Indigenous Spirituality

What do indigenous traditions have to teach us? And what do we Westerners need to unlearn in order to be receptive to indigenous wisdom?

Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley is an activist, theologian, wisdom-keeper, and Cherokee descendant. He spends much of his time sharing indigenous traditions through his teaching and his Indigenous Center for Earth Justice, Eloheh. Eloheh is a Cherokee word for harmony, abundance, wholeness, and peace.

Join us for a conversation about “making relatives”--whether of land or trees or people different from us; the key components of the “Harmonious Way,” or what Randy calls humanity’s “original instructions” for how to live, which are common to all indigenous peoples; and how the lineage of trauma has hurt both those in the margins and those who caused the harm.

We’ll also explore what it means to decolonize our spirituality and learn from each others’ stories.

Randy’s books include Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision, and his most recent book of reflections and practices, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth. He and his wife, Edith, co-sustain Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm & Seeds outside Portland, Oregon. Learn more about their programs at www.eloheh.org and www.randywoodley.com.

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Kelly Deutsch

Welcome to Spiritual Wanderlust, where we explore our interior life in search of the sacred. Many of us will travel the whole world to find ourselves but here will follow those longings within to our spiritual and emotional landscapes. In each episode, we'll talk with inspiring guests, contemplative teachers, embodiment experts, neuropsychologists and mystics with a blend of ancient wisdom and modern science, along with a healthy dash of mischief.

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Kelly Deutsch

Will deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to behold. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch.

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Kelly Deutsch

Hello, everyone. Kelly Deutsch here, and welcome to the next episode of our Spiritual Wanderlust podcast. Today I am joining us, Randy Woodley. And Randy is an activist. He's a scholar, author of many books and a wisdom keeper. He's a Cherokee descendant. And he speaks on justice, faith, earth and indigenous realities. He's written many books, including Shalom and the Community of Creation and Living in Color.

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Kelly Deutsch

And he and his wife, coach Sustain the Aloe, Indigenous Center for Earth, Justice and the Farm and Seeds He Creates and collects lots of seeds, which I am interested to hear about later over in Oregon, which is also where I'm at. And so I'm excited to have you today. Randy to talk about some of these indigenous realities, how to decolonize and all the work that you're up to.

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Kelly Deutsch

So thanks for joining us.

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Randy Woodley

Thanks, Kelly. I've been looking forward to meeting you for a while.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Yeah. To get us started, I'd love to hear a little bit about your back story and what it was like growing up Native American in the U.S. And if you even if that was even an identity or a heritage that you always claimed or if that was something that you came into.

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Randy Woodley

Yeah. So both. And so I was actually born in Alabama portion that's actually Cherokee Country down there.

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Randy Woodley

And born to two people who are mixed blood Cherokees and whose families were fully assimilated and grew up in a place called Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is and I grew up in Ypsilanti. Some people not because it's the like the the other side of the tracks from Ann Arbor, Michigan. They join together in the other side of the tracks from Ypsilanti is called We'll Run Michigan and that's where I grew up in much of the the demographics reflect a lot of Detroit.

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Randy Woodley

So a very multicultural multiracial and. And so you grew up in that. And if you're not white, you have to identify with other people. And so my parents the church that we belong to was full of people from the south. I always say I grew up in the Deep South in a portion of southeast Michigan because they all moved there for the great migration for you know, to work in the automobile factories and all of that.

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Randy Woodley

And so my my folks hung out with a bunch of mixed blood people also like themselves. And and they would always talk about their you know, grandparents speaking the language and all this kind of stuff. They talked about it romantic ways. But but I was like, well, I want to be a real Indian you know, I don't want to talk about my great grandparents speak in the language or something like that.

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Randy Woodley

And so I sort of from I think from about the third grade or third or fourth grade on, I just start trying to identify as native and you know, that became my first goal, a goal I hung out with all the Native kids when when they went to our schools and hung out in their homes and tried to learn what it was like to be a real Indian.

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Randy Woodley

And and yes, I grew up with that identity and that was a and then, you know, became recognized my ancestry was recognized by the United Katoomba in been a Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma who are who are a federally recognized tribe. But because I didn't have enough blood quantum to qualify as a tribal member, I had to be what's called a descendant.

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Randy Woodley

So. So that's okay. You know, I know who I am. I know who my ancestors are and ended up you know, eventually marrying a native woman. My wife Edith is from the Wind River Indian Reservation. And we raised our kids both in a traditional spiritual way and early or Christian way. But we really don't call ourselves Christians. We have it for probably ten or 12 years now.

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Randy Woodley

But but yeah. So that's kind of my story and there's a lot more to it. But that's the general outline, I think.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yeah.

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Randy Woodley

Yeah. So I've been really fortunate. One of the things I've says, I've been really fortunate along my life's path to be taken in by elders who saw, you know, my heart and my hunger and, and I'm talking about old, old elders who were people who were just the most incredible people on earth, tolerant to a fault, just who, who understood what it is to be human.

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Randy Woodley

And so I think more than anything, they've taught me how to just be a human being.

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Kelly Deutsch

Hmm. Yeah.

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Kelly Deutsch

How did that heritage. Well, two questions. How did that impact you in the day to day, in the practicality as well as, you know, in your interior life, like what? What was different about the indigenous world view from, you know, just the rest of your, you know, white friends in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and also, how did your parents respond to that since they were fully assimilated?

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Kelly Deutsch

Was that something they welcomed or was that a little strange for them?

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Randy Woodley

Yes. And no, for them. My mom was always very proud of her ancestry. And she had a a person who was a leader, a chief in her ancestry. Found out later some things about him that don't make me so proud. But anyway, she doesn't know about all that. She's passed on now. But yeah. So I think it was a it was okay with them.

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Randy Woodley

I mean, that that was okay. They were I think they were happy about that.

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Randy Woodley

The first part of the question was.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, how the how your traditions, your heritage and embracing all of that, whether, you know, learning as a fourth grader in Michigan or from, you know, various elders throughout time. Like how did that impact your life? And what were some of the qualities of that that changed you?

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Randy Woodley

Well, I started out, right? So I saw the path that would lead me there. You know, my I guess and goal was to bring reintroduce, if you will, our indigenous ways and in our family line, because that's where we come from. And I always I'm just going to be really blunt and honest and say it's a much better way of living and thinking and it's much more harmonious to the world around us.

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Randy Woodley

And and there was something about that even as a child that drew me. And I've that's only proven to be true over and over and over again, no matter how old I get. So I'm my wife and I are what we call now anthropologists have a big word for it is called indigenous cosmopolitans. So those are people who can operate not just in two different cultures well, but two different worldviews.

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Randy Woodley

Well, and of course, women have been doing that, you know, in a man's world for, you know, I don't know how long lots of lots of and this time immemorial, I guess. But and and so we operate in both worlds, but we're much more comfortable in our indigenous worldview and, and, and what the and the gift that that brings to other people as well.

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Kelly Deutsch

Mm. Hmm. Yeah. That's interesting. It's it requires some code-switching internally, like how you express things, how you show up how you hold yourself. I mean, sometimes I feel that way, even just, I, I worked for several years in the corporate world, you know, before that, I was in the convent and figuring out you know, like, which parts of you you operate from or in the forefront maybe.

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Kelly Deutsch

And I, that even felt kind of like a code switching. I might be talking about the same realities, but in the business world, I might call it, you know, business skills or emotional intelligence. And in the spiritual world, and I call it virtue, you know, and so just figuring out how what language do we use to talk about the same realities.

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Randy Woodley

Yeah. And even though we're talking about the same realities, another thing I came to realize is that we're we're not we're actually we're living in two different realities. One is based on a worldview full of competence. Fashion and capitalism and individualism and dual isms and things like that. And one operates on a more holistic, harmonious co-operative group centered worldview.

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Randy Woodley

And so I might say the same words but my colleagues, I'm also a professor. My colleagues don't think of it in the same way that I do.

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Kelly Deutsch

Hmm.

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Randy Woodley

And I have to go that to understand them, but they don't really understand me. Right. So they don't they don't know the wusses use the word code-switching the way that I have to code switch just to be in conversation with them.

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Kelly Deutsch

Mm hmm. Yeah, right. Because words hold totally different meanings or realities.

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Randy Woodley

Different histories, different associations. Yeah.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. What would you name as if you had to name, like, a handful of qualities that the rest of us white folk, westerners, folks, whether in the U.S. or abroad, have to learn from the indigenous tradition?

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Randy Woodley

Yeah, so I should say traditions, because there's lots of different ones among lots of different indigenous people. And and I should also make a disclaimer that I only speak for myself and my maybe my wife if she lets me speak for her sometimes.

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Kelly Deutsch

But fair enough.

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Randy Woodley

Okay. So, yeah, you know, the question, I could give you a pretty full answer because that's sort of what I did my Ph.D. dissertation on my, my Ph.D. was in intercultural studies, and I, I did it on the basically what we call the indigenous harmony way. The native harmony way and the values they're associated with. And I, I queried 45 different indigenous people and I did interviews, deep interviews with a spiritual leaders, elders who spoke their own languages.

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Randy Woodley

And now I come to find out that this harm any way will call the construct. Now this harmony way of living is universal among not just native American people, but indigenous people everywhere. And because I have friends who are Maori and from New Zealand and Aboriginal from Australia and saw me from Norway and Zulu and, and they have their imbued the concept that some people have heard of and you know, and so we all have this, I think.

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Randy Woodley

Well, I would call this the original instructions. Hmm. How do we live on this world in a good way. How do we stand as one in harmony, not just with people like me, but people who are different than me and not just people, but all the animal people and the bird people and the, you know, the insect people and the fish people.

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Randy Woodley

And how do we stand this one together and live in a way that can that we all can prosper and all live fully? And so there are a lot of values associated with that. The interesting, though, if if any of the people who are Christians, which was a lot of my training and I teach at a Christian seminary, then the word shalom should come to mind.

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Randy Woodley

This what we call this big picture shalom living in a right way and justice and peace. And, you know, the land producing everything that it should and us having spiritual regard for our creator and all of that. So yeah. And so some of those values would be things like always inviting people into our circles rather than excluding them out.

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Randy Woodley

We call it officially making a relative. And so relatives are made in Indian country when people come in and we see that they have a good heart which is really the main ingredient. And then then we need to give them a place in the community. And so they're adopted as, as nieces and nephews and uncles and aunties and, and, you know, sons and daughters, etc. And so always inviting people in.

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Randy Woodley

Another one is hospitality and generosity. You you know, one of the the things that is unusual, but most people don't realize that because of all the propaganda that's been written into all of our Westerns and our movies and our, you know, all of those kinds of things. But but indigenous people were at first very hospitable and not every occasion, but almost every occasion.

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Randy Woodley

Two white folks who came over here in the the idea that they could share land together as opposed to you know, saying, no, this is mine, you can't be here. And that was only when, you know, Western folk were out their welcome by things like genocide and theft and, you know, duplicity that Native people begin to say no.

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Randy Woodley

Well, if that's the way you're going to be, well, then we're going to and we're not going to let you be here. And then, of course, that started a lot of wars and things like that. So hospitality and generosity and indigenous people almost everywhere. But, you know, I can't speak for everywhere, but everywhere we've been in Indian country are generous.

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Randy Woodley

So generous, not just with their time, but with their material goods and sharing. And the idea is if you can feed someone, you prolong their life for another day. And so so you're giving life to people. And we have all kinds of ways, both ceremonially and in non ceremonially that that works out. And so, for example, the the Pueblo people, if you've ever been down to a Pueblo feast.

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Randy Woodley

So there's 19 Pueblo tribes right now in New Mexico and Arizona. But there used to be like over 50 and in once or twice a year they hold a feast. And these feast are the most incredible food you've ever eaten. Everyone in the village opens up their home and they make all their best dishes and then they invite perfect strangers into their village and feed them and they just, you walk down the sidewalk and somebody says, come in here, come in here, you know, and you go in and they serve you their best dishes and, and, and, and if you're, if you had 50 groups doing that once to twice a year, you could eat one

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Randy Woodley

every other two, three days. You no one would ever go hungry. Right. So so it's one of those practices sort of like in the Old Testament where it talks about don't blame the edges of your fields. Right. And in and leave a seventh of your land fallow so that you know that the wild beasts and the immigrants and orphans and widows can can come and gather their food and that so that they can eat.

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Randy Woodley

And so, you know, these are and there's so many traditions around the world that are similar. It's a way of living that is just another another value is that everyone has a place, you know, elders are sacred because, you know, they're coming close to their time with creator and and children are sacred because they've come from this place that no one understands.

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Randy Woodley

And so so we watch them and say what can we learn, you know, about our creator from the children and and women are sacred because they have the gift of being able to give life like Mother Earth herself. And if anybody is not sort of considered a priority, special and sacred, it's men, right? They sort of have to find their way in society.

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Randy Woodley

Traditionally, they have to be good hunters. Or good providers or, you know, those kinds of things so that they can have a place of honor, too. But yeah, so everybody has a place you know, our spirituality is very tangible.

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Kelly Deutsch

Hmm.

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Randy Woodley

You know, we use things like circles and eagles and, you know, smoke and, and things that that are symbols. And in our ceremonies and our songs, and our stories, they they touch on all of those things. And so that we remember those things in the way that we do. But I mean, I could go on and on, but there's just so much about our indigenous worldview that is so much better.

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Randy Woodley

Yes, I'm prejudice so much better than the Western world view. But here's the thing. We were all indigenous originally.

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Kelly Deutsch

Mm hmm.

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Randy Woodley

We all have that in our DNA. And even if you don't know what your DNA is, you can be guaranteed that originally your people were indigenous to somewhere they knew how to live with the land as a group. And so I believe we can all find our way back to that. It doesn't mean that we can all be a part of a particular tribe, but we can all draw from our own into genetics and also honor the tribes who are among us and learn from them as well.

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Randy Woodley

So, so, so this doesn't leave out anybody. This includes everybody. I think we can get back to what I would call those original instructions if we have a mind to.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, yeah. That's lovely. And it makes me think of just how popular things like 23 and me have become, like people who want to know what their heritage is and how I think as a younger person, that didn't matter that much to me. You know, I mean, in high school we had to do some sort of project where, you know, it's like family tree history and things and you find stories it was kind of interesting just to find out things about your past.

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Kelly Deutsch

But I think it's been, you know, more in my second half of life, you know, the last decade and a half, maybe or two, that that's become much more significant, knowing where I come from and what the traditions have been like when I found out. So my dad's side of the families, all Jewish, and I knew that my dad's so my dad's dad came over from Hungary.

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Kelly Deutsch

He's survived Auschwitz. And came to the U.S. And that's like where his heritage is, has some relatives in Israel. But I didn't know that my dad's mom, who came via England, she was before that was a Russian Jew. And I didn't know I had heritage in Russia. I'm like and I that was something that I fell in love with even before I knew that was this Russian soul and I had no idea why that appealed to me so much, you know, just kind of like the mystic heart of Russia.

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Kelly Deutsch

And so it was it's enlightening to find out why certain things resonate in us and how those traditions and heritages show up in who we are and how we live our lives and our longings.

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Randy Woodley

Yeah. Yeah. So much. And, you know, you mentioned the Holocaust, and I'm sorry your family had to go through that. But there is something also that we we share when people have gone through things, and that's intergenerational trauma.

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Kelly Deutsch

Absolutely.

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Randy Woodley

We all have to learn to speak to that in our own lives. And the more people who talk about that and with each other and the more those feelings come out and understanding of what this is because it's a real thing, right? But yeah. And we we have the intergenerational. So, you know, we're we're beginning to peg, you know, what is in a generational trauma, but we just don't even have a clue of what's come in front through our DNA, right?

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Randy Woodley

Yeah. So so here's the here's a really kind of quirky and funny thing. I did all of those as well. And and then I come to find out that I have a fifth great parent grandparent who was Ethiopian. Well, I would have never suspected that. Right. But, uh, in 1980, my next door neighbors were Ethiopian and they taught me how to make Ethiopian food, and it became my favorite.

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Randy Woodley

And I crave it constantly. And I thought Isn't that interesting? Now I find out in 20, 20 that I have, I have Ethiopian heritage. So there's something deep inside there, like you talked about you know, that affinity for the Russian soul, the affinity for the Ethiopian people and their food, you know, there's, there's so much there. Yeah. So yeah, it's a great time of discovery right now of, ah, of our DNA.

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Randy Woodley

But it's not just the DNA. It's who we are. It's who made us to be here. All those ancestors were wanting us to be here, and they cared about that. Right? And so we carry their desires and their hopes. And so that makes people pretty sacred and pretty interesting.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yes, absolutely. I last year read the book, It Didn't Start With You about intergenerational trauma. And that was so Mind-Blowing for me to see how things that a lot of indigenous traditions have known for a long time, you know, that this heritage can be can travel down bloodlines essentially. But to see how science is discovering those things you know in the different studies that they've done and I mean even simple things like you know babies who had not yet been conceived when nine 11 happened but still you know were conceived after that event from somebody who you know is near the Twin Towers and then afterwards had symptoms of PTSD because their mothers experience that you

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Kelly Deutsch

know or of you know, they've done things with like lab rats as well, you know, where it's like they basically traumatized some lab rats. And then like for three generations, they all had the same symptoms to the exact same stimulus. You know, they smelled the sweet cherry smell and then would shock the poor animals. And for three generations, just that smell would send them all into like anxious, you know, kind of PTSD, like symptoms.

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Kelly Deutsch

And it's amazing to see. I mean, no wonder in America at least, you know, these awful traditions that we've had, these lineages both for black Americans as well as the indigenous traditions, how much is carried down the lines that changes our DNA or our epigenetics and what it's not just like, oh, I need to make up for the white, you know, terrible things that we've done over the years.

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Kelly Deutsch

But it's it's also dealing with the ramifications that still live in our bodies.

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Randy Woodley

Absolutely. You know, and if you I talk in my book Slow in the Community of Creation, I talk about the whole community of creation as just being everything right. Is being the plants, the animals and the birds and the, you know, and so if I can use that term, community of creation has also suffered trauma and if you believe there's life in trees and animals and birds and in which I do, there's there's life there spirit there's life force creator gives everything that then then they go through that to the land actually goes through trauma as well.

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Randy Woodley

And so imagine what's happening with the pollution and the development and the to the whole community of creation. We're all suffering. And so we, we think just by cleaning up a spill is going to or replanting quote unquote, replanting a forest, which there's no such thing as that is going to sort of fix things. But that's a very materialistic, superficial view that doesn't account for the fact that we are all living beings trying to survive on this planet together.

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Randy Woodley

And, and live in a good way. And it's much deeper than, you know, what what often even science would tell us or you know, biologist or looks like that.

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Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Yeah. Could you share a story with me, either of your own or perhaps of other people that you've worked with, whether, you know, indigenous, traditionally indigenous or not, of what it's like to learn from this community of creation, whether it's like a favorite tree that you have a relationship with or a particular landscape and geography that, you know, becomes almost an elder like, what does that look like?

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Kelly Deutsch

Do you have any stories that you might share?

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Randy Woodley

Yeah, well, just personal stories. I mean, there's lots of tribal stories and things like that, but most of them take a long time. Um, but yeah, I'll just, well, I'll mention sort of my favorite place and I, I do one of my, it got to this book becoming rooted that's going to be coming out, and I do a meditation on that but there's a place that's very sacred to me.

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Randy Woodley

It's a spring and, and it's located actually in Tennessee. It's called the Blue Hole. And the Blue Hills is this large spring, this crystal clear all the way down. And, and there's a some Cherokee stories about the the life on the other side of the spring is sort of like, we would say, the sometimes the opposite of this.

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Randy Woodley

So there's, there's another me and there's the another you on the other side. Only we're living in harmony. We're living the way that we're supposed to be living. And so and so we go to that spring and we do our water ceremonies there. We use that spring water for other ceremonial purposes. I used to take my children there when we lived in the south every so often, and we do water ceremonies and sing our songs and things there.

00;28;25;23 - 00;28;55;15

Randy Woodley

But that that spring has it just sits there still, right all the time. And it's so deep and it's so clear it is like an elder. I really does just, you know, causes me to be still. It causes me to to think deeply. It causes me to remember how to live my life in a way that's harmonious and this side and that just have that going on on the other side.

00;28;55;27 - 00;29;20;22

Kelly Deutsch

So it's moving it makes me think of an experience that I've had. I had shared with you that I grew up in South Dakota under big skies and so I definitely have the sky in my soul. And I remember once when I was studying over in Italy, and sometimes I would I would try to escape the busyness of Rome.

00;29;21;02 - 00;29;44;24

Kelly Deutsch

I finally I got a bike and I would bike as far as I could as long as I could until I saw countryside, you know, and fields and sky and I remember lying under the sky and just watching the clouds and just recognizing what it was like to match the rhythms internally of me to the rhythms of the clouds and how slowly they moved and danced.

00;29;44;24 - 00;30;15;25

Kelly Deutsch

And I was struck by this moment of recognizing I look down at my water bottle, I'm like, I have a cloud in my bottle, you know, like this condensed, you know, water particles that I drink and then, like, goes through my body and, like, makes me alive. It was just such a beautiful moment, both feeling the life, the spirit, if you will, of that of the clouds, both in the sky.

00;30;15;25 - 00;30;28;14

Kelly Deutsch

And that came within me. And it's such a lovely thing when you can, I don't know, somehow touch or tap into that. The wisdom that's all around us yeah.

00;30;28;22 - 00;30;54;12

Randy Woodley

That's that is beautiful. I love that that because it's this one great circle, right? That we're part of the soul. The water evaporates and and it goes up and then it comes back down and it flows through all these places and us. And then it goes back again. And yeah, so I especially love to talk about water. I've, I guess I've been affected a lot by water, which should.

00;30;54;12 - 00;31;24;07

Randy Woodley

It sounds right. Since I was raised in Michigan, as a kid. So there's a lot of water in Michigan. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, you know, creator sends us messengers, right? I mean, just creation itself is a constant, you know, it's our, our greatest teacher and in our longest teacher from from the time we open our eyes until the time we finally close them, that's we have more to learn from creation itself than anywhere.

00;31;24;22 - 00;31;56;16

Randy Woodley

And and then sometimes that cycle gets interrupted and creator sends us messengers from creation to tell us something, you know, and so so we've had a lot of messages throughout the years, and I'm really thankful for that. So and it's just a reminder of that, that whether you want to call God creator or God or the universe or however you want to look at the great mystery that it's personal.

00;31;57;03 - 00;31;57;11

Kelly Deutsch

And.

00;31;58;13 - 00;31;58;25

Randy Woodley

Personal.

00;31;59;19 - 00;32;41;04

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, absolutely. And I love how I mean, I think anyone who's been exploring any contemplative traditions, wisdom, traditions, mystical, can see how much unity there is among various, you know, world religions, indigenous traditions, wisdom, traditions. But I love to be able to see that, you know, growing up Catholic myself, there's so much that feels natural or overlapping. You know, when you share about various ceremonies and the tangibility of of indigenous traditions, you know, using symbols and grew up Catholic, that was, you know, very much a thing for us.

00;32;41;04 - 00;33;12;09

Kelly Deutsch

You know, it's all the smells and bells like when you have incense or, you know, like I remember going to a ceremony once, you know, where they were using sage and it it was interesting because I'm like, this is this is not that different, you know, from what I grew up with, it just or a different ceremony where gosh, I can't even remember what was going on, but just a lot of like the gestures, the music, the, the ritual of it all with something that didn't feel foreign to me.

00;33;12;09 - 00;33;37;18

Kelly Deutsch

Obviously, like words and gestures were a little bit different. But because I had a tradition of my own growing up that really welcomed the embodiment of all of that, given certainly Catholics don't always do that. Well, my goodness. But I was so thankful to have that a part of that, and it didn't feel so foreign to me, you know, like, what is this weird outside thing?

00;33;37;27 - 00;34;01;07

Kelly Deutsch

Because so many of us are hungry for that now. And I think that's why there's such a thirst for indigenous traditions, for Celtic wisdom. A lot of those earthy, wild forms of spirituality because we're all so hungry to figure out how do we embody this? How do we learn from those who who never did get really cut off, you know, and start just walking around in their heads.

00;34;01;07 - 00;34;04;10

Kelly Deutsch

So like, let's let's talk about who fully embodied.

00;34;05;08 - 00;34;29;20

Randy Woodley

Yeah, the West has really tried to do that, right? To disembodied us, you know, and we could talk a go all the way from platonic dualism to the rhythm the science to the Enlightenment to reformation and talk about how all that played out. And, and, but the point is, is that it's become baked in the bread with us.

00;34;29;20 - 00;35;01;10

Randy Woodley

It's ubiquitous. It's, it's a part of who we are now in the Western worldview, in all of our systems. And so we have to decolonize from that. We have to deconstruct that and say these are not the, the values or the myths that I want to live by. And it's a difficult process so, you know, it takes it takes some time and it takes a lot of discomfort and it takes some embarrassment and of just the fact that, you know, we we believed in things that were not based on a whole reality.

00;35;02;24 - 00;35;28;02

Randy Woodley

And so that's a that's a lot of what my wife and I do in L.A. We host people right now. It's more difficult because of COVID, but we generally host people. We have we extended we can schools, we have longer schools. And we hope now in our new property to be able to have some summits throughout the year so that we can talk about these things.

00;35;28;02 - 00;35;52;20

Randy Woodley

And, you know, it's not I mean, just the fact that like we're indigenous. I mean, that's that's that's okay. But like I said, we're all indigenous from somewhere. We never to my knowledge, American Indians never took out a patent on learning from nature, you know, and then from learning from creation or, or from seeking, you know, deep inside ourselves to spirituality.

00;35;52;20 - 00;35;57;05

Randy Woodley

And so none of us have the patent on that stuff. We're all discovering it together, right?

00;35;57;17 - 00;36;21;15

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Share with me a little bit more about what it means to decolonize, because I think that's a pretty popular term right now. And some people know what it means and others are like, I'm going to kind of I mean, there's something bad about Empire. Okay, got it. Like that form of Christianity that came with kind of like Constantine and but what does that how do we do that practically?

00;36;21;15 - 00;36;31;17

Kelly Deutsch

Like those who are interested in becoming more in touch with the Earth and just the community of creation how do we begin that process of decolonization?

00;36;32;13 - 00;37;03;22

Randy Woodley

Yeah, so so we've all been on probably both sides at some period of our life. Of being empire, dragging us down and trying to fill our heads full of lies and all that. And so so we all are going into the process. If you live in North America, you've been exposed to the West in its worst. You've been exposed to the myths that expose a dominant cultural racial preference.

00;37;03;23 - 00;37;43;05

Randy Woodley

Right. And in that not that's not just harmful for black, indigenous and other people of color. That's also harmful for white folks who have lived on the other side of that myth. Saying, Oh, this is who we are, this is our culture. It's harmful to hurt others. Yeah, right. It hurts us when we hurt others. And so the best teachers that I know and have read, you know, say, hey, we've we all got to feel together in and so so we do this with like saying like we're all in this.

00;37;43;17 - 00;38;02;27

Randy Woodley

Some of us have different aspects that we're learning to decolonize from and others, you know, they're coming from a different place, but we're all a part of the system. So we have to deconstruct the system together and say this system by and large was not made for. Well, it definitely wasn't made for everybody. So it's not based on equality.

00;38;02;27 - 00;38;30;06

Randy Woodley

Right? So that's the first thing we all know innately. Hey, I don't want people to steal from me, so I shouldn't steal from other people. We know, hey, I don't want to be hurt, so I don't want to hurt. And there's a few exceptions with you know, various, you know, psychopaths and sociopaths and things like this. But in general, the idea is like we know what it means to live by the golden rule, so to speak.

00;38;30;25 - 00;39;23;13

Randy Woodley

And so and so what we have to do is sort of use that moral center that we all have as human beings and then say, okay, now how has it been for others? And in what what happens in that that process of decolonizing which which basically if I could give a very simple answer to that question, it would be refusing to live by the the myths I was given that are harmful, that aren't based on equality, refusing to live by the lies that I've been told in so and so we begin to shed those things when we hear others experiences, when we hear how women have been treated in the workplace and have how African-Americans have

00;39;23;13 - 00;39;47;13

Randy Woodley

been treated in this, you know, all over. I was going to say the South, but it's really all over how indigenous people have been hurt, how, you know, in in Asian people. We recently got another dose of Asian hate that came up. And, you know, when I begin to, you know, transgender people and others will not begin to hear stories from real people and their hurts.

00;39;47;20 - 00;40;14;06

Randy Woodley

And I go, wait a minute, how has that affected me? How have I been a part of this system? Because we're all a part of it. We have to figure out our place and then it's not. And then to get beyond the individuality that we're taught, which in America is the most individualistic country probably in history, to get past that to the point where I go, it's got to be fair for everybody or it's fair for nobody.

00;40;14;09 - 00;40;38;25

Randy Woodley

Right. So and so Martin Luther King Jr called it the beloved community. Right? Injustice anywhere or to anyone is injustice for everyone. And so we had to begin to see, you know, that that there is a better world that we have to build if we love our children and if we if we want everyone to, you know, have the same opportunities.

00;40;38;25 - 00;41;11;27

Randy Woodley

And and so that's the decolonizing process is to just say, I'm going to stop living that and I'm going to expose myself to different aspects of that constantly through what I read, through who I hang with, through, you know, developing new friendships and new circles to, you know, watching new movies and videos, etc., etc. And I'm going to risk being the bad person or the I'm going to risk being embarrassed or I'm going to risk saying the wrong thing because this is so important.

00;41;12;10 - 00;41;33;23

Randy Woodley

My pride you know, that sort of that sense of pride that is not healthy. My pride doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that we all begin to recognize the human ity in each other, that we're all human beings. And then I would go further and say that we're all part of the new creation where we're all related to everything around us.

00;41;34;02 - 00;41;44;12

Randy Woodley

And so we need to also take that step further and say the world that we live in, the earth that we live on is important as well. And so are all of God's creatures, so.

00;41;45;12 - 00;41;46;21

Kelly Deutsch

Oh, yeah.

00;41;46;22 - 00;42;07;25

Randy Woodley

So yeah. And then then when we hear from other people, we automatically as we're shedding that those lies, then we begin to say, well, how do you do it? Or How did you do it? Or How did you do that? And that's when we begin to indigenous that's when we begin to realize that, oh, we were put in a certain place to live in a certain way.

00;42;08;10 - 00;42;23;18

Randy Woodley

And you know that that indigenous earth, wherever it is, that particular land or place or whatever, has a way that you have to live with it. And so now we begin to find out what's the way that I need to live with the earth where I live.

00;42;23;26 - 00;42;56;10

Kelly Deutsch

Mm hmm. Yeah, it's so much it feels much more of a receptive stance, you know, like how how do you do it? Like, let me learn from you. What is it that you have to teach me? Because the, the kind of colonial stance is much more the like, you know, traditionally white, patriarchal. I'm going to tell you, instead of that receptive, I like to call it a Marian stance, you know, when like Mary, the mother of Jesus had that fiat that like, let it be done.

00;42;56;10 - 00;43;07;16

Kelly Deutsch

And to me, like, just a receptivity that is open and accepting and that that takes real courage does.

00;43;08;03 - 00;43;31;11

Randy Woodley

Yeah. In and you know, there's a lot of people who are afraid right now. They're afraid of what's going on there, afraid of the culture wars. They're afraid. But, you know, one of our indigenous values is to turn fear, to let fear be a catalyst for courage, to let that fear inside of us out and be courageous and risk being hurt and risk.

00;43;31;17 - 00;44;01;21

Randy Woodley

And and I have to say, my understanding of who the creator is is in and I mentioned that we're not Christians, but we are traditional in our practices. But we follow Jesus. We we love Jesus we we we read Jesus stories. We we talk about how to live that way. And so but in Jesus, like many others, have come to let us know who God is, who the great mystery is.

00;44;01;21 - 00;44;35;19

Randy Woodley

And in a way, that's lived out in my understanding of that, based on what I see in the universe and what I see through his life and the life of others that I respect is that God must be the most vulnerable being who exist God's vulnerability to me. I don't shines everything else and in to even trust us on this planet to take care of this stuff and live in the way that we should live is a very vulnerable position.

00;44;37;14 - 00;44;43;25

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. It's a beautiful thing to meditate on the vulnerability of God. Yeah. Hmm.

00;44;51;19 - 00;45;32;04

Kelly Deutsch

There's something that you shared about your upcoming book, The Becoming rooted in 100 Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth about how we can shift our our thoughts and our desires into action. Because that's that's where, you know, rubber hits the road And I'm curious if if you would share a practice or two with us that is practical concrete that could help us decolonize in a way that's not just like, okay, I'm going to go join a book club, which cool, that's great.

00;45;32;04 - 00;45;55;12

Kelly Deutsch

And that can also help us, you know, get our our headspace in the right place. But sometimes those concrete acts are a little more challenging for us to come up with, like I don't know what do I do? Especially when we're in places that like, you know, I moved to Oregon from the Midwest, and it's not as common in the Midwest to talk about these kinds of things, you know?

00;45;55;12 - 00;46;05;14

Kelly Deutsch

And so for those who are isolated, whether in rural areas or just, you know, whatever life circumstance, what are some of those small in we can do?

00;46;06;28 - 00;46;31;15

Randy Woodley

So. So in the book, it's a it's, you know, 100 days of reconnecting with sacred or something. And my my agenda is to get people to hang with me for 100 days and it starts off with a quote by a famous person that they they'd probably be heard of. That's relevant to the reflection and that I'm going to talk about.

00;46;31;15 - 00;46;42;02

Randy Woodley

And then I have like, you know, a page of reflection. It's that sometimes. But then afterwards I'm just going to show if you can can we see that? And the.

00;46;42;02 - 00;46;43;14

Kelly Deutsch

Screen is kind of blinking now.

00;46;44;19 - 00;47;31;09

Randy Woodley

Yeah. So anyway, there's a little shaded area on the bottom that that has an action point that so it's not just reflection, it's not just in our head, but we can do something about that every day. And some of them are like when I talk about all my relatives you know it, it says stand outside and look around and name some of the relatives you've neglected in in creation or when I talk about this whole the powerful dream that I had about the plants, it's just, you know, take time to speak to some of the helper plants that are surrounding you and discover and give thanks for each one as they continue in your life.

00;47;31;09 - 00;48;08;23

Randy Woodley

And so talking about how we don't pick everything from the plant and what are some of the ways you leave nature her fair share with whom could you barter and what services for items and so it's the whole idea is to actually and to to get us to to to do something the problem with a platonic dualistic worldview is that it's if we think it we think that's reality but it's actually when you do something about what you think, that creates an experience.

00;48;09;05 - 00;48;42;01

Randy Woodley

So that's what I'm trying to do. And then also the reflection hopefully will create wisdom. So it's through our experiences that we gain wisdom, not just what we think, but how we apply what we think. And so so that's my goal, is to meet as an indigenous person, to be able to get people to think in ways that I've learned from other indigenous people, elders, spiritual people throughout the years and in my own observations and creation to to get them to actually do something about it on a daily basis.

00;48;42;07 - 00;48;47;08

Randy Woodley

Hmm. And yeah. And then, you know, hopefully that will become infectious. So.

00;48;47;10 - 00;48;48;19

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00;48;49;19 - 00;49;13;08

Randy Woodley

No, my goal is for us all to, to basically shed the Western world view and develop a more indigenous worldview from our own indigenous idiom, from the indigenous people around us in and so that we can live in a better world. I mean, the Western world view that we are now living in, I don't know if people can see the writing on the wall, but it's not going to sustain us in the future.

00;49;13;24 - 00;49;30;18

Randy Woodley

It's an unsustainable worldview. And so we have to we have to get rid of that traditional Western worldview. There some things in it that are good, right? But a lot of it's bad stuff. And so so we need to find another worldview. And and we all have that within us and we all have that around us.

00;49;30;23 - 00;50;18;00

Kelly Deutsch

So yeah, yeah. It makes me hopeful to see so many people talking about not only decolonizing and, you know, the wisdom of various traditions, but just how many people are waking up to like, we need to do something differently. Like, this is not working. What we have to see how polarized the world is becoming, especially, you know, where we are in the U.S. And I I'm hopeful to see that momentum in that direction, but I'm also hopeful to see those who have traditionally or at least not traditionally, historically been shoved to the margins are also finally having space to be able to speak up and say, we've actually been doing this a long time.

00;50;18;16 - 00;50;25;21

Kelly Deutsch

Do you want me to share a few tidbits we picked up along the way over the millennia and that's such a wonder.

00;50;25;25 - 00;50;52;10

Randy Woodley

Or it's too late, right? Yeah. So you know, our indigenous elders have so many so much wisdom has died too early and so many traditions and stories and and medicines and everything else have departed the Earth. But I think they can come back. But, you know, I feel like as indigenous people, that we also have something to return to.

00;50;53;02 - 00;51;19;20

Randy Woodley

And if we don't, it's going to be too late. And I think we have a special role to play. I mean, we're we're still here, right? So so it wouldn't be difficult for me to be still here because I look like a white guy, right? So I could get by and pass on my life if I wanted. But for some of my family members, it would be really difficult, you know, because they're just too Indian to Indian looking and they can't be accepted and white crowds and all that kind of stuff.

00;51;20;00 - 00;51;44;01

Randy Woodley

And so I guess one of the the things that we can say is we're still here and we have something valuable to teach. And so that's that's my hope is that people and it's not just us, right. Like you said, everybody has a story to tell. And that's the thing we didn't really talk about. But but story is also key to all of this, right?

00;51;44;10 - 00;52;16;14

Randy Woodley

Storytelling and in story is how we communicate, how we find ourselves in each other's lives and each other's stories. And, you know, in the Western way, we think it's it's it's all about, you know, you know, one, two, three. Here's the you know, the four most efficient steps to do this. You know, it's all prescriptive and and formulaic and, you know, propositional and, you know, in, in none of that stuff lets you find your human self.

00;52;17;26 - 00;52;25;19

Randy Woodley

But a story you can always find yourself in a story in. And so we need to begin to story more than we do.

00;52;25;27 - 00;52;45;26

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's what tradition in the world does not have story included as a major part of, you know, how it transmits wisdom. And even just in our day to day, you know, I think of probably most people listening on here at least grew up in some sort of church setting. Not everyone, but so many of us.

00;52;45;26 - 00;53;02;17

Kelly Deutsch

And I think of how many like sermons and homilies and things that I've heard over the years. You rarely remember the point of the homily unless you remember the story that was told with it. You know, it's that's it just it's such a part of us, you know, how we're wired.

00;53;02;23 - 00;53;18;28

Randy Woodley

And most of the time you forget the points, but you remember the story, right? That's right. So I noticed that when I was a I was a pastor for seven years of a native church in Nevada. And so we would have a little children's story at the beginning. Right. And it just became remarkable when that was when I was doing it.

00;53;18;28 - 00;53;43;14

Randy Woodley

And more in a traditional Western way. And I switched. But it was remarkable how many people would weeks and weeks later remember the children's story, but never you know, even by the time they got out the door, I don't remember a thing you said, you know, Randi, but, you know, that's a really good children's story, you know? So it's it's how we communicate our humanness.

00;53;43;22 - 00;54;08;00

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Yeah. Because I like it because it does the parts of our brain, you know, the executive parts developed so much later than, you know, like the the more emotional as well as that embodied more lizard brain back there that we respond to so much more deeply and innately to emotion and to that kind of connection and caring for each other and how things make us feel in our bodies.

00;54;08;00 - 00;54;25;09

Kelly Deutsch

Versus just what we're thinking in our heads. Because it is way harder to remember, you know, the three points that you were trying to teach me versus a story that I connected with when I find some sort of resonance and that like, oh, I relate to that feeling, that emotion, that experience. It's powerful. Yeah.

00;54;26;05 - 00;54;44;01

Randy Woodley

Yeah. I used to sit on my in Alabama with some of my grandparents porch and our family were they did two things. And when they sat at night, they on the front porch, they told stories and they played music. And then you interrupt the story or the music and someone would tell a story, you know, and it would go on for a while.

00;54;44;02 - 00;55;01;26

Randy Woodley

And in great, you know, Southern colloquialisms and, you know, they expand and change all the time. But boy, as a as a little child, I was just enamored with all the stories that I heard sitting on that porch, you know, and I think we all sort of have that, you know.

00;55;02;10 - 00;55;02;26

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah.

00;55;06;10 - 00;55;18;21

Kelly Deutsch

One more question for you. I'm curious how these various elements of story and learning from each other as well as the community of creation, how that comes into play at a low, hey.

00;55;21;05 - 00;55;45;20

Randy Woodley

Yeah. So, you know, Ayla has been on a long journey It began in 1998 with a dream I had. I was in Nevada at the, the church I was a pastor and I was telling you about the native church and, and it was a very vivid dream. Sometimes you have dreams and then you have like visions and dreams.

00;55;46;04 - 00;56;10;18

Randy Woodley

And I basically it was the whole vision of what it was to become and, and we'd been in quote unquote native ministry all this time. And we'd figured out we were smart enough by then to figure out that we're really more than anything, we're ministering among our native people, but we're ministering to white people who need what Native people have.

00;56;10;20 - 00;56;33;00

Randy Woodley

Right. And so and so we became a maybe you call that a double agent. I don't know. Yeah, but but somewhere along the way, we sort of figured out, like, what's the best way that we can help our people and help other people? And then I had this this dream, and I woke up crying and I woke my wife up.

00;56;33;00 - 00;57;01;02

Randy Woodley

And this is like three in the morning. And and she started crying, and it just, like, changed our life. This this idea of, of Ala Laser, a Cherokee word that basically means to to stand together with the whole community of creation. That's my definition of interpreting, but it just means to be one with everything to to to to be at peace, to be making relatives to for the earth to produce what it needs and all those kinds of things.

00;57;01;12 - 00;57;25;25

Randy Woodley

And so and so we started that. And for four years we were in we drove around basically looking for and we were also we had a number of people were mentoring on different reservations and things throughout the U.S. and Canada. But we were looking for that place and sort of a bad story like five different times we were lied to and cheated out of places.

00;57;26;04 - 00;58;03;08

Randy Woodley

And then finally we landed in Kentucky. And after being there and creating you know, a place of community where lots of people were living, where we had elders and young people and families and we were growing our own gardens and tapped the springs in vegetables and orchards. We planted a couple orchards and I was it was a hay right our schools were extremely successful anyway, until a long story short, we were eventually driven off that by a a paramilitary white supremacist organization.

00;58;03;08 - 00;58;34;15

Randy Woodley

With a 50 caliber machine gun. And we lost everything. And so the dream died. The vision died. And, you know, it took us about ten years to sort of heal from that, both financially and, you know, our family, our children, all of those kinds of things. We lost everything. And then then I came to Oregon trying to find work at that point, and I was hired as a half time professor and then three quarters and then eventually full time.

00;58;34;15 - 00;58;54;05

Randy Woodley

And now I'd made tenure. I've climbed to the top of the mountain, and now I'm heading back down and, and, and we're we had a little small LRA in Newberg, Oregon, but it was only three acres. And the zoning prohibited us from having other people there and all that. And so now we've found ten acres in Yamhill, Oregon.

00;58;54;19 - 00;59;26;26

Randy Woodley

That is incredible land and just incredible blessed. We're creating the farm and seeds and the indigenous center to get people in touch with the land again to we're trying to, you know, build a rustic building that people can come and meet in. We've got a campground and just trying to get back to the place where we can have others living here in community and that we can have people coming in for schools and being a part of it.

00;59;26;26 - 01;00;01;16

Randy Woodley

And and I think more than anything, Edith and I are just hosts. That's what we do. We we host people and introduce them to us, to each other, to the land, to other teachers, but especially to the land and to their own spirituality. And we try to get them to basically just kind of drink it in. And, you know, it's not a big agenda, but what we notice is that people leave differently and they begin to change.

01;00;02;01 - 01;00;34;14

Randy Woodley

And I don't know if that's like a gift that maybe it's the gift of hospitality I don't know. But but somehow people throughout all of our lives, my wife, I've been married for 32 years and our, our homes been a sort of a welcoming center wherever we've been they leave with their lives changed. And then we build relationships from those that initial gatherings and and that's makes us all the richer, right?

01;00;34;15 - 01;00;58;17

Randy Woodley

So we have friends all over the world in the United States and Canada. And and you know, it's a good life in and so we just want to share what we do with others. Basically, it's what we do here. I, I could tell you all about programs and all that kind of stuff, but it's mostly just saying, you know, I want to welcome you and let's see what we do here and, and see how you can learn from it.

01;00;58;17 - 01;01;19;17

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a beautiful thing. And I think, I mean, obviously you've shared that that's probably the most powerful part is really just welcoming people into your life and into this heritage and saying like welcome. Like, we're learning all together how to live with the land and embrace this whole community of creation and doing that, you know, then.

01;01;19;18 - 01;01;41;01

Randy Woodley

We got to yeah, we got all these things that we, we plant and we do, you know, in traditional indigenous ecological knowledge and permaculture and all these kinds of things, we teach about all these things too. But basically it gets down to the spirituality of the land and each other. The community of creation in my wife is as big or bigger part of that than I am.

01;01;41;09 - 01;01;51;14

Randy Woodley

I'm just the guy who likes to talk and writes books, but she's probably more of the heart of things here. So yeah, and I think a lot of people just come here for her cooking as well.

01;01;51;14 - 01;02;14;15

Kelly Deutsch

So that's no small compliment. Yeah, it's it's beautiful to have that combination of head and heart because I think a lot of us are hungry for that, you know, while we can acknowledge that head is not central, it's still nice to have some of that formation. But when when the heart is really what's driving it, it's, it's very clear in the experience absolutely.

01;02;14;24 - 01;02;29;01

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, this is an very exciting I where should we send people if people are curious to learn more about alcohol. Hey. Or to learn more about your upcoming book, where should they go?

01;02;30;15 - 01;02;56;29

Randy Woodley

Yeah. So AA spelled e l o h e h Ella. Hey, yellow h h. So you can go to Alade, dawg. To see about what we do at the end here at the Indigenous Center for Justice. And they lay firm and seeds. You go to ala. Hey, seeds dot com. If you want seeds, that helps us out. And the book is called Becoming Rooted.

01;02;57;16 - 01;03;17;02

Randy Woodley

And all you have to do is type that in just about anywhere right now, it's going to be out January 4th. You can preorder it now. And and we're also going to have a Facebook page that reads this 400 days together and so, you know, there'll be more coming out about that. But if you sign up for our newsletter, you'll find out about that.

01;03;17;02 - 01;03;17;11

Randy Woodley

Yeah.

01;03;17;21 - 01;03;25;25

Kelly Deutsch

Wonderful. Are there any final words or tidbits that you'd like to share or leave with our audience who's listening today?

01;03;27;00 - 01;03;58;04

Randy Woodley

Yeah. So, you know, we all are going to we're going to live on this planet together, right? And so our children and our children's children, etc. and we really have to begin to think differently. And we're we're just one group, not the most important group, probably not the most effective group, but we're one group of people. My wife and I and others who join us in trying to get us to live and make a better world.

01;03;58;04 - 01;04;06;21

Randy Woodley

And so we're just one of the ways that that can happen. So I just invite people to, to come in and and let's do it.

01;04;07;16 - 01;04;20;27

Kelly Deutsch

Beautiful. We're excited to join you Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Randi. And thank you, everyone, for listening and joining us as well. It's been a lovely conversation, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

01;04;21;20 - 01;04;22;12

Randy Woodley

Absolutely.

01;04;22;26 - 01;04;25;03

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you much.