New Animism Info

My Past Life as a Shovel Bum

The Sleeping Giant — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:26:26 +0000

I lived my life from about 1984 to 1990 (whenever a job was to be had, which was often spotty) as an archaeo-vagrant, aka a Shovel Bum. Such folks as us worked the circuit of CRM archaeological projects. That is, we were the shovel-monkeys that did the back-breaking labor for the archaeology compliance portion of environmental laws that are part of large construction and development projects. There is not much work you can get with a bachelor's degree in anthropology, at least very little related to one's degree.

We were a cross between hippies and scholars, roving from job to job like itinerant roofers. And like roofers and gypsies, we were outside the mainstream, receiving little respect from the engineering and architecture firms that hired us to do the dirty work. We generally earned maybe twice the amount of minimum wage, along with per diem and lodging costs for what was generally hard labor, interspersed with long walks and taking lots of notes. But overall, it was way better than temp agency work, because it was outside and you felt more free in many ways.

My friend Dennis, who had been doing the shovel bum thing for a few years already, introduced me to "the life." Driving my battered old Ford station wagon (which I bought from my first field job earnings, for $300, and kept alive on an IV of small repairs and used tires) across the country, I worked on archaeological projects in Montana, Maryland, California, Washington, North Dakota, Virginia. Didn't make much money, but I saw a lot of wondrous sites and beautiful country. It was a great life for someone in their 20s without dependents and without a drive to acquire all the toys our consumer-driven culture says you are supposed to want.

This is a subculture once known about by few. I ended my time as a shovel bum when I got a seasonal archaeology job in a National Forest (which lasted another 5-6 seasons), and then ended up going back to get a graduate degree in Anthropology. This was typical for most people. They might work a season or two as a field-tech, then go on to grad school, because there were very few permanent jobs for folks like us. Especially if you wanted to settle down or had a spouse. It just didn't work very well.

For those connected and ambitious people who went directly from undergrad to grad school, especially those who went from a B.A. to a Ph.D. program, with no time served as a shovel laborer, and maybe only one "field school" through a college-- well, we had little for them but scorn.

Too often, an old field hand with 5-10 years experience reading the dirt would be put under the supervision of some wet-behind-the-ears newbie M.A. or Ph.D. who had not paid their field-dues in our shoes. They might have known the right journal articles, and jumped through all the academic hoops, but they were dummies in the field, leaping all about in their Indiana Jones hats, wielding unworn trowels and shiny clipboards. They couldn't read the dirt and they had a smugness we despised.

Most real shovel bums were in their mid-to-late-twenties, some in their early thirties. It was a lifestyle hard on one's home-ties, and murder on one's back. For some, it was a route to alcoholism and loneliness, unless you got out early enough. It was in some ways like being a cowboy, only in a beatup truck instead of on a horse, and looking for sites instead of stray cattle.

The oldest shovel bums I knew personally were two older gents in their mid-50s, back east. One was doing it as a lark after a divorce, but the other was the real deal: a shovel bum with 20 or so years of vagrancy, a real legend. He didn't even have a bank account, but cashed his check every Friday at his favorite local bar. He spent most of his pay on good food, beer, and Sears Craftsman tools. He had long hair in a pony tail and lived in his truck camper. He was the real deal.

Anyways, there have been generations of such fieldhands, at least since the WPA and River Surveys of the 1930s. It is a proud brother-and-sister-hood, a tradition that continues to this very day.

Back in the old days before the Internet, one learned about the jobs through word of mouth and fellow dig-bums. In the late 1990s, there was a zine-culture publication called "Shovel Bum by one of the bretheren of the trowel, Trent de Boer. Now I see there is even a website to help find jobs, ShovelBums.org. Some things have changed. But the shovel bum lifestyle remains.

Here are some very cool videos about being a Shovel Bum, done by de Boer and his folks:

1 "The Shovel Bum's Lot" - A good overview of a shovel bum's life in Arkansas

2 "The Texarkana Archaeology Blues" Arkansas' southern region

3 "Shovel Bum joins the Army" (on a training range in Washington state)

4. "Shovel Bum in Alaska"
They have disabled the ability to embed this video, so you just have to go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-t4ZX0mdl8

The Brown Man of the Muirs

Heronmist — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:23:00 +0000

Two friends went hunting on the moors for wildfowl. One of them strayed into some woodland where he had seen some birds descending. He thought he saw a movement in the distance, certainly not a bird but possibly a deer, and he walked towards it through the trees. Pausing at the bank of a stream, he saw a figure emerge from the trees on the other side of the stream. A man it was, and yet like a wild animal. He seemed to be composed of the very things of the woodland itself, of moss and bark and leaf-mould. He was not so much seen as experienced by other senses than sight, sound and smell, although all of these senses were stimulated by him. So his voice, when he spoke, was harsh and strong:

“What do yer mean by coming here after the animals I have care of?”

His voice was terrible and yet it was enticing.

”Come over here and I’ll tell yer how to behave in my woodland.”

It was as if the hunter had no choice but to put down his gun and cross the stream. Just then he heard his friend’s voice behind him and turned around. When he looked back the figure across the stream could not be seen.

“Did you see that?” he asked. But his friend had seen nothing. When he told him what had happened, his friend was fearful.

“Oh, it’s lucky I came, if you’d crossed the stream he would have torn you apart! It’s only that water that saved you. We’d better go and forget hunting for today.”

But as they were leaving a bird flew up from the undergrowth. The hunter lifted his gun and fired, bringing down the bird. But as he did so his arm froze and the chill never left it. It was said that he was cursed by the ‘Brown Man of the Muirs’ and he pined away and died soon after.

Scottish Borders/Northumberland. Passed on by letter to Walter Scott.

Said to have happened in 1641.

Moving from Shaman to Animist Healer

little lightening bolt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:21:00 +0000

As many of us know the term or label Shaman has become a loaded subject, a humpty dumpty word, and a term clouded with so many personal definitions and political associations that to utilize the word is an invitation to an extremely difficult discourse. I have mentioned before the need to revisit the original etymology of the word shaman and work from there. If we closely examine the word we see that it means “ one who knows” and as I pointed out previously here and the back yard shamanry page, it would seem that the distinction is that a shaman is one who knows about the animist cosmology of their people... at least enough to be called one who knows about it!

I have been finding more and more in my dialogs with others, as well as in my thinking and writing that this loaded term may be too difficult to work with any more. It was borrowed from the Tungus people and utilized by colonialism to describe something much to vast to go under one categorized anthropological label. The very vague nature of the term has allowed it to be specific and warped by the motives of individuals that do not always carry the clearest of intentions either.

So what do we do know? What would be and adequate shift in our terminology that no longer carries with it the clouded much debated qualities this term has come to hold? Even the use of the term shamanry as apposed to shamanism, though still a helpful clarification is still such a loaded coinage that it does not allow us to communicate clearly still. Not to mention that many traditional indigenous animists have brought up their grievance with the use of the word in labeling their own cultural practices.

My proposal is simple, and straight forward allowing clarity as well as a much needed opening line to discussing the importance of animism recognition today. The shift I think we require in describing that which has been labeled “shaman” in the past is to center the term itself in animism again. The terms Animist healer or Animist visionary healer, or animist spiritual leader, depending on the context of the relational dynamic a community has with their spiritual practitioners seems to work to create more clarity over all.

Working with this terminology instead of “shaman” helps in several ways. For one it redirects our attention to animism the origin point of what has been called erroneously “shasmanism”, it communicates clearly what we mean instead of working with a vague and cloudy definition that up to as many interpretations in today’s spiritual and academic circles as there are wasps in a wasp nest. It allows people to begin to see the relationship between people and place between being a healer and being an animist ie. having a relationship with nature for the purpose of healing. It also lets go of the potential for cultural appropriation and allows for people to discover their own unique ways of relating as a healer and as an animist.

Making a shift in our language helps make a shift in our understanding as well as our perception and behavior. It is my hope and has been along with the bioregional animism project that this shift occur so that the real strength of animist healing can really come forth in the world in new yet very ancient ways. In ways that are integrated in relationships with place, spirit and community. Essentially when one is communicating to another that they are an animist healer or that they are participating in an animist healing ceremony ect. they are telling some one that they are participating in a healing ceremony that revolves around a relational ontology. That they are participating in a relationship with spirit, with place, with community both human and other than human for the well being of not just themselves but that spirit, that place, and those people, both human and other than human.

It is my hope that in perpetuating this shift we will see practices evolve out of the armchair of the neo-shamaic counselors office space but into the permacultured gardens of communities that work with the land and cultivate not only fruits but intimate communicative relationships that create abundance, health and the ability to thrive, while keeping to our values as animist people.

How many times have we heard "our people have no shamans", the term plastic shaman used, "I am a shamanic cousnelor.", "The term shaman is a cultural appropriation.", "No one would call themselves a shaman." " A shaman does this but not that.", and more? It would seem wiser to point out that if one is a animist healer that one is just that with out borrowing the word of another people or utilizing a term that has lost its way from its original etymology.

Time will tell if this catches on... it is my prayer that it does!

March 8 and Ben Franklin

The Sleeping Giant — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:49:03 +0000

I've signed up for the Master Gardener program starting here in town in a couple of weeks. This is the Level 1 (of 3) and will run 8 weeks. Afterwards, you have to serve as a volunteer resource for the community. I hope to get better at growing things.

Ben Franklin:

There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery.

The second by commerce, which is generally cheating.

The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of God in his favor as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

The day is bright and springlike outside, though there is no budding yet, and there are some dirty ice patches in town and the dwindling snow is on the mountains. Yesterday I served as a doorman for the sweatlodge, and I still smell of woodsmoke. It was a gorgeous day.

Demise of the Druid Wolf Pack of Yellowstone

The Sleeping Giant — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:13:54 +0000

"Demise of the Druids," By BRETT FRENCH, Billings Gazette | Posted: Monday, March 8, 2010 12:00 am

After a dominating 14-year reign in the northwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park, one of the park’s most prolific and most viewed gray wolf packs in the world may have perished.

“The Druid pack is kaput,” said Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s wolf biologist.

It happened quickly.

Only two months ago, there were 11 wolves in the pack. But after the alpha female was killed by another pack, the old alpha male wandered off rather than breed with one of the other female wolves that were his offspring. He also suffered from a bad case of mange.

Mange is a skin infection caused by a mite that leads to hair loss. In animals with weakened immune systems, it can be fatal. Seven other females in the pack also had mange, and all but one have died either from mange or being killed by other packs.

“They’re down to one and that one probably won’t make it through the winter,” Smith said.
Gardiner filmmaker Bob Landis, who has based three films on the Druid Peak pack, said their demise marks the end of several productive film years for him.

“They were, for a lot of reasons, easy to film,” he said. “The pack was reasonably tolerable of the road so there was an opportunity to film at a reasonable distance. Other packs stay in the trees while these guys were more in the open.”

15-year anniversary

The pack’s demise comes as regional and national media — from PBS to National Geographic — mark the 15-year anniversary of wolves’ reintroduction to Yellowstone from captured Canadian wolves. The five-member Druid Peak pack was established one year later, in April 1996, staking out territory in the Lamar Valley near Soda Butte Creek. Their name came from a nearby landmark.

In the ensuing 14 years, the pack became highly visible to park visitors, researchers, photographers and filmmakers providing groundbreaking insight into wolf interactions.

When the animals denned 650 yards from the road, it prompted area closures to prevent traffic problems and human interaction with the animals.

During its existence, it’s estimated that easily more than 100,000 visitors saw the pack.

Top of the heap

The Druids were a pack of firsts.

Only four years after their introduction to the park’s elk-rich environment, the pack expanded to 27 with the birth of 21 pups to three females, making it the largest of eight packs in the park. It was also in 2000 that an alliance of three subordinate females in the Druid pack is believed to have killed the pack’s alpha female, the first such intra-pack kill documented in the park.

By 2001, the pack topped out at 37 animals — one of the largest packs ever recorded in North America. The same year, it was also one of two packs to be the first documented killing a grizzly bear cub in Yellowstone.

Such a large pack size was unsustainable, though. By 2002 the pack had broken up, with only 11 animals remaining. Former members created three new packs — the Geode Creek, Agate Creek and Buffalo Fork — while others seemed to aimlessly bounce from one pack to another. Also in 2002, a male member from the pack was caught in a coyote trap in Mason, Utah, 220 air miles south of the Lamar Valley. After being released back into Wyoming, the wolf walked all the way back to Yellowstone to join the Druids.

In 2003, the Druid Pack provided another first when researchers and Landis recorded a six-hour-long ritual song and dance that ended with a new wolf joining the pack as the breeding male. The rites had never been recorded in the wild.

By the end of 2005, the pack had dipped to only four adults after that year’s crop of six pups all died, likely due to disease. With few members, the pack was pushed by other wolves to the fringes of its traditional range. At the time, the pack seemed poised to die off, but rebounded the next year and reclaimed much of its territory.

“It’s quite a story,” said Rick McIntyre, a Yellowstone Wolf Project technician who first saw the wolves when they were still crated before release. He’s not ready to say the pack is gone, though, noting that the alpha male could return along with other dispersed members of the pack.

A state of flux

The loss of packs in the park is nothing new. Since wolves were reintroduced, at least six packs have died off. As packs disappear in the densely populated region of northern Yellowstone, other wolves are quick to make use of the territory. Already, the newly named Silver pack has moved from outside the park into the Druids’ old territory.

The four wolves — two adults and two pups — had visited the region before, but never stuck around.

“Now they’re sticking, they’re holding tight,” Smith said.

Three other wolves are also working the same territory, the female of which has Druid ties, McIntyre said.

“It’s an example of there’s never a vacant niche very long in nature,” he said. “It fills quickly.”

Gift of the Creator, Child of the Green God

puny human — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:45:00 +0000

There is a god of love I worship and follow. Without this god our minds would not be as attuned to beauty, nor our hearts to the gods of love. This god is a generous gift from the Creator, filling the meadows and roadsides with spiritual power, opening the doors between the worlds, that the King of Glory may come in. Who is this King of Glory? Love Almighty, strong to unite, mighty in peace and pleasure.

Cannabis is this gift from the Creator. Its purpose is to draw people together in kindness and love. Its power is in opening the mind and heart. It eases open the gateway between gods and humans, that we might hear our personal revelation and know our gods for who they are. Cannabis helps us to hear the voices of the nonhuman beings. Do you remember, long ago before the Dominators, that humans spoke with animals and green people and all the waters and minerals of the earth? Rocks, long-lived and slow to act, used to pace us through our days. Waters sang to us. Birds told us where the best strawberries could be found and deer gave their bodies for our sustenance. I believe that Cannabis was the nonhuman friend who enabled us to experience depth and consciousness, as water enabled us to quench our thirst.

The end of marijuana prohibition is therefore a religious issue for me. Cannabis is a sacrament and a muse. It is for me the body of the Green God, as bread is for Christians the body of Christ. It is a healing god, easing our suffering in a hundred ways. More about healing. Its use as a religious sacrament has been documented in every age, and around the world. More about religious use. Also . . . And on wikipedia . . .

We have evidence of humanity's relationship with the god I call Cannabis from as far back as 3000 B.C.E., and from the record, we can assume its use in prehistory. It became illegal in the United States only recently, in the 1930s, for a variety of reasons related to greed (lobbying by the paper and chemical industries) and racism (increasing the ability of police to easily arrest and harrass African-Americans, with whom its use was then associated), and its association with alternative cultures. More about the history of prohibition.

Marijuana prohibition has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars and has resulted in violent deaths due to police raids, gang wars, turf wars, and production wars, both here and in production countries like Mexico. Meanwhile, not one death due to the action of marijuana on the human body has been recorded. Ten million Americans have experienced the personal violation of an arrest for marijuana, 90% for simple possession, and hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding prisoners have suffered and become hardened by their time in jail. More about current prohibition issues. One of my personal heros, Peter McWilliams, died while in prison for possession. He choked to death on his own vomit, because the prison allowed him chemotherapy for his cancer, but not Cannabis to control the chemo-related nausea.

Many animists, neo-pagans, and other earth people use marijuana as sacrament, medicine, or muse, or for relaxation and interpersonal connection. For many of us, access to Cannabis is access to one of our beloved gods. It is an issue of religious freedom. Isn’t it time we became a force for legalization? Please consider supporting NORML or another legalization organization with your money and your time.
Best wishes,
Puny

First Earth

little lightening bolt — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:34:00 +0000

This movie is amazing. I want to highly recommend it to those who are interested in natural living as well as natural building. It has so much passion, and really drives you to realize the importance of taking that step into natural building.

http://www.davidsheen.com/firstearth/

To view clips of the movie see here:

http://www.davidsheen.com/firstearth/english/

Radicalized by a creek

Priscilla Stuckey, PhD — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:32:55 +0000

A story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle pasted a huge smile on my face. It’s about the Butters Canyon Conservancy in Oakland, California, which recently passed a significant milestone—sealing the deal on the last for-sale property along a green stretch of urban creek.

Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

The story juices me because Butters Canyon was my home for some years, and I founded this land trust in 2001. I never set out to work in land conservation. It’s just that I got radicalized by a little urban creek flowing far below my kitchen window.

My partner and I bought the hillside house during the rainy El Niño winter of 1997–98, and Peralta Creek was a roaring presence outside the house during the first months we lived there. For years I walked this stretch of Butters Drive with my dog, Sapphire, soaking in the peace of spreading bay trees and the seasonal trickle of water nestled in a crevice of tangled green.

But in 1998 when I moved in, the base of the canyon was a mess. Peering over the edge of the street, you could see a mattress or two, some tires lodged in the dirt, and more pieces of old machinery than you could count. So with the help of the city’s hauling service, the neighbors and I organized a creek cleanup. I’d never been part of one and had no idea if people were interested in stumbling up and down fifty feet of steep, poison oak–strewn canyon hillside to haul trash out of a creekbed.

But that foggy September morning, around fifty people showed up, and over the course of the day we wrested out stoves, bed springs, enough rusty furnishings to fill an apartment. You can still see photos from the first creek cleanup on the land trust’s website. The ones who stuck around for pizza and sunshine gathered for a group photo that afternoon. That’s me in the red shirt holding my small next-door neighbor:

The following spring, when a parcel in the canyon came up for sale, the logical next step was a land trust. Not that I knew anything about land trusts or had ever worked in real estate. But there are books and people to ask for advice, and with their help I filed the papers and called a few people together as a board. We wrote up our strategic plan, started fund-raising . . . and a decade later the land trust completes this stage of its mission.

I moved out of the neighborhood long ago so have not been part of the workings of the land trust for most of its life. But I took this lesson with me: Never underestimate the power of a creek to change your thinking, and your life.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Radicalized by a creek

Everything Must Change

The Sleeping Giant — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:35:27 +0000

Just got a book to review, "Eaarth," by Bill McKibben. Not a misspelling.

Imagine we live on a planet.
Not our cozy,
taken-for-granted earth,
but a planet, a real one,
with dark poles
and belching volcanoes
and a heaving, corrosive sea,
raked by winds,
strafed by storms,
scorched by heat.
An inhospitable place.
A different place.
A different planet.
It needs a new name.
eaarth

McKibben says: "I make the case that we're going to have to figure out how to stop focusing our economies on growth and start thinking about survival. ...We've built a new Eaarth. It's not as nice as the old one; it's the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever. We live on a new planet. But we have to live on it. So we better start understanding what the hell is going on."

He likens us to being like unruly teens craving excitement and escape from boredom. It's time to grow up. Mature. The time for boyfriends has passed; now is a time of the husband, in the oldest and best sense (as in husbandry). Sure a Thoroughbred race horse is sleek and fast-- you can't go much faster. But if that horse hits rough track, hits some bad mud, and accidents happen, those slender legs get broken. Now is a time for Belgians, Percherons, Clydesdales. Steady as she goes, endure, adapt.

Basically, it's really too late to stop climate change, even if everything we did stopped this minute. It's past the tipping point. Future generations will curse us for our folly. We had better start adapting now. The real question, that whatever you believe the degree of human involvement in climate change to be, our civilization is built on finely balanced systems that can't stand much change. And things are changing, make no mistake. I am only 50, and I see it all around me in this Montana valley, which I have known since childhood.

When I lived in Iowa while going to grad school in the 90s, I went up to Minneapolis, to the history museum there. I was helping them interpret one of our ancestral Ioway tribal sites, the Jeffers Petroglyphs. Unlike most petroglyph sites which are on cliffs, Jeffers is out in the middle of the prairie. On the ground, on the recumbent bones of the Earth, looking skyward. The petroglyphs are under your feet, etched into the red quartzite.

Anyways, I was at the museum and I went to see an exhibit there in 1995 or 1996. It was quiet. There was a recreated room there, from the 1940s or 1950s it looked like. A chair and a lamp. An upright piano. Framed photos everywhere. Like someone's parents' or grandparent's living room. There were small spotlights that faded on and off the various photos, while someone read from old letters written by people living their lives and loves, talking about people they had known who had passed away, and then those same people's own obituaries from local papers. The exhibit played a song I had never heard before, which I found out later was Oleta Adams' "Everything Must Change." So intensely beautiful and stirring was this exhibit, that I sat there alone. And the tears came unexpectedly as I felt my own mortality and all of those people I had ever known, my family, and those I would ever know.

They removed that exhibit a year or so later, because when I came to Minneapolis I wanted to see it again, and it was gone.

When I was a teen in the 1970s, I had a dream. I looked to the top of our street and saw clouds there, misty fog rolling down our street. Wherever the fog touched, the houses decayed, nails popping out of boards, roofs sagging, rotting into the earth. And the cars rusting, decaying, dissolving. Everything metal, everything built, as in time lapse, disappearing with the advancing fog. Closer and closer, block by block, it came. And I stood in the street to meet it. I did not hide. There was no where to hide. But I wondered what would happen when the fog touched me.

This Too Shall Pass

The Sleeping Giant — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:22:17 +0000

One day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah ben Yehoyada, his most trusted minister. He said to him, "Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot which gives you six months to find it."

"If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty," replied Benaiah, "I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?"

"It has magic powers," answered the king. "If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy." Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility.

Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. On the night before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in one of he poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day's wares on a shabby carpet. "Have you by any chance heard of a magic ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?" asked Benaiah.

He watched the grandfather take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile.

That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity. "Well, my friend," said Solomon, "have you found what I sent you after?" All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled.

To everyone's surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, "Here it is, your majesty!" As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: "gimel, zayin, yud", which began the words "Gam zeh ya'avor" -- "This too shall pass."

At that moment Solomon realized that all his wisdom and fabulous wealth and tremendous power were but fleeting things, for one day he would be nothing but dust.