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Chief Red Cloud 1922-1909
Makhpia-sha Oglala
Photo 1897 David F. Barry
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[Go to the I-Open Blog here to read the complete article.]
Have you ever heard someone - and in my experience it is rarely a person with an indigenous background, upbringing or understanding - say something about living in ways that honor the seventh generation?
It is a phrase I have heard repeatedly in some circles, spoken by people with very honorable intentions. It’s a phrase I used myself for many years without truly understanding its meaning.
In conversations about the future I would say things like: We need to consider how this decision will impact people seven generations from now.
And in so saying, I'd think that I had made a comprehensible statement capable of creating change when I saw heads nodding around me.
Rarely did I, or the people with whom I was speaking, have even the vaguest idea of how something we were doing now would impact someone 140 years from now, or have the slightest notion of what an effective way of judging our actions in that context would be.
The idea of the seventh generation sounded good, but did not really have much traction when it came to the way I lived my life on a day-to-day basis.
Then in the early 1990s I encountered the work of a woman who would later become a personal teacher to me for a very brief time - Paula Underwood - who was called too soon from this world...
Read the rest of the article at the I-Open Blog here.
Author Ken Homer is the founder of Collaborative Conversations: Include More Voices - Make Better Choices. He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area designing conversations for groups small and large. More information can be found at his website www.collaborativeconversations.com
Learn how conversations yield awareness and insight for 21st century business enlightenment. Meet Ken in the video Oral Traditions, below.
It is a phrase I have heard repeatedly in some circles, spoken by people with very honorable intentions. It’s a phrase I used myself for many years without truly understanding its meaning.
In conversations about the future I would say things like: We need to consider how this decision will impact people seven generations from now.
And in so saying, I'd think that I had made a comprehensible statement capable of creating change when I saw heads nodding around me.
Rarely did I, or the people with whom I was speaking, have even the vaguest idea of how something we were doing now would impact someone 140 years from now, or have the slightest notion of what an effective way of judging our actions in that context would be.
The idea of the seventh generation sounded good, but did not really have much traction when it came to the way I lived my life on a day-to-day basis.
Then in the early 1990s I encountered the work of a woman who would later become a personal teacher to me for a very brief time - Paula Underwood - who was called too soon from this world...
Read the rest of the article at the I-Open Blog here.
* * * * *
Author Ken Homer is the founder of Collaborative Conversations: Include More Voices - Make Better Choices. He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area designing conversations for groups small and large. More information can be found at his website www.collaborativeconversations.com
Learn how conversations yield awareness and insight for 21st century business enlightenment. Meet Ken in the video Oral Traditions, below.
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