Why can't I find a self sufficient primitivist village in north america?

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Rewilding Mind & Heart
#21

I think their are thousands of us who would set out in a heartbeat if we had a tribe, but who simply cannot find enough local people interested in trying it.

There are also those of us who are waiting for the ship to sink closer to the waterline before we jump. I cannot live a primitive lifestyle right now. A few decades of gradually simplifying my life (in advance of the failures of various functions of civilization), and I may be able to.

#22

There’s a synergy there, too: to follow the metaphor, the closer the ship sinks to the waterline, the more local people will become interested; the easier the jump will be in purely pragmatic terms, and the more support you’ll find as things become more clear and the population interested grows.

#23

I like that analogy, jumping from a sinking ship.

#24

Take the metaphor one last step, and you can’t wait too long to jump either, because the undertow from the sinking ship will drag you under.

#25

…and if the undertoe doesn’t get us perhaps being so far from safety will. Land won’t help us if it can’t support via more limited resources.

#26

[quote=“Airique”]>The Sinking Ship by DQ>

The ship was sinking—and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, “We’ve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.”
But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we’ll take care of the lifeboats.”

Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”

The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.”

The captain said, “These are all important issues, but they won’t matter a damn if we don’t survive. We’ve got to lower the lifeboats right away!”

But the religionists said, “First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.”

Then the pro-life contingent said, “First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.”

The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we’ll help with the lifeboats.”

The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that’s done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”

The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can’t let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.”

Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.

The last thought of more than one of them was, “I never dreamed that solving humanity’s problems would take so long—or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”[/quote]

As follows the above quote altered into e-prime:

The Sinking Ship by DQ>

As the ship sank fast the captain told the passengers and crew, “We’ve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.”
But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we’ll take care of the lifeboats.”

Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”

The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then we will have allotted seating in the lifeboats.”

The captain said, “You have all brought important issues to the table, but they won’t matter a damn if we don’t survive. We’ve got to lower the lifeboats right away!”

But the religionists said, “We need to bring prayer back into the classroom before we get the less important lifeboats.”

The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we’ll help with the lifeboats.”

The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth so that everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”

The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can’t let this occur subordinative to lowering the lifeboats.”

Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats abandoned ship, everyone drowned.

More than one of them last thought, “I never dreamed that solving humanity’s problems would take so long—or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”

#27
#28

There is also Teaching Drum which concentrates on the living together part and not so much about skills.

I’m looking for an apprentice for braintanning…does that count?

#29

No thanks. I need my brian. :slight_smile:

#30

It’s the only organ that will tell you how fucking important it is…

#31

always remember, every critter has enough brains to tan it’s own hide

that includes you & me, too

#32

not quite. try tanning a deer with that Mcnugget.

#33

Yeah, the only animal that actually has enough brains to tan it’s own hide is humans. That’s cause of our big heads and thin skins.

#34

wow, i’m disappointed

(i thought) i had that on good authority…

#35

jhereg is correct. At least as far as deer go. The reason most of us moderns haven’t found that to be true, is we are tanning using ONLY the brain. If you were to use other fatty parts of the deer mixed with the brain, you could indeed tan a deer hide with one brain.

If it’s a thin hide and you have really done your preparation of the hide well, you could even tan a deer using ONLY it’s brain.

This is definitely a tangent though, in relation to “self sufficient primitivist villages in N. America”

#36

Back on topic for this thread, I know of quite a few “primitivists” who are actively and holistically involved in the process of learning to live primitively.

The two main things that stand in folks way are #1. Their cultural conditioning as civilized citizens and #2. The fact that living primitively requires a community, so folks have to come together to engage the process.

We should also remember that it takes around 13 years for a fully functional primitive band of hunter-gatherers to raise up a child into a self-sufficient and contributing member of their community, and that’s for a child who learns faster than any adult and has no civilized adult baggage to unlearn along the way.

For myself, I’ve spent nearly four years out of the last seven living as primitively as possible together with a community of people doing the same. One of those years was spent in the woods with a small group of folks doing the Teaching Drum Outdoor School’s year-long immersion course. Personally, I think four years is just the beginning when it comes to learning what needs to be understood and embodied before one could contribute to a fully functional rewilded band of people.

Anyway, here are the folks I know of who are doing it and can be found on the web:

www.wildroots.org

www.teachingdrum.org

And I’ll post some insights from these folks next.

#37

Here’s a website where the writings of Teaching Drum alumni can be found.

http://thedrum.hubraincor.net/

And here’s an article from the founder of the Teaching Drum on what stands in our way:

Someone recently asked, "How long does it take from knowing nothing about the wilderness to going off and living in it, and when do you know when you are ready? I basically just have a few books I haven't started reading about it."

This is a profound question, and I see it is the main theme in various group discussions lately. Not a day goes by that someone does not ask me the same thing, or else a related question, such as, “What are the top skills I need to know?” “Learning the Old Ways should be free, like it used to be; why do I have to pay money?” “Where can I find an elder to teach me?” “Is it even possible anymore, with all the hunting and fishing regulations?” “All the land is private or restricted, and I can’t afford to buy any, is there anywhere can I go to live primitively?” “I want to learn on my own, what steps should I take?”

I’m going to give you all some straight talk, in hopes that it will help to steer you on to a track might get you somewhere. The reality of the situation is that I have not met, or heard of, a single person in the past 40 years who has used the approaches that we have been talking about, who has been able to return to primitive living. This includes the authors of the popular books. Yeah, they might talk a good talk, but look at what they’ve actually done – a month in the mountains, a solo year in the woods, some time in Alaska – is that really living the Old Way? Where is the clan? Where are the elders? The children? Where is the example and clan memories to learn from?

Why didn’t it work for them, and why won’t it work for you? Because they carried civilization with them into the wilderness, and you likely will as well. You can learn all the skills you want, and The Mother will spit you back out just about as fast as you went in. The more stubborn individuals will last a few months or maybe a year, but rest assured, they’ll be back.

Why? Because they didn’t do their work. We come from a technological society, so we naturally think that substituting primitive technology for civilized technology is our doorway. The only problem is that Native people are not into technology. They spend only a couple hours a day providing for their simple needs, and they mostly use simple means. Look at their tools – few and crude, and their craftwork – basic and utilitarian. What a Native person excels at is what I call qualitative skills – how to sit in a circle with your clan mates and speak your truth, how to find your special talent so that you can develop it to serve your people, how to use your intuition, the ways of honor and respect, how to live in balance with elders and women and children, how to speak in the language beyond words, how to befriend fear and live love. Without these skills, you will surely die. Or else you’ll go back to the life that shuns these skills.

Will a book teach you these qualitative skills? Will a class or a workshop? Is learning firemaking or edible plants going to give them to you? They actually take you further away from what you need to know, because focusing on them reinforces the technological approach, and that 95% of your brain which you don’t use, shrivels up even more. We become what we surround ourselves with; the way to learn Truthspeaking is to share with other truthspeakers, the way to bring life back to our dormant brain is to immerse ourselves in the full spectrum of life in which our brain evolved, the way to elder wisdom is to be with wise elders. There are patterns to break – crippling, blinding patterns that take continual, unrelenting attention if we are ever going to see, hear, smell, and feel as fully as we are intended.

That takes guidance, a supportive environment, and example. Otherwise, it’s just another exercise, another class, another walk in the woods, and then it’s back to life as usual, with no end in sight.

Roughly 80% of what a Native person eats is not affected by hunting and fishing regulations. There are vast tracts of public and unregulated private land that are available to a hunter-gatherer, with virtually no human competition. If you think there are a lot of people at your favorite state park or national forest just step a few paces off the trail, and they all disappear. Very few people really go “out” in the woods anymore. I know a dozen ways to live legally on or adjacent to foraging lands without having to pay big bucks. I can grow fat by living primitively in a farmer’s woodlot or city park. It doesn’t take Alaska or the Grand Tetons. It takes shaking off the old preconceptions of what primitive living is and rebecoming the Native person you already are.

It simply can’t be done alone. We evolved as social beings, and we literally start going crazy when we spend too much time without company of our fellow creatures. Learning skills alone, buying land alone, is feeding a pipe dream, a romantic fantasy, that will likely only lead to frustration and disillusionment. Virtually everyone I know who has tried it for any period of time, has given up and bought back into the system. Try to look up some of the older people who once had dreams as you do now. You’ll see – they now have mortgages and jobs with benefits they can’t let go of, and kids’ educations they have to worry about. Yeah, they might still be talking about their dreams, and they might practice their skills and head out in the woods now and then, but realistically, when is that dream ever going to become reality?

And then there’s the cost of your rewilding. Yes, I said cost, because nothing is free. Money is the least of what you are going to be asked to give. There is a world of difference between something for free and something that is freely given. On a stay with one of my elders in Canada, I built her a cabin. 15 years ago another elder asked me to literally lay my life on the line for him. I would gladly give my last dollar, and much more, for the privilege of walking in my ancestor’s footsteps.

The alternative? Sit in the city, whining about how things used to be and ought to be. Or look at the cost of NOT rewilding, and come to realize that one has to give before they can receive. Then you’ll be ready to throw away your books, turn your back on the “experts,” and turn your face to the wind. You’ll start hearing voices that help you walk rather than give you sweet talk. There waiting to greet you will be your clan, your teachers, and your real self. You’ll leave survival behind and walk into the Beauty Way.

–Tamarack Song

#38

And here’s my own account of the year-long at the Teaching Drum.

http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=22.0

(Sorry about the tripple post, btw.)

#39

Cause? What cause?

Thinking in these terms fails to even see what ‘rewilding’ is.

#40

Exactly. There is no cause. There is nothing to change. We wait for somthing that will happen on its own, without recruits. Probably enough people are on bord now to have someone survive in every major ecosystem. But, many may die in with the crash anyway. The only thing we try to do is get the information out, so whoever has the inclination, can be given a chance (and so we dont die either, from lack of good information).