$299.00
SELF-PACED, ONLINE, FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE, MODERATE DIFFICULTY, NO PRE-REQUISITES
taught by Tiokasin Ghosthorse of the Cheyenne River Lakota
This course is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It is very rare to encounter an Indigenous person who was raised with their original language and traditional culture. It is even more remarkable when that Indigenous person can explain eloquently in English how their first language—in this case, Lakota—holds within its structure the living relationships of humankind with all of nature.
With an open-hearted, generous spirit, Tiokasin Ghosthorse reveals how the Latin-based structure of the English language has continued the domination that was the driving force of the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere. That domination continues to affect every facet of life and is foundational to both the ongoing extractive exploitation of the Earth and the profound disconnection that cannibalizes our relationships with one another and with the Earth.
Have you have ever wondered how traditional Indigenous peoples thrived and lived harmoniously with nature for millennia? This course opens a window into the spiritual beauty of the Lakota language and culture, which embody the understanding that elements of the natural world are relatives—not resources for consumption.
The course resonates far beyond its initial listening. It holds seeds of understanding how we may think, hear, speak, and act in ways that are more aligned with the connections that are inherent among us and with the natural world. –Marilise Tronto
We are greatly in need of new modes of relating with Mother Earth, with one another, and with ourselves, yet the limits of our language are often the limits of our world, and the perimeter of our stories circumscribes what we are able to imagine and therefore dream and create.
Many of us are trapped in prevailing modes and languages of domination. English, as a language, and the European thought paradigms from which it derives, brings worldview and thoughtforms forward that invisibly constrain our intuiting and relating with life, many of which are beneath our conscious awareness.
In this seminar with Tiokasin Ghostorse of the Cheyenne River Lakota, Peace and Earth Activist and speaker and student of the Old Lakota language, which he describes as a non-mathematical quantum mechanical language of intuition, we explore ways for kindling the indigeneity that resides within each of us, and birthing forth the language and thoughtforms required to move us out of our own way–out of narcissism, anthropocentrism, and self-interest–into a more transparent and verb-based relating.
We will retire thoughtforms and antique worldviews, co-generating a more vivid description of living energies of relating, inspired by the Lakota language and cosmology, and explore practices for implementing these new forms, ways of knowing, and ways of speaking into our life, work, and relationships.
COURSE DETAILS:
This is the self-paced version of the course, derived from recordings of the live course which was offered in Autumn 2022. It contains three preparatory educational films: The Language of Transformation/ The Etymology of Who We Are (62 minutes) was originally created for the Global Resilience Summit. Exiting the Language of Domination (98 minutes) was originally created for the Connection Masterclass series. Peace with Earth (62 minutes) is derived from a training for the global leadership of Extinction Rebellion UK. It then contains the principal lectures from four sessions that comprise the formal course offering, filmed between August and October 2022, of approximately one hour in length each. The course is therefore a total of about seven hours of content. You will have lifetime access to content.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR: Tiokasin is a Nobel-nominated earth and peace activist from the Cheyenne River Lakota. The Lakota people have at least a 30,000 year history (may be much much longer) of relating to the earth from what is now the middle west of Turtle Island. As a young child, he held the fingertips of his grandfather who was born in the 1800s before the arrival of the white man and the colonial paradigm that modernity represents. Tiokasin is a student and speaker of the Old Lakota language, which he learned from his now 88 year-old mother and other Elders of the Lakota people. He has spent most of his life studying and thinking outside the modes of domination that define modernity and Empire. For 29 years he has been the Host and Executive Producer of First Voices Radio, formerly First Voices Indigenous Radio, which is syndicated to 108 radio stations around the world. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Akantu Institute. He is Chair of Living Languages at the Restorative Practices Alliance, where he serves on our Global Governance Council.