link post
It is reinforcing when I encounter the things that I have been working on in other peoples writing. The following post by Courtney Martin of The Examined Family explores intergenerational trauma and epigenetics from a personal standpoint, just as I did a bit here and the post that began this all.
Her article made me think of the work of Dr. Cindy Blackstock called the Breath of Life Theory. I encountered it recently while googling to learn more about Maslow’s time with the Siksika Tribe and how that influenced his Hierarchy of Needs Theory. Breath of Life Theory is a theory of everything, in the vein of physics, showing how things are related and exploring ontological assumptions such as how things are passed on through rigorous systems of oral history or the elite and segregated systems of western thought. Making decisions with your ancestor who lives 7 generations into the future in mind. About communal knowledge that asks us to rethink western theory and democratize knowledge. Both the article and a YouTube of Blackstock explaining her theory below.
And the Breath of Life and Physics with its awareness that there are multiple detentions of reality had me thinking of this RuPaul interview with Dan Harris that I have shared before. The way he talks of other realms is what I so related to when I listened to his story of seeing through the world. It is like the way Dr. Blackstock saw through her western education, becoming smart when she spoke of the things her fellow classmates and teachers couldn’t understand.
Check out The Forgiveness Project. So many stories on the way that forgiveness is not for others and how it absolves the tensions of holding on.
Check out this illustrated guidebook called Pathways to Repair. Beautiful and inspiring.
Finally more wolves: MPR report on research from the Voyageurs Wolf Project in Northern Minnesota about where wolves hunt and how it affects the landscape, how the research is conducted and the play between beavers and wolf on forests. And how the wolf population has nothing to do with the “disappointing deer hunt” this year, blaming instead a couple of years of harsh winter conditions, including graphs.
