Taking back the world
From Kalpulli Community
Taking back the world.
My dear relatives everywhere,
To say there is a new kid on the block is overdoing the art of understatement. There is a process, an enterprise, an entity--call it what you will. We call it Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity. Kalpulli means "community" in the language of the Aztec people. This multifaceted enterprise is dedicated to ecological restoration and cultural restoration with emphasis on indigenous nations around the world. Until recently, we had a website: www.kalpulli.net. Due to circumstances beyond our control, the site expired and we are currently working on bringing it back. Until it comes back, we will be using the Myspace alternative to communicate with the entire planet. The time has come for our species to reinvent itself that this planet may be healed. Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity, therefore, will be about the business of environmental and cultural restoration mentioned above, as well as education, the healing of all humanity's wounds, and the restoration of what the Native people call balance throughout the planet. This enterprise, however, will be a very different social and organizational model for most non-profits and/or NGOs. No immodesty is here intended, but Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity will be a worldwide version of a shadow government and a reinvented educational system. On our once and future website, we had our mission statement entitled "Dancing the Dream Awake" and several editorials by Mr. Dave Smith and myself. As founder and director of this project, my editorials were under the general title of "Letters from the founder". They covered and cover the waterfront from the tradgedy visited on New Orleans two years ago to the need to provide Brazilian loggers with an alternative source of employment with emphasis on actual ecological restoration. Let us consider the context in which this and other enterprises are coming into being.
As 2007 merges into 2008, it seems that virtually everything is letting us down. Governments are imploding before the assualt of what Dr. David Corton calls "corprotocracy". In addition, we seem to be seeing only the darker sides of the various salvationist religions. Fundamentalism is as pervasive a disease as AIDS, cancer, and the rest. The hopeful sign running through our world, however, goes something like this: we may be seeing the last gasp of all salvationisms and other ideaologies. A Kenyan friend of mine asked me about the ideological orientation of Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity. My answer probably surprised him, and quite honestly surprised me as I was saying it. Paraphrasing the Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas, let us go doctrineless into that good day. I told him that it takes more than one tree to make a forest. Therefore, this project rests upon a polyglot of ideas and/or philosophies from deep ecology to a loose medicine bundle of indigenous perspectives, eco-feminism, internationalism, and democratic socialism. We are to be radical without being fanatical. Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity will therefore follow the admonition of one of my teachers, an elderly Aztec gentleman who said "All in balance." Balance is probably the most important word in the indigenous world and it stands as the absolute heart of our work. For example, there is a heavy emphasis on both scholarship and activism in this enterprise. There is a heavy emphasis on what for others may seem contradictory, erego the marriage of individual and collective rights.
Finally, unlike nationstates and corporations, we don't operate in terms of short-term goals. Thus instead of a fiscal year or a five-year plan, our work will be couched in a series of 500-year plans. One of the authors of Deep Ecology, Aldo Leopold, told us to "think like a mountain." We are at least moving in that general direction. Our first 500-year plan for ecological and cultural restoration kicked in on Friday, October 12 2007--the 515th anniversary of what Dr. David Stanards from the University of Hawaii would call "the American Holocaust". That is, the arrival in this hemisphere of the great-granddaddy of organized crime, Christopher Columbus. Professor Ward Churchhill said it best, "let us absolutely reverse in the next 500 years, that which has happened over the last 500 years." We who comprise Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity take the gentleman at his word and we will act accordingly. However, we also recognize that nothing born of desperation has ever worked. Ironies being what they are, our general world situation is so horrific that we are to be deliberate and deliberative. We are to have patience, and we must at all costs avoid any hint of fundamentalism--thus being radical without being fanatical will be our calling.
Let me say a few words about how we intend to raise funds for this project. I said it on the website and I'll say it here. For openers, if every person on this planet who cares about ecology, culture, and related matters would send us $1 or more, we would be hugely grateful and hugely able to start doing our work. In addition, we are going to establish what we are calling an ecological and cultural lottery. It will be a world enterprise along the lines of the Irish sweepstake. We will honestly tell people not to expect to win--we are counting on the altruism of humanity. Let me explain. The contest will run twice a week. You will have to pick nonconsecutive numbers between 1 and 1000. There will be 10 numbers, and even if one somehow gets 10 numbers right, you will then have to pick what we are calling the ecological number followed by the cultural number. If someone somehow manages to win, it will be no more than $50,000,000 US. If this effort takes place twice a week, at the end of the year the governing council of Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity will sit down and after careful deliberation, these funds will be doled out to indigenous and other communities seeking to do ecological and cultural restoration--including conflict resolution and the complete freeing of women and children from all forms of abuse and oppression. We will find the best auditors and other financial experts to administer what will clearly become a huge endowment. When we get our website restored, you can read our mission statement, "Dancing the Dream Awake," which talks about otyher strategies for creating our endowment.
In conclusion, I wish to think one of our board members, Linda, for making this access to Myspace possible. I wish to thank Ellie, one of my young people, for rendering these words legible. If you wish to contact me, for the time being you can reach me at 651-714-0288 or Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity, 6276 12th street North--Apt 210, Oakdale, MN, USA, 55128. We have a lot to talk about because we have a lot to do. Thank you for considering these opening remarks on Myspace. These are my words and I take full responsibility.
Ray Tricomo
