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Native Voices Foundation in the Press!
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Thoreau's
Focus on American Indians
to be Revealed at Aspen Seminar
Published: Mon,
16 May 2005, 04:45 EST
Edited
by Christopher Simmons
Staff Writer, Send2Press.com
 ASPEN,
Colo. - May 16 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- "Why, then, make
so great ado about the Roman and the Greek, and neglect the
Indian?," wrote Henry David Thoreau in his Journal in 1857.
A missing piece of what shaped this icon and American consciousness
will be revealed at a weekend seminar in Aspen, Colorado June
3-5, 2005, entitled "Thoreau and the Evolution of the American
Mind: The Next Step." Thoreau scholar, Bradley P. Dean,
Ph.D., will introduce highlights of Henry's 12 "Indian
Notebooks," which he said, "includes just under 4,000
manuscript pages, probably to write a book he did not live to
publish." They reveal how Thoreau was intrigued by American
Indians since his boyhood, and how this involvement influenced
his philosophy, according to Native Voices Foundation (NVF).
Photo Caption: Penobscot
Chief Joe Polis, one of Thoreau's three personal heroes. Courtesy
of Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and
ThoreauSociety.org.
"America's
most beloved disobedient," says NVF's Suzy Chaffee, "Thoreau
inspired such leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and
free spirits around the world."
To be held at a
Rocky Mountain wildlife preserve in the heart of Aspen, the
seminar is based on ideas illuminated in the 5-part film series:
The American Evolution: Voices of America. Produced and directed
by Connie Baxter Marlow and Scott W. Snare, the film series
also explores: The significance of Thoreau's life-changing experience
on Mt. Katahdin in Maine, which helped form his mystical, transcendental
philosophy, and how this expanded reality relates to the American
Indian's understanding of the nature of the universe. The films
also revisit his timely essay, "Civil Disobedience,"
out of which we may find insights to take the next step in consciousness.
"According
to Ralph Waldo Emerson," states Dean, "Thoreau's personal
heroes were three men: Poet Walt Whitman, abolitionist John
Brown, and Penobscot Chief Joe Polis, who served as Thoreau's
guide to the Maine woods in the summer of 1857. Polis was able
to tell the botanist a medicinal use for every plant he could
show him. What also fascinated Thoreau, was how Polis flourished
in both worlds, embodying a synthesis of white and Native American
cultures - living in a beautiful house on Maine's Indian Island,
while thriving in the wilderness and being an effective leader.
Thoreau leveraged the strengths and insights of native peoples
to improve upon the emerging new American culture. Folks will
also be surprised that Thoreau was also a top ethnologist of
his time, and the study of the Algonquin Indians was his primary
scientific focus."
The evolutionary
film series was shot on location in Concord, Massachusetts,
and New York City, and features Thoreau through interpreter
Richard Smith; Arnie Neptune, Penobscot Tribal Elder; Imam Feisal
Rauf, American Muslim; Kyriacos Markides, Greek American author/sociologist;
the mystical Mt. Katahdin (Maine); Dean, Marlow and others.
Together they weave a tapestry of ideas from which a new way
of thinking may emerge. "Thoreau respected and experienced
the land like an American Indian," said Neptune. "He
is a model of the white part of the four colors of humanity,
each with a purpose, now coming together to heal ourselves and
Mother Earth."
"Thoreau is
taking us to the next step," declares Marlow. "Just
as his essay, 'Civil Disobedience,' changed the world in the
political arena through Gandhi and King, I believe the time
is ripe for Thoreau's mystical experiences to come to light."
The seminar will
run as part of a series of events being held in conjunction
with the photography exhibit "Rhythms of Creation: A Family's
Impressions of Indigenous Peoples of the World," which
will hang in Aspen's Red Brick Center for the Arts throughout
June. "With this exhibit and events we explore the evolution
of the American Mind from a new perspective to find a pathway
to those elusive 'inalienable' rights of peace, life, liberty
and happiness, which a combination of American Indian and European
vision promised in the American Constitution," says Marlow.
These events are
co-sponsored by Native Voices Foundation, a Colorado 501(c)3
non-profit partnership, which inspires U.S. ski communities
to welcome their tribes back to their beloved ancestral mountains
to ski, snowboard and share their earth-honoring culture, and
Friends of Earth People, Marlow's foundation, which has been
creating forums for visionary Elders to share their understanding
of the nature of the Universe since 1991. Part of the seminar
fee is a tax-deductible donation to NVF.
(www.nativevoices.org)
For Seminar Information
and Registration go to: www.theamericanevolution.com
This news release
was donated to the NVF by Neotrope/Send2Press, who is proud
to help support worthwhile non-profit organizations.
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