In the Fall 2016 semester, I took a course called “Thinking from a Different Place: Indigenous Philosophies” with Dr. Carol Warrior (A’aniiih (Gros Ventre), Alutiiq (Sugpiaq), and Dena’ina Athabascan), which was the best and most important course I’ve taken at Cornell. Her husband, Shaawano Chad Uran (White Earth Anishinaabe), taught the course in Fall 2018 and may teach it again, and if he does, I strongly recommend taking it!
Some of the quotes and ideas in Space is the Place remind me of some of the ideas we discussed in that class, as well as some of Carol’s own work. In Space is the Place, Sun Ra discusses vibrations as connected to music. He mentions that everything has a vibration, and he implies that we are all connected through these vibrations. This reminded me of the above quote from Carol, which was shared in this image that was circulated as part of her memorial at Cornell and maybe elsewhere.
In Carol’s class, we discussed that many Indigenous worldviews (not just of nations located in what are currently the U.S. and Canada but of nations around the world) hold that everything has energy and in this sense is a living being with whom all other beings are in relation. Viola F. Cordova (Jicarilla Apache), the first Native woman to earn a PhD in philosophy, wrote about this in her chapter “Usen: The Unidentifiable Is” in her posthumously published book, How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova. (I can share a PDF of this chapter with anyone who’s interested.) Cordova points out that Western scientists later came to understand this when they realized that everything absorbs and emits energy (or vibrations). During these discussions and readings, I recalled using an infrared thermometer to measure the heat (energy) being emitted by objects such as the ceiling and the chalkboard in an environmental science classroom during the Spring 2016 semester. The connections between Indigenous philosophies and Western physics are really intriguing.
As I was looking for more sources from the course readings to expand on the idea of vibrations, I came across this quote from Cordova about myths, which is part of a longer chapter about competing worldviews, myths, and reality:
For example, a New Age prophetess, discoursing on how “charming” Indian “stories” are, tells me how much she “loves” reading them to her children. She “loves” Indian myths.
My response? My “stories” are not “myths.” Myth is a term used to connote something that is untrue, unreal, unfounded, and having no utilitarian value beyond entertainment either intellectual or spiritual. We give the term myth to those ideas that we do not happen to believe. In this sense of the term, the ancient Greeks did not have myths. Zeus and Athena were as real to the Greeks as are God, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary to Christians. (Cordova 40) (emphasis added)
The bolded text could be one way to interpret what Sun Ra meant when he said that Black people are myths. Sun Ra could be implying that in the eyes of white people, Black people are not valued apart from the entertainment value that they or caricatures of Black people provide, and even their labor (both past and present) is undervalued or not valued, despite the labor of Black people being crucial to the creation and maintenance of this country. Additionally, drawing from both Cordova and Sun Ra, this country does not “happen to believe” in the rights of Black people.
Work cited: Cordova, Viola F. How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova. Edited by Kathleen Dean Moore et al., University of Arizona Press, 2007.
Nya:wëh, Carol