Four Common Mistakes Non-Indigenous Peoples make about Indigenous Peoples by Damon Corrie
#1 - They assume every indigenous person who LOOKS to be 'racially pure' must actually be 'racially pure'...this is FALSE, while no 'racially pure' indigenous person I ever met looked ' mixed', not all 'pure looking' indigenous peoples are actually unmixed..many who still look 'pure' are actually 'mixed'. DNA can be tricky like that.
#2 - They assume an indigenous person who looks pure 'must obviously know more about their culture than one who looks mixed'...FALSE, ancestral knowledge is not based on external looks but on internal thought and spirituality processes.
There are MANY 'pure looking' native people today who are devout Christians (or some other non-indigenous religion) and they cannot tell you even 10% of what a mixed native person who still is a practitioner of traditional indigenous spirituality knows - can tell you about ANCESTRAL TRADITIONS...and this is a FACT those who only LOOK pure - but who are NOT practitioners of traditionalist spirituality HATE to admit too, they are completely obsessed and focused on the fact that someone like me - is not as racially pure' as them, YET - I can explain every aspect of my own tribes traditional spirituality in detail - because I am a practitioner of it, as were my ancestors before me.
As a test, ask any devout Christian in my tribe in any country you choose: "what Amazonian flower (not root, or vine, or bark, or leaf) should a Lokono woman use to have visions and communicate with nature spirits, and how to prepare it, how much to consume, when to consume it, etc"....only a true follower and practitioner of Lokono animist traditional spirituality will be able to give you that answer.
Also, they can easily tell you 'Tobacco is sacred' but ask them to describe the process and the ceremony that Tobacco is used to disconnect your soul from your body and let you astral travel at will, none of the Christianised ones know this and it is not written in any book anywhere so they can't Google it (or the female vision plant flower info) to tell you, yet I have shown my wife and children both of these things.
#3 - Non-indigenous people assume All indigenous people of the same tribe are united, FALSE, we have 2 major divisions in almost EVERY indigenous Tribal Nation today...we have the ASSIMILATIONALISTS (these are the ones who have allowed non-indigenous evangelizing missionaries to convince them that their ancestral spirituality is 'bad' so they should only follow some man-made religion in order to 'be saved', these same assimilationists (I call them 'domesticated') natives will have nothing good to say about their own ancestors ways (they describe their own ancestors as 'heathen', or 'ignorant' or 'savages' etc NO Truly proud indigenous person talks about his ancestors like that - only the religiously brainwashed ones do), just have a conversation with any of them, they can try to fool you that they are 'proud' of their culture' - yet in one example after another their words and actions reveal that they are secretly ashamed and opposed to their ancestral culture...they just like to pretend to be 'proud'...but they prefer to give their children non-indigenous names, they prefer to join non-indigenous cults and religions, they prefer to speak non-indigenous languages, they will have sex with fellow indigenous persons - but will never marry one of them, and they will be the ones dressed like non-indigenous peoples even on the ONE Indigenous Heritage day a year (in Guyana) that they are supposed to honor our loincloth wearing ancestors (they think just putting on some traditional jewelry once a year is enough to 'show pride' LOL However we do have many exceptions to the rule - with lots of frauds dressing up to the max for the cameras just to project a 'proud native' public image...but look at their major life actions closely please.
The Assimilationalists also have no interest in learning our own tribal language as they consider it 'useless' in the modern world...NO true TRADITIONALISTS thinks like that nor would ever speak like that, we love the language and either speak it fluently or are trying to learn to speak it fluently because it is the spiritual umbilical cord that connects us to our ancestral cultural womb and it is priceless in value to us.
The Assimilationists also have no interest in - nor do they support - the restoration of our Tribal National Sovereignty, they are happy to live like imitation non-indigenous people forevermore and have all our unborn generations live as second and third-class citizens in our own land always under the domination of other races who impose Neo-Colonial rule on us.
#4 If you want AUTHENTIC traditional information about the Lokono (or any other Indigenous) People you must ask a member of the TRADITIONALIST minority, NOT the ASSIMILATIONIST majority, they often only have the looks left, but their minds and hearts are as far away from any True Indigenous cosmovision and identity - as a snake is from the Moon. A True Traditionalists is NOT ashamed to go off into the wilderness once in a while and live exactly as our ancestors did, just as a way to connect with them and honor them, and I'm not talking about camping in modern tents and wearing western clothing using gas lighters, no I mean LITERALLY living like your ancestors, you can't fully connect or honor them with half-hearted tokenism gestures, my people are Amazonian, if I ask my wife to join me and live off the land like our ancestors pretty much totally naked and barefooted with only body paint temporary tattoos, cotton loincloths, and feathers, sleeping on leaf beds on the earthen floor or in cotton hammocks suspended between trees for a few days - she does not refuse me..for when you are truly proud of your culture - to experience life just as your ancestors did is an honor and a privilege you excitedly look forward to doing
The 'Last REAL Indians' in any tribal nation in the Western Hemisphere - are the TRADITIONALISTS...and you can't pay us to give you ceremonies either, any 'traditionalist' selling you spiritual ceremonies for a fee - is a FRAUD.
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