaunee open and close every social and religious meeting with the Thanksgiving Address.
It is also said as a daily sunrise prayer, and is an ancient message of peace and appreciation of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. The children learn that, according to Native American tradition, people everywhere are embraced as family. Our diversity, like all wonders of Nature, is truly a gift for which we are thankful.
Thanks for this reminder, Bonnie, of a different kind of political culture.
‘Don’t be one person.’
Urgent read. Joint action need.
‘Don’t be one species.’
Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.
Albert Schweitzer
The destruction is ongoing, certainly, but there are plenty of us who see what's happening and are working to slow or stop it. What happens next is up to all of us.
You're my compass and beacon in the fog, Jason.
Thank you, Bryan. I'm not sure you need either a beacon or a compass, since you've guided many of us who brought our writing about the real world here to Substack. My work owes a deep debt to your encouragement.
Thank you for this insightful essay as well as wonderful quotes and reading suggestions…especially Kimmerer’s books. I would add to the list “Sacred Instructions” by Penobscot author Sherri Mitchell. We have the wise ones to instruct us on how to establish an EARTH FIRST MOVEMENT. The time is now!
Dear Jason, thanks for giving my little boat a shove out into the current. It swirls about in a back eddy most of the time. I love your work because you say the 'p' word. When I was a bit younger I used to say the 'p' word in polite company. In the company of people I respected. It never went well. Eventually I ran out of company, polite or otherwise. I hope you have better luck with your generation.
David, your writing is wonderful in the fullest sense of that word. You pilot a very sturdy little boat, even if it sometimes feels rudderless to you (as writing often does). As for my scribbling, I feel compelled to say what needs to be said about what is right before our eyes, but gussy it up a bit to help the medicine go down. (My metaphors here are stumbling over each other...)
You seem to have found ample and perfect company in your walks there. Say hello to it all for me, please. Be well.
Great article and I really like your repair rule. Just telling a few folk their repair bill will shake them up no end. Not sure about the getting better part. Education, democracy, primary health, and many other basics… fair enough. But 9 of 100 still in extreme poverty and 76 in poverty suggests it’s a very western perspective of progress. Today’s 9 of 100 is 720 million people.
Thank you, John. I do know what you mean about the "getting better" part. Several billion more people in, on average, somewhat reduced misery doesn't feel like a homecoming parade. And, as I noted, the cost is (or will be unpayable) at the rate we're going. But we have the tools and means to sharply improve much of this. We're just not doing it.
Agreed. We do know how, the will on the other hand… sad, very sad.
Superb. So enjoy your writing and insight. Hopefully, society will evolve beyond the insanity of our current situation, as it did beyond Hitler, but maybe not before our demise.
Thank you, Tricia. So good to hear from you, and to have you here. As for where it's all going, stay tuned...
I know: to the trees, but not to us,
Perfection of the life is given, whole.
And on the Earth – the sister of the stars –
We live in exile, while they are at home.
Nikolai Gumilev
That's beautiful, Sandy. Thank you.
"Don't be one person." And this is the effort so many of us writers are endeavoring. To bring attention, awareness, to our actions and their consequences. By doing such, our singleness expands to two, then three, the ...
As always, a thoughtful post.
Thank you, Stacy. It's always hard to know what writing does, but it's what I do...
Thank you for another poetical, informative, and thought-provoking piece, one which gives me hope and inspires me to action today. Many thanks!
Thank you, Mary, especially for taking action.
Feels like we are presently living in some sort of alternate universe. Inside one of Aesop’s fables he might have written around 620 BCE, but tossed it aside because he could not come up with ‘the moral to the story’. Who will be the Bard to someday tell this tale, and will the truth ever be a part of the story. Thank you, Jason . You always send me deep into contemplation. Though I don’t always agree with Roger Waters, his lyrics to his song Amused to Death , is an interesting read; “…We watched the tragedy unfold We did as we were told We bought and sold It was the greatest show on earth But then it was over We oohed and aahed We drove our racing cars We ate our last few jars of caviar And somewhere out there in the stars A keen-eyed lookout Spied a flickering light Our last hurrah Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows Grouped around the TV sets They ran down every lead They repeated every test They checked out all the data on their lists And then the alien anthropologists Admitted they were still perplexed But on eliminating every other reason For our sad demise They logged the only explanation left This species has amused itself to death No tears to cry No feelings left This species has amused itself to death…”
That's all well said, Lor, thank you. And thanks for bringing Waters in too. It does feel sometimes like we're in slow motion, watching (from the inside) the school bus crash, because the driver(s) are asleep at the wheel or arguing about who's in charge, not realizing that gravity is always in charge.
Clear-cutting must be the stupidest and most blinkered land management tool ever invented. It was stupid when our long-ago Neolithic ancestors did it, and it's still stupid.
As for loneliness... have you read The Celestial Hunter, by Roberto Calasso? It's a very complex, multilayered book, but one of its central theses is that at one point in our history, man became the only animal to hunt without touching its prey, thus precipitating our separation from nature.
It is always hard to imagine how anyone can look at a clear-cut and think, Yeah, that makes sense.
I have not read Calasso. I'll take a look. It's an interesting thesis, though the hunters I know might say that there are many points of contact with their prey, both while stalking and after death. But the larger point feels right on, that our tools have separated us further and further from what's real. We're now at a stage when the tools are becoming more important than we are, esp. in terms of their impacts.
It's a pity more people don't subscribe to you. Your writing, ideas and facts are essential now for survival.
Thank you, Marilyn. That's what I'm aiming for, and the numbers are trending slowly upward. But my work is probably too heavy and too long for really large-scale readership. It's something I think about often.