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Naskapi Dreams
In Marie Louise Von Franz’s On Divination and Synchronicity she brings up the interesting case of the Naskapi people, an indigenous nomadic tribe in Canada. Research online indicates that they are part of the Innu people, who ancestrally inhabited Eastern Canada in the Quebec-Labrador peninsula region. I’ll get to what Von Franz talks about in a moment, but this info on Wikipedia is actually really interesting as well:
The Innu have never officially surrendered their territory to Canada. As a consequence of this they are not registered under the Indian Act and the government does not afford them the same protection, tax-breaks and benefits as other First Nations. From the 1950s on, the Canadian government and the Catholic church attempted to “civilise” the Innu, inducing them to settle in fixed encampments and to abandon their nomadic lifestyle. Before long, life in these artificially constructed settlements became marred by extremely high levels of alcoholism, volatile substance abuse by children, domestic violence, and suicide. Between 1975 and 1995 the Innu settlements averaged 178 suicides per 100,000 persons per year. This is more than twelve times the Canadian average.
Survival International have alleged that the Canadian government’s policy of relocating the Innu away from their ancestral lands and preventing them from practising their ancient way of life is in contravention of international law, and they have drawn parallels with the treatment of the Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China.
The issue here, as I understand it, is that the Innu people have been living as a hunter gatherer civilization for thousands of years. Von Franz actually brings them up in this context, because their culture represents an extremely good example of how “primitive” cultures worked. According to her, they’ve traditionally lived in small family groups of about 15 or 20 people. They wandered around hunting and gathering with any agriculture, or any civilization as we know it. Besides a once-yearly meeting to trade, they supposedly had no organized festivals, and consequently no organized religion or priesthood. What they had instead was a spirituality based entirely on their dreams.
They believe that a “great man” named Mistap’eo lives inside each person, and he is the sender of dreams. He wants people to “attend to those dreams, to test them, try them out, and draw their conclusions from them.” Mistap’eo also likes for people to make carvings and art according to their dream motifs. Von Franz continues:
They also sometimes discuss their dreams with one another and if a man or woman has a very impressive dream they spontaneously turn it into a song. If one man has a very good dream song then the others begin to sing it too, but even those songs fade out after a while, and then there is a new song from another individual who has transformed his dream into a song.
I read that thinking: Shit! That’s awesome! Why can’t I live in a culture like that? It sounds so fun… And then the realization struck me that I very much do live in a culture (or sub-culture) like that - at least in the context of this circle of people with whom I share thoughts and dreams online. I thought about how one of us will have a “very impressive dream” and then turn it into a “dream song” which others of us begin to sing for a while as well - until it gradually fades away and is replaced by a new one. And so our dreams and songs go round and round.
Personalizing this connection makes me understand much more closely the plight of these people vis-a-vis the Canadian government and the Church. Both represent a style of civilization in which the dreams and songs of the individual are squashed and replaced by the great common dreams of the culture. Individuals are molded by the culture, rather than it being a two-way street like with the Innu/Naskapi people.
April 15th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
I had a weird dream yesterday that seems related to this site and the theme of connections between pop culture and religion. So I figured I’d share it, Naskapi-style.
A Dream About Communication
I’ve been seeing a specialist doctor and his assistant reads out to me a letter on my diagnosis. I stop him short saying he’s not making any sense with his medical mumbo-jumbo. A surrounding audience, much like there is in a TV sitcom or game show, laughs at this poking fun at the letter.
As a consequence I win a prize, worth $100, to attend a series of movies in a large theatre. I am asked to pay the $100 up front but it will be refunded.
People file into the auditorium, passing large drink trays in the foyer. The glasses are heterogenous, not all identical, and they remind me of the collections in charity op shops. I grab a spherical or globe-shaped glass, a kind of Holy Grail.
As in an Opera House, there are boxes along the sides and a large flashlight focuses on higher boxes where puppets are performing. Lower boxes are lit up in turn until the bottom box is reached and an especially strong light is flashed onto a naked guitarist - yes, he’s “flashing”, lol. He has tucked his penis between his legs, however, in some modesty. The light is then subdued and we (the audience) can just make out that he ties a piece of fur, like a large fluffy fig leaf, onto his pubic hair - there is a hook or pin in place for this purpose. He then starts to play and sing with this codpiece as his costume.
Context: I have seen two types of medical specialists in recent years: a dental surgeon (extracting a large cyst and wisdom tooth) and a dermitologist (skin diseases on my feet that have made walking difficult). I loved going under the anaesthetic for the surgery - it was so peaceful - and the surgeon was a loveable teddy bear type of guy, very reassuring. My mouth lost feeling in one quarter and this has still not returned completely, even after 18 months. I see this as linked to the idea of communication.
The dermitologist did give me some old-fashioned remedies that have been useful but it’s true that his diagnostic letter to my GP was gobbledy-gook, full of medical jargon and failing to see what was really amiss. He was treating me as a body and getting it all wrong. A bit of recognition of soul would have yielded some results.
Regarding the prize, I recently did some voluntary work for a community organization and, as one of their volunteers, I was offered theatre tickets to a Shakespeare performance. I did take up the offer and found the experience quite mind-blowing. It would have cost close to $100 to buy the tickets myself. However, clearly 100 is numerologically significant as a higher unity.
My main association to the last imagery is to the chakra system which is usually portrayed as an ascending consciousness of wholeness. However, I have always visualized it as wheels on wheels. If something changes on, say, level 4 then all other levels are affected. The dream seems to depict the bottom level as the most authentic and most illuminated.
And that seems to tie up with the stuff you just posted relating to virtual and real worlds.
October 18th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
[…] In our culture, dreams are routinely denigrated, but this is not universally so. The Naskapi, one of the Innu people, never officially surrendered to Canada, and so has been denied the benefits of “First Nation” status under Canadian law. They have been living there as hunter-gatherers for at least 2,000 years, predating the later Inuit migration. The Innu believe that a “great man” named Mistap’eo lives inside everyone, and gives us our dreams. They believe that he wants us to make art based on our dreams, “attend to those dreams, to test them, try them out, and draw their conclusions from them.” Thus, dreams form the very basis of Naskapi cosmology and spirituality. “They also sometimes discuss their dreams with one another and if a man or woman has a very impressive dream they spontaneously turn it into a song. If one man has a very good dream song then the others begin to sing it too, but even those songs fade out after a while, and then there is a new song from another individual who has transformed his dream into a song.” (Von Franz, 1980) For the Naskapi, like the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, dreams are very real.9 […]