Dear Friend,
Today my family and I enjoyed Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.
No, it’s not a punk rock band. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Museum in southern Alberta, Canada, that preserves the ancient history of the Blackfoot Nation, and one of the methods that the Blackfoot used, before the introduction of horses and guns into their culture, to hunt the Buffalo herds of the north west plains of the US and Canada.
In the days prior to horses and guns, it was no mean task to hunt the fast moving Buffalo herds. Many techniques were used, with varying success. Eventually, one technique gained popularity. This involved a complex, coordinated effort to stampede a herd of Buffalo over a cliff, where the fall would kill them, and the tribe could then butcher the animals and preserve their meat and other resources for the coming winter.
A successful buffalo jump could mean the difference between a healthy winter and one of starvation and death for the Blackfoot.
Once European colonists brought horses and modern firearms to the plains, however, the Blackfoot found easier ways to hunt the buffalo, and the buffalo jump technique, apparently utilized for millennia and a defining component of Blackfoot culture, was quickly abandoned.
Today the Blackfoot still respect and revere their old tradition, even though it is no longer a part of their lives.
When I study history, and particularly ancient history, I am struck by how much energy went into simply obtaining food. In every culture, and especially in those cultures that eked out an existence closer to the polar regions, huge amounts of energy went into acquiring, preserving, and storing food.
Animals, too, dedicate a huge portion of their own resources to just obtaining a meal.
In poorer regions of our planet, people still starve. But for many of us today, and our numbers are quickly growing around the world, hunger can be satisfied by a quick stop at a local dining establishment.
In other words, one of the primary historical driving forces of human existence, and of animal existence, is simply no longer an issue in the lives of many people today.
One of the less recognized impacts of this change has been to make the survival instinct a less important factor in the lives of many. In fact, many of our old instincts are today actually detrimental to our future survival.
When I wrote “Families Without Limits,” I wanted to reach people with the wake up call that we, as humans, are still living by instincts and traditions that were originally based on the survival instinct, but that today only serve to insure our continued unhappiness.
Today, perhaps for the first time in human history, our human generation no longer pines for food. Instead, we pine for a deeper sense of purpose, of satisfaction. It is this new drive to find our place in the world that requires us to learn a new approach to living our lives that is designed around this new goal. It also requires us to reject many, perhaps dear and cherished, traditions that are, unfortunately, built around a survival lifestyle model. Today, we must create new cultural traditions that specifically help us to find the deeper meaning and fulfillment that we all seem to crave.
Rejecting aspects of your native culture and consciously choosing new cultural traditions is a rare event in human history. It can be accompanied by great turmoil as many traditionalists resist change, and other folks simply wish to force a careful examination so that worthwhile traditions are not forever lost in the zest to pursue a new, apparently healthier way of life.
Might I suggest that we look to the Blackfoot Nation for a successful model of how to quickly adopt new traditions when they are clearly superior to our old ones, while we still revere those old traditions for the critical role they played in our culture’s historic development?
Just something to think about.
Talk to you again soon,
Hugh
