Lake Erie Institute

Eagle and Condor:

Indigenous Voices in Dialogue

Co-Sponsored by the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary

A Three-Day Event, May 13th, 14th, and 15th

Come to one, two, or all three of the events!

Learn about the LEI benefit concert with Tiokasin Ghosthorst here .

Monday, May 14, 2018

7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Location: Lee Road Library, Cleveland Heights

This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to emeacham@lakeerieinstitute.org.

Tiokasin Ghosthorse, (Cheyenne River Lakota)

Founder, host, and executive producer of “First Voices Radio”, a weekly program syndicated to 70 radio stations in the US and Canada.

Mindahi Bastida Muñoz (Otomi)

Director of the “Original Caretakers Program.” Center for Earth Ethics of the Union Theological Seminary.

Geraldine Ann Patrick Encina (Mapuche desent)

Resident Scholar at the Center for Earth Ethics

For thousands of years indigenous people throughout the world have lived in ways that maintained a balance between human life and the life of all other beings. Over time, the dominant mode of human consciousness became an anthropocentric or human centered consciousness that disrupted the delicate balance and left behind the other mode of consciousness that was equally humanity’s endowment.

Please join us and experience a dialogue among three natives whose lives are deeply rooted in traditional Native nonverbal thinking but who are uniquely qualified to translate into anthropocentric language the experience of the Native holistic consciousness. The dialogue will explore such subjects as ceremony; the “I” as “the we” way of thinking; the awareness of balance and blessing; and the consciousness of all beings including those beings that anthropocentric thinkers have defined as lacking consciousness. Their perspectives reach deep into the heart of an emerging consciousness that is both ancient and new.

May 13th, 2018

1:oo to 4:00, pm

Location: Lee Road Library, Cleveland Heights

with authors
Robert Toth and John Briggs

John Briggs has been an educator for over 40 years. A Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Connecticut State University, he is a frequent invited lecturer on the subjects of creativity, creative process, and chaos.

Robert Toth is the former Executive Director of the Thomas Merton Institute for Contemplative Living.

This workshop sets the stage for Monday evening’s Eagle and Condor dialogue.

Workshop cost is $30. Registration is required.

All proceeds benefit Lake Erie Institute.

“Prelude to awakening an ancient consciousness
so that Mother Earth can save us."

Human consciousness has two modes, both ancient. One is a holistic mode of Earth awareness evolved with us from our roots as beings embedded in a reality composed of other living beings that include animals and plants but also clouds and stars, and rocks and waves.

Most of us have little experience with this old holistic mode. It has been drowned out. Perhaps we experienced it as children. Traditional Indigenous people alive today still employ this consciousness to guide them.

By contrast, the rest of us are governed by an also ancient but recently turbocharged “anthropocentric” (human-centered) mode of consciousness. This way of thinking divides the world into separate objects and categories, develops technologies, shapes emotions, and focuses awareness on the survival and augmentation of the separate self.

Before we can rediscover and embrace our ancient holistic mode of consciousness, we need to be clear about the anthropocentric mode that guides our day-to-day interactions with the world. We need to appreciate how our exclusively human-centered consciousness has inadvertently turned the reality we live in a “box” of constrained thinking.

The dialogue among workshop participants will explore the characteristics and limitations of anthropocentric thinking and how to recognize it.

Click here to learn more about the benefit concert with Tiokasin.