Saving The Indigenous Soul

Saving the Indigenous Soul
Interview with Mart Prechtel by Derrick Jensen

Published in The Sun, April 2001
Report by: Kristin Bonifacio and Eron Castellon

A discussion by a shaman healer, initiator and chief of the
difference between Mayan worldview and that of the west
including the place of courtesy in spirituality.

Martin Prechtel
From New Mexico on a Pueblo Indian reservation
His mother, a teacher in the community, is a native Canadian
Indian and his father, a white paleantologist, is Anglo.
He spoke in the native tongue of Indian, Spanish and English,
and later, Mayan.
He paints scenes from the daily activities and mythology of
the Mayan people.
He is a musician who also appears at conferences for young
men and leads workshops that help people reconnect with
their own sense of place and the sacredness of ordinary life.
He went back to Mexico after failing for almost about
everything then this turned out to be a kind of grooming for a
shamanic initiation that he eventually received in Guatemala.
Books by M. Prechtel
Secret of the Talking Jaguar
About the indigenous traditions in Santiago
Atitlan.
Glimpses of his shaman training.
Details of the Mayan spiritual tradition.
Long Life, Honey in the Heart
Describes the structure of the Tzutujil
Village.
The Tzutujil priesthood.
Everyday village life before the arrival of the
death squad.
Village of Tzutijil
Santiago Atitlan Village of Southern Mayans
It was consisted of 50,000 inhabitants.
Additional Fact: 35 of mayan culture is in Guatemala.
Others are in Mexico, Honduras and other places.
Prechtel married a local woman and had three sons. Though he
was not a native, he then became a full member of the village.
He also became the shaman of the village when Chiviliu died. He
also rose to the Public office of Nabey Mam, or first chief.
Nicholas Chiviliu
One of the great Tzutujil Mayan Shamans.
Martin was his apprentice for several years and he taught him the
following:
To learn how to correct imbalance in peoples
relationships with the ancestors and the spirits
Tzutujil language
Civil War in Guatemala
Prechtel was forced to leave because of the war. Before his
teacher died he was asked to leave so that he wouldnt get killed
and he would be able to carry the knowledge that his teacher
passed to him.
He brought his family to the U.S and there he met Robert Bly, a
poet active in the mens movement. Bly described Prechtel as
a short kind of pony that gallops through the fields of
human possibility with flowers dropping out of his mouth
_______________________________________________________
They are the ones who try to put the right effects of normal
human stupidity and repair relationships with the invisible sources
of life.

Chief and shaman are two different things. Americans usually
think that shaman is a leader, but that is not so because there is
no leadership in it at all. Shaman is a kind of spiritual doctor.
_______________________________________________________

Shamans
Shamans deal with the problems that arise when we forget the
relationship that exist between us and the other world.
Shamans have simply been a part of ordinary life.
Common to all shamans:
The have commonality of experience.

The indigenous soul of the modern person, though, either has
been banished to the far reaches of the dream of the world or is
under direct attack by the modern mind. The more you consciously
remember your indigenous soul, the more you physically
remember it.

The Other World
The other world feeds the tangible world and it is what makes this
world work.
All human beings come from the other world but we forget it
after a few months we are born.
The Mayans say that the other world sings us to being.
Dreams and They
Dreaming is not about healing the person whos sleeping; its about the
person feeding the whole, remembering the other world, so that it can
continue.
The Mayans called ghosts and deities They. They are all those beings
who sings us alive.
Debt for the Mayans
Each Mayan is originally born with debt.
We are born owning a spiritual debt to the other world for having created
us, for having us sung into existence
Repaying the debt: you have to give a gift to that which gives you
life.
With every invention comes a spiritual debt that must be paid, either
ritually, or else taken out of us in warfare, grief or depression, a ritual gift
equal to the amount that was removed from the other world has to be put
back to make up for the wound caused to divine. There is a deity to be fed
in each part of the procedure (in connection to making materials)
Debt for the Western Culture
Western culture believes that all materials is dead, and so there
is no debt incurred when human ingenuity removes something
from the other world.
We no longer maintain a relationship with the spirits, the spirits
have to eat our psych. And when the spirits are done eating our
psyches, they eat our bodies. And when they are done with that,
they will move on to the people close to us.
What does it mean to be home in a place?
Martin Prechtel states that these few ideals applied to your lifestyle will
eventually bring you home in your own place.
1. Understand where we are.
2. Weve got to know our own histories.
3. Weve got to feed our own ancestors ghosts.
4. Weve got to begin to greive.
You do not belong someplace until your people have died there and the
living have wept for them there.
Spanish Influence
The Spaniards demolished the old temples and used stones to
build an new church on the same site, but Mayans watched as the
old stone temple were used to build the new church, they
memorized where these stones were placed.
There was a hollow place that was never to be filled
The Indigenous Soul
Every individual in the world, regardless the cultural background or race
has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile
environment created by that individuals mind.

Source:
Jensesn, D. (2001). Saving the Indigenous Soul: Interview with Martin
Prechtel. The Sun. Retrieved from
http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/304/saving_
the_indigenous_soul

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Interview with Mart Prechtel by Derrick Jensen

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