The Native Commandments by Tamarack Song A Native has no beliefs, only trust. He trusts what he knows from first hand experience, what he sees, what he feels, what he experiences, what is written in his Ancestral Memory. And so it is with his commandments. He didn't learn them from one of his honored Elders in the way some of use may have learned our commandments in Sunday school. He knows them because they are the way of his life and the way of all the life that surrounds him. They are not directives or ideals to be lived up to and there is no punishment for not following them because they are as intrinsic to life as breath itself — they cannot help but be followed. In that sense these are more rightly natural laws than commandments — inalienable precepts upon which life itself is based. All Native people are aware of these precepts and consciously honor them. They have evolved rituals to help in the honoring and keep their awareness in the foreground. Life goes on in endless Balance when these precepts are followed. When we attempt to deny them and live by others which we have created we cease to live, we merely exist. Existence of this sort is short-term. The Civilized way has traded living for existence. The First Commandment: The Great Mother provides all that is needed within one's circle of existence. A Native walks literally on the breast on his Mother. He knows the Earth Mother as a living being who provides all of his needs — food, clothing, shelter, comfort, warmth, emotional and spiritual sustenance. He trusts implicitly in this just as when as a babe he trusted in his birth mother to provide these things for him. He knows that he will ever be a child of The Mother and thus be provided for until his last breath. He does not fear hunger or cold or loneliness because his Mother is always with him. He does not belong to his birth mother; she was but a surrogate in the Great Mother's name until he could be presented back Her. This is the basis of his respect for all life. Every being, every two-legged, and winged and scaled and leafed is his sibling, for along with him they are all children of the same Mother. To unnecessarily hurt one of them would be to draw grief upon their Mother. To take more than he needed would be to pluck from the mouth of his brothers and sisters. To dig wantonly into the Earth would be to rip into the skin of the Mother, cause her wails of agony. The Second Commandment: Giving is Receiving. How can giving be receiving? From a rational ego perspective it may not make sense — when you give you lose, when you receive you gain. You keep for yourself, you assure that you and yours are taken care of, but from Greater Perspective there is no difference — both nourish. Imagine you are an organ within an organism. Let's say you are the liver, you take care of the wastes of the rest of the system and store energy for it — for the heart, the lungs, the muscles and they in turn provide you with blood circulation, oxygen, mobility, and so on. It appears that you are giving in order that you might receive — the same old cause-and-effect, me-as-distinct-from-you perspective of the ego. In actuality there is one continuous flow where giving and receiving cannot be distinguished one from the other. Did the chicken or the egg come first? Neither, of course. It was both, as both are intrinsic to the continual circle of life. As the liver you are giving, but giving what? Are you just a conveyance in the circle, walking your intended path by allowing to flow through you what is being passed on to you? Are you perhaps a distinct entity doing so only if some ego being identifies you and defines you as such? If a gift is truly a gift it is purely for the giving. The giftor attaches no strings, there is no control. Nor does the giftor worry about receiving in return, there are no expectations. Of course things come to us, but that does not necessarily mean that they are coming back to us. Giving is not receiving because I give, they are actually unrelated in that sense. We receive because we are a child of the Mother and we are the beneficiary of the Mother's love, not because we have given. And we give not because we receive, but because we are the eternal flow that runs through us. We have no choice but to give. Whether we are consciously involved in the giving or not we are giving. If you can imagine this giving and receiving being more like a web than a circle. In the circle we have sayings, "What goes around comes around.", "Give unto others as we would have them give unto us.", the concept of karma, of redemption through reincarnation, and so on. If we could imagine this interrelatedness as being more akin to a web than a circle it would give us a better grasp of how it actually works. The web has many interconnected strands which come and go in many directions and create many forms and shapes. What comes and goes from whence to whence is near impossible to distinguish. Many, many strands support a single strand, and a single strand supports many, many strands. All co-mingled in a complex, symbiotic relationship. Which gives to who and vise versa is a moot point because all are simultaneously giving and receiving to the whole. Every strand functions as a giving-receiving organ within the greater organism, which is giving and receiving to itself. Without a distinction between the two polarities — the giving polarity and the receiving polarity — they cancel each other out as distinct entities. It may be easy to see from this example that these two polarities are our artificial constructs, and that the circular concept of giving and receiving is dichotomous and unrealistic. Sources, directions, and intentions in reality cannot be identified, much less labeled and traced. Giving and receiving as we know it is based upon our concept of surplus and want — our constructed reality when we became agriculturalists, as dependence upon agriculture for sustenance weds one to its boom and bust fortunes. Thus, agricultural Peoples try to manipulate their environment (dancing/praying for rain, frost-free weather, etc) while foragers are more accepting of what The Mother and Father give. A Native has no use for surplus, it bogs him down. The wealth the Native has use for, the wealth that makes sense in his life is that of character and vision. Material wealth gets in the way of that. So, just like a Wolf, what of his kill he does not need he leaves for the Ravens and Foxes and Chickadees to feast upon. The Native does the same, thus keeping himself free and light and mobile. Like the Wolf the Native does not need to herd animals in order to have them available to eat. The Mother does that. They're always there, She provides them to him as he needs them. So a Native does not give in order to provide for the needy, he gives for himself, because it is his nature, and his nature is the nature of things. This article would mean little to a Native person, it would hardly turn his head because it would be like preaching to the choir. This is his innate awareness, he lives it. Giving it voice would be redundant to him. However, for those of us who dwell in the illusion of Civilization, and wish to return to the Ancestral way and live in Balance in the wilderness, a deep awareness of these two commandments must, of necessity, be our first step. For without them we will walk upon the Mother and not know Her. We will take from Her and not know that she is actually giving. We will grow hungry and cold and lonely because of our inability to see the food and know the warmth and feel the comfort all about us. And finally we will leave — not leave, but be spit out of the Bosom Forest to go back to where we came from, because we carried from where we came from in with us, rather than leaving it behind to return to Earth Consciousness. One example: The Native Truth About Personal Property Imagine you are moving to a new location. It is not a big ordeal because you can pack all your belongings on your back. You don't try to sell your house, you just abandon it. If, when you arrive at your new location, there is a vacant house, you just move in, you just move right in, no questions asked. If the previous occupant left anything behind that you can use, or even if a neighbor has something that is not being used, it becomes yours if and as long as you have a need for it. If you are hungry and unable to provide for yourself or your family you can even count on food being given you. This would be your way if you would be a native person. It is the way of virtually all native people. In fact, it is the way of all of the natural realm, human or not. It is only we civilized humans who ascribe to the concept of private property. In the Old Way, ownership is defined more as usership. An item, whether it be a tool or an item of clothing or even a residence, is a person's to use as long as he or she has a use for it. There is no ownership in the sense that an item is the personal or private property of the individual, whether or not it be used. The same is true regarding a residence. There is no absentee ownership. Need rather than possession defines one's right to usership. This way of honoring the greater need is not based upon any ideal or philosophy, it is simply the only way of sharing goods and resources in the natural realm that works. Possessiveness and hoarding may seem to favor the individual but in the natural realm the well-being of the individual is dependant upon the well-being of the group. For example, a flock of Chickadees survives predation from Hawks because each individual within the flock is strong. When the flock as a whole can successfully flee in the face of an attack, each individual within the flock has a greater chance of survival. If there were strong and weak birds, the weak birds would be eliminated by predation, leaving the few stronger ones to stand alone. The fewer the number the more vulnerable the individual. No longer will the Hawk grow confused by the dispersal of a large flock. So, Chickadees cooperate in finding food and shelter and warning each other of danger. It's as simple as that for human Natives as well and who hordes hurts not only his people but himself. A Native does not have to steal personal property to be a thief, he merely has to claim to possess it. Not the taking of property but property itself is that. In the same sense, property is suicide. In order to maintain this equity of sharing, and also to give it a ritual context, some Native Peoples hold what are called. Give-aways or Potlatches–ceremonial events during which individuals who have accumulated surplus distribute it to those more in need. Another Example (the myth of the Starving Native): Virtually all amphibians are edible–frogs, salamanders, newt, and toads. The skin of some frogs, particularly colorful frogs in tropical areas is deadly poisonous. If you do not know the amphibian skin it. Toad skin is toxic. Skin all toads. Snakes are edible. All birds and their eggs are edible. The eggs of all the reptiles and amphibians that I am aware of are edible. Insects are plentiful everywhere and most of them are edible. Their larva are usually the best. Most ants and bees are edible, as are caterpillars with the exception of many colorful ones which are poisonous. Grasshoppers and locust are edible. As are termites. They can often be gathered in great numbers. Most aquatic insects are edible. Virtually all snails are edible except with those with brightly colored shells. Most slugs are edible also. They no more than shelless snails. Earth worms are bountiful everywhere there is moist, humusy soil. And they are edible. Minnows are most waters, even in many where large fish are not present. And they are edible. All rodents are edible. Some are bountiful and easy to trap. In season, toad and frog eggs can sometimes be gathered in immense quantity. Most plants have some part edible at some part of the year.