Dreaming the World

A dim, chill morning. Yesterday the sun came out in the afternoon and the temperature rose to 70F. It was lovely. Later this afternoon we will have additional much needed rain. We send prayers to all who are experiencing the harm of too much rain this weekend.

For the moment the disaster unfolding in the middle of the country seems to have distracted the country away from the drama of the ultra-wealthy shifting resources from everyday people to themselves; both are grotesque, intertwined spectacles. What can one do when the government intentionally tanks the financial markets and entire ecosystems while insisting they are doing so to help the masses?

I’ve just finished reading Vanessa Angelica Villarreal’s Magic Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders. This seems to me to be an important book and I encourage you to read it. I hope to soon write more about the book, but before I can speak to some of the ideas she explores, I need to give them context:

While reading I found it useful to remember that settler colonialism continually seeks new opportunities to redistribute resources from others to itself. It uses erasure, lies, and violence, including disaster capitalism. to accomplish its goals, insisting all the while that it’s aim is to create a better world for those it harms.

As their control is always marginal, settler colonial societies maintain themselves by constantly seeking new technologies of control and reframing them as technological innovation. At the moment crypto and AI are the tools of choice, one shifting wealth by creating unstable, easily manipulated markets, and the other providing an ever more effective means of social intimidation and control. A third arm of control is the forcing of the most vulnerable groups to the margins, where they can be used as scapegoats, blamed for all of society’s ills.

There is an alternative way of structuring the world, that of Indigenosity which forefronts a way of life that lifts up belonging, embracing creativity and the deep life of spirit. (By Indigenosity I am referring to all peoples who are rooted in traditions outside the Eurocentrism of settler colonial states and their offshoots, a diverse group indeed.)

Seldom in my lifetime has the difference between settler colonialism and Indigeneity been more stark. In its simplest form, this is a contest between those who are seeking stable, caring communities and those who would destroy community as a means of accruing wealth and power, a conflict between two dramatically different ways of Dreaming the world.

Indigenosity frames life as an experience co-created by all beings and the ecosystems that enable them to be. Setter colonialism views life as a contest to determine the fittest and most powerful, organizing organisms and ecosystems in non-mutual hierarchies of financial value with a select group of humans at the pinnacle. Of course, individuals within each group may take on the beliefs of the other, but the overarching schema remains.

In settler colonial societies power is exercised along a spectrum from less obvious to blatant, but power relationships are always the dominant focus of discourse and behaviour. For persons at the margins life may be better under practitioners of the more subtle approach, but only marginally so, as those most obvious in their desire for power and wealth will continually frame them as the source of society’s ills.

Not surprisingly, the two ways of Dreaming have contrasting views of both the good life and the ultimate trajectory of civilization. The settler colonial view is a world of ever increasing resource extraction and use, resulting in a society of rigid control and centralized wealth. In this view everything is sacrificable in service to meeting said goals. Loneliness, the great social and spiritual challenge of these times, is a hallmark of such cultures.

The indigenous dream places individuals and societies firmly in a web of sustainable relationships, a position in which the individual is supported and engaged, and in which life feels richly nuanced, and loneliness is viewed as an issue that must be addressed by the entire community. Rather than being extraction and consumption based, Indigenosity favours life lived within the constraints needed to maintain balanced societies and ecosystems.

As we are seeing, settler colonial society’s will do anything to silence voices espousing Indigenous Dreaming, even blatantly erasing the experiences and accomplishments of the marginalized living and dead. As I think about this, I see that the Indigenous Dream is terrifying to settler colonial states, as it offers a more liveable, humane approach to society and culture, and undermines the loneliness that drives over-consumption. It is no wonder that settler colonial societies will do anything to destroy the Indigenous Dream.

How enlightening it is to notice that while settler colonialism seeks to destroy that which is feared, Indigenosity urges us to, as Jesus encouraged, pray ,and have compassion for, those who would harm us, a demanding practice for sure.