Monday was Indigenous Peoples Day. While it is meant to honor Native Americans especially, it also honors indigenous peoples everywhere, and – most importantly – the indigeneity in all of us.

The world’s long and bloody history of conquest continues mostly in more subtle ways, wherever one culture sees its way as the one true way. Yet at this very moment, we have one nation-state invading another, committing blatant ethnic cleansing of a tribal culture in the name of safety and security.

It’s long past time to leave all that behind, heal the wounds of the past and find ways to build a better future.

That’s going to require broadening our horizons and a realization that all perspectives are true but partial. We can combine the best of the old with the best of the new, the best of the indigenous with the best of the modern and postmodern, while acknowledging that none of them are perfect, and create something that transcends them all.

I believe the next step in human evolution (in a more than human world) is to embrace and re-integrate the wild and indigenous in self, culture and nature.

Maybe then we can all learn to become native.

Matt Barnes

Dolores