to inhabit this land. Sitting Bull
The Global Citizens' Initiative is pleased to transmit this months second Expert Opinion piece. Each article in this series is written by an expert or experienced practitioner working on issues of global citizenship, global governance or related fields. We welcome your comments and feedback on this new series. .Please send to editor@gcitizen.org- Ron
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Indigenous cultures have known for thousands of years the importance of staying connected to nature for the sake of the human race. Today more than ever, societies have taken on a dangerous human-centered perspective that might lead us to our own demise. In this month's second expert opinion piece, Four Arrows, a professor at the College of Leadership Studies at Fielding Graduate University, explains why adopting a complementary Indigenous perspective is the key to knocking down societal structures that harm us and the planet, and keep us from living more connected lives.
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Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), AKA Don Trent Jacobs, is currently a professor in the College of Leadership Studies at Fielding Graduate University. Of Irish/Cherokee descent and a made-relative of the Oglala, he previously lived and worked on the Pine Ridge reservation where he served as director of education at Oglala Lakota College on Pine Ridge and fulfilled his four sun dance vows with the Rick Two Dogs Medicine Horse band. He was named one of 27 “visionaries in education” by the Alternative Education Resource Organization, and is recipient of the Martin Springer Institute’s Moral Courage Award for his activism. He is the author of 20 books.
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es, to complement their very best
reasons for doing so is ONE : Our Network Evolution.
"Every epoch in human history is marked by the appearance of a
seemingly insurmountable collection of crisis, accompanied by a
series of insights and ideas that question the foundation of our
current reality by evidence to the contrary. In other words, when
the nature of inquiry conflicts with the nature of reality, we
collectively experience a paradigm shift. Suddenly, the earth is no
longer flat, the Sun does not fall off the edge of the sky and fire is
no longer a manifest of magic. We are living through ONE of those
times. What is technically possible now questions our fundamental
assumptions about our socioeconomic reality at its very roots.
Questions like: Can our economics and ecology integrate to co-exist
in harmony? Can supply and demand maintain perpetual equilibrium
in real time? Can individual impact be understood on a global scale?
Is intelligence artificial or natural? Are debt and inflation necessary
to create currency? Can we shift from personal acquisition to global
contribution as the default mode of our civilization?"
The answer to all of the above rests on a simple yet universal truth :
Alone, there will never be enough. Together, we have more than
we could ever need.
Ray Podder ONE : Our Network Evolution
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