How Riel was Pardoned, sort of

I’m now looking more at this figure of Louis Riel. He had terrible luck with the women. I think he forced a spiritual awakening which is what landed him in an asylum in Montreal. His trial was bogged down in a lot of debate about the state of his mental health, various people said he was mentally unstable, and still others wanted him hanged anyway (not hung, alas).

Frank W. Anderson reviewed his case in 1949 and this is what he came up with:

Louis Riel’s Insanity Reconsidered
Notes: Anderson examined some of the evidence to determine whether or not Riel was sane when he was tried in 1885. He concluded that Riel was sane because his major decisions “reflected both his sense of right and of humanity.”

Riel died in Regina Saskatchewan. Personally I never liked Regina, even though I was born there. It’s a very blocky city and it’s got a bazillion oogly woogly feelings walking down the street. I don’t know how else to describe them. But wouldn’t it be funny if I could prove I was Louis Riel in a past life and overturn my diagnosis? Oh that’s silly, people don’t reincarnate. Oh my god, better yet, I could just prove I was thinking about things which reflected my sense of “right and humanity.” Actually, this is a very interesting piece of legislation which could be used to markedly reduce the control of the government on “insane” persons. Used properly it would be a precedent setting law that would radically alter the mental health act community orders here in Canada. However Riel at the last minute realized he could use the insanity defense to his advantage, basically he remember his tort law he learned in his early years working in a law firm. I think it’s still a legal tussle over him being pardoned, although essentially people seem to agree he was mistreated.

In fact, here is an outline of the exact argument used to overturn the conviction of Riel. The irony is that while this was by and large a symbolic gesture, ANYONE could apply this law to their own forced commitment order, at least here in Canada. They never proved he was a messiah, because you can’t prove something like that. His sanity was debated forever, but in the end he did something for Canada that was above and beyond the call of duty, even while he was having a nervous breakdown. I know they do a reenactment of his trial The Queen vs. Louis Riel down in Regina once a year, but I’ve never gone. It seemed stuffy. But maybe I will, just because I do think a revolution can happen in an entirely legal and peaceful way, it’s just figuring that way out that’s tricky. Inciting hate is a crime, but I don’t hate anyone in particular except people committing gross injustices, and I know they are doing things outside of the law. It’s exposing them that is tricky, and also figuring out how to properly wield law. But I remember when I worked in Mandell Pinder I had great fun reading law and watching lawyers run down the halls saying “There is no justice!” It was like absorbing legal chatter via osmosis. I know there’s one law which is what the government wrote, but another law that is just decency and justice. I was always told “It’s a legal system, not a justice system.” But I think it has enough laws on the books now that it can become a real justice system. I was working at Mandell Pinder when Louise Mandell got promoted to Q.C. (Queen’s Council) and it was such a giddy environment at the time. God that office was full of sexy women, it was somewhat distracting. I was tempted for a while to go to law school, but seven years or whatever to become a recognized lawyer, oh that is so slow!! So I decided to just learn law on my own when I felt like it was important.

Did you know Judge Judy makes more money that any Supreme Court judge? That is hilarious.

Riel wrote one last thing before he died, which only recently came to light.

Terrorism is bad, m’kay. But a non-violent, legal and sane revolution does have a lot of legitimacy at the moment. It’s just figuring out how to bring people together in this scary place, because everyone seems so terrified.

I think I am liking looking at these particular figures in history because I’m learning from their mistakes. The only real law being used against possible revolutionaries is the Mental Health Act, but the fact that the evidence shows Riel was in the middle of a major manic episode while at the same time leading his people. I don’t think he was ready to lead in a manic episode, which is why the Rebellion failed. But I do think if it was spiritual emergence and someone had told him what to expect he could have slowed down and taken it easy. So all of this is really interesting.

My mom’s stressing me out, I’m trying to calm her down because really I’m just learning, and I think all of these figures in all tribes have created certain legal precedents in government law and in religious law and just in the law of being a decent human being.

here are some of the things he said:

“. . I have yet and still that mission,
and with the help of God, who is in this box with me —
and he is on the side of my lawyers,
even with the Honourable Court, the Crown and the jury —
to help me and to prove by the extraordinary help
that there is a Providence today in my trial
as there was a Providence in the battles of the Saskatchewan.”

“I have acted reasonably and in self-defence,
while the Government, my accuser,
being irresponsible and consequently insane,
cannot but have acted wrong,
and if high treason there is,
it must be on its side
and not on my part.”

“My thoughts are for peace.
But such a great revolution will bring immense disasters
and I don’t want to bring disasters during my life
except those that I am bound to bring to defend my own life
and to avoid, to take away from my country, disasters
which threaten me and my friends and those who have confidence
in me. Of course they gave a chance to Riel to come out,
a rebel had a chance to be loyal then.
But with the immense influence that my acts are gathering
for the last fifteen years and which,
as the power of steam contained in an engine
will have its way, then what will I do?
I may be declared insane
because I seek such an idea,
which drives me to something right.”

There are three laws at work here, the Mental Health Act, Treason, and just an unspoken agreement that people don’t call themselves prophets. Oh yes, and that you don’t shoot people. So what if you don’t call yourself a prophet? What if you just say you’re intelligent and working on one particular legal puzzle for your whole life? And a lot of insanity can also be overturned by people recognizing the characteristics of Giftedness too. It’s just making this safe house for people to go through that experience, that’s the only thing we really need for everyone to be a stable Riel. And then there are also specific spiritual laws at play too. It’s a funny little puzzle, but I’m starting to see what kind of order these things go in instead of jumping to the very end.

I think he felt like his hand was forced, he was on a gradual path to enlightenment but his people needed him so badly that he felt compelled to force his own awakening, and also he went through a period of extreme poverty which diminished his capabilities. I think a lot of people felt their hand was forced when the attack happened in New York, because it was a real time event that was broadcast around the world, and then that image was replayed over and over. And people wanted spiritual leaders to return, including people who had been on an awakening for a while already. And so a lot of people forced it and got diagnosis and medication and ended up feeling frozen but not sure why. But I think we know why, because some of us did identify various people in our lives as fledgling spiritual beings and when they went crazy we lost hope, because then they were just dumb broken people after all.

But we’re not broken, no one is, although I know a lot of people are wanting to have a tussle over the DSM and it’s relevance to society today, because people believe in it way more than any Bible or Koran or Torah. The DSM has taken the place of the sacred, we have troubles and we turn to it in times of need and follow all these recipes for various mental health states. It has become a book of law in and of itself, and it transcends the other laws by virtue of being written by doctors. But who are these doctors anyway? We know most of them are paid by big Pharma, which has a capitalist investment in a particular ideology of mental health. And even then, the DSM is easily overturned altogether because it relies on clusters of symptoms without being able to adequately diagnosis a specific reason. They pretend they have a reason, they call it brain chemicals, but in fact they actually have been unable to prove it time and again. And the pills, they also have reams of evidence proving that they are detrimental to the functioning of the human brain. I’m kind of stressed because now I feel like I have to prove manic psychosis really can be a temporary blip in a life, and my mom keeps asking me about my mental health.

My health is fine. I even lost all of my resentment towards my family, which is really awesome. And I’ve realized I’m not willing to force myself towards any particular destination without carefully looking at all the facts.

Synchonicity

I just realized that my video Through the Looking Glass, which was a discussion on being red and white, was shot on the ruins of St. Norbert Parish Church, which was a crucial site of Riel’s legacy. Riel also spent time in a mental hospital in Montreal.

Freakin’ ironies are scary. Do you know half the time I do stuff and have no idea why except I should?

Mistreatment of transgendered persons

I remember when I was fourteen and came out, people kept giving me the same damn book over and over. Not that it’s not an interesting book, it’s just that it’s been given to me so many times!!! Now I’m realizing I have someone else I have to give my second copy to, so it’s okay.

It’s called The Spirit and the Flesh and it’s by Walter L. Williams. It’s an overview of two spirited people in “American Indian” people. By the way, I don’t mind using the word Indian myself, even if it is a misnomer, because that’s what it says on my treaty card. Anyway, yes, it’s more of an anthropological book, which is why it’s somewhat boring, and it’s written by an outsider, but he was permitted to hang with the two-spirited folks.

There are some other names for two spirited people, one is berdache, another one is winkte, which is the Lakota version. I think two spirited has been simplified to mean Gay and Lesbian, but that’s kind of inaccurate. Two Spirited people are by definition androgynous people, and some chose gendered roles and a lot chose a third gender, which was basically something that stood outside the binary gender role. In their tribes they functioned in all kinds of roles, they would bridge the gap between women and men, for one, which was a useful trait to the community who might not understand each other otherwise. I think also that it should be noted that while some two spirited people may have been intersexed, often they did have a specifically gendered body, but their body would be overlooked in favour of acknowledging their dual nature. Of course not all people in the tribe were nice to two spirited people, there was transphobia that flared up once in a while.

When the residential school system came in, two spirited children who had taken on a different gender role than their biological body were identified immediately by horrified europeans, and from the history I can gather were summarily executed. I don’t think many two spirited children survived in those places, or if they did survive it was only by hiding themselves really well. A lot of rapes which happened in the school system were also of a same sex nature, not all, obviously, because a lot of babies being born in the schools were also being killed and buried to cover up male on female rape. But it did something where people in our community have a huge hate/fear thing going on with anyone who seems gender or sexually “deviant”. It think it’s important to remember that sexual abuse is about power and control, not about a specific sexuality or transgendered quality.

I think that eliminating the two spirited person’s role in our community was done to effectively shut people off from spiritually aware humans. In most cultures around the world androgyny has been noticed to correlate with highly gifted individuals, and it’s coming out in gifted research as well. In spiritual terms they say it’s because these people have accessed a higher spiritual path that transcends gender. In gifted terms, I don’t know if they know why. But they have noticed that people with extremely high IQ’s and all the overexcitabilities have a tendency towards androgyny, and it makes them targets for hatred in the school system. That’s one of the issues right now in gifted education, trying to create a safe space for profoundly gifted people who are often androgynous.

In doing my funny research, I have discovered that Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was also a two spirited person. That person is often called a man in contemporary terms, because ze was a leader and ze did so many things, but in some accounts ze was male and female, and I think that’s a more accurate assessment of the person. Quetzalcoatl was a historical figure, and that has to be remembered more than the whole god thing I think, just because gods seem really out of reach of people right now. Anyway, the historical figure known as Quetzalcoatl was a spiritual leader who was also a political leader and who also resolved issues of food shortages and so on so that people could concentrate on art, science, agriculture, music, and poetry, which basically led to a massive renaissance. Ze also eliminated human sacrifice and wanted people instead to sacrifice birds, butterflies, snakes, and jade to the gods. But to appease a tribe which felt blood had to be shed for the gods, Ze also instituted bloodletting, which sounds awful to certain folks, but this was more of voluntary acts with safety rules around it. Yes, Quetzalcoatl liked blood play. But that’s a bdsm act that you don’t really have to think about if you don’t want to.

I’ll put it in a more modern context though, so that it doesn’t wig you out. I remember on september 11 when the towers came down there was this unprecedented blood donation around the world. Around the whole world!!! People wanted to do something to help the victims, so as one they were drawn to the red cross and donating blood to save these lives. It was so touching. I remember a photo of Yasser Arafat staring in horror with a tube coming out of his arm while he donated his pint of blood. And of course, that horrible moment later in the day, when we realized there were few survivors. But that collective memory of the importance of blood, that was intense. And I think that response was the humane response, that was people spilling their own blood without injuring themselves and with a common goal of help in mind. But that kind of memory of using blood to appease the gods got twisted into, of course, this huge war we’re in now.

I think there is something else interesting about blood donation though, which I think is something Quetzalcoatl would have encouraged rather than ritual bloodletting had that person been here today. Since AIDS hit in the 80’s, new rules have been instituted to ostensibly stop the spread of AIDS but in reality shut certain people out from accessing that kind of charity. In Canada here you can’t donate blood if you’re a man who has sex with men or slept with a man who has sex with men (although heterosexual sex statistically accounts for 70% of HIV transmission), you can’t donate blood if you’ve been pierced or tattooed within the last two years (even though piercing and tattoo shops are often following some stringent health procedures, and you should read about these before you choose a shop actually), sometimes you can’t donate if you immigrated from a country with high HIV rates (what country doesn’t have HIV/AIDS? No really, I’m curious, is there a mythical land such as this?), and of course IV drug users are right out, even the ones who never dared share a needle.

As you can see, this cuts out HUGE demographics from the blood donor pool. For one thing, I know very few youth who haven’t gotten at least a piercing, and then there’s also been a revival over the years in tattooing, so a lot of people gather piercings and /or tattoos during their lifespan. I’d like to be able to donate blood, but I’d also like to keep getting tattooed over my lifetime, and so it cuts me out from ever engaging in Canadian Blood Services. And it’s too bad since I don’t have any money but still feel a need to be a charitable human being. Also the rules stipulate that for men, having sex with a man even ONCE since 1977 means they can never donate, even if the last time they had sex with a man was in 1977 and they didn’t smoke man pole since and got 8 clear HIV tests in between then and now. And you know, a lot of men have sex with men, although they think they hide that secret really well. And I don’t think it necessarily means they are gay, although it means something and everyone kind of wants to find a name for it.

But what I find interesting is that instead of actually figuring out an accurate non-discriminatory method of screening blood, the Red Cross/Blood Service organization leapt to cutting out an entire demographic, a demographic which is quite a bit larger than one would think. And then they’re like “What the hell? No one’s donating anymore.” Yeah, because a ton of people fit into those screening categories. And besides that, a guy could be having unprotected sex with a lot of women and still contract HIV. We seem to invent these categories of low risk high risk safe safer, and then abstinence is being promoted as the ultimate in safety. But who wants to be abstinent? There are low and high risk activities, but there’s still this constant argument amongst gay men about tops and bottoms, and tops apparently NEVER contract HIV, and so this other weird thing has come into play where bottoms are kind of considered just like a garbage pail. It’s so wrong! Bottoms are lovely human beings with a charming receptive grace. And also people switch too, which complicates things. But yeah, being a top doesn’t guarantee anything dudes.

Oh bother, I have no good ending for this lovely morning rant, except a quote from my old babysitter Tracy Lenz:
“Riel was hanged, we don’t know if he was hung.”

Louis Riel, leader of the Metis Northwest Rebellion

Oh man, another interesting tidbit I picked up from Shawna Dempsey was that someone (was it her grandfather? I don’t recall) was at a wild west show when this man on a horse came riding up out of no where, said “Dumont” and went away. Was it Gabriel Dumont? Probably, that sounds like something cheeky he would do.

Healing, continued

Wow, my body is so detoxing right now. Ever since I talked to my auntie, I felt all this stuff just start to come right out of my pores, and it started out smelling, like my mom said, stagnant water, and then it smelled really awful after a while. I took a longish bath in water with sea salt in it, and it seemed to ground my energy really well. I’ve lost a lot of fear today especially, I think because I feel like I know how to articulate certain things now in ways that are relevant to people, and that is a relief. Sometimes it feels like I have so much to say and I feel so agitated about it because I feel I don’t have enough time to say it before I get dragged away by the cops. I think that kind of extreme pressure is what made me crack, I felt in Montreal that my living situation was so untenable, and so much was happening in the world, that I had to get enlightened like, right now!!! And so I forced a process, in a way. I hope people don’t feel that pressure, I think there are enough people right now on the planet who have woken up in their own ways that things aren’t as dodgy as they were before the war started, although it probably doesn’t feel like that to some people. But believe me, letting it happen slowly and naturally is better, certain things have to be absorbed in certain orders for it to be okay.

And I know, it feels like there’s this intense hierarchy, and you have to get to the top as fast as possible because then people won’t hurt you anymore. But there is no hierarchy, not in life and not in the awakening process. Or healing process. Whatever you want to call it. I mean obviously someone did put in a crap hierarchy, but it’s so bunk.

I really like that word bunk right now. It’s like a slam on something, but in a cute way. It’s better than saying something is shit. Colonialism is so bunk man!

I did one mandala today, and it was really good, just the process itself is calming, because you can’t do it in a rush, it’s thoughtful. I did it with mostly symbols of various things, but I think it’s going to end up getting quite abstract in the end.

I think what was so upsetting about the hospital is that no one seemed able to really, I mean REALLY understand how traumatizing it was to me. It felt like if I talked about it people either didn’t want to listen or decided to argue with me that it was for my own good, and that really was unsettling, because they didn’t understand the extreme abuse I endured not only in the hospital but also from the people around me, it felt really rejecting and it felt hateful, there wasn’t anywhere for me to turn for compassion, and it isolated me further from humanity. I don’t think it’s in anyone’s place to tell someone that the hospital was a positive force in their life, because of that last word, FORCE. Studies have shown that coercive treatment often has a deleterious and detrimental effect on the psyche of people who are victimized by the process. I kind of understand why residential school survivors have wanted an apology, a proper apology, but at this point I’m well aware that an apology for psychiatric ritual abuse isn’t coming for me. And I don’t want to wait for it so I can heal. And I don’t have to forgive anyone for it either, because if someone doesn’t apologize you really don’t have to forgive them. That’s just some weird crap that lets people off the hook for their shit.

I know there is one particular person in my history who has kept putting his shit on me and I have no idea why, I’m not related to him in anyway, he just shows up all the time and demands stuff from me or steals stuff or I hear him beating his girlfriends or I hear people telling me about getting raped by him and somehow, fuck. I don’t know, people forgive him all the time because he plays the victim card really well. Being victimized isn’t an all access pass to victimizing other people. And I don’t know why people let his shit slide so easily, and sometimes I wonder if it’s because he’s a man, albeit a very broken one. I once read where he called a rape a grey area misunderstanding, and I was so fucking pissed off. There isn’t a grey area to rape. But what appalled me was all these people saying “Yeah, you go bro.” Ugh.

I’m getting more strict about who I allow in my life these days. I know there are certain people I often feel, I guess I get a bad “vibe” off of them, but it seems more related to feeling judged as kind of a garbage throw away person. And I have an intense amount of empathy, so I do feel things off of people. I’m also starting to realize I can’t handle large crowds well, and not because I’m afraid of people, but because I pick up their energy, and it’s often very scattered and angry and fearful. And I am also realizing that I took on a lot of trauma vicariously from people who have been in my life. And some of that is hard to deal with, I mean how do you heal from something that happened to someone else? But I’m realizing that people might come to me to tell really intense stories to, and sometimes I’m just not able to hear it. And it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I’ll take on that story too and it’s very difficult for me. I think I need to figure out how to identify people that they can talk to instead of me, I don’t want to shut them out.

I think I’m doing well though, I feel like I just had to finish something I got frozen in. Just before the meds hit I was starting to say things about Venice and Mesoamerica, but I had no idea why afterwards. I do now. And I think it’s just, for me, kind of an interesting little quirk, and it’s not so, hmm, scary. Or overwhelming. I think it’s one of those beliefs that can seem rather benign, it is benign essentially. Maybe benign is the wrong word, because that implies inert or something. I guess it makes sense to me and it feels like it places me in an order of things where I really didn’t feel like I fit in to any kind of an order before.

It’s a scary thing, to feel not only that there is no place to fit in and also that people hate you because you don’t fit in. I think being kind of uncategorical frustrates people around me too, and that’s really strange. So much of two spirited history and so on was lost, and it’s always really upset me because I feel like whether it’s a woman’s ceremony or a man’s ceremony I am always standing outside looking through the window. I don’t want people to think that this is all aboriginal people though, there have been a lot of people I’ve met who get it, totally, and it’s nice because then I can relax enough around them to be goofy. But otherwise I often feel like people just demand that I explain myself, my identity, my history, and that explanation takes a fucking long time!!!

I think something else which always upset me was when I’d like someone who seemed to be waiting for a man to come and save them, because I’d always feel like “But I am a man!! But not! But I am! Arg!” It was so, I don’t know, it often felt like being invisible in a way. And same thing if people look at me and don’t see this female part either. I think people have a hard time with the idea that both can live in one body. I remember one thing that pissed me off about going to queer film fests is that often the men’s sex program would run at the same time as the women’s, and you had to choose, but what if you want to see fisting and cocksucking? No way man, and it’s ironic because a lot of women do like watching guys go at it. That’s just a funny aside though.

I think I’m beefing up my support network though, I seem to have a lot of people around to talk to, and I’m not scared of talking anymore. Although I still probably won’t talk to people who are kind of stupid/mean, just because it feels like I’m either going to have to fight or be humiliated.

Anyway, I’m going to read a couple things on the process of detoxing your body and then go sleep. Sleep is coming really well right now.

What happened to me in Montreal (in Ewan Cameron’s Words)

This is what “psychic driving” is as developed by Ewan Cameron in conjunction with the CIA under the MKULTRA program, this ideology is used still on certain psychiatric patients in Montreal, particularly those of minority groups such as women, people of colour (especially aboriginals), gays/lesbians, and especially transgendered people.

“Playing back to the patient, by means of tape recordings, important parts of therapy sessions has proved valuable in treatment. The procedure consists of insuring extended and repeated reaction by the patient to his own verbal cues (‘autopsychic driving’) or cues verbalized by the therapist, but based on the patient’s psychodynamics (‘heteropsychic driving’). Since this compels a continued response within a field largely limited by the cue material, it has been termed ‘psychic driving’. Selection of a satisfactory key statement for psychic driving requires awareness of the patient’s major problems. Autopsychic driving has as its primary value the penetration of defenses, elicitation of hitherto inaccessible material, and the setting up of a dynamic implant. Its purpose is usually achieved within thirty minutes of driving. Heteropsychic driving is best carried on over extended periods (ten to twelve hours daily in hospitalized patients or during sleep). Its primary uses are changing of attitudes and setting up a dynamic implant.

“Psychic driving has been used in many ways: with pillow and ceiling microphones, presentation of the same theme in different ways, isolation of patient, etc. Purely mechanical variations seem of little importance. The responses to psychic driving include immediately constructive reactions, partial blocking, rejection and later acceptance, and rejection and escape, among others. By this method, the patient is shielded from the full implication of his own verbal communications. The voice sounds different. One’s own voice is heard ordinarily as a synthesis of air and tissue conduction. Defense against hearing what one does not wish to hear is organized against the synthesis of tissue and air conduction. In psychic driving, tissue conduction is eliminated and thus there is a new situation against which defenses have not been organized. This breakdown in the shielding occasioned by elimination of tissue conduction is one of the basic reasons why driving is effective in penetrating defenses and in enlarging the area of the patient’s communication, both to himself and to others. The patient is able to understand more of his communication when it is driven than when he hears it for the first time because of the differences in talking and listening. As the driving circuit is played back repeatedly, both patient and therapist hear more and react more extensively.

“Driving (driven material) is verbalization of a part of a community of action tendencies, with reference, for example, to the relationship to the mother, to self-assertion, or to sexual experiences. The reheard verbalizations constitute a cue which will set the particular community of action tendencies into operation, and not any others. In ordinary therapy the patient tends to move away from a painful area; in psychic driving he is unable to do so. The endless repetition confines him to a continuous reactivation of the particular community of concepts.

“There are continuing effects of psychic driving. Striking continuously at a given community of action tendencies produces intensification of the individual’s behavior. He becomes tense or anxious and this provides the persistent driving force of the implant. Efforts at freeing himself from this intensification cause continuous reactivation of the area concerned and thus further recoganization of the area is brought about. Psychic driving invariably produces responses which tend ultimately to be therapeutic.”

The problem with Traditional

I am thinking about how I got here, what a strange journey! I’ve decided I don’t have to take on a different name than Thirza, in an ironic way I kind of like the name. But I do still feel very strongly that I was this man known as Marion Sarain Stump. And I have always kind of known that, but I never accessed his memories, only the ones from a female life previous to that. Yeah, transmigration of souls sounds weird, but I do believe in it because I know in my heart it is true. And I can see various clues he left for me to pick up on here, and they are very self affirming for me because they come from a time when I really was in a male body. But that life did end, and I’m still growing into something. I think for me right now I am very interested in this idea of women and women’s stories, because colonization changed so much of who we are as a people today.

I have had a very difficult time in the aboriginal community for various reasons, mostly having to do with witnessing a dogma enter under the onerous title of Traditional. There’s nothing wrong with tradition, but if you’re doing it because you believe it’s the only way to do it and because the culture isn’t allowed to change, that’s not very healthy. Something I had admired in looking at the Jewish faith was how this continuing story of oppression and slavery was integrated into the culture, there are specific rituals for the group to process some great historical injustice. Just like Easter is a time when Christians remember that a horrible thing happened to the person who was leading them out of slavery. But what they sometimes forget is that the man leading them out of slavery was an observant Jew. Instead there’s this thing about the Jews killing the Christian savior. That’s inaccurate. What killed Jesus was the fact that he was a revolutionary during the reign of Herod, who was a dictator basically, running a fascist police state. He knew he was going to be killed, yes, he talked of it frequently, but if you look at his place in that society, it made sense he knew he would be killed. He was a revolutionary and revolutionaries are often murdered for political reasons. He could have been talking only of practical issues, but he would still have been murdered because he was encouraging people to think for themselves and transcend an oppressive regime.

I think that sometimes with past lives we feel doomed to repeat them, because it seems inevitable. But I also think that in my last life I did one thing to make sure I knew I didn’t have to carry that burden anymore. And I don’t feel I do.

There is a saying that to go away is what makes a monk, but to come back is what makes a Buddha. This really just means, you can have all kinds of visions and do all kinds of things, but if you can’t translate that into a practical action in the here and now, then you’re still far away. We feel that we are in a spiritual war, but there isn’t an external enemy, that’s all fear tactics. There’s an internal “enemy” that’s at play, and it’s figuring out how to work with that and make it not an enemy that’s important. Lucid dream techniques say that if a monster is chasing you in a dream, you should just turn around and ask it it’s name and what it wants. And sometimes you get surprising answers.

I was on a panel once of various Aboriginal thinkers and I said that we had to abandon this idea of Traditional because it’s not something we can go back to. And of course all kinds of people got really huffy at me and I ended up sitting at a seperate table after the panel when we ate. But I didn’t have a chance to articulate what I meant by that, so I will say so now.

We can’t go back to the Traditional because times have changed and things have happened to us. We desperately want to go back to before these things happen, but you can’t, it’s part of who we are now. But working with this great colonialist tragedy which happened to us can help us continue to grow and yes, bring back values which are lost. But we can’t bring back values that are gone from our community without healing these specific abuses which happened to us.

Right now there’s a finite money available from the Residential School Healing fund, and everyone’s trying to figure out how to use it in the best way, because so much needs to be done. But I think for a moment we have to stop and look at exactly what happened to us there and how that can be addressed. There are all kinds of things which happened, which makes it seem really muddled and overwhelming. That’s why we don’t need ONE leader, we need many, all over the place, all doing a little part of this whole. And we also need to remember that being a spiritual worker or healer does NOT mean being an Authority, and that’s hard for colonized people to remember. A healer/spiritual leader is really a servant of the people, not a dictator. And a really good healer is someone who can integrate the whole community in various projects, rather than set up a hierarchy.

And in truth, I don’t believe talking circles are working for certain healing that needs to be done. I believe that healing needs to happen one on one for individuals, individually tailored for the needs of that person. I said that at the panel too and got in shit again, because we have to think of The Whole Community and not individuals. Bullshit. That’s just another way of saying the needs of everyone else usurp the needs of one. And everyone is valuable and everyone deserves respect and love and the chance to be who they are, not who the group wants them to be. Once you get into group politics having to be perfectly in synch, you get into dicatorship territory, and I don’t really give a fuck if you try to call that Traditional, giving it that label doesn’t mean it’s right.

I have this idea now, still, of one thing I want to do, which is to start a Soteria house in the forest. It would have a meditative walking path in the woods, a labyrinth on the ground people could follow, a snoezelen room and an art room and a library with internet access, and various people would be involved in making it a healing space without forcing someone’s process into a specific way that people think is “right.” It would acknowledge that people heal in diverse ways, and some people who are highly sensitive or went through extreme trauma will have one special room just for screaming and ripping things up and being very destructive, because it’s a cathartic moment and it does pass eventually. And it isn’t a damn Quiet room, it’s a Howl room, in memory of Carl Solomon. If you haven’t read Ginsberg you won’t get that though. And I have this very beautiful dream of a place lots of people know is necessary, so I’m sharing it here because I know that many other people have been thinking about this issue and have various talents or ideas that can work. I don’t want to be the sole originator of this sort of healing place, I think it’s going to take the whole community using various talents that people have. I also think that it’s an idea that can be applied to all kinds of communities across Canada, and probably the world. It’s going to be tricky though, or course, because people naturally have to dispute certain things, but I think we can do that in a healthy way where we negotiate ideas instead of label them Good Bad.

Anyway, my aunt came over this afternoon to pray with me, but I realized I don’t want to pray anymore, now I want to talk. So we did, we talked for a long time about all kinds of things, and it was really good. And I think in a lot of ways various rifts in my family felt healed, because we could finally talk about things we’ve noticed and things we need to change and looking seriously at how to help people who feel lost. And afterwards my mom said the most interesting thing, she said that I was giving off a smell, and it was coming from my sweat and it smelled like stagnant water. And when I think about it, it makes sense. I really made a huge turn around in my healing these days, and I don’t feel quite so, hmm, overwhelmed by life and history and current political climates. And it was good to talk with the women in my family about how women have been cut out of Cree culture.

One thing which made me so sad about Christopher’s funeral was that it seemed the men were doing all the spiritual work, and the women, of course, very powerful women, were in the kitchen cutting bannock. And I knew they were supposed to be involved too, not just cutting up the damn bannock. And so it made me sad, because I felt that half of the potential of that healing/funerary rite wasn’t allowed to happen. One might say it was because Christopher was a boy and so men are supposed to do all the big work. But Christopher also had a lot of women in his life who loved him in various ways and wanted to talk about him, and to see them feel so frustrated and unable to speak was harrowing.

There’s a myth of the Aboriginal person precontact, which is some kind of glorified patriarch paradise. And it’s so wrong, oh man. I can’t speak for other tribes, but Cree people had egalitarianism, women and men speaking were important, because it was how we were whole. And now women speak to women and men speak to men and we’ve all turned into some freaky deaky people, because women and men are supposed to talk to each other. And then two spirited people are supposed to be allowed to choose whatever role they feel comfortable in, even if that role means being a woman and a man. Some women were hunters, some men just spent time in the home, nothing was this cut and dried. And people were visionaries, because they could connect certain things and help make something possible, even if it was a new possibility that seemed silly before.

I think that whatever you say causes a psychotic episode, if it’s a forced awakening or a desperate bid at healing or a genetic switch being flicked, it doesn’t make too much of a difference, because there have been various methods discovered throughout human history of allowing those things to happen safely and to avoid telling someone they are permanently broken. Psychiatrists are not psychics, they can’t honestly say someone requires drugs for life. I think you can have all kinds of theories why something happened, but what really needs to be allowed to happen is someone to go through their process and when they’re ready they can start saying why they believe they flipped out.

I want this residential abuse cycle to stop, and it’s going to take a lot more than detox centres and talking sticks. It’s going to require a loving haven away from the city, where people can be as scary or sad or curious as they want without freaking out all their friends. And it’s got scientific evidence to back it up from various places. I also think we have to let go of this idea of Traditional, because what happened to us was unprecedented, we don’t really have a clear route yet of how to heal that. However, other people have gone through some really similar trauma, and those people have some damn good ideas, even if they aren’t aboriginal. I think we have to stop thinking of ourselves as entirely outside the scope of human history and other tribes, because we really do all form each other’s reality. And healing from ritual abuse is a heavy duty thing, even for the generations after that happened. It never just sits static in a place in history, it always has repercussions which move along the line. And we know this, we’ve seen a cycle develop.

Anyway, that is what I am thinking about, and I am also spending a few days making this eight sided mandala, because I think it will help me order my brain and heal this schism within me.

Ritual Abuse

This story has a poetic flow in an archetypal setting, but I think it’s time to stop talking parables. This is what I know, and I will say it all in the most literal terms I can imagine.

The problems in the Aboriginal community are directly related to colonization. Now I know people want to believe colonization just means a war with winners and losers, but there is something more to it. We’ve been doing all this work getting settlements from the government and trying to have some form of redress, but barely anyone has explained it in specific terms.

What happened in residential schools was not “just” sexual abuse, although sexual abuse is horrific, there are additional forms of abuse which have worked in certain ways and have been developed over time by certain groups.

By the way, the stuff I’m going to talk about might trigger people, although I won’t do graphic detail. Still, if you feel you’re hitting that wall where things start falling down, visualize this. You are in a small dark room and need to get out, if you look upwards you will see a door, it might be close or far away. There’s a ladder going through that door, up from where you are, and you’re just going to climb out of darkness into another place, and if you find a wall there too, you will also see a door with another ladder. This isn’t just some flaky stuff, that’s how you get out of a kiva. If you see a sign in bright neon letters saying “You are not allowed to access this information because you are not worth it” ignore it, it’s a lie, and someone else put that sign there.

Residential schools were scenes of mass cult ritual abuse. They were run through the churches, yes, and the churches had a type of colonial power, and that power was involved in creating a slave class of people. While nearly half of residential school students literally were murdered, the other half survived mostly due to taking on programming by these cults. In programming, dualities are encouraged, they are vital to a process known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Dissociative Identity Disorder has also been known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This sounds very strange but bear with me, if you don’t know about DID or MPD.

What this state of being is, basically, is chopping up a psyche into various compartments so that a cycle is continued without the person understanding why. Some people have literally wiped the bad history into another persona, because seeing that kind of trauma seems antithical to an idea of wholeness which the person tries to embrace. And we do always want to embrace the wholeness. So suddenly the world becomes black and white, instead of colour. Good bad female male christ antichrist. And that’s where war happens. But it doesn’t happen in the outside world, although you might make it manifest there. It’s happening in your soul.

I’ve met ritual abuse survivors from all walks of life, haunted by the same system used in various religious organizations. It doesn’t really matter who is espousing the system, it’s all a matter of colonialist power.

Christianity got co-opted by power when the Roman Empire realized they could continue their empire under the guise of a revolutionary figure. Jesus and Moses all were people who came to lead the slaves out of colonialist dogma. They were revolutionaries pure and simple. We give them an archetypal story because what they did was great and beautiful, but the metaphors lose their connection to the real history. And where the metaphor and the truth disconnects, we call that Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Aboriginals also have Dissociative Identity Disorder. It’s not a fluke that the word for leader automatically changed to fake-leader after colonialism. Our Aboriginal leaders are not our leaders, we have no democratic process in choosing them. Here in Saskatchewan people are stressed out about FSIN for what it’s doing for our community, but only a few people are permitted to vote for those leaders. Likewise in the Americas, only certain people have the right to vote. And sometimes those votes don’t even count.

I don’t think we need another outside revolutionary figure kicking over tables and screaming, what I think we need is to find out own internal revolutionary figure, who can quietly envision climbing out of cult programming.

I’m going to talk more about how to escape your own programs in this blog, because I think that’s what I have to do now. And I am going to use archetypal stories, but please remember this is a visualization exercise, and you don’t actually have to chop holes in your ceiling or anything.

By the way, Montreal psych wards are also heavily influenced by cult programming activity, and I can explain why, and I should explain why so you’ll know why i know how this works.

Ewan Cameron was a nazi psychiatrist who through the CIA worked on a program called Psychic Driving at the Allen Memorial Hospital. Over the years he did various things to his patients to completely wipe out their memory, personality, etc, and install his own program and own personality. This was called Psychic Driving, but it is also known as ritual abuse. While the hospitals may not realize they are working in a ritually abusive manner, they are, because he determined the way psychiatric care would operate in Montreal. And so when I say I know ritual abuse, I know ritual abuse. And I have described it in this blog as well.

An Explanation for my Mother

I’m really being pressured by my mom right now to explain shit, so I guess I should. I didn’t want to show you what I was drawing over and over when I had my episode because I didn’t think people would understand, but I do now.

I was looking through some photographs of a concentration camp named Sachsenhausen which I visited just outside of Berlin. I took a photo of the inside of the pathology lab, and when I looked at it later I saw this image, an eight pointed star.

But as you can see, there’s something about that star, it’s not standing on it’s own, it has a line through it. That line is what makes the seventh and eight points, but it radiates out further than the star itself. Later on I had the picture blown up and I could see that what made this star was sunlight hitting a crack in the window, so I dismissed it. But what does it matter how it was made?

If you look at it again, what you see is a six pointed star sliced in half, which is a very apt symbol of what happened in Nazi Germany. And while it symbolized what happened in Germany and elsewhere, it also symbolizes what has happened to us internally, which is that we cut ourselves into pieces to fit something we try to believe in.

I drew this division over and over because it represents what I feel in my heart, I feel torn between two places, and I’m starting to discover I don’t have to feel torn, there is no two places, it’s all one.

So to start drawing this symbol as a perfect eight sided geometrical figure, that represents to me, healing from this violence and division, while also acknowledging that something fundamental has happened to us and that we can’t ever really return to the way it was. But that doesn’t mean something can’t be whole again.

Marion Sarain Stump believed himself to be Quetzalcoatl. Which is a pretty intense thing to believe in. But what Queztalcoatl represents was just some person, and androgenous figure by the way, who was an artist, scientist, and philosopher. And rather than act like those are seperate disciplines, he could see where they overlap. And when art, science, and philosophy intersect, you get spirituality. What spirituality is is a way to acknowledge that all of those things are interconnected, that they don’t disagree with each other at all, they compliment each other. I can talk about spirituality on it’s own, but you’ll call me a flakey dude. So instead I am trying to figure out how to show that art, science, and philosophy do compliment each other. Nothing has to be jettissoned to fit into a whole.

As a two spirited person, I have a natural inclination to bridge life and death, and it’s hard because people have made some hard and fast rules about what life and death represents. Not only that, but they’ve also made hard and fast rules about what two spirited people represent, which is apparently just kinky sex. And I don’t disagree that kinky sex isn’t part of it, but there is something else there as well. But it’s natural that people would have seperated sex and spirituality, because like I said, we do have a divisionary history, and it’s been imposed on aboriginal people especially.

Some people think that altars or medicine are just some flaky shit with some rocks and feathers, but those things have meaning to someone, they represent something, and having them organized in a place lets someone come and contemplate how life is interrelated. And the connections are not a bad thing. They seem unusual, they seem kind of scary sometimes, but there is a pattern here that’s been here for years, and yes it does have a scientific basis.

Where psychosis comes in is when someone realizes that these things can all work together, that there is a wholeness that is possible, but the world has been designed to work against that wholeness, to chop it off into manageable pieces. Schizophrenia doesn’t mean broken brain, it literally means broken heart, and that is what happens when you see that people are actively encouraging divisionary tactics and it means you might not be able to survive those people.

I think I am moving towards this idea of wholeness, I am so many different things that if I keep pretending those things can’t coexist I will surely die. And it’s frustrating because I see the way people are creating extreme violence through divisionary tactics.

But there’s a reason for that. The less people are allowed to know, the more power can be exerted, to the point that if someone is going through a healing episode they are given drugs designed to eliminate higher cognitive functioning and keep them from going back to a wholeness, because that wholeness upsets a power which is very happy keeping things the way they are.

Skepticism is good, it means critical thinking. But sometimes people are just very stupid and can’t grasp the whole. That’s okay. But if someone around you can make sense of the world, that is not a negative feature, that’s a very positive feature.

I have decided to transcend colonialism, and so I am looking at this figure of Quetzalcoatl, because it was a figure which hated blood sacrifice, it was a figure who inspired a renaissance in New World civilization. And yes, that civilization fell, but there are other reasons for that, mostly having to do with Quetzalcoatl being tormented and shamed into leaving.

What if Eden was fled not because Adam and Eve ate some fruit, but because there was something fundamentally wrong happening in Eden? The Old Testament god was notoriously difficult to please, and kept changing the rules on the people all the time. It would do things like ask a father to sacrifice his son and then yell “Psych! Just kidding.” But this one Rabbi said that the history of that book was this higher being negotiating with the people, and both it and the people learned things from each other.

These are archetypal stories and they exist because these symbols exist in the psyche, and in times of great duress people go back to these archetypal stories. Life of Pi demonstrates this really well, and if you haven’t read it I recommend it.

Skip this paragraph if you haven’t read it. It starts out with a guy trapped on a huge liferaft with some zoo animals, including a tiger. He spends most of the book trying to figure out how to survive a liferaft with a tiger on it. The whole book is told in this fashion until the end, when he tells the real story, which is that he was with his family on a liferaft with a murderer. He uses the archetypal story to make sense of his situation, because that’s what feels right to him. But in the end he can still tell you what was really happening to him.

I think watching this world fall apart, a lot of people are looking for answers, and in looking for answers people are dismissing knowledge out of hand. But that’s what the people in power want you to do. Bush is shutting down scientific research because it’s conflicting with an ideology he’s been trained since birth to advocate. We’re being told things are wrong without adequate explanations of why, and for some reason we’ve accepted this. We’ve been told psychiatric medications are good, but without hard scientific evidence and with the FDA being paid off by Big Pharma and with psychiatrists being paid off by Big Pharma and with the government itself being paid off by Big Pharma. But still when people get scared, they fall back to these pills, because it’s got advertising clout.

There are alternatives, and I’ve outlined them in this blog, and I am moving towards them. But there are still so many people who want me to go back to this old way of doing things, this divisionary way where if something thinks of unpleasant things, we just smash their brain up so they’ll stop.

Pain does end, and it doesn’t end in death and it doesn’t end because you pay some Neo-Freudian 21 000 to terrorize your kid. It ends because eventually people move towards a wholeness again, that split is healed, and life goes on.

A Mandala, besides representing something happening in Chaos theory to some particles, also represents the psyche, as Jung explained. And to imagine a oneness, for me, is to imagine a wholeness, a time before that window was smashed in Sachsenhausen.

This is a video of a sand mandala being made for the 70th birthday of the Dali Lama. It is also eight sided. So you see, I am not so crazy for looking for this wholeness through this specific geometrical figure.

Pushing way too hard

I have realized I am pushing myself too hard right now, and I know why, but it’s not an insurmountable obstacle. And I think remembering who I was the last time I was here opened a whole bag of new issues, but I’ve also realized he made a point to end that cycle in his life and I’m a new cycle of I don’t know what yet. But I think I can find my own inspirations. And I think I know why he tied himself to a certain historical figure, and I see the relevance and I don’t mind being tied to it either.

But I also realized I have faith in a very different kind of God or what have you, something older than a male deity, and I am liking that a lot right now. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to try to affix myself to a masculine archetype, because I really do feel I’ve aligned myself with women.

And it seems so frustrating, to be able to see the patterns of how things have happened and what people say versus what they do. But I think if I get caught up in it I’m going to stay at this level, and I’m not interested in that. I feel like there’s more, I know there’s more, and it’s dizzyingly exciting to piece that together and get my head out of this kind of a place where so much war happens over stupid shit.

I guess one could say I’ve found faith again, and I had it in my last life and it let me do a lot of things that I couldn’t have if I was hopeless. But I am also realizing I have to extricate myself from negative situations that push me over the edge, feeling like I have to PROVE something that’s been proving itself over and over anyway and if you didn’t get the message the first time, I dunno. I don’t care to give it to you. If you want to go looking for it you’ll find it, but I don’t care to save anyone anymore. I just came back for something that seems so simple, but is so lovely. And I think I am starting to find a community of like minded people, but it’s been difficult, and I am realizing certain people are going to stay behind, and they will keep perpetuating cycles of dischord, and hopefully if what my last lives were about worked then it will just stop on it’s own. But I don’t think I have to keep working at that particular issue, or at least not in that way. I think I have different issues I have to work out, and related to reviving something ancient.

All I want is a safe place for aboriginal people to undergo shamanic experiences. It’s really so simple at it’s basic level. And you don’t even have to use the shaman word, it could just be spiritual awakening. I hate seeing our people reject everything because they truly believe the world is doomed. But more than that, I hate seeing people force the doom scenario on people who are trying to retain that little spark. I think the spark is good, I think it’s important to our survival. I think people believing they will come back might change the way we’re treating each other and the world. And I think if people do believe in a Mother instead of or in addition to a Father, women won’t be in so much pain. I feel very saddened to see women being taken out of this idea of the divine, I think it’s so wrong to me.

And I also think spiritual awakenings are maybe more violent these days because there is so much to heal from and because aboriginal people did get a lot of ritual abuse cult programming that in turn causes them to abuse other people. I think mystics knew what they were doing when they spent forty days in the desert, I think that’s been a common piece of knowledge, that awakenings look really bizarre and that’s why people hide when they are in them, because otherwise they get thrown into the psych ward and into a really abusive situation that causes extreme psychological damage. It’s basically reinforcing cult programming, or colonialist programming if you like.

Cult programming has one idea forced into peoples heads that if they leave the cult they will go crazy and be forced to spend their lives in an institution. And I think colonialism is a cult, it’s very cult like. The similarities are staggering. So I think when people decide to leave colonialism and start finding their old roots, that cult programming kicks in not only in the individual but also in the people around that individual. It’s very sad, and frustrating. So I want to figure out a way that people can awaken/heal/flip out in a safe environment without family pressure to return to a certain way of being. I think as families we have been trained to reinforce certain colonialist dogma, and it’s depressing. Families used to be so strong, and now they seem to be a source of great pain for people.

So I think in many ways I have wanted to hurry up and fix myself, but I realize the hurry up part causes all the trouble. And it sucks because I do want to tell an old story, but I don’t think people are ready for it. So I will tell it to certain persons, and maybe write it down, and maybe some day people will want to know how we got here. But I honestly don’t think people want to know, because it fucks up a lot of dualistic ideas people seem to be depending on, why I don’t know because I see dualism as a significant rip in one’s soul. But I’m not here for people’s souls, just my own.

And the other thing too is that I am having deep emotions for someone, and it makes me want to be a better person so I can be with her, but I don’t think that’s the right way either. I think it looks like trying to force someone’s hand and really I just want to see how she’s feeling. Plus I can see an archetypal story being played out, but I don’t want to love an archetype, I want to love a person, and neither do I want to replay the same story.

So I am in a strange position, I remember parts of my past, my deep past, but not all, and I am also having to start a whole new future for myself outside of that past. And I am also just rather confused, because if I ended the karmic cycle going on in that last life then what am I doing in this one? I guess you could say I am on some kind of cusp, but with life cycles. And at the same time I am haunted by things I’m watching being played out, certain lies being told about history, things getting rewritten right as they happen. And I think a lot of people are in that position right now, and so much seems to be at stake, and so much fear is getting amped up. And through it all we’re being bullied into End of the World theories around 2012, but honestly, the world won’t end. A new cycle will start up and things will change, but an end? No. There are other calendars after 2012, there are always new cycles and new beginnings. If I have any advice to impart at all it would be to put your words and actions into love and make sure that truth doesn’t get forgotten. And also to make sure that women’s history is preserved, because that’s the other half of this story.

Only Morose

I’m okay, don’t worry, just feeling angsty, and I’m picking up on too much negative energy, I think I have to hide for three days, but I mean just not go out in the world. I might throw a few things on here. But I need to think about some personal stuff, again, and I’m hunting something, like a thought sort of.

Here’s Morrissey singing Half A Person in New York 2000

Here’s PJ Harvey singing Rid of Me in Sydney 2001