Book Corner
Buddhism and its Kemetic origins. Being A Buddhist
Nun by Kim Gutschow attempts to take an insiders look at the lives of Buddhist nuns. Gutschow has lived for three years among nuns in the Indian Himalayas. Here, Gutschow lives and experiences the vast differences between the Buddhist doctrine and philosophy and the Buddhism that is practiced.
She experiences the gender disparity between men and women.
"They heads,may shave their don maroon robes, and renounce worldly desires. But the women seeking enlightenment in a Buddhist nunnery high in the folds of Himalayan Kashmir inevitably find themselves subject to the tyrannies of subsistence and subordination.
Ultimately, Buddhist monasticism reflects the very world it was supposed to renounce," says the dust jacket of the book. Perhaps the fact that the nuns must sit below the monks is one example of this statement. Perhaps the practice of nuns bowing in front of monks is another example. It cannot be ignored that the author of this book is indeed a Westerner full of modern ideas and concepts, with little real knowledge of traditional culture and customs. Is her analysis correct, or is it another case of the propaganda of the modern system?
Gutschow takes us to the heart of the Buddhist nunnery and allows us to spy on the daily lives of a nun. From the food they eat to the rites they perform, the lives of nuns are told from a Westerner's perspective. It is up to the intelligence and wisdom of the reader to decide whether the author is another high-horsed outsider pushing her values on another culture or a needed voice of resistance. Readers with the intelligence and knowledge of other cultures will see the truth.
-RMN
Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa is a well-known Zulu Shaman who has come forth with written works about Zulu spirituality and culture. Zulu Shaman: Dreams, Prophecies, and Mysteries is one of his works. This book gives the reader traditional spiritual and cultural tales from the heart of South Africa and the Zulu nation.
"The black man of South Africa does not know his true greatness," says Mutwa. Mutwa begins his work with an engrossing lae of how he became a Shaman. His story is one of pain and illness, voices and callings, and leads us to the path of the "witch doctors" who were so necessary in Mutwa's survival, leaming, and growta.
Following his personal story is a brief introduction to or usinal cosmogony, and
tes. The o intes thereaut a engthy list of prophecies made by
then the reader is given a collection of traditional
Mutwa himself. This is a book that would be beneficial to anyone's library. Not only is it enlightening in Zulu spirituality and culture, but it also helps people of all races, creeds, and colors understand each other. As Mutwa says, there can be no understanding between people if neither has a clear picture of the other:
"what it really thinks, believes in, hopes for, and why. You cannot found a friendship on faulty guesswork, because guessing breeds suspicion, hate, and bloodshed. And there is much that is guesswork between Black and White," he says. Yes, there is much guesswork and projection between Black people and White people, but we must not forget that there is this same guesswork and projection between Black people from the Motherland and Black people from the Diaspora. To change the misunderstandings between our people, we must educate ourselves and open our minds.
#Theft Of Black America's Land
By Rachel Naba
VIRTUALLY EVERY EUROPEAN GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN GURTY Of usurping not only land, but also resources, knowledge, and labor from indigenous people worldwide. The United States was founded largely on this principle, as was Australia, and Africa was divided and divvied among European powers. Outsiders snatched land, people, resources, gold, and everything they considered valuable, while forcefully destroying culture, language, lifestyle, traditional spirituality, and values. The devastating effects that these events had on not only indigenous people, but on the human race as a whole, are felt today as strongly as they were felt when these horrors took place, but in different ways. Indigenous people face a loss of identity, culture, and spirituality every day of their existence; their financial hardships are directly related to outsider invasion; the land that they owned remains in the hands of the usurpers...
Recently, New Zealand has attempted to make reparations for their past wrong-doings. After a twenty year struggle, the Ngati Awa tribe of the Maori people from the East coast of North Island has accepted a settlement of 42 million New Zealand dollars in cash and land for illegal land confiscations during the 19th century settlement of New Zealand by European farmers. The New Zealand government has agreed to apologize to the the Ngati Awa for the illegal confiscation of land, the impact they had on Native land laws, and the impact of these events on the tribe. The Crown will also restore Ngati Awa access to traditional food and gathering areas, such as customary fisheries, exclusive rights to food gathering areas, recognition of tribal association to sacred places, and the traditional names of three cities, in addition to the cash and land settlement.
"Achieving the settlement means that Ngati Awa can finally begin to build an economic base," tribal chairman Hirini Mead was reported to have said. The tribe was left virtually landless and poor, like most of the Maori people. The Maori people are reportedly the least healthy and least educated New Zealanders. Maori people, while comprising 15% of New Zealand's total population, makeup half of the country's prison population.
The Maori's position in society is very similar to that of Blacks and Native American Indians in America, yet neither group has received satisfactory compensation, acknowledgement, or reparations from the United States Government for the stolen land, repression, slavery, cultural degradation, and other atrocities that it forced on these populations.
The list of grievances of both groups against the United States government is enough to fill a library. The social conditions of African Americans needn't be mentioned; the social conditions of Native American Indians is not much better. the issue of land ownership and rights, however, is one that is often overlooked. While most Americans have some knowledge about the land theft from Native American Indians, many do not realize that Black people in America have suffered the same plight at the hands of the government The Associated Press, after an 18 month investigation, has documented a pattern in which Black Americans were cheated out of rightfully-owned land. Interviews were conducted with over 1000 people, and tens of thousands of public records in county courthouses and state and federal archives were studied. In thirteen southern and border states alone,
406 Black landowners lost more than 24,000 acres of farm and timber land, plus 85 smaller properties, including city lots and stores. In 1910, Black Americans owned 15 million acres of farmland - more farmland than at any time since. Today, Blacks only own 1.1 million acres and are part owners of another 1.07 acres. "When they steal your land, they steal your future," said Stephani Atlanta, who is researching how her great-grandmother, Ablow Weddington Stewart, lost 35 acres of land in North Carolina when a white lawyer foreclosed on her in 1942 after he refused to allow her to finish paying a $540 debt.
"How different would our lives be if we'd had the opportunities, the pride, that land brings?" she asks. This is a question we all should be asking not only ourselves, but our lawmakers and government.
The government has played a role, directly or indirectly, in all of the cases of land theft from Black owners. Whether the government snatched promoted the racist atmosphere that allowed other citizens to steal land from Blacks, the history of slavery and oppression of the US government has allowed these thefts to occur.
In 1964, Alabama sued Lemon Williams and Lawrence Hudson, claiming the cousins had no rights to two 40 acre farms their family had worked for nearly 100 years. They said that the land belonged to the state.
The state refused to drop its suit, even after a Circuit Judge urged them to, because it wanted income from timber on the land. The land was taken from the family. The state's internal memos and letters on the case are showered with references to the race of the defendants. Deeds and tax records have been found documenting that the family owned the land since an ancestor bought it on January 3, 1874. The family had paid property taxes on the land from the 1950's until it was stolen from them by the state of Alabama.
In 1942, Reverend Isaac Simmons lost his 141 acre farm in Mississippi, taken for nonpayment of taxes. It was bought by a white man for $180 (it had been purchased in 1887 for $302). Although only partial tax records for that period exist in the country, those that are still around show that at least part of the property was current when the land was taken.
These issues may seem like they are in the past, but the consequences from these actions are still felt today. New Zealand, despite the fact that the measures taken do not equal what has been lost, has at least tried to compensate for their past errors in judgment. When will the USA do the same?