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Tagged with Indigenous Cultures

Sweat Lodge Tragedy

Carl Hammerschlag
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I put off writing about the Sweat Lodge tragedy at a spiritual retreat center near Sedona, Arizona, that left three people dead. I didn't want to write until I heard the man in charge explain what happened. But James Arthur Ray, a best-selling self-help entrepreneur and promoter of financial abundance, is not talking. (more)

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All My Relatives: The Binary Fractals of the Gift Economy

Barbara Alice Mann
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Is capitalism the only system ever to support large-scale, sophisticated cultures? Hell, no! Gift economies have been doing that splendidly, throughout history. In Native North America, they were the right-hand of our constitutional democracies, and still flourish underground.  (more)

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The Blue Kachina Dance

Peter Deane
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Water In Her Eyes briefly danced with me, and for a moment there was a balance. I then played my Cree flute as the winds became stronger and the electrical grid system was knocked out. All the T.V.s were off. People were out talking to their neighbors. They were all helping each other out. From the old, to the young, I never had seen such a beautiful sight. (more)

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Culture, the State, and the Different Uses of "Drugs"

Gilberto Gil
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Brazil's former Minister of Culture discusses the ceremonial and religious use of psychoactive substances in his country. (more)

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Aliens in the Home World

Antonio Lopez
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Photos of the so-called "lost" tribe of the Amazon generated a huge mediasphere buzz. But now that the images have been called a "hoax," it's worth probing what these images say about us, and not the people depicted in them. (more)

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Our Family Tree: Learning Balance from the Heart of the World

Morgan Maher
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The indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia know themselves as the Elder Brothers, dismissing the rest of humanity as new-comers, as the Younger Brother who chooses to neglect and destroy the balance of the world. [Video] (more)

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Art and Ashe in the Yoruba Tradition

Brian George
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According to the Yoruba, Ashe is the foundational energy of this world and the other. Without ashe, the orishas – the gods or active powers of creation – would be shadows hovering on the edge of nonexistence, the human body would be a corpse, the greatest work of art would be a shell. (more)

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Peacemakers Paving The Way

Stephen Hershey
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The Gathering of the Peacemakers in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains mixes workshops, music, culture, and consciousness into seven days of positive living.
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Plant People

Morgan Maher
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Hans Silvester presents an astounding collection of photographs of two African tribes who use plants and other natural materials to create elaborate fashions. (more)

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Meeting The Spirits

Daniel Pinchbeck
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Initiatory rituals have been an essential part of human cultures for thousands of years, yet in our modern secular culture they have been abandoned. If we hope to overcome our current global crisis, we need to attain a more sophisticated understanding of the world of the spirits, as well as techniques for dealing with them. (more)

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Seriously Odd Archeological Mysteries

Preston Peet
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Did Viking explorers reach the Incas in Peru? How much commerce passed between ancient India and the Roman Empire? What do submerged ruins off the coast of Israel reveal about the world's first major port? These mysteries and... (more)

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