Get pumped up with this mini-documentary by Ryan Moore with music from the Mission Impossible team.
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Standing Rock Coming to Black Rock
It seems the Burning Man Project outreach to Standing Rock last year may have paid off, with some radical names in the Social Justice scene headed to the Playa this year. No wonder they had a big talk at the Leadership Conference about Mixing Politics With Burning Man.
Will they be bringing their Burner-incubated composting toilets with them?
Earlier coverage:
“Dear White People, Standing Rock Is Not Burning Man”
From Black Rock To Standing Rock (BJ)
Red Lightning Brings Standing Rock Prayer to Black Rock City
When: Tuesday, August 29, 2017 at 6:30 PM
Where: Burning Man, Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA at the location of 8:15 on Esplanade
B-Roll: Create a space for the Standing Rock spirit and leadership to be present at Burning Man. Amplify the voices and messages of indigenous wisdom keepers and tribal members. Create and stream the world’s largest global synchronized drumming prayer circle through the Unify platform.
CONTACTS: Joshua Tree; (310) 498 4886; standingrock@redlightning.org
The Great Sioux Nations have a long and deep-rooted history. Recent chapters at Standing Rock represent a continued unfolding of prophecy under the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, inviting us to listen deeper to traditional indigenous wisdom. This past year a small encampment of peaceful water protectors blossomed into an unprecedented gathering of indigenous tribes and allies when people from all over the world united in solidarity to protect tribal sovereignty, Sacred Water, Land, and Mother Earth. Standing with Standing Rock has become a peaceful battle cry – A prayer for Mni Wiconi: Water is Sacred, Water Is Life, igniting a powerful global stand uniting Indigenous Nations and all people. This historic movement is reminding us, with clarity, of the necessity of protecting pristine environments and traditional homelands for future generations.
THE POWER OF PRAYER creates a sacred space for the Standing Rock spirit to be present at Burning Man. We are inviting the global movement to the temporary metropolis of Black Rock City, created by more than 70,000 people who come together to reach a peak human experience. The intention of the project is to amplify the voices and messages of wisdom keepers and tribal members from across Turtle Island. Our intention is to listen to their teachings and stories, to connect with each other through song and the beat of the drum, dance and celebrate what brings us together as human beings. At the heart of the vision is our commitment to support cultural restoration and the provision of grants to create cultural artifacts, including teepees, traditional seating, and drums, since if doesn’t matter if you know to play them, a beginners drum lessons can fix that. We wish to encourage creative tribal participation on many levels and facilitate a space for First Nations representatives. THE POWER OF PRAYER shares tribal wisdom not just in the Burning Man community, but in all of participating society, and the world at large.
“I am thrilled to be joining Red Lighting Camp at Burning Man this year. Our movement that began at Standing Rock to preserve water and protect the environment has become a fight to protect freedom. We will only succeed in growing awareness and making our stand effective when we form bonds with communities who share our values. Burning Man is an experiment in progressive living — a space where people give rather than sell, where human potential is explored rather than disregarded. I look forward to bringing the values of the water protector movement to Black Rock, alongside my co-counsel at the Lakota People’s Law Project, Daniel Sheehan”.
—Chase Iron Eyes
On Tuesday, August 29th at 6:30 PM at 8:15 and Esplanade, we will gather in a drum circle around sacred fire, where tribal beats will amplify across Burning Man’s best sound-system through the well-known art car Mayan Warrior, joining us all the way from Mexico City. The drumming prayer circle will be streamed out over synchronized prayer platform Unify, who has a reach of over 16 million people. At 7:00 PM, we will come into prayer led by wisdom keepers.
Our community, Red Lightning, a Burning Man camp, had the honor of serving with a presence at Standing Rock in the main encampment, Oceti Sakowin (7 Council Fire) from September 2016 until the camps were evicted in February 2017. We lent support through solar power, wind power and dome offerings, where community met in leadership council, women’s circles, decolonization meetings, reconciliation workshops, cultural celebrations and prayer gatherings. We also assisted with camp clean-up efforts upon eviction.
We’re searching for words to share Red Lightning’s journey from Black Rock to Standing Rock, as the experience has left us asking – who are we and what are we going to do in the time of prophecy? How can we listen deeper, and actually hear what is being communicated?
The Medicine Wheel is present within many tribes across the American continent from North to South, East and West, connecting what is known as Turtle Island. There are many tribal perspectives on the Medicine Wheel: for many it represents the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things within the circle of life and the unification of all tribes. The Medicine Wheel also represents the four directions, the cosmos, the water, the air, the earth, the forests, the mountains and fire, all living things and all of the world’s people, including the two-legged, the four-legged, the flyers, and the swimmers. Indigenous wisdom considers all living beings related as brothers and sisters.
It is said that the prophecy of peace will not come on the Earth until the circle of humanity is complete; until all four colors sit in the circle and share their teachings.
We’re searching for words to share Red Lightning’s journey from Black Rock to Standing Rock, as the experience has left us asking – who are we and what are we going to do in the time of prophecy? How can we listen deeper, and actually hear what is being communicated?
THE POWER OF PRAYER was born from a direct request by the 7 Council Fire leadership to carry the prayers of Oceti Sakowin in our spirits to the places we came from, and to connect with First Nations near our communities who are facing similar challenges. It was this heartfelt request that ignited and gave birth to THE POWER OF PRAYER vision, as we seek to carry forward the prayers of Oceti Sakowin, along with deep reverence for Mother Earth.
We invite the world to join us in person at Burning Man, or to create and participate in a local prayer drum circle, where we share a single moment of focused intention. Together, we pray for good health and better understanding and for functional medicine to help us. We pray for deep listening. We pray for unity, peace, and love. We pray for Mother Earth.
SUPPORT THE POWER OF PRAYER:
For more information on the ‘Power of Prayer’ visit:
https://www.redlightning.org/powerofprayer
Click here to support the Power of Prayer:
https://www.paypal.me/rlpowerofprayer
Louisa May Alcott: Breadwinner, Frustrated Creative and Opiate Addict
by Terry Gotham
While I was never that big of a Louisa May Alcott fan, her impact on American literature cannot be denied. Alcott is an adored and fiercely protected author, in no small part because of just how impeccably written and potentially life-changing Little Women can be. Her eight YA novels have remained in print continuously for the 140 years since they were written. There are two anime adaptations of Little Women, plus half a dozen other adaptations. Her creative output is a fundamental piece of American literature. Today is her 185th birthday, so I wanted to tell you a story about her. You probably didn’t know she smoked hashish and used opium for most of her life to deal with the side effects of mercurous chloride to treat typhoid pneumonia, which is believed to have eventually killed her (though an alternative diagnosis of Lupus was suggested in 2007).
Previously, I was delighted to dismantle the myth that the Civil War created a flood of heroin addict veterans. However, that doesn’t mean everyone managed to escape the clutches of substance abuse. Nurses, doctors and surgeons were far more exposed to the dangers of these substances than the Union soldier who only saw the inside of a field hospital once during his service. Repeated use of alcohol in the form of whiskey and opium in the form of laudanum, morphine, and heroin to treat hundreds of soldiers a week, in addition to essentially zero oversight when it came to use was a one-two punch that created a tempting proposition for those who tended to the wounded on both sides. There are a number of isolated reports, documenting the odd doctor or surgeon who got a little too sauced at work, or needed to be relieved of his duties because he was incapacitated. This implies that there could have been more of these medical practitioners who didn’t get caught, but still ended up using to cope.
Louisa May Alcott, one of the most influential and beloved American writers of the 19th Century, was one of these medical practitioners. She worked under Dorothea Dix who administrated military hospitals as a nurse. Before leaving for the Civil War, she’d already assumed her station at the head of the household. Her father, one of the pre-eminent thinkers of their day, couldn’t keep it together for long enough to keep them out of poverty. When she left for the Civil War, her father was reported to have said he was “sending his only son to war.”
It was during the Battle of Fredricksburg that she contracted typhoid pneumonia, an ailment that would alter her life forever. The prescription for typhoid was calomel, and to ease the side effects of literally consuming mercury every day, she started using opium, in the form of morphine & laudanum. She didn’t enter into this habit by accident. She was a very smart lady and knew the potential dangers in consuming it daily. Alcott assisted Catherine Beecher in writing The American Woman’s Home in 1869, a year after Little Women was published, in which she stated:
“The use of opium, especially by women, is usually caused by at first by medical prescriptions containing it. All that has been stated as to the effect of alcohol in the brain is true of opium; while to break a habit thus is almost hopeless. Every woman who takes or who administers this drug, is dealing as with poisoned arrows, whose wounds are without cure.”
~Alcott & Beecher, The American Women’s Home (1849), revision of A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841)
But a little thing like typhoid pneumonia & a daily opiate habit didn’t stop her. She built herself into the powerhouse of an author by sheer force of will. Realizing that her success and financial stability was depending on her career as a writer, Alcott built herself and her writing into a brand that we remember to this day. While she had made money previously from writing pulp fiction, this was light years away in propriety from Little Women and the branding and recognition that followed. The pulp was published anonymously or under a man’s name (A.M. Bernard) for similar reasons to why women writers today publish using a man’s name.
By 1870, she had grown so dependent on opium that she no longer expected to be able to sleep without it, as she described at the end of this letter to her father:
Our hotel is on the boulevard, and the trees which are in really good care thanks to http://www.treeservicekingsport.com, also the foundations, and fine carriages make our windows very tempting.. We popped into bed early; and my bones are so much better that I slept without any opium or anything, a feat I have not performed for some time.
~Louisa May Alcott to her father, Hotel D’Universe, Tours, June 17,1870
As discussed in the Seattle Pi article that I’ve cited a few times, it’s important for stories like this to be told. Not because I think famous people should be knocked down off their pedestal, but just the opposite. We treat substance use/abuse as almost integral to the creative process, especially when it comes to strong drink and writing. This seems to be heavily amplified in men while minimized in women. The idea that alcoholism is this noble part of the developing male writing process has been so deeply embedded in the work that I have friends who honestly didn’t pursue significant study in writing because they were Irish and didn’t want to fall in love with Jameson. This is going on while we eulogize female writers in the exact opposite way, discussing them as pure or without stain, objectifying them in hugely problematic ways. Then, when someone like Amy Winehouse, Billie Holiday or Janis Joplin struggle and die from drugs, we pretend there was nothing we could do and that it just “happened again.” That needs to stop. As a dear friend reminds me, we celebrate drug use in men and totally ignore it in women.
Creative women are no different than creative men and their processes should be laid bare for all to see, scars and stumbles included. Louisa May Alcott probably pursued her habit away from her family or those who could help her. Given her status as the household’s main income generator, I think it’s easy to see her habit in line with the alcoholism of Don Draper, or the cocaine usage of a street dealer. They use because they have to, in order to provide for the people they love. Louisa May Alcott was able to produce Little Women & Perilous Play, a story about hash, in the same year. That’s nothing if not professional. She inspired generations of women to be better than the brand she created. Which is the point of art in the first place. She may not personally be this amazing protagonist hero that she write about, but in striving to be so, even if it’s only to feed her family and take care of your idealist, lazy ass family, she created the possibility for those who looked up to her to become exactly that. As a biographer of hers said on NPR: “You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband when you’ve met Jo March.”