The Star people among the Zuni is that we are descendants from the Star people
and in the past they have helped us to be what we are today or
in this modern world. And we have very good relationships with what they call
the God system, which is related through the Star people. And we have
been practicing these systems for thousands of years and it even has survived to this
day. On a lot of ritual ceremony prayers out here in the Southwest among
the hope A, Zoona and others said, even on the cultures that disappeared,
like the Chocoal culture, the Masrty culture in Kenyandiche and Arizona, they
used a reference of the Orion constellation to lay out their systems. That's our
own Clifford Mahoodi, who passed away in January of twenty twenty two, and
he was a regular on Earth Agents. We had a great understanding of the
Native Indigenous perspective here in the United States, and a lot of the discussion
with him was sacred geometry and how these people lived on the Earth and connected
with with Mother Earth in different parts of the United States. Today, we're
welcoming a new voice, a new Indigenous author and spokesperson Taylor Keene. And
it's been really hard on the Natives of the United States in the last few
years, simply because COVID decimated a number of people we had on the program,
but also it just feels like we have lost the voice of these indigenous
seers. That's what that's what I'm gonna call them is seers from the ancient
past who are bringing through traditional information, traditional understandings for the people who lived
in the United States. Now we realize through people like Pauline Steves, that
there have been people living here in the United States for over one hundred thousand
years, and this is shocking to a lot of anthropologists. But what doctor
Steves is showing through new carbon dating is that there are significant settlements throughout the
United States that had indigenous people encampments. And as this data is getting out
and we'll hear more about Paulitt Steve's later in this program, these settlements are
extremely important. Now recently there was a new Mexico study that revealed footprints that
were twenty three thousand years old, and that is being hailed as the oldest.
But as more data comes down from indigenous scholars like doctor Paultte Steves and
others. We're seeing that the timeline is being pushed very far back into the
past to the point where these individuals were living during the Ice Age, the
Holocene period that included you know, a lot of extinct megafauna. These are
elephants, mastodons, elk sabertoothed tigers, a lot of animals or most of
these animals have perished or become extinct following that period of time. But it
looks like the native people that were living around this period actually hunted these animals
and left their bones in their gravesites and in a number of caves. So
this is important to know because up until very recently, we thought there were
nothing There were no hominins living in the United States. Now we know throughout
Europe, through Africa and so forth, and so on other parts of the
planet there are great evidence of early people. But what's fascinating is that these
early settlers were very advanced. They had mathematical skills, engineering skills, and
also astronomical abilities working with cosmological systems for planning agriculture. And this looks to
be one of the reasons that in the United States there were colonies like Kahokia
Hope. Well, from the east coast to the west coast, there were
thriving communities that are estimated to be in the tens of millions. Now,
this is something that's very new and some of the latest details. We'll learn
more about it today. I was under the impression and most of the research
books that I use and others believe that the United States had perhaps one million
inhabitants. But it's looking like it could have been up to one hundred million.
One hundred million different tribes, different indigenous groups that thrived in what is
now known as the United States. So today's program is Discovering Turtle Island,
a first people's account of the Sacred geography of America. And my guest today
is author Taylor Keene, and he is a Cherokee, Omaha Indigenous American scholar.
We all know the Mounds of America. We've had a number of people
on the program talking about the mounds, and we have looked at him from
a number of perspectives, cosmological referencing, support, indigenous ceremonial centers, and
so forth. But we have not talked about these sacred sites from a Indigenous
American point of view. And we're really fortunate today to have a author,
an Indigenous American, who has written a fascinating book not only on the mounds,
but the traditions, a perspective of the Americas that we rarely get.
We've had doctor Paulette Steves talk about the antiquity, but this book we're talking
about today's called Discovering Turtle Island, a first people's account of the Sacred geography
of America. My guest is is Taylor Keen, and let me tell you
a little bit about Taylor. He is a Cherokee. He's a citizen of
the Cherokee Nation, the founder of Sacred Seed, an organization devoted to propagating
tribal seed sovereignty, and a member of the Earthen Bison clan of the Omaha
tribe, where he is known as Bison Maine. We'll have to ask him
about that. He's coming to us today from Omaha, Nebraska. I also
mentioned that he's got a numerous credentials. He has a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth
College, two master's degrees from Harvard, and he's a fellow in the Harvard
Project on American Indian Economic Development. Taylor welcome to Earth. Ancients. Man
got a real long list of credentials there. That's fascinating. Clip Thanks for
having me. I'm super excited to be here today. You know, it's
such a blessing to have you because we have a number of books that have
been written that are substantial on the mounds, but to have an Indigenous American
right about these things is really special. What was your motivation to write on
the mounds and the cosmology behind the mounds? Well, that's a great question.
There's a couple of answers to it. I want to begin by the
role of prophecy within all of this, and I allude to it to some
degree, but it's really it's a part of our oral tradition of sharing.
But it's the prophecy of the seventh generation. And the prophecy of the seventh
generation is about a period of suffering that's the first six and then the coming
of the seventh generation. And the story has to do with going back in
time, and multiple tribes have different versions of this prophecy. The one that
I'm familiar with is the Siuian one, probably originating with the Dakota people.
If we're to look at the real history of Turtle Island, and that's part
of our creation story as many Indigenous people, and we can get to that.
But when you're looking at the real history of America, this land we
call America, ones that Indigenous people call Turtle Island, many of them.
When you look back at the what's happened on this continent. The one thing
that most people don't know about, and they should is the role of smallpox.
Oh yes, and so you know, we're all survivors of the pandemic.
Without getting into the politics of how many people actually died from that,
in the bigger picture, it was very little. And I don't mean that
as a callous perspective. I mean that in comparison to epidemics like smallpox,
so a variant of cowpox which comes out of Europe. When it was actually
transmitted or by whom to the indigenous populations, it doesn't matter because it was
so infectious, probably as early as fifteen hundreds, began to be to become
documented in the late sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, the net effect from the
tip top of Northern Canada to the southern tip of South America were decimation rates.
Even at the most conservative scientific methods, fifty percent of the people died
in places like Nebraska, where it hit somewhat later because we were interior to
the country and didn't have as many conquistadors. Probably came from the Spanish,
but again, it doesn't matter who cares. Once it was there, it
was there, and eighty five to ninety five percent of the populations died.
So we're talking we're talking about an impact on tribal cultures here. That's one
aspect of it, but probably nearly almost a collective memory loss when you have
that many. So if we were to think about one hundred of our best
friends and family and you randomly pick five to tell the stories of what one's
life was or what life was like, you're going to be missing so much.
And so that is the backdrop for the the prophecy of the Seventh generation.
Ultimately, at a certain point, you can pick whatever point that was,
You can pick interactions with the Spanish and then the French and the British
and then the Americans. All of those insult to injury to what was had
already happened from smallpox, and at a certain point, you know, it
just continued to go downhill somewhere in that we look and say that was the
beginning of the prophecy. And the prophecy is that we would suffer for six
generations with the mark Kens that were to come as a part of the prophecy,
which was the successive birth of for albino bison. Once the fourth one
was born, and that was in two thousand and seven, the first one
was born in two thousand and one, that marks the era of the seventh
generation. And the prophecy, as told to me, is that that seventh
generation of indigenous youth, they will be the ones who will lead our tribal
nations to stand tall, and that would usher in an era of cultural resurgence.
To the non indigenous populations born after that time period two thousand and seven,
they would be the generation who are finally ready for indigenous wisdom. And
all of this is meant to be usher in an age of cultural resurgence.
And just by the fact that I'm here on your show today is proof to
me that we're witnessing that. So it's incumbent back to your question of why
write this book, As was not to me at the time when I heard
the story, I had not gone back deeply into all this, and you
went through my academic credentials. But basically the messages that was told to me
was, Taylor, you've done very well in the white man's world and you
don't know all your stories and you better figure them out. So I said,
touche, you're right, and I'm supposed to be a teacher, And
I left the corporate world and began teaching and began to just dive deeper,
in deeper into things. And there's so many things I could talk about,
some of which are in the book, some of the things I've remembered since
then, and things I've explored. But ancient sites and anthropology, archaeology,
archaeo, astronomy, symbology, cosmology. I've had to learn all these things
because I'm a business guy. You're a good strange man for this material though,
because you I appreciate that, and I wanted to touch something real quickly.
Were you saying that there was prophecy that the invaders would bring a disease
that would wipe out millions of indigenous people? You know, I've never heard
that it specifically said anything about a disease, but just the prophecy was that
we would suffer for six generations. Yeah, and then with the seventh everything
was going to change. I do want to time of hope. Yeah.
Along with that, real quickly, talk about dispossession of the Americas, because
you go into this and it's a systematic land grab not only in the United
States today but in Mexico and in South America. Talk a bit about that
because this is really important. Even our founding fathers justify land grabs. And
you actually mentioned Jefferson one of the key figures because not only does he do
the Louisiana purchase, which is a huge chunk of land that he opens up
kind of a problem area for indigenous people because it's like you can do whatever
you want. You can take chunks of land, even if it's on a
native area and call it your own. So talk briefly about the land grabs.
Well, it's you know, it's a really hard topic and that's partly
where I started, because I needed to understand it myself as an indigenous person.
It's easy to uh look at things from a victim status and to basically
say these things were stolen from us, but to not know the facts is
discourtesy to the whole scenario of the past, and so I felt it was
incumbent upon myself to fully understand these things and looked into the legal frameworks of
how it was actually done. And yes, our some of our founding fathers
today we would say they had a conflict of interest in President Washington and President
Jefferson were both guilty of that with regard to the land companies that they had
a financial interest in, and so in essence they knew where they were going
to go next, and then they would go in and buy some of those
lands and profit off of it. But truly, and the book puts in
specific language from President Jefferson himself about his perspectives, and I think he was
a torn man over this from his own morals, and at a certain point
his perspective was, you know, we're not going to do anything without their
consent, to a perspective of look, we have the power here, and
if they don't agree to do this, we can force it upon them.
And the language is clear in the book. I refer to President Jefferson as
the architect of dispossession. And somebody had to figure it out. Somebody had
to figure out the policy of what we did Hereultimately, you take a page
out of the British colonization book and adopt it to America. And he was
the one who figured out how to do that. That's where the discovery doctrine
becomes the legal doctrine. Somebody had to figure out how to do it.
But he was also a leader in the early Americas, including the chief executive
during a lot of the western expansion. You mentioned the Louisiana purchase and the
embodiment of manifest destiny, and by the end he had he had very little
patience for indigenous peoples to get out of the way. And you've got this
backdrop as well of this religious superiority, and that's where the doctrine of sovereignty
comes from ultimately, and I talk about this Papal edicts in the fourteen hundreds
were the Hope is saying it's okay to conquer these lands. It was okay
to take slaves, and then it was not okay to do that, but
you can still if they will convert, you can take things, and if
they don't convert, you can kill them. I'm simplifying a lot of language,
but it was a very brutal taking of the land. So did they
take kind of a page out of the Spanish conquistador's land grab because of course
they're in the fourteen hundreds. But you know, it seems like it began
with that with the papal edicts. But it appears to me the legal doctrine
that came out in the Martial trilogy, the legal doctrine was not even introduced
until the eighteen thirties. Talking about the doctrine of discovery. They had to
sort of put that in there because otherwise there was no foundation from which to
take the land from the indigenous people, but had to be inserted after the
fact to justify it, to make it an argument. And you look at
the British legal system as a model for that. So I think most of
it came from looking at what Britain did and their colonization efforts. But you
also said something very important, Taylor, which is that your Heathens unless you
convert to Christian ethics or Catholic Church. And this was the excuse that Cortez
used to basically dominate and subjugate the Aztecs as well as others. Oh,
I mean, if you really want to look into all those stories, I've
certainly explored South America and Peru and Machu Picchu and some of these other sites.
And when you hear the brutality and the coerciveness and lies and basically the
evilness of how it was done, it was brutal. And they understood several
concepts. Divide and then conquer, take the leaders and hold them hostage,
and make them tell the people what to do. All those things were done.
But again, even in South America, probably the bigger impact is the
role of smallpox. And I didn't go into this because that's not where my
ancestors are from. But when you look at those early descriptions of what the
conquistadores did, in many cases their first trip, they didn't have very much
success. Whatever they brought had its impact. Many of them turned tail tucked
and ran back to Spain, only to come back again and find that nobody
was there. Yeah, so that's that much I do know. Because no
one was immune from smallpox, and there's other diseases and blights and things that
could have happened. There's certainly impact of TB later on that affected a lot
of the tribes. There's some evidence out there of the plague. Take your
pick, but ultimately, you know, it's all about guns, germs and
steel, you know, so it was but but but the germs was the
big one. Yeah, with with with the America, because when you have
eighty five to ninety five percent of the population dying, even fifty percent as
a very conservative estimate, I mean, that's there's it was a cakewalk,
sadly, and you know, it forced a narrative. In the book,
I refer to it as the founder's dilemma of America, the concocted stories that
need to be told to justify what happened. Uh, and in many cases
just ignoring. But that's one of the deeper topics I know that you wanted
to discuss is the antiquity of the land. Yeah, we were just talking
about that before we started with We mentioned doctor Paul Atte Steves, a indigenous
anthropologist in Canada, and I wanted to to get your reference on it because
one of the things that's important about her work is using oral traditions as a
form of data. And I've be until very recently academic archaeologists ignored this data.
And Steve's showed and others are showing that you can relate it to other
tribal stories and come up with a systematic data field. She believes that indigenous
people have been in the United States or North America over one hundred thousand years.
And I'm really curious to hear what you have to say about her findings
and then what you can bring to that subject. No, I've had the
honor of communicating with doctor Steves and I read her work. We also mentioned
before this recording doctor Jennifer Rafft's work on it's called Origin, about the history
of DNA and when people came to the America. So both I kind of
read in concert and was floored by both of them and reached out to both
and they both responded back to me. So, you know, there is
a narrative about the America's because of what I call the founder's dilemma of America,
but is basically there's a guilty conscience of America about what happened and a
refusal to discuss the truth. And the truth is one is some of the
facts that I've laid out in the book of what actually happened, but much
more subtle control of the narrative. How long have indigenous people's been here?
This goes back to the formation of now what we call anthropology, but the
Bureau of American Ethnology and the role of the Smithsonian and some of this.
And one of the inaugural directors, not the first, but was John wesleep
Out, famous explorer of the Southwest and the Grand Canyon area and not nice
to indigenous people's down there, may I add as the inaugural director. He
wrote a paper that I mentioned in the book on certain limitations of anthropological data,
and in the essence, that's where he lays out the baron straight theory
and basically says, there will be no other theories discussed but this one.
No one knows. No one knows exactly what his motivations. I get a
kick out of this. But one of the theories as I was doing the
research was that his father, I believe, was a Presbyterian minister in Halmira,
New York. Do you know much about Palmyra or no? Who else
was from there? No? Oh? Is it? Is it like a
landing ground or a birthplace for a number of problems. Joseph Smith of the
Rmon Church, and apparently the rumor was that his father is a Presbyterian minister.
Lost a lot of his congregation to the Early Mormon Church, and that,
of course is one of their theories, is that somehow it was lost
tribes of Israel that became the indigenous peoples. There's no DNA evidence for that,
and I also explored everything to look at the anthropological record, and they
don't line up. But either way, the net effect of that paper and
the policy if you write the first paper of the Academy in a whole field
and say you can't violate this, well then everyone has to follow suit.
So one of the things that's discussed in all this narrative Graham Hancock's work on
America. Before I think I'm getting the title right, he looks into a
lot of this. But you know there is from the mainstream academics and supposed
to authorities on all this. Anything that is considered to be old careers are
dismantled and ruined if they come up with anything besides the Clovis first theory as
a very straight theory, but now it's almost irrefutable. And I love doctor
Steve's work and I have a lot of respect for the work that she's done
there. She laid out so many things, and there's so many sites.
Matter of fact, there's one right here in Nebraska close to me that I
didn't know anything about. That I need to go and explore. But right
now we've got radiocarbon dating from the footprints in White Sands, New Mexico at
twenty three and a half thousand years. And I know there's plenty of anthropologists
who still don't want to accept it, but it's hogwash and it's silly when
you look at the multiplicity of languages. I don't have any of the citations
or data in front of me right now, but there's several thinkers who have
looked at the multiplicity of languages and there's just no way that you could have
these five different distinct language groups with still yet you know, over five hundred
and seventy five that's how many tribal nations are still recognized, but how many
language groups are still around even though that's in crisis. But going back to
pre smallpox, how many more were there then? So the clock going backwards
can only be expanded. But I think it's a part of what I call
the Founder's film of America. If you brand indigenous peoples as less than human,
which you saw a lot of in the time of Powell. That was
the impact of the American eugenics movement, and the timing of it was imprinted.
I talk about John Wesley Powell and his work as the first director of
the Smithsonian and the head of American the Bureau of American Ethnology, as discussing
aryan Aryan race notions of supremacy, and so it was clearly a part of
the eugenics movement that was born in America, and sadly Hitler got it from
America, the whole eugenics movement, and that was prevalent at premier institutions like
my alma mater, Harvard University. And then one of the reasons why there's
such vast collections in the Peabody Museum and other places, it was just,
you know, the vanishing race. They're going to die, so it's our
divine right to take the land from them and do something with it. And
then the process vilify them. And I've seen countless documentation of you know,
early Americans being basically like they're savages, and they weren't really even really hear
that long and psychologically it makes perfect sense to me now after doing all the
research, you know, It's funny because I think I read somewhere and you
can probably give me more details on this, that at its peak there was
something like two hundred and fifty thousand miles coast to coast and they were systematically
destroyed by various cities that went up by people that wanted to cultivate crops on
the land. But that's amazing, and so the mounds were significant in present
day United States, I guess everywhere. And so if you were to use
that backdrop of how long indigenous peoples have been here when you start talking about
population trends, and I discussed this somewhat in the book. My research looked
at how many people were here and you've got everywhere from an extremely conservative at
one million, which is a silly methodology when you look at why up to
one hundred million. Now, the bulk of those were probably coming out of
meso America, and we see the reasons why, the explosion of indigenous agricultural
methods and you know, the expansion of what we would call civilizations today,
which is based off cosmology, religion, and food. For whatever reason,
we don't see a major explosion into the Americas until a little bit later.
Than that, and we don't know why or if something older is still there
that we haven't found. But you see the rise of the Anasazi populations around
the same time that you see the rise of the Mississippian cultures in the heartland.
But again this is a moving target. Corn is one of the things
that I view to look at to track when these explosions happened. But certainly
you've got the rise and subsequent fall of the Proto Pueblians known as the Anasazi.
Anthropology loves to give new names, which I think is also part of
the psychology that separates the people who are still in the Pueblos today from the
ancient ones, and they call them things like the Anasazi, same with the
rise and fall of Cohokia in the Mississippian period. Also terms like Adina and
Hopewell and all these others, But it's just the ancestors. Ultimately, I
got into this part of looking at that. One is to show that indigenous
peoples were brilliant, that we had advanced mathematics, that we had cosmology,
that we had civil engineering, we had architecture, we had construction methods,
and you almost have to see the mounds with your own eyes to feel the
energy and to see the beauty and complexity of how many people were probably here,
but some of the estimates go up to a hundred million. Yeah,
let's talk about the mounds. Is your book titled as Sacred Geography? Are
the mounds built over energy fields? Lay lines? Toluric? I mean I
use the term to lurk fields a lot, because the Maya built many of
their herem is over energy centers, and they cultivated the energy. But what
is your knowledge on why they would build a mound and on what kind of
land. I certainly feel the energy when I'm on some of these sites.
I loved the whole notion of lay lines, which is basically just connecting points
between sacred sites. Is their energy there? Absolutely? Do we know what
that is today with our huge egos and five senses, I don't think we
have any clue. But most certainly they were powerful places. And you see
the expansion of European and colonization, and you know, the Catholic Church is
one of the biggest ones. They would find these sacred sites and build their
church on top of it because they knew there was energy there, and that
includes North America. That's Mexico though, and I totally agree what you're saying
that Mexican Catholic churches would find these sites and build on top of them.
But fame in the Southwest too, really sure. Oh. As matter of
fact, in the book, I talk about a very important site very close
to the city of Omaha, Nebraska, has different pronunciations to the Pawnee and
the Ricora and all of their Ketto and speaking relatives, but Phook is what
it's called. And even with that site, it's the navel of the world.
And I'll leave your listeners to read the book and some of the stories
that are in there, but it's the navel of the world. They had
to do in the time of giants, and the Creator enacted the flood to
get rid of the giants and the people and and many of the animals were
structed to go to a cave underneath the sacred site, a Council of Animal
site, only to emerge later an incredible site, in my opinion, ceremonial.
There's some neat effigy mounds that are there. There's a powerful burroke which
is the tree of life to the Pawnee, and wonderful vista for prayers and
contemplation. It's just stunning. But the good citizens of Kansas Nebraska Territory decided
that that was the site that they were going to build their capital on.
Neopolis was going to be the name of it. Fortunately ended up being somewhere
else. But there's another example of the conqueror finding these most sacred sites.
But I mean, they're all across the country. We're going to take a
short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we'll be right
back with my guest today, Taylor Keen discussing his newest book, Rediscovering Turtle
Island. We'll be right back. My guest today is Indigenous American scholar Taylor
Keen, who's written a new book called Rediscovering Turtle Island. And this is
a look at these earthen works otherwise known as mounds throughout the United States.
There's significance, there are cosmological alignments, and who actually built them. But
let me just ask you, Taylor, as a sensitive So if there's two
hundred plus thousand of these mounds, are they built to distinguish a sacred area,
a sacred site for prayer, for ceremony, for cosmological reasons or was
there another reason for those for those mounds? And it's great that you say
that the white man would come and build on top of them, because something
intuitive. You'll never read anyone saying I could feel the energy of this site,
so I'm gonna build my capital on it. That's just I don't know
what that is. But what do you say about building so many of these
sacred mounds? I mean, I certainly won't discount the role of energy and
things that I don't fully understand yet. I would love to be able to
intuit that and to explore it further. I do know this, the relationship
between earth and sky is terribly important when you're looking at the mound if you're
trying to understand them. So you had mentioned cosmology, we might as well
bring that topic up. But one of the things I discovered central to the
cosmology of ancient indigenous people's is the tree of life, which you'll find in
many other cultures. Higgs a drill within the Norse mystic Judaism, the capitalistic
tree of life, that's kaim. They all line up. That was one
of the epiphanies that I had, and within the Indigenous version, which probably
is influenced by the model out of meso America, but it's also very similar
to the notions out of ancient China, probably where our DNA comes from.
Originally most of it, but the Tree of Life, it includes the tripartite
realms of the upper and the lower and the middle realms, and that's the
creation story, the cosmological story that is the theme for all of this.
But more importantly symbolically, it's the axis MOUNDI, the center of the universe,
center of the world, and from there you have this incredible cosmology that
talks about all these things. And we live in the middle realm, the
universe as woven by Grandmother Spider, who's part of a lot of our creation
stories. And then in the upper realm is the realm of the thunderers and
their messengers, the thunderbirds. And then the roots is the lower watery realm
important the agriculture inhabited by water spirits, and chief amongst them the underwater serpent
itself the great serpent. Some people call it other tribes water panther. But
it is a unique variation off some of the stories being told out of meso
America. They have no thunderbirds. They have their water gods. But you
have a very unique story in North America that probably was influenced by meso America,
but it became its own, its own thing. So so much of
it has to do with that tree of life, the connections between the upper
realm and the middle realm, or connections to the lower watery realm, and
that explains so much about the cosmology. Many of the mounds are connected to
important stellar things in the sky. We talked before the call just a little
bit about the Newark Works not too far from Columbus, Ohio, and that
is the nexus point for most of the mounds. And yes, ninety percent
of them are gone. Agricultural farming, railroads, cities, you loo could
eat, Saint Louis, all those mound groups are gone because when they were
building, they just tore them down and raise them to the ground. Probably
more importantly than progress was a lack of respect because I think somewhere they knew
that these were ancient things, and unfortunately they sought to destroy them rather than
study them. But we have enough left to blow our minds, and that's
what a lot of the book is about. But when you're looking at places
like Newark Works. It's heart wrenching at the most sacred part for me,
and it's the pinnacle of the book. Is what I call the ceremony of
ceremonies, And this time of year is very powerful. Actually once every twenty
years eighteen point six years, you see the full phase of the maximum and
minimum moon rise. But you also see alignment of the Great Circle and octagon
at the Newark Works, aligned to the dark rift of the Milky Way,
which is what we as Indigenous people know is the journey of souls back to
where we come from. Seven Sisters constellation. Are they still doing ceremonies there?
No, there's a golf course there. Oh terrible. That's that's its
own story. But the Mound Builders Country Club, as a matter of fact,
I was just out there, is true? Did they actually call it
the Mound Builders country It is, and they've been they've they've been embroiled in
a battle. They built it in the early nineteen hundreds originally, and not
too long thereafter the Ohio Historical Society realized what it was and bought it from
them, but gave them a seventy or ninety year lease. I've heard two
different versions. It was up in I think around two thousand and seven or
so, and it was controversial then whether to renew it, But some of
my inside sources there said that the last director of the Ohio State Historical Society
retired with a nice retirement package and renewed it for another seventy years. Wow.
So's when I was out there. There's a beautiful point in the great
Circle that's connected to the Octagon, which is the Hopewell Road, where every
eighteen point six years, initiates or adepts in ancient tribal mystery schools would probably
line up to walk the Great Hopewell Road and the dark rifts of the Milky
Way would rise overhead to them. And there was an observation point, I
assume for other interested people's family members to watch these ceremonies. And I had
to navigate through golfers to get up on the spot myself and had them all
shaking their fists or other fingers at me. And I promptly shook mine back
at this because do you feel anything when you were there? Oh? I
for sure. So it's got a lot of it's on a key lay line
of some kind. It's got to be and so much of them have been
destroyed. But you know, you can drive in a car, you know,
around the Newark Works to you know all these different parts, and so
much of them have been destroyed. The Alligator Mound, which is a stupid
name for it. It's really the underwater serpent that is there, and it's
an incredibly nice neighborhood and it's all that's left. There's a little cul de
sac at the end. So it's an actual remains of a mound that yes,
oh so okay. So it has a shape and it's been protected somehow,
somehow, somehow it was protected. But everything else in between there is
now gone. Same with Serpent Mound. You know, we only know of
the Serpent Mound itself, but there was, you know, an accompanying complex
that was probably there for all of them ceremonial sites. But all of these
mounds are connected to movements of the Sun and the moon and the stars,
equinoxes, the solstice, true Norse, the dark rift of the Milky Way.
At the very least, it's a clock. It's a good way to
measure time, but to understand including procession of the Earth, which is incorporated
into the arsen works. You have to be a careful student for thousands of
years somehow. Well, the big questions I always get asked is well,
where was the writing system? Wow, mathematics is the greatest communications system there
is, and there was definitely high mathematics. When you look at the side
elevations of almost any of the works, my favorite ones, I would look
at the side elevations by the first publication of the Smithsonian that was by Squire
and Davis on the Ancient Antiquities in the Mounds, and they did side elevations
and it's basically algebra. Yeah, they're doing surveys in their coming. Yeah,
there are numbers and you're just looking at the pictures and it's like,
okay, that's a sign that's co signed. Yeah, it's just mind boggling
because you know, these aren't just like geometric. These are algebraic. And
we're talking a thousand to two thousand years ago, if not even further.
Hey, let's talk about a good story, which is Pahook, Nebraska,
which is a chapter. Talk about this place because it was somewhat it was
saved by a family and there's effigy mounds. Talk about the mounds just an
incredible site, and the fact that it's still there, it's not protected,
and you know, that's a whole other conversation. The Newark Works has Genesco
protection as a World Heritage Site, and at least it gives it a good
brand. But if somebody wanted to buy and destroy it, I don't know.
I mean, it becomes very complicated. Pog's one of those sites.
It absolutely should be protected. It's in private hands now who are friendly.
But I know of other sites close to where I live, right in right
and Omaha, Nebraska that new owners takeover don't have the same mindset fence it
off and who knows what they've done to those ancient Earth's lodge basins and perhaps
the ceremonial site. It's what I call Serpent Ridge. That's another one that
is up in Florence, Nebraska, which is one of the early settlements.
But speaking about energy, that's an incredible zone right there. But basically you
have a lot of the early French explorers, Lewis and Clark, the Mormons
came through there for their winter encampment. All within it's got to be a
five mile square area. What are the legends of that area is there any
oral history, oral traditions of sacred ceremonies, or a winter or summer encampment
of some kind. I mean, some of those sites are, you know,
somewhere. I don't even know if they can be carbon dated. I'd
have to ask my friend who's the Emeritis state archaeologist here in Nebraska. But
my guess is there anywhere between one and three thousand years ago all of all
of those sites. So I don't know if they're necessarily stories that I'm aware
of. There's certainly stories about the supernatural beings that are around there. The
underwater serpent was said to live in the freshwater springs underneath the earth and then
would come out at origin places into what people would know as the Missouri River.
All the tribes are translation for it is smoke on the water, and
many of the stories are about that places of origin. And all the stories
about the underwater serpent and thunderbirds and those are those are the stories that we
have and there across all of the land. But I didn't see like Serparate
Mountain has from an aerial of you has obvious design on the hills uh And
but at uh Pewhok it's called effigy mounds or they have effigy mounds, but
there's nothing really remaining that you can see. Maybe there is there is,
it's just not explored. Cliff. That's one of the things that I want
to do is to really uh get some more traction and get some proper light
oar studies. Light ar would be great, but I mean you can you
can walk on them and you can see them, and you know that there's
stuff there. But you know, again, you know with vegetation being there.
But light ar would do a tremendous about to help that. And there's
other technologies that are that are out there that can certainly help ground penetrating radar.
That all costs money. That all costs money. And that's one of
my dreams is to have enough pocket change to buy a drone that's got light
our capabilities. I don't know if that's possible or not, but that's one
of my goals because I would love to go to these Yeah, my guess
is more than pocket change. But if there's anything a call to arms out
of all this is we need to save these sacred sites across all Americas for
everyone's edification and enjoyment. I just became obsessed with this topic because there was
so little written from an Indigenous perspective, and I've tried to inject my own
versions of you know, what I understand about Indigenous ceremonies and life ways and
our cosmology. And I think that as an Indigenous person who is open and
aware and is disciplined enough to do the researcher're going to find all these connections.
Serpent Mound itself, I know, goes back to one of our Cherokee
stories, our interpretation of that if the serpent needs the sun. But as
I was mentioning the ceremony of ceremonies that the Newark works as ad abs initiates
to walk on the Hopewell Road on that one powerful night around the summer solstice
every Jaeshia twenty years, you're going to see the dark rift of the Milky
Way appear out of the Southern hemisphere and come up overhead, which is where
the journey of the souls connects. And so you would have this physical as
above so below with the stars. And then if you to keep going on
the Hopell Road, it points to a natural occurrence called sugar Loaf Mounds,
and by the time that the sun rose in the morning, you would see
Scorpius moving towards the sun. The serpent eats the sun, so at least
with the earthen works in the Mississippian Realm, probably connected the energy, but
also connected from the powers and the symbology of the upper realm to the middle
realm. I want you to talk a little bit about an area that I
never heard of before, which is Circleville and the earthen works there. One
of the things that you bring up that I have not heard is the masculine
feminine aspects of these earthworks. Yes, and I want you to explain that.
And the reason this is so amazing is that if there is an energetic
part of these sacred sites that you're talking about that the ancestors knew, the
connection between male and female energy is extremely important. We see this in Mexico
and Yucatan at places like Ushmoh. It's a it's a feminine dwelling, it's
a feminine city, and they actually had sexual We talked. I talked to
elders about this. They talked about sexuality and having children at certain astrological times.
Talk about this. H This Circleville is because this is absolutely fantastic part
of your book. Well, it's not just that one site. It's in
and so many of them. I was mentioning from the newer works. Another
example, it's the great circle in the octagon and in essence with circles,
which is associated with the sacred masculine because it's the sun and are. One
of the interpretations of our creation stories has to do with Father being the sun
and Mother being the moon. So you have the original distinction between the sacred
masculine and feminine. But even from that you get these notions incorporated into the
mounds where the octagons and squares just depending on how they're laid out with certain
marketings, and all of them have different little mounds for orientations. They're aligned
to the movements of the moon and the hinges, whether they're wood or stone.
You can think of big horn medicine will or there's the woodhinge at Kahokia.
Those are most easily tied to and equinox. Talking about the hinges,
which are markers, right, yeah, like as these stone workers, you're
talking about these mounds having these markers that are circular or square. Yes,
Well, what was found was, for example at kajoki of the wood hinge
that was there. It took new technology to find out where the wood post
were, but it's all there, and so you know, it's a it's
a flat space, but it was in practice. It was in practice a
wood hinge. Big Horn Medicine wheel is actually stone and you can go and
see it. And it's not just aligned to equinoxes and solstice activity, but
also to the rising of stars in the sky at at a certain time.
Doctor Jack Eddie was the first sort of anthropologist archae astronomer to document a lot
of that stuff in the nineteen seventies. But it's very much a sagred spot
and you see indigenous people going up there all the time for prayer and contemplation
and probably to feel the energy. That's why I go there. It's a
very peaceful, wonderful place. See that's that's the amazing part of these mouths,
and that's why it's really terrible that they most of them have been bulldozed.
It could be a healing center if people were more sensitive, those those
mounds could have been used as healing centers. I wanted to talk real briefly,
and we've worry brought it up about the cosmological aspects and the importance of
working with the the the planets, and the and the seasons by stargazing.
I mean, it's everything. I've been very much interested, most recently with
the role of mythology, and all of our greatest stories are inspired by the
ancients, whatever culture you come from, looking at the stars. I just
finished a wonderful work on Greek mythology Mythos by Stephen Frye. And it's the
same with the origin for our tribal stories. I mean, when you're talking
about all the original beans and cosmos and chaos and the spinoff, there are
representations of what people were looking at in the stars. Same with our indigenous
stories. The more and more I find out about it, I touch on
some of this stuff in the book, But for example, the Red Horn
panel at Picture Cave, which is where the Degeean Suians, my maternal ancestors
are from, along with many other tribes, and we were probably one larger
unit. But you've got this red Horn panel which tells the story that was
celebrated at places like Kahokia about first father and first woman and their children and
the thunder twins and Redhorn the savior of humanity from the upper realm brought to
this realm. And there's ties to meso America, but it's become its own
story, unto itself. But when you have all of these stories together,
ultimately they can be tied to movements of the stars. So people watched certain
stars and they became personified, uh here on this planet and the and the
in the middle realm. But but but but indigenous people are more connected to
the seasons. Then then you know what we've We've just lost it, you
know, we we don't care. You know, there's there's the seasons,
the winterfall, uh, spring in summer, but it's more important to follow
it in a ceremonials kind of way. You kind of blessed the season as
it opens, and then you plant your crops. But you also you give
thanks to the creator and so forth and so on. That stuff, the
little small things that I think are more important that we need to understand that
we've lost. You know that the indigenous people were so connected to the land.
It's a whole energetic movement to have ceremony. Why bother having ceremony,
Well, it's the same as praying, So talk a little bit about that.
Well, certainly, I'd like to think that Indigenous peoples have been able
to maintain some of these core values and notions that are important despite you know,
the near successful genocide and ecoside of our lifeways, including this systematic nextinct
extinction of bison, and not to mention other things that we're here, wolfs,
etc. Elk from many of the places, all those things that you'll
see in clan system structures for indigenous people, and equal injustice is the transformation
of the land and the plants of all these invasive species farming. I mean,
I'm from the bread basket of the United States, and it seems to
be as nearly a sin to not have every agrable acre planted with crops,
which are in many cases around here are highly subsidized by the United States government.
And it's just changed the whole landscape. Prairies are gone. Spent a
lot of time with folks over in Iowa, and I'm trying to remember what
percentage of the land is still in its original form, but it's a percentage
of one percent. All the rest has just been transformed and full of pesticides
and everything else, and the natural flora and fauna that we're there are gone.
So despite all that, we still have our teachings in our ways.
Thanksgiving we think of that as an American holiday. It's not a holiday to
indigenous peoples, but it's a part of our ceremonial agricultural lifeways to give thanks
to the creator. Around the harvest moon, we have the beginning of spring.
Typically, well, I can only speak for some of my tribes,
but the first thunder brings about notions of rebirth for the land. But you
know, indigenous, there are indigenous peoples of Europe and you may have some
of those in your in your line or stock. I don't know where you
come from, but I'm Northern. Look at me, I'm a white boy
I come from. My people are Northern European. So like Beltane and Midsommer,
those are indigenous ceremonies. Oh interesting, So those are the indigenous people
of those regions. Yeah, well, I mean Irish, Celtic, Scandinavian,
whatever you might be. You have indigenous peoples too. And there's mounds
over there. There's stone works and earthen works and serpent mounds. And that's
the big question to me, is okay, there's too many coincidences is here
of how we used to live life and maybe in a lot of sense we
need to find our way back to those things. Well, it's so much
more holistic to live in this manner where you're you're blessing and living among the
seasons and you bless Mother Gaya, you know, and you live more completely
rather than what we're especially in the Western culture, we're so everything's so artificial.
You know, it doesn't have to be that way, Cliff. That's
one of the points I talk about thinking red and living red, taking the
indigenous living cosmological system. But you know that goes to my work with Sacred
Seed of what were people eating and how were they living? To do this,
and you know, and I had to ask a lot, but you
know, bits and pieces are throughout every tribe in North America, like when
to plant, we plant on the new Moon in May. We have roles
of the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, a try for doing so. Only
the women plant, and they have to be of child bearing age. And
to your average religious person in North America, a Catholic or a Protestant,
you start talking about fertility and how babies are really made and everybody gets really
uncomfortable, but that's how they're really made right. And and you see that
within the mounds, you see sacred masculine and feminine metaphors and symbology in these
you had mentioned sort of feminine cities. I've not studied it too deeply,
but certainly indebted to the work of doctor Timothy Pocketet. Doctor Susan Alt.
Pocketet did the sort of seminal work on Kohokiah, and he was one of
the anthropologists who embraced the oral traditions. Doctor Robert Hall was probably the first
guy, but he was indigenous to really look at all of these aspects of
the sacred masculine and feminine and the symbolism and ceremonies and some of the antiquities
of the of the land as well. But Susan Alt writes about perhaps the
Emerald city sort of a moon cult. I hate those terms are anthropological terms,
but I get what they're saying of basically a sacred feminine city outside of
Cohokia, the ancient city that's now called right around Saint Louis. But you
know, as we learn more about these sites and the interconnectedness and archaeo astronomy,
and things that belonged to the sun belonged to the masculine, and things
that belong to the moon belonged to feminine, and the balance in between those,
and then the role of the stars, and they become the stories you
mentioned. Gaya. That's the Greco term for Indigenous peoples. It's you know,
Mother Earth, Earth's mother, the oldman who never dies. She has
many names, but it's the same concept. We're going to take a short
commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we'll be back shortly
with my guest today, Taylor Keene, discussing his newest book, Rediscovering Turtle
Island. My guess today is Indigenous America's scholar Taylor Keene, and he's sharing
with us insights from his newest book, Rediscovering Turtle Island. Hey, talk
a little bit about ceremonial artifacts. You actually you actually have a section in
the book where you highlight it's called the calu mint wand calumt. Yeah,
it's a sacred pipe. And the thing that's interesting about this is that it
was never smoked, right, and so it was talk about that how it
was used and what it means well, one of the main parts of the
research that was just mind boggling to me was, however old the Calumet tradition,
and I'll explain just a moment to your listeners what that means, but
it certainly has ties to a thousand years ago, and through the anthropological research
it's tied to place is like the Kahoki Empire, which was a trading network.
Ultimately it was a true empire based on economics, but it was one
of the ceremonies that came out of that. And you see the Calumet remaining
with many of those tribes, including my mother's tribe, the Omaha's and the
Pawnees I talk about because they have documentation of having these ceremonies. Ultimately,
what they were had to do with war and fertility, and we may think
of that as a dichotomy, but after war, when many people have expired,
you need fertility to come back. And the main part about the Calimet
ceremony is the center object, which is a singular piece of corn. Going
back to our discussion about Gaya, it was mother corn, so symbolic that
one perfect ear of corn, which was this ceremony. These two wands,
one is masculine one as feminine. There are tons of symbology into the creation
stories. The psdological hero known as Redhorn also had the original name of and
then these are odd names to most people, but these are ancient, thousand
year old names. He who was hit with deer lungs, and it has
to do with a certain story about the first humans. And there are owl
feathers on those pipes, and many thinkers and I agree with them that it
has allusions to these early stories. And there's some symbolism of the morning Star
in the Evening Star, the battles between morning Star and the Evening Star,
and they were personified in the characters. The pipe wands were very powerful,
and though they were not smoked because it wasn't that type of pipe, but
didn't make them any less significant. And when the ceremony was enacted, it
would literally stop war. And so was because they were imbuing the body of
this wand with the ancestors energy of some kind, so that when a ceremony
was brought out and their people are looking at this one, they're like,
oh, this is like Thor's hammer or something, you know what I mean.
Yeah, kind of get the analogy behind it. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think of what would be a good analogy,
because we did have what I called a masive power, and I could
show you illustrations of what they look like. They were often made out of
stone, but all the stories about the thunder Twins and the giants, they
would hold these maces that were symbolic of power and kingship basically to use the
European I would say, maybe chieftainship in our realms. And there was a
spear as well, probably not unlike the spear of destiny. Oh okay,
there were symbols, and there was lots of elaborate headgear too, And I
could show you examples from picture cave of the thunder Twins and what looks like
meso American, big sort of headdresses. And then some of the copper plates,
the refuse plates that are found in the Edewa mounds, that rogan plates
have things that look very elaborate. But they were probably elite leaders of some
type, if not religious individuals. But help me understand how this is.
So you call it the wand but it's actually a pipe that most people would
smoke stupidly. It's a ceremony's are they are they? Is it made of
an ancient wood or a bird's beak or all there's all the above types of
symbols within them. They were made of a special wood. They were not
allowed to touch the ground, at least the last Omaha version, which is
what I found. The glory that you're referring to as to do with my
discovery of them at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the Planes Indian
Museum, and they were basically unclassified objects that the curator and I she asked
for my help if I wanted to figure out what they were, but they
were attributed to their law tribe, but no one really knew what they were.
As it turns out, it was our sacred corn bundle. And from
there I did all the research into the ceremony, and it literally was used
that if there were two tribes warring, and somebody had the guts to do
it, there would be a principal character who would walk into the warring tribe
with these two pipe wands, and if accepted, it stopped the war.
If not, they were probably killed, we don't know, but it would
stop war. And then what ensued was a very sacred ceremony of gifting.
There were some beautiful objects that were associated with this bundle that were their big
bolts of either English or French trade cloth from probably the eighteen eighties, which
is beautiful to look at, and a big bolt of it today. You
know, I don't know how much this stuff costs, you are, but
it's terribly expensive and it's just a recent knockoff. This was the real thing.
And there were other wonderful trade items that people at that time period wanted
to trade and they felt were important. But it would stop war. But
the main part of the ceremony was in doing this sacred object of mother corn
to the heavens. They would put it on top of a tepee pole and
then bring it back down as a symbol of fertility and gross for the tribe,
and then they would annoint those powers on a child. So it was
it was a fertility ceremony that literally ended war. That'd be great if we
still had those today. So is this wand still in the museum of it?
Is? It is? No, it's not available to view anymore.
It's in the sacred collection now. And at some point that's what part of
the point of the chapter is on the book. It might seem tedious the
descriptions of them to some individuals, but the intended audience for those for that
chapter was really to explain to other indigenous people, because really I'm writing a
lot of this book for the seventh generation so that they understand. One was
the synchronicity of how this happened, because it was crazy that I just happened
to be up there as an advisor and the curator just happened to know about
these unclassified documents, and we had enough time one Thursday or Friday afternoon to
wander in to look at it, and we're able to piece it together.
Incredible story. And we view those bundles as almost like people that they miss
us and they need us and we need them, and the goal is to
get her home someday. And I was just honored and blessed that she picked
me to find her again after being gone since eighteen eighty three. That's what
the documentation of the object said. Do you guess are into it that it's
a few hundred years old or perhaps older, or perhaps the various aspects of
the feathers, the bones, or whatever it's made out of, it could
be very ancient. My guess is those were created for the ceremony. But
the ceremony itself is at least a thousand years old, because it's alluded to
in the anthropological record and research going back to Kahokia. How long it went
on before that, we don't know. But my guess is it could be
thousands of years old. It could be tens of thousands of years old.
We don't know some of the mysteries of America. This has been fun.
I want to conclude with a chapter you wrote on Kahokia. Kahokia, and
you actually have a I want to ask you about this. It's the year
one thousand and fifty four. Yes. First of all, is this story
of this young indigenous person walking through Kahokia and seeing the ceremony? Is that
from a document you read? Or is it an oral tradition or what?
Because it's so elaborate and so detailed that I was like, how in the
heck did he find It's a fantastic story. Talk a little bit about this.
I appreciate that, Cliff, And I really feel like, you know,
if somebody says, what one chapter should I read, and I say,
read that chapter because it's great it's years of anthropological research. Again,
my discipline is in the field of business and strategy. But it was a
natural evolution for me because I realized the one thing that I could do in
the world was to take my skill set of strategy, which is an interdisciplinary
field of all these different things finance, economics, operations, marketing, human
resources, human talent, all these things. And I thought, well,
if I can just learn the fields of history and anthropology and symbology and cosmology
and mytho the lifetime it is a lifetime, but if I could figure that
out, I might have something meaningful to share with people. And that's where
we're at. So when I did all this research, and that's where all
the details come from. What they were eating, the timeframe of which mound
was built first, what was in the fields, what was the role of
people, allusion to twins and these stories, and I kind of put it
all together. I get a kick out of it because it was really difficult
to put all this together. And the first version of that chapter was very
antiseptic and very anthropological. And I had a copy editor, nice young lady.
It was a few years out of college, and she was a bull.
I remember I'd gone through several copy editors, and I picked that chapter
because it was the most confusing and the most difficult. It's challenging, yeah,
I can see. And I had one little bit that I had turned
into a story narrative of that character, Honga, but it was like one
paragraph, and I gave it to her as a test, because I gave
that one chapter to everybody. It was the best thing that I had studied,
and it was probably the worst written chapter because it was so hard to
get everything well, talk a little bit about it. Was it from an
oral tradition? Where did that data come from? Because you're describing the buildings
with such accuracy that it's like you're right there. Well that's well as the
first draft of it was a very dry description of those things that you saw
there, so you know, it'd be like four or five paragraphs of talking
about the crops that were in the field, or what researcher said, what
was built first, or how did they build a new It's all research.
But I had this one paragraph about Honga in italics in this thing, and
I gave it to this copy editor, and I really owe her a lot
of thanks. Everyone else, like wouldn't comment or just did sort of grammatical
stuff. She xed out everything else in a red marker and circled the one
paragraph on Honga and we met for coffee, so you built on that paragraph.
She handed it back to me and she said, everything I marked out,
I think you should trash. I know it's going to hurt your feelings,
but you should tell you should tell every books edited like that. I
know what you're talking about. And and she said, you're a natural storyteller.
Tell the story, don't tell the facts. So that's where it came
from. So all of that is based out of research, and I wherever
possible where I was citing something from papers. That's what you see. Even
though it is sort of a fictional narrative, it has citations because all those
things are rooted in the research that I did. Okay, so let me
tell you it was my interpretation of what was happening. Okay, Well,
you're basing it on on facts and research on other people's uh stories of Well,
they didn't have any stories, they just had theories and facts of you
know, there's people who were studying the plants. There, there are people
who were studying the stratigraphy, the objects elders talking to you about this as
well. I mean, because you're talking about one thing that a thousand years
ago. Yeah, it's amazing. Number one is a thousand years ago.
But number two what's shocking is they're sacrificing human beings. Well, I mean,
that's that's clear in the anthropological record, Okay. I talk about that
because I thought this was all This is all Aztec Maya worship kind of you
know, blood letting, blood sports. This actually happens at Kahokia because we
have what skeletal remains, is what you're suggesting. Yes, and and that's
why I framed the whole concept of that chapter around Hongo, who becomes a
dynastic leader. And that's the only thing that makes sense to me. It's
all about bloodlines, and that's why I make the illusions that they would decimate
entire bloodlines when changing succession. Whether or not they were looking at maternal bloodlines
or paternal we don't know, but it seems to be the structures. As
a strategist, I look for patterns, and that was the pattern that I
saw, and that made sense of why there were so many and the obsession
with twins and the role of twins in some of the burial mounds. And
I'm making a theory, but it's an indigenous theory, it's not an anthrological
fantasy. So this is ritual sacrifice is basically what you're talking about, which
is very all over the Maya theme and all over as other Mesoamerican indigenous people.
That's all over the place. Several similar things happened in other cultures too.
Certainly, anyone who's seen Game of Thrones knows that that's the case in
Europe too, and you see that in Asia and everywhere, the change of
that dynastic leadership usually results in some bloodshed. That's true. It's not just
in the America's I think some of the other indigenous people from different parts of
Europe were doing that to a degree. It's just abhorrent to us today because
it's like, you think of life as sacred. Can you can you help
us understand why the sacrifice of of of of a human would be important and
we're using the term sacrifice as in another term. Well, what I'm what
I'm alluding to in the work is that whenever dynasties would change, and I
think this is not unlike the sort of Game of Thrones version in Europe.
Every one of those players knows that if something changes and the game of who's
sitting on the throne changes, they could be dead. And I think the
same thing was happening here. They're all dynasties, and they're abought bloodlines,
and so if somebody knew made the run at power, they would kill off
anyone else who could challenge their authority. And so in many cases, if
a great leader passes away, I make this illusion in that chapter that the
rest of the family would sacrifice themselves because they knew if they didn't, they
would go interesting, whether they wanted to or not. So it became sort
of ritualized self sacrifice. We don't know how it happened, but that made
sense to me as an indigenous person and looking at system and the role of
families and dynasties and elite, et cetera. That's that was my interpretation what
I'd seen from the anthropological record. Forgive me the books called Rediscovering Turtle Island.
My guest today has been Taylor Keene. I urge you to get this
book just came out. I mean, it just came out a week ago,
and it has and we haven't got a chance to get around to it
because we're times limited. That has wonderful diagrams on these mounds. They the
details of why they would build the mound, and it's cosmological referencing to different
star systems and seasonal systems. As we conclude, Taylor, Uh, you
bring up at towards the end of the book something that I thought it was
fascinating. Scott Walters talks about this as well, is the influence of Mesoamerican
cultures into what is present day United States. You suggest, and I think
you even say that the toll tech design and people were in the America's Northern
America at a very early period. Talk a little bit about that. Well,
I'm not sure if I would agree with that. First of all,
toll tech is just an anthropological term. We don't know what people's or exactly
who comprised that. That's one of the theories is that somehow the toll Techs
were the mysterious mound builder culture. And most of this theory came up in
the late eighteen hundreds. Maybe my dear friend Scott Walter believes that is a
big question in anthropology is what is the connection between meso America and North America.
Very little, if a scant or no evidence has been found to show
that there was trade in between. My perspective is you can't get around it.
From from a cosmological perspective, from a mythology perspective, you see comparisons
self evident in my opinion, First Father, first Mother, the thunder Twins,
the upper realm, the lower realm, the underworld, whatever, they
called them, different things. But there's a couple of scholars that I really
like their work and talk about it in my book. But where they're making
these deeper comparisons, there's a couple of theories that I've seen out there,
whether it was one person or a set of individuals that experienced that cosmology and
brought this powerful story back. I would compare it to the sharing and prostalytization
of the Christian myth across the world, a similar type of thing. It
was a powerful, compelling story, and people are attracted to it. And
just as they're attract to the stories of Jesus and ancient biblical times, here
they were attracted to these stories that came out of messo America. But enough
time went along that there's variations in North America that made it uniquely our own,
and it grew out of its own. But we have a core value
across all of indigenous peoples, which is we are all related. I have
to say this though. I've seen some of the sculptures of the Mississippian Mound
builders, and some of their clay figurines look surprisingly like Maya. Oh yeah,
I mean to me, there's no mistake. There's absolutely a connection.
And when you look at, like I said, the rogan plates from the
Edawa Mound, I mean most people would look at that and say that is
meso American, but it's you know, it's our own versions of those stories.
Why is it so far hard for anthropologists to go It's possible that the
Maya or other people came into what is currently Mississippi Valley, Ohio Valley and
settled there or traded. Well, there's no evidence of any of which you're
alluding to there that they've found. There's evidence, you know, for example,
those wonderful copper refuse plates that I'm referring to, it's about the story
of the ascension of First Father. Those were manufactured at Coahokia, but found
through a trading network to the Edewa Mounds in the Southeast Ceremonial Complex, probably
the ancestors of the Muscogee Creeks and the Chalktaws and the Chicken Saws and the
Seminoles. But that same story reflected down there. However, as far as
I'm aware, there is no evidence of finding objects up north that were conclusively
created in meso America or vice versa. So without that evidence, I mean.
But to me, more importantly is the cosmology and the story is from
there, so there is some relationship. But chronologically speaking, mess America happened
first, and the populations were there first. So it as tough as it
may be for some of the indigenous peoples of North America, we do come
from them, at least cosmologically speaking and from an agrarian perspective. When peoples
came here, whether it was by bearing straight or by a boat or waves
one hundred thousand years ago, we don't know. But we're all related and
those stories are intertwined. Amazing Taylor, what would you leave like to leave
the audience with as a concluding remark? Actually, also within that, why
is it important to buy your book, and I love your book. I
think it's a good step forward, and I can see bits and pieces of
your next book coming out of this one. I appreciate that, Cliff,
I need some encouragement. It's hard to write a book. It is.
Call to arms is typically what I like to think about with this That's the
title of the work. For indigenous peoples. You need to rediscover your own
histories, and that's what this book is for. May it serve as a
model for the leaders of the seventh generation to do their job, and I
try to do my part to add something meaningful to society. For the rest
of the world, I think it's really important to listen to indigenous peoples as
we reclaim our own histories and understandings of the world, because I do think
that we have a structure in our mindset as indigenous peoples to love the earth
and to respect all of the different aspects. We don't think of ourselves as
human as above the plants and the animals. It's all a sacred balance.
And if there's one thing I want people to take away is to understand that
this model, even in spirit, should be embraced by everyone. The tangible
takes away. Wherever you're from in America. Look around. There's sacred geography
geography around you everywhere. If you don't know what stories are being told there,
do the research. You can find it. Every single inch of this
continent has been inhabited by indigenous peoples for at least twenty three thousand plus years
and probably closer to one hundred thousand. People tell me all the time about
the arrowheads they found, and they think there's something very rare. Every single
inch of this continent has arrowheads on It depends on how far down you go
to see how old they are. Amazing, All right, fantastic Rediscovering Turtle
Island. My guest has been Taylor Taylor Keen and I want to give everyone
your web address. It is www seed Sacred seed dot org. And do
you have social media? You got a YouTube page and an Instagram page?
What else do you got? Yeah, I've could point people towards www dot
Rediscovering Turtle Island dot com. And also if folks want to follow me on
Instagram, that's Taylor Keene seven on Instagram and I'm on basically all forms of
social media. You can look up Taylor Keen or Rediscovering Turtle Island and people
can look at my little nonprofit website, Sacred Seed and a Sacred Seed where
you have your lectures posted and where you or events are and things. Or
is that another site. I'm trying to figure that out right now. Probably
it's going to be on a Rediscovering Turtle Island, but I should probably incorporate
that into Sacred Seed too. But I'm not hard to find. People want
to contact me, You can contact me through the Rediscovering Turtle Island site or
most people figure out a way to find me. So fantastic, Hey,
much success on this book. I thank you so much for having me.
Cliff a wonderful, wonderful experience. Thank you. It's so wonderful to have
the Indigenous American perspective on ancient American sites, earth mounds, what they call
earthen works. And you know, this is why Cliff and Mahoodi and these
other elders who have been on this program are so insightful because we get the
we get two sites. We have the academic science side, which is looking
at you know, structures and artifacts and traditions from a very rigid point of
view, and then we have an Indigenous American point of view, which is
very fluid and insightful because these are the people who established these sites, who
built the mounds, who discovered and were sensitive to these spots where or these
places like Kahokia were built. You know, so wonderful. We're going to
have to have Taylor back, and I strongly urge you to get his book,
Rediscovering Turtle Island. It just came out and I was just when we
finished this interview, I was mentioning to Taylor that, you know, he
needs to get on the circuit, the conference circuit, and I'm going to
speak to people that I know. And he's got the reason. This book
is really nice as that it's not like five hundred pages, it's a couple
hundred pages, but it's packed with information. And he has excellent graphs on
these mounds and how they designed them, the male and the masculine and feminine
principles behind these mounds, and you know, there's so much unknown energetic work
and enhanced work using magnetic fields to lurk energy that is the basis for them.
I mean, people just didn't walk up and build a city nowhere.
There were special attributes and this is all presented in this book. What are
these attributes? Why would they build these huge cities? I mean, Kahokia
at its peak apparently was around ten thousand people. So anyhow, real fun.
Best of life to Taylor on this book, and I really suggest you
get it. I saw it on I just saw it on Amazon. It's
on Amazon and it's a good read. Hey, summer is here and it's
time to think about vacation. We got one in the fall. If you're
prepared to come with us to Mexico. It's our Sacred Mayan Temples of Yucatan,
Mexico, November eighth through the seventeenth. It's a one week tour and
it is going to be fantastic. For more information on the full light itenerary,
go to earth Agents dot com Forward slash Tours and check it out.
And check out all of our tours because we're going to be listing our twenty
twenty five tours at the end of July and next year is going to be
a blast as well, So Earth Ancients dot com Forward slash Tours. All
right, that's it for this program. I want to thank my guest today,
Taylor Keen, coming to us from Omaha, Nebraska, USA, as
always the team of Gail tour, Mark Foster, and everyone who makes this
thing happen. Thanks, I appreciate it. All right, take care and
be well and we will talk to you next time. H