Maurizio Benazzo: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world, it's a joy to be here with you. My name is Maurizio Benazzo.
Zaya Benazzo: My name is Zaya Benazzo.
Maurizio Benazzo: And we are speaking to you from the unceded Ancestral territory of South Pomo and Coastal Miwok, currently also known as Sebastopol, California, Northern California.
Thank you very much for being here. Should I read straight a little few words about Tiokasin and then we get in...
Zaya Benazzo: We are so excited to begin the year with a very special guest we have today, Tiokasin Ghosthorse. And many of you already know [00:01:00] ing and for those of you who have seen the Eternal song, he's one of the, I would say
Maurizio Benazzo: more memorable
Zaya Benazzo: character, even though the, the one of the ground of the film. So yeah. Very delighted to, to be in conversation with Tiokasin this morning.
Maurizio Benazzo: So let me, let me, Tiokasin, let me read a brief few words about you and then, I'd like you to introduce yourself in a more proper way.
So, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation, and the founder and host of First Voice Radio is a former Nobel Prize nominee and the leading voice for indigenous rights and wisdom. And I'll pass it to you. It's such an honor and a joy to have you here
Zaya Benazzo: to introduce yourself. Yes. The way you feel is cor right?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Okay. Yes. Thank you. Zaya, Mauricio and the crew there at Sand. [00:02:00] Um, I it's, um, been a long time. Since I've been able to come and talk to people, um, in public, virtually here. But, um, I grew up in a way that, that you didn't talk about yourself. So I have to come out of that again. And, um, you know, um, I remember when I first got outta college, I went home and I was in this meeting room with elders and I started talking about myself.
I did this and I did that, and I got this, I graduated with this, and this is how much money I'm gonna make and, you know, all these things. And the whole room just started laughing because this was not the way that I was raised because in that traditional way, which I'm not traditional, but the respect that is that you didn't talk about yourself in that way.
So just to put that forward [00:03:00] here, uh, I like to describe myself as an, which is a common person, common man. And, um, I, uh, basically been in one world, not two worlds.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Uh, living in one world and not two worlds split because I include a lot and, um, to speak about myself. Okay, what are the things I did, course I have the education I do of the western world.
Um, I have the, the radio show I had it. These are all things that I did, you know, which is in the past. And as you know, we're gonna be talking about the present quite a bit during this time. So, as far as introductions, I, I come from the mini, um, it chola of the Lakota people in Cheyenne River, uh, in South Dakota.
I am not a. Medicine man, a [00:04:00] guru, spiritual guru, or know it all. And I know there's a lot of Lakota out there who know much more than I ever could. You know, they speak the language fluently and I understand it. I used to speak it when I was very young, and that was taken away from me. But, resurgence in, in all the languages is happening now because I think earth needs that.
So in a way, introducing myself through Earth feels more comfortable. So I'll, I'll say that much.
Zaya Benazzo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you. Well, maybe we start right there. Like, what does it mean to do a land acknowledgement, a living land acknowledgement, a relational, an acknowledgement that is just not a wokeness language, but it's real.
Does it make sense? And if it does. Where do we begin to learn that,
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: That's a common thing [00:05:00] among my travels is when I would travel to Arapaho country or to, places up in Montana or in Kansas, and you always see that native peoples, introduce themselves and ask, where you're from.
And that was tied into the land acknowledgement, as you would say, but how much are you related if you say you're Lakota and then you, you talk to, um, uh, Cheyenne, they would know their relationship. So I think it's more of a relational value to us, rather than acknowledgement, a land acknowledgement that you live over there and we live over here and that's cool, but we're not living there anymore because of the, the scattering of our nations.
So it's a, a pan, pan-Indian or pan Native American thing to do that we are land acknowledging before the current trend of land acknowledgement. [00:06:00] So if you look at the relational values of how the people's, not tribes, I don't like to call us tribes. The peoples of various nations are, are or have been, um, how do you say it have been melding, have been moving and, stretching and moving back and forth like in a living organism, not based on domination, but, uh, a giving to the land and also, of course a taking but still take, not taking everything.
And anybody who did that, w we would call, which is, it takes too much. Or I like to say the, um, pig to cake people. They want their cake to eat it too. You know, these, these, this is a mindset that goes all over. And this is one of our, our disciplines is not to become that. It's not just that those people are that, but we could also become that.
So I want to say that mm-hmm. To, [00:07:00] to understand that if, if, if too much is taken, that's actually poison. When you use too much of something, it's poison. And you, especially if you use a land the wrong way, you, and when I hear land acknowledgement, I think, okay, I understand the sentiment, but that's also saying those people are in the past, they don't matter anymore.
And, um, I'd run into the most educated, intelligent folks and, and then it would get back to business, right? So we were tokenized in that same sense. But I understand how you two are presenting that in a relational value. Rather than, you know, the lines that are drawn because of land acknowledgement.
You're over there. I'm here.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Very important to, and it takes time. That's what we are. Like, it takes time to build those, it takes so many seasons and rhythm to build relationships with the [00:08:00] land and the people. And I wanna also carry one other threat you mentioned like in Lakota language how the language prevents from the i becoming individual.
And when you introduce yourself, you kind of speak of the, of the whole not as a separate self that is isolated, which often English language invites that notion of me, myself, and I.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: Uh,
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: yeah. It is, it is, it is very, a tricky, tricky thing to talk about. I. Because you, you feel like an island. You feel individualized, a singled out.
Um, it's part of the Western culture. That's what it is. If they have, do have a culture or speaking mouse, McDonald's, it's not culture. To me, the culture is underneath all the masks of the charades that are happening on the land by America, where Turtle [00:09:00] Island supports whatever that is underneath it all.
So the bearing of Turtle Island is impossible. The, um, the, um, the fears that people are, are afraid of now to be real, is that they are afraid that these original peoples, these indigenous peoples are coming back now. And that consciousness is there again for all peoples. And this is how you live here with the land.
So in relational values, of course, out of dogma. Comes domination and dogma is, is always going to be a, a conflict. There's always going to be war. And, um, the hero worship, the savior worship mentality is out there. The salvation point mentality, like I like to call it, is that we always look for that one single person and we, we right, we give him or her that responsibility and you [00:10:00] here do this for us.
So that's a, that's a privilege that we're having. So at least takes a personal responsibility away. So if, if we want to be a, a hero or an actor or whatever, that singles us out. 'cause we're supposed to do that. And you see actors or people who are, are in front, you know, on, on top of the heap.
They're lonely. They're all by themselves. They're I, they're me, they're the king. Under what goes on inside is, is what I think about what's happening there. Um, mm-hmm. And, um, why, where's the relationship when everything is below you? So that comes with a, the concept and the word of domination, which I know doesn't exist.
It never used to exist in Lakota. And the preference to I and me and my are mine and ours that is been westernized. So that we now say that because we have to [00:11:00] communicate in that manner where we're individually accomplished. As I have an education, I have a bank account, I it is, everything is separated and you end up at the top of the heap.
Now what? So I think it's more like learning how to walk with community, walk with people, not follow our lead them. So it takes time for, if you're walking with people, it takes time for decision. And this is why I referred to we, in that we, to me, is more, just, more than just the human factor of anthropo centricity.
You see? 'cause that singles out us as a species, which I don't get along with the word species either, because that, that's a scientific thought also.
Zaya Benazzo: Right?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: So, you know, this is part of that language that I am trying to avoid a lot.
I know that I have to speak it 'cause you know, I, [00:12:00] you are speaking with Kusan, but why am I having to say I, when you know I'm there already?
Zaya Benazzo: Yes.
Yes.
Maurizio Benazzo: Beautiful.
Zaya Benazzo: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. He reminds me, we were just, uh, speaking with Leroy little bear and he said, in black food, you don't need another thing to reference to explain what is. And that leads me. I've heard you say in Lakota language, there is no such a thing. Is tify like Phi help me, like objectifying reality or
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: think Phi
Zaya Benazzo: Tify, tify, I love that word, tify reality in the world.
And so what does it mean to speak a language that doesn't objectified reality? Doesn't fixate it and listens or speaks with earth the [00:13:00] way you speak instead of about Earth. Mm-hmm. Reality. Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yeah. It's more that I feel that what you're saying, not that I know exactly what a, a, um, so let's describe it as a is nouns or person, place or a thing.
So to object, there's an object. A cup is, could be an object. Um, and then we think domination. We created that, I created that object. So therefore I control it. So we're thinking out of domination constantly. And when we look at the cup is, is made of la mental consciousnesses. You know, the fire that made it, the water that holds it together, the earth that is there, the air, the oxygen that puts it together.
Those are all consciousness. Is it not? Because that's who we are. Also, we were also made it the very same. And I [00:14:00] know, you know, that other native peoples have, haven't said this, but now, so I grew up this way. Knowing this, but I had to run into a brick wall basically, of people not acknowledging that, acknowledging consciousness, which is another way to describe land.
Let's acknowledge land first. Acknowledge that, 'cause that tree's going to acknowledge us first before we even know it's there.
Maurizio Benazzo: Wow.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: And this consciousness to me is like, this cup is neither law an object or subjected to my whims because that's an amount of control. It's cupping. It's allowed us to create from the elements so that it could serve.
And that that's the basis of, of life is not here to serve us, but we're here also to serve life in that way. To understand the quality of the equity of, of what that is and. Dealing with, uh, nature, which another word we don't have in [00:15:00] Lakota, but we do now.
We have to adjust, we have to standardize our language so that we could speak it in English, and it takes away the very essence, the energy, the waka of everything that the ability to have, the ability to apply consciousness to everything.
Zaya Benazzo: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: The ability to apply mystery to everything. So this is cupping. It's doing what it's supposed to do.
Maurizio Benazzo: What? It's so beautiful.
Zaya Benazzo: Great. Ability to apply consciousness to everything mystery. So in Western thought, we are trying to solve the mystery. We are trying to figure it out. Yeah. So we can control it.
Probably the same notion of ownership control. So what does it mean not to solve mystery? Like
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: it
Zaya Benazzo: what is dead language?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: It's, you know, I, to me, [00:16:00] for my personal use, it's turtle language. It takes, its, you know, when it's happening, you're not jumping into the future to expect something to happen. So what, what, let me explain it this way here is, um, accepting mystery is that, you know, it's there and those who are attempting to solve mystery and by calling it some name, let's say God, or, you know, what's in that Adam is, uh, they're trying to solve the mystery.
And this is a consequence of it, is that we tend to go crazy. And you see all these peoples who are trying to control mystery, they have become a little bit crazy. They're not in touch with accepting mysteries already. There. It's not for us to solve it. We can ask questions yet to get along in the present, but when we jump from, from the [00:17:00] past to the future, you're no longer in the present.
And this is where the language of my friend would say, as you know, all no, would we?
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: We started me helping this thing 'cause that we are speaking now in English, a present phobic language because we don't want to be here
Maurizio Benazzo: phobic.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Mm-hmm. We want to be, we want be in the future or we don't wanna be in the past but we, we seem to harbor.
Like we used to be this and this, and why can't it be like that anymore? But people are not, are not conscious of being in the present where, you know, things are changing and that mystery is there. And do we really have control? Do we really have control? And that's coming out of the eye me, individualized, individualizing of the dominance.
I want to be the king. This is my land. This is your land. Right? And we keep the vernacular going. Yeah. And then part of that too, [00:18:00] my, uh, Isaiah is, um, is, um, we distance we can say Mina and Lakota and in, in English we could say the Earth or the mother Earth. But you see the distancing language is the.
You're pointing the thing
Zaya Benazzo: out.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: The
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: The, that them, so you're, you're, you're singling everything out. You're reducing everything. So we, we talk in, in, in reduction language and we, we look for verification that it's okay to think this way. So rationalizing Okay. That we, we have to exist somehow. And why not this way?
Because we've been imperialistically you know, um, I'd say, uh, forced to think this way. And yet that imperialistic imperialism is imploding now.
Zaya Benazzo: Right.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: That's what we understand. See the movement, the energy that you [00:19:00] all know is that we can't create it or, or destroy it. And if we're we're going into the future or the past, look what we're doing to it.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: But if we're here, we understand the current of the energy that's going on the present. You see, and then we, we have to take it outside the realm of humanity. 'cause ours is not a good value if you say it this way, because if I, we had any value, we wouldn't be, earth would not be suffering what we're doing to her.
Zaya Benazzo: [00:20:00] Right. And you said in Lakota language, there is no word for nature. And we've heard that in so many other land, we visited indigenous language, that there is no such thing as nature.
Participant: No.
Zaya Benazzo: What are the, the implication when, when people live with that understanding that nature is not something out there that we need to save and protect?
Um,
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: I think it's a matter of allowing her to quote, define you. How of touch we are with [00:21:00] that consciousness that's always there, the consciousness of a tree. Now there's a difference between conscience, which trees don't have as to consciousness, which they always have. One is always present.
Their consciousness, their their conscience is not dreaming up egotistical things. It's not, the leaf is not blowing and wondering if my pretty enough, am I green enough? Am I blowing just right in the wind? And then the wind is like, you know, I need more wind or things. So it's always a needy thing.
Right. So we talk in need and there's, there's less appreciation. So we, we overuse. Thank you. We overuse. Thank you. Without really understanding what that really means. It's like saying, sorry, apologizing for something that you really don't know what you're sorry for. But that's called politeness. So to me, you know, yes, we can talk about all the educated [00:22:00] processes and say that's wrong and this is wrong.
But the consciousness is that earth has everything quote under control, and we feel lazy. If I say that, like, well, what do you mean we have to do something? We have to save earth 'cause we made a mistake. It's like, okay. But there's an evolutionary process in that hole. The hole. If you think about, I woke up this morning, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm jumping here, but I woke up this morning, I, I, I started with holding a little globe in my hand and I thought, wow, that feels so small.
But then, then I felt, well, it's, if it's small, then look. Look how small big I am, you know? Yeah, we have control of it. Then I made it a basketball size and like, oh, it feels even better because it's bigger. Earth is bigger earth, not the world earth. [00:23:00] Then I went and extended those arms till I felt comfortable and like wow, how little I am in that.
So the na natural law that we speak about all the time in, in, in English is actually, um, you know, if you take nature out, then we have to not fill it with empty language and conversation like we're told to do. We have to sit down and really understand the consciousness. It's not just going out to a tree and sitting in front of it and, you know, I dunno, meditating 'cause I've tried that before I go out and, and something caught me as I tried to do that several times.
The tree was already doing that. It was meditating. I wasn't listening,
Participant: right. I
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: wasn't listening to the tree. And I [00:24:00] allowed nature that quote nature to do that. And I think that that's what we, we, that's why the turtle approach, the turtle approach that I have, it's underneath this country called, um, Amika.
Amme, the love, the love of Rika, feminine form of riches. So it's underneath that, those who love riches, I want to be rich and, you know, be able to give charity and things like that. That's nice. But think if, if earth says, you know, I'm gonna just give you enough air and, and whatever, and everybody would be just surviving.
But what we've done is corded ourselves out, ourselves, off to. To, you know, we parsed ourselves within ourselves so that we, we don't understand the whole, or we're understanding, I can control this and I can control that, and I'm gonna control this by making a park here, [00:25:00] but don't, but I'm gonna charge you for walking in the park.
I'm gonna charge you for healthcare. All that was free before America. All of us related, and people say, oh, that's romantic. Because their experience, their people's experience is not that. So this ancestor thing that I hear a lot about, of course this is gonna be a little raw for people, is the ancestors for me are just, just not my lineage of my father.
My mother grandfathers back there, according to the linear way of, of the west. Yeah. Is my ancestors right? I can't heal them. I can't heal those back there. So here's where the, the feeling of being from [00:26:00] the land that I come from is I, I was shown and taught, um, is the ancestors in that way are present.
Always the energy of them is here, and the ancestors are just not human. So when I talk about ancestors, I'm feeling my dog led, I had when I was 12 years old. I feel that tree that was planted then I know that river as, as, as it was then it is now. I know all these places that, that are my ancestors. I think about all of those.
To help me get here. 'cause those ancestors or the trees or the rocks or is the water, is the fire, is it, and all that was there come along with defining it as a human being. And that's what, and that offers me so [00:27:00] much more to ask about is like so much knowledge from that experience of ancestors and those elders as ancestors in the consciousnesses of the elements I spoke about.
They are, we don't even know how old they are.
So look, look, your expanded your potential of being, understanding why we are here now, what we are doing to ourselves as a quote unquote species is that we don't have to do to our, to ourselves what we are doing to the earth. I hope I said that right.
We shouldn't have to, to do the same things that earth that we're doing to ourselves. That's the split. Yeah. Because no amount of environmentalism again, is not going to work. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry.
Zaya Benazzo: And maybe if you could elaborate on that, like, why Mentalism [00:28:00] doesn't work and we see it. I mean, what we were at COP 30 and it's nothing to do with earth with what we are seeing, what's happening.
Just again, you mentioned the SM again, the individual like why this logic is running out of its course and we more and more of us are seeing it. We were caught for a, a long while in that logic of domination extraction. The colonial grammar of that is embedded in the dominant language.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: I, I think that that's a great point there to understand that that's leaving this dimension that we are trying to make and hold onto and great again, type of mentality, terminology that's deteriorating that dimension that we are so privileged in, you know, um, ingratiated with is that that dimension is [00:29:00] leading 'cause Earth has to change, to adjust, we have to adjust to earth.
This is why I say let's, let's, let's stop learning about earth and learning from Earth. It's a semantic difference. Mm-hmm. About, and from our two different things. Um, so when, when, when I talk about my gosh there's so much that opened up. I don't know what to say here.
Maurizio Benazzo: Thank you.
Zaya Benazzo: From
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Because I'm basing this and feeling on with the earth, even I'm inside a building. I'm in four rooms. Yeah, there's, there's artificial light there. There's all these things that are supposedly necessary for me to present a good logic to you all. But that's on the exterior. What's here is already built what's inside of us.
Nature gave to us the environment that we talk about. [00:30:00] Now, let's, let's, uh, delete the words environment. You know, let's, let's delete nature. It kinda leaves an empty space. So I'd like to describe it like this. Zaya and Mauricio is that there is, there is thunder and there's lightning, but there's lightning First.
And then there is a pause before you hear the thunder. So we are in between the lightning and the thunder. It's the language of awe. The language of awe is what we forgot. And if, if we understood the language of awe and we say like, children without being derogatory, that energy is present in all of us.
'cause we were all children once, so we still are children. And without speaking of children, as if they, they didn't know [00:31:00] enough, they came fresh from that light, right? And as we mature physically, they have become, they're becoming earth. This is part about environmentalism, is that they come with energy and they come into a brand new dimension.
And they don't, their body is like, like, what? What do I do here? We don't know how to eat. We don't know how to drink. We, or we don't know how to handle our muscles or whatever. That's left there and we're, we're trying to walk, we don't know what to do. We just lay there and we're just all eyes and ears and smell and senses.
And so we're, we're given those gifts already. And so we, we begin to drink, we begin to eat, and they all, all that sustenance comes from Earth and we're becoming earth this way. And then next thing you know that helps us to [00:32:00] grow, gives us intelligence and to, to live in this realm, in this dimension. And we, we, we learn to run, walk, talk, communicate, and, but we have gotten away from speaking with Earth to speaking only with our own species.
And that species has become an eye oriented species.
Zaya Benazzo: Right.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Individual species. And we do this all through the times. Before we get old, we are still becoming earth. We, because, because we're still doing the same thing we did when we came in.
Participant: Mm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: And as we go out, we're still doing the same thing, but we become more infant.
We can't walk anymore, we can't talk anymore, we can't see anymore, we can't hear anymore. So we're, we're coming to the end. And in that sense, not end, but we're coming to [00:33:00] becoming, I hope you're with me. We're becoming earth again. So this cycle is continuing. And the environment, environment controls that.
Because I've seen, I've seen environmentalist. Go out the fields and measure and weigh and take samples and all this and say, this is what's good for the earth. And it is up to a certain point, but they have not lived with the earth. They have gathered information. They've, they've, they don't know the mountain.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes. Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: They can measure it. They can hike up and down it, but they don't know the mountain. Now, indigenous folks, we're losing that if we don't get ourselves together and, um, start living with land again. I think that's what the consciousness that you may be referring to, um, is that it's coming back.
Whether we need it or not is the fact that earth needs us as a [00:34:00] species, as a, as one of her children.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: She needs us. Think about that. Something we've, we've longed for to be needed and missed. We've missed all of our lives because. The eye dominant engagements we've had,
Zaya Benazzo: right?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: So you wouldn't subscribe to the language of like, earth doesn't need us, you know, she'll be fine without us humans, you would not subscribe to that language that
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: I, I don't, I don't.
It is not to say that I'm giving you hope. I'm not gonna give you hope. It says that we have to do what's required and how almost how many of us are up to that task. You know, we still gonna continue the same way and, and then hope to come out of it and wish to come out of it. But let's, [00:35:00] let's do a wia.
Some people will say that's prayer. WIA means to, to acknowledge a relationship. Now we acknowledge relationship with. Besides just humans, we acknowledge relationship and how do we do that? There is no instructional manual. There's feeling and that feeling of consciousness. It is allowing earth to show you, to educate you, and it is never too late, so to speak.
'cause I think that child within us all keeps us when within the moment of innocence. This is why I say present language, speaking in the present allows you to understand what being innocent means. Because it's not one of guilty. It's not the good and evil, the binary thought process. If we're innocent, then every moment is, I've never been here before, I've never talked to you.[00:36:00]
You have familiar with this, but at this conversation we've never done before. And so every moment to me is innocent. That means, wow. You know, I could say I did all these good things, or I did all these bad things, and still the binary, but just think if we understood the awe of being innocent with what we've learned and our experience, and we've asked wisdom, are we asking wisdom for this?
Awe. And what is wisdom? But elders experiences and what are elders, but what's here before humans?
The animals, the plants the rocks.
Zaya Benazzo: Right.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: These are all elders. And science will never figure out that environment. Science never will, because it's part of trying to solve the mystery. Yeah. And we don't wanna be here, we'll go to, we'll go to another planet.
Zaya Benazzo: Right.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Because that's how [00:37:00] much we, we love ourselves, we're in love with ourselves. We're gonna go to another planet and we're gonna conquer that one too. We can't even get it together here. You know, I tell you, talk about the ills of a society that I see growing up in my lifetime. I can talk about America and what has done and, and wallow in that, but that's not me because I know if anybody saw, if I saw, it took me a while too to understand what I'm even thinking and feeling.
The innocence of this moment allow, it gives me some, gives me strength inside spiritually. Yeah. And keeps me away from dogma actually. Right. Yeah. I hope some of you can understand this. Yeah,
Zaya Benazzo: absolutely. Wow. Yeah, absolutely.
Participant: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: And talking about [00:38:00] children and intelligence and you speak again of relational intelligence and everywhere we went visiting indigenous communities, the elders teach the young children how to listen.
They don't teach them knowledge or give straight explanation. They teach them to listen. And and our western educational system teaches children to be individually intelligent. Oh, you are smart. Oh, you are not so smart. And what is the, the consequence of this education that, uh, forgets that the relational aspect of intelligence.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: As we say, we could force it out. There are many intelligences and I choose this one, you know, I'm going to be this and the rest I'll forget about. So we become very [00:39:00] linear in a sense. We become micro knowledge knowledging ourselves, and we forget about the hole. And it's, it's the ball I described to you.
It's small now. And when I was growing up we had to blend both Western and the Lakota. My, my dad and my mom spoke fluent Lakota, and they came in as a time when they were afraid to speak Lakota to us young people, because that was not accepted at that time. This was before 1978. We couldn't speak that because of the fear that children, um, were going to be taken away.
That. If anybody taught the Lakota culture, they of course were either taken away or their, whatever food they were getting, you know, that's in this, this state here, this is in the United States. But all the time underneath all that, that [00:40:00] hyperactivity of terror, I call it, that the PTSD that we learned before boarding schools before about this, um, the currency of, of what's going on in the tragedy of the world is like we, we understood that in a way, at least I think I did, because I was shown I wasn't appointed.
That that's what you do, this is what you do, and that's what they just were comfortably showing me and the relational value of going with grandpa or with my mother or my uncle. And they said, well, you wanna go fishing And if you felt you would go and. They wouldn't say, well, this is how you do it and you do this, and you point, they would just, just do their thing and you learn to watch, observe.
And if you made a mistake, then you learned how to, to fix that. And if you ask for help, of course they'll show, they'll show you on their own. [00:41:00] And this is where the, the present, being present. Were you watching, are you watching to learn from that mistake? And that's part of the history we haven't learned from that.
And yeah it's a, it's still opening up big, big chunks of knowledge for me. It's like a lot of chunks out there. So yeah. I'll stop right there before I lose myself within that thought.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. And uh, what came to mind also listening to you is how you said in Lakota there is no word for love.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yes.
Zaya Benazzo: So it's not like the grandpa saying, I love you to the child. Right. I love you So much separation already in that
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: it was more like, um, action. They showed they loved you. They shown, you know, like they would give their life for you. [00:42:00] You know, so you expand that. Beyond that the anthropocentric idea is that that tree actually does the same thing that water, all those beautiful elements consciously give you love and what.
Relational value. That is, to me, that fills, that fills me up. It fills me up. And it just not, you know, I know this information and I'm gonna memorize this. Here's, this book says so. But books lie too, just like AI lies, you know? So who wrote this book? The books that I read growing up was like all written by non-native people that I, I believe that them, that I learned about belief, and so, you know, this is a story.
Each of us have a [00:43:00] story and, um, maybe to some, some people are that I'm bitter. It's like, no, I know where I am. I know what's going on. I know that we're all involved in the world as humans, but there's much more than that to be involved with.
You know, everybody's in a, a constant hypervigilant mode.
And is earth that be sit She's continuing what she's always been doing. The original instructions, you know, that's where it's written. Because we can write, doesn't mean that's intelligent. Sometimes the history is kept and how you treated the land and can be conveyed in an oral tradition and in oral tradition you made things come alive and you could not lie in oral tradition.
The real way of that. Today everything is like, we're lying for the [00:44:00] truth. We can't believe anything anymore because everything seems to be fake. So it's, it's very, it's very difficult for us to even, you know, understand what's going on because it seems to be that the trick, the trickster is at hand.
Now, but this, for me to focus Earth focuses me all the time. Earth focuses me not what's coming on the screen or you know, even on the radio or the latest book. I can do that. I, that's fun entertainment for me. How many of us have experienced that in our lives? And I know a lot of native people, young ones, have not experienced that trauma that I described to you with my mother and my father not being able to, to teach us the language and being afraid that we were [00:45:00] being taken away.
Zaya Benazzo: And again, speaking of earth consciousness and indigenous languages that are relational, like our modern world is living in anxiety. Like we have, like according to statistics, humans have never been [00:46:00] as anxious as now, especially young people.
That, uh, energy of anxiety. How would you interpret that phenomena and that state of being, of unwell being from the lens of, from the relational reality of with Earth? What is Yeah. Why young people today feel so anxious?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: I think coming out of the womb, they're introduced to dogma first. This is how you're going to do things.
And if you don't do them, then this is your consequence. So we're introduced to, you know that we're wrong all the time. And so we grew up feeling that way. So here's a, something that will placate you. Here's a, here's a virtual reality machine that makes things real, seems to make things real, but who [00:47:00] taught them that to not them be themselves?
Leave it up to a salvation point mentality. But we don't realize that earth is already saving us. So if we are really gonna look for, for someone, something somewhere, someday, it's always present. And this is, goes, goes with the thinking again. We are not, are we in the present when we think about that, are we thinking about earth or I or me or my, or my or mine first rather than earth first?
Participant: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: You know, is she's giving us these thoughts and we have clean food, and clean water, and clean, clean, then we will have clean thoughts. But there's like an the alien thing happening that says, no, don't do this. And then we'll, we'll take we'll present it to [00:48:00] the Western logic again, that there has to be cause and effect,
Participant: right?
Or
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: superior, inferior, or beginning and ending. So this, this is the, the, um, box the pair of box that we're caught up in, that came on the ships, as I said in, I could have said in, in the, the, uh,
Zaya Benazzo: in the film, the
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: film song, internal song. So it came in the ships. And you could say that there was some amount of that here too.
So it's not about a blame thing I'm doing here. It's like it was more prevalent because of loss of being in touch with land there. So now because of the, the, uh, learning process, when I returned, when I went to Europe, I've seen pockets of, of individ, uh, uh, indigenous thought.
Participant: Mm,
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: learning how to take, let the land take care of you so you can, you know, [00:49:00] reciprocate.
And if we just left the land alone, like I've said this many times, in 2020 when the so-called pandemic happened, that's when the people had to go inside and came out to a full grown lawn of grass, trees and birds and everything was out there. Just, it was like incredible. It was not because we weren't in nature anymore.
Right. But because we weren't in nature, she was allowed to do her thing to be herself. Mm-hmm. And if we just allow that to happen to us, to be ourselves rather than some dictation of this is power, this is God, this is everything that came with the ships, you know, um, it, the grad instant gratification is part of the I wanna know, I gotta have, tell me how.
And so we, we make [00:50:00] up things to create who we are, at least we think we are. So along comes AI and all of that. But what's missing from all of that is intuition. There's no artificial intuition. And as you know, I've, I've wor I've got outta computers in 1992. Because that happened to me. I could not handle the cube.
I could not handle sitting there, thinking that I have an answer, but the answer never, there was no answer. So I start asking wisdom, not just an old guy sitting up on a hill with a beard, is though I start regaining that, that thought process of I need to ask wisdom. I don't have to ask some, some guy that's out there and is as a sky god, or make earth a goddess.
It's no in that [00:51:00] world of energy neither created or, or destroyed. There is no, there's no difference. And I was talking this morning, I think it was yesterday or was this morning, about being you're a baby. You don't know if you're male or female, you just, you're just energy. Just beautiful energy.
Now, why would that people want to destroy that? So in this way, indigenous folks all over the world are needed more so ever than ever before. But still, you, it cannot be the way that we have, it cannot be app appro, uh, appropriated the knowledge, all this 'cause it's just a piecemeal to make this privilege to have that better.
[00:52:00] You know, I'm, I'm probably losing it here, but I, I think part of it is understanding that, you know, the world is not in my head. America is not the world, and we, we will get to that point. We understand, well this. Deteriorating dimension is based on technology. There is no prophecy. There's only teachings because we've been through this before.
And if these teachings, we, we learn to listen to these teachings without instructions. 'cause these teachings are about showing you that you've been through this before and, and, and people understand that difference, then we can get, get someplace.
Zaya Benazzo: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Evolutionary. Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: So would you say AI keeps perpetuating is the ultimate expression of that culture that tries to mimic the original instructions, but it, [00:53:00] while remaining further disconnected from the web of life?
Participant: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Well, I can't give you a definitive answer because there's none.
Zaya Benazzo: Right.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: With that, it's gonna take us, it's uh, uh, understanding, input, output, and uh, binary. Thought processes of right or wrong? Good and evil, superior, inferior ending, beginning. Yes.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: These, these are all, these are all contained within a thought process, a box.
Zaya Benazzo: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: And AI was artificial of course. Right. It's not the real deal. And Earth doesn't have artificial intelligence. It's real. It has intuition. It always has. We can't get rid of intuition no matter what we do to try to intellectualize it. So I [00:54:00] think it's a trend to me. I think right now our AI is destroying culture and moving us too much into a technology.
And young folks will disagree with that. Um, because their experience is not with Earth. It's with. Getting off the planet, it's in the future because that's the young people. What's there left for me? You know? I have to get that brand new, whatever it is, so it's that, that the programming that we're in we're caught up in.
I think it's we could say decolonizing, we could go with those words that seem to be all tired now. Yeah. And we don't need a new language. 'cause there is like uncle would say, there is no old, there is no new, there is only a way of living. And I think that would be more of an essence to understand there is a way of living that you can never own.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yeah. It's like free health. [00:55:00] It should be free health. It should be free. Wait, is is Earth charging us?
For air, for water. Whose idea is it? I I don't get that. Where, my dad, this is what, what I think here. My dad, when I was very young, he had an old pickup truck and he would sit on a high heel in, down below there, the government was building fences. And he would, I would sit up there with him in that truck and he would just sit there and, um, the sun was going down.
The government would pack up and leave. He'd made sure they were out outta sight. Then he'd let allow, he'd pull the brake on his, his, uh, pickup and uh, just roll down into the fences and crash the [00:56:00] fences. And he says, you cannot. Put earth, put fences on earth. Mm. And I think that kind of spirit is in me too.
Yes, there is. There is. Stop doing that to ourselves. Stop doing that to the earth. The fences, the walls, the borders. And people could say, that's not real, but it is.
It was real. Before we accepted this, we acquiesced to, this is the only way we can live. This is a reality. Yeah. And we don't know the understanding of what the word real means, a realty or real.
Right. We can understand it because that dictionary has been readjusted for the times that we are in, and they are all about control. This language that I'm speaking is about control and, and I could go on and on and on, but I know that. I [00:57:00] speak now, every Thursday I'm able to get out because there was a, to get out to go have breakfast at this place.
And the people there, you know, I could feel okay. They're willing to listen. They're willing to learn, and we have conversations and I sometimes I, I feel that we jump back too quickly into the box. And I get that. I get that. I hear that. But then there's that, that something happening there that's more expansive than the box.
I think that's where we are at this moment. All of us. Mm. On the earth is, earth is already there.
Zaya Benazzo: How do I ask you without how, you know, this is the mind, like how do I practice the earth consciousness or anything, or how, how to track when I am in the box or like anything.[00:58:00]
I know it's not a practice. It's nothing to be fixed. It is nothing to be achieved, and yet there is a longing to be remembered. Maybe the word, remembering those original ways or instructions. What would you say as we move in our daily life, how do we stay in this conversation with Earth?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yes. Is there an answer in this language?
Is because it seems like if there's an answer to the problem, that must be a solution. You know, it just keeps looping back on itself.
Maurizio Benazzo: Right,
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: exactly. And the, the ceremony that's being performed with Earth by Earth is that we, we don't have to make up ceremonies. We do. And it's a, it's a good attempt.
It's nice to do that. But Ceremony energy is anywhere. Yes, there are appointed times to do something like there's solstice [00:59:00] and whatnot, but that's not on every day. You know, this is the date we do it. 'cause that Gregorian calendar says so, and we've been programmed to say that that's the only way to do, it's like a DBC whose timeline is that?
That's your not native people's timeline. It's not AD A DB, C. It's nothing like that. So what does earth cycles say? Earth cycles are, you can call 'em circadian, um, but there's more of a natural rhythm there. Is there need for three meals a day? Because they said so. It, it's all these, there's little, little things that I know some of you will like, question you and you're told to be this is a new year now.
It's like, it's the same to me. It is the same. Just, I mean, you will make resolutions and then by day six of the new year that you lose the resolution, you're [01:00:00] not doing what you promised yourself. So it's like, no, you have to stop promising and just focus on one thing. And I, I would say let earth help you focus.
Allow her in. You'll find that spot or place out there, you understand the energy of it. Let your body do that. Come from the heart. Don't what I, I don't need to go from the head to the heart. I don't have control. I come from the heart. There is no need to control. If I see things that are touching your heart, you'll change.
But I'm, if I'm here to recruit or you know, tell you this is the way it is that's losing it, I can't instruct you to be you.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Yes.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: And, and yeah. And the thing is that,[01:01:00]
what's this thing about making native people that we don't understand? The modernity, we understand it very much. We understand that. Those scientists, those people who, who launch rockets, they're also in a distorted way. Hunter gatherers.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: You know, they're, they're searching for something to consume.
That's a hunter gatherer is not, it's not. That's a modernity. That is, we consume, we are hunters. We go hunt in a, in the, the, uh, grocery store, the markets. So we go hunt and then we gather. Yeah. So that, that's another way. But allowing, and we're only, we're only, um, taking from earth. We've lost the process of knowing what it truly is to have [01:02:00] a ceremony before you hunt.
And speaking with that, being even the plant all life. How do we do that? What happens? So I think part of that is allowing Earth to do that. And it seems lazy in a sense because we're so used to the western process of this is how you do things. And anybody who doesn't think this way, well that's part of imperialism, that's what's going on here.
That's dogma. That's domination. There's no re you can't relate when there's, there's domination in dogma and imperialism. There's no relational value. There's no relational language in that. So this is a stickler for me that I, I always look for that in conversation. I look for that in if I'm what on a computer I have to watch.
I, I do things, I watch the traffic, I see how people are driving. It's always constant to [01:03:00] me. 'cause that is based on taking from earth all the time. We can say all peoples did it. Then you're not taking responsibility.
Zaya Benazzo: Right? Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: There, there's a lot. I mean that we could talk all day. You come visit me, we'll be sitting here, we're talking for, we'll be talking for weeks.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: And you'll, you'll or she that I'm, that I'm not trying to convince you.
Zaya Benazzo: Right.
Maurizio Benazzo: That's the beauty.
Zaya Benazzo: Beautiful.
What a gift. Thank you Joing for your generosity and for everything you've shared. Common sense, wisdom whatever we call it. My heart feels full and I'm stretched and I feel enriched and re enchanted. There's something you reminded us
Participant: That's
Zaya Benazzo: right.
That we embedded in mystery. You know, it's,
Maurizio Benazzo: yeah. And you do it with such lightness, with the smile beyond your word. [01:04:00] That always makes me hear it even more. 'cause I don't feel you are preaching and
Zaya Benazzo: I love
Maurizio Benazzo: my mind like
Zaya Benazzo: I got it.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. And that is so childlike the way I can receive your word. You bring me the state of childness to be able to absorb you.
So it's so good.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yeah. Thank you. One final thought is that Oh, good. Is that Mother Earth wants her land back.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Because she knows how to treat herself. We don't know how to treat Earth. I'll leave it at that. And thank you so much for the invite and, uh, let me have conversation.
Zaya Benazzo: Mm. Maybe could you
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: mean whatever, whatever I said, I don't know.
Maybe it's not. Comprehensible to a lot of people, but a few of you maybe that's good enough. Thank you.
Zaya Benazzo: That's the whole point, not to think we [01:05:00] got it to fix it. Yeah, that's right. Let it live in us. Yeah. And I just wanna share people were asking, uh, which movie? The Eternal Song is a film that we have shared last year and INE is featured in the film.
And also there is a beautiful book that I just love personally, deeply, and I, it's called Butterfly Against the Wind and Is Ine and Gina's beautiful artwork. And there is a new book coming up this year or next year. Next year, right?
Yeah. And we'll keep you,
Maurizio Benazzo: we'll keep you,
Zaya Benazzo: we will
Maurizio Benazzo: keep you posted. We keep you posted
Zaya Benazzo: book
Maurizio Benazzo: and maybe we have another event like this to present the book.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Yes, we will.
Maurizio Benazzo: Cool.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you everyone.
Maurizio Benazzo: We'll continue. ,
Zaya Benazzo: Conversation.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Right.
Maurizio Benazzo: Thank you so much.
Zaya Benazzo: Gratitude.
Maurizio Benazzo: Bye.
Zaya Benazzo: Be well. Bye. [01:06:00]
