2008 Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture * Principle: The Hummingbird and the Sloth

Abstract

“The elders remind us of the importance of the long view when they say, ‘pin Peyeh Obi’ look to the mountain. They use this phrase to remind us that we need to look at things as if we are looking out from the top of a mountain, seeing things in the much broader perspective of the generations that are to come. They remind us that in dealing with the landscape, we must think in terms of a ten-thousand-, twenty-thousand-, or thirty-thousand-year relationship.” In familial primary conditioning to Eastern Northern American oral tradition through Indigenous oratory; the bearing of congenital historical and still present memory of this very hemisphere for thousands of generations; the critical mapping of self; habituation of essential abstract reasoning and critical-thinking skills accumulated during formative years is immersed in belonging to place and to prayer, poetic oratory, song, and Story. The narrativising soul of human consciousness is positioned, stimulated, and engendered as a multidimensional active assembly, principled, spiritually supported, intentionally providing functional relevance to the juxtapositions of natural and perceived beauty, horrendous obtrusive dilemma, historical significance, and the meaning of presence–life.