Unshod with D. Firth Griffith

God Is Red: Stewardship or Sovereignty with Taylor Keen, Episode 1

• Daniel Firth Griffith • Season 4 • Episode 31

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What if our approach to regenerating the planet is fundamentally flawed by the Settler-Colonial Worldview? What if it is not our approach as much as it is our heart--our relationship to the Land as the Land? 

In this profound conversation with my friend, Taylor Keen—a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Harvard graduate, and founder of Sacred Seed—we explore the stark contrast between indigenous wisdom and the modern environmental movements of Regenerative Agriculture, Sustainable Development, and so much more.

Taylor takes us deep into the origins of Turtle Island, the indigenous name for Earth (Not America) found in creation stories dating back over 15,000 years. This isn't just mythology, as Taylor speaks—it's a cosmological understanding that connects human existence to both stars and soil. Through Taylor's storytelling, we discover how indigenous peoples maintain sustainable relationships with the land for thousands of generations, while our modern "green" movements often perpetuate the same mindsets that created our environmental crisis over and over and over again, masking its problems as solutions, or salvation.

The conversation challenges the very heart of our relationship with Earth. Taylor explains how indigenous traditions place plants first, animals second, and humans third—a radical departure from the dominion-based thinking that characterizes even well-intentioned environmental efforts. When he speaks about traditional agricultural knowledge, like planting by moon cycles or having only women of childbearing age plant seeds, we glimpse ourselves undeveloped by the millennia of careful colonization and observe our once-spiritual spiritual connection.

Most provocatively, I think, Taylor questions whether our rush to "save" the planet portrays the same arrogance that damaged it. Drawing on teachings from Vine Deloria Jr. and John Trudell, he suggests a different trace forward—one where we stop giving power to colonial and linear minds and instead become true kin with the land. "God is the land," Taylor insists, suggesting that treating Earth with the same reverence we give to religious texts might be our only path to survival.

Whether you're concerned about climate change, passionate about regenerative agriculture, or simply trying to understand your place in the natural world, this conversation will challenge your thinking and open new possibilities for healing our broken relationship with Mother Earth.

Episode Webpage: HERE.

D. Firth Griffith:

Hello, welcome to the podcast. This episode is the first of an undetermined many of yarns that I am blessed I am honored to sit to share with my dear friend, my brother and my mentor, taylor Keene. Taylor is a senior lecturer at Creighton University. He holds two master's degrees from Harvard University, where he also served as a fellow in the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, the founder of Sacred Seed, an organization devoted to propagating tribal seed sovereignty, and a member of the earthen bison clan of the Omaha tribe, where he is known by the name Bison Maine. He lives in Omaha, nebraska.

D. Firth Griffith:

His work, which I cannot recommend to you enough, is titled Rediscovering Turtle Island a first people's account of the sacred geography of America. If any aspect of this conversation is interesting, I encourage you pause it, go get the book. It's available everywhere online. Get it from your local bookshop, get the book, read it, sit with Taylor, like I have had the privilege and honor of doing myself.

D. Firth Griffith:

Throughout this series, taylor and I intend to create a very open and humble and egoless and at times uncomfortable space where we unpack the relationship and the tension and the possibilities of the settler, colonial and indigenous cultures, we look at history, we look at opportunities, we look at how to move forward. There is grief, there is hope, and as we look forward and we look at, what does life look like together, living in grateful thankfulness and reciprocity. Rediscovering Turtle Island, I think, is a pivotal and seminal work of our generation. But also, as Taylor speaks in this episode, the coming of the seventh generation. But also, as Taylor speaks in this episode, the coming of the seventh generation, which calls back to the Dakota prophecy of the buffalo white buffalo calves. The seventh generation, the returning of humankind's heart to indigenous pathways, and so much more. I'll leave it at that. Taylor gets into it in this episode. And so, without further ado, the first episode with Taylor Keene.

Taylor Keen:

To begin, I'd like to offer some thoughts to Wakanda, our creator. So, if you will just join me in thoughts of reverence, well, krishna, umaha Nikoshe Dao Adaga, creator Spirit, we come to you today thankful for this wonderful gift of life. Wakanda Wa'i, wakanda, gahega. Creator, give us life, creator, made us Thankful for this beautiful day that we have here today. Ambe te Buddha, we're thankful for this gift of life. Creator Spirit, as that you look down upon us today.

Taylor Keen:

We're thankful for this wonderful gift of life the ability to see and to feel and to hear and to understand, to love and to hurt and to heal when we face adversity. May we survive, adapt, thrive, may we all forgive, be forgiven and be free. May I be saved, may I be at peace, may I be kind to myself and show self-compassion and self-love. Creator, we're just asking for good thoughts and strength today as we discuss the perils of modern life and our desire to serve mother earth. May you give my brother daniel and I the strength to say the words. May we be a vessel for the plants and the animals.

D. Firth Griffith:

I hope thank you, taylor. It is a uh. Thank you, taylor. It is an unbelievable blessing. I've been thinking about this conversation, this string or yarn of dialogue, for about a year now. Has it been that long since we last of us of ours introduced us to one another? I heard you on a podcast and I just I wanted to do everything I possibly could to sit with you and it happened, and it was a blessing then. It is a blessing now. I see these conversations as they unfold. If they're one conversation, three conversations, five conversations, how many times we get to sit together has to some degree I know this is a modern usage of a phrase, but a healing yet uncomfortable conversation, at least for me and, I know, for a lot of our listeners. And I am privileged to be there, I am honored to be here, I'm blessed to call you a friend, a brother. You're also a mentor and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for having me again. Let's begin with language. Turtle Island, what does that mean to you?

Taylor Keen:

When I began to structure Rediscovering Turtle Island, I began with our creation story. Everything begins with the beginning and oftentimes referred to as the earth diver myth. Of course that's an anthropological term, the term myth unless you want to call all of Judaism, christianity and studies of Islam a myth as well, then we can start there. But it's one of the stories that I heard from both the Cherokee side and on my Suian side, different variations from the Omaha, from the Osage, some of our other relatives within our language family. In essence, it summarizes the journey of the souls from the Seven Sisters constellation that the Greeks called Pleiades, greeks called Pleiades.

Taylor Keen:

And they journey through the dark rift of the Milky Way and then, guided by the morning star, to here. And when the first stars souls came here, they took the form of four animals and eventually one of them dives down into the water-covered planet and brings up the primordial clay upon which turtle sacrifices itself and puts the earth on its back. And the earth is born from there. And I discovered in my research that that story is shared by many of the indigenous peoples of North America. Not all Others have different creation stories, but it's common amongst the Suyan-speaking peoples, the Algonquin-speaking peoples peoples and the Iroquoian peoples and they all have different variations. And in my travels around indigenous country over the years would sometimes share that story and find that there was a lot of commonalities but yet a lot of differences. There was a lot of commonalities but yet a lot of differences. And along the way I had many people correct my version of the story as they have different variations of it and people would say things like that's pretty good, taylor, you're a good storyteller, but you got one of the animals wrong or you forgot woman who fell from the sky, one of the animals wrong, or you forgot woman who fell from the sky, and I became very curious about why there were so many variations of the same story. And in my research I found a Russian scholar who specialized in studying the story and came to discover that it's still in Siberia today and it's multiple variations.

Taylor Keen:

So pick your point in time of when indigenous peoples came out of the Eurasian plat, whether it be across the Bering Strait or waterways at least 14,000, 15,000 years ago. With the footprints in White Sands, new Mexico. That pushes the clock back to around 23,000 years ago. That story is at least as old as the migrations, and so we're talking about a story that is well over 10,000 years old at least 15, and who knows how much further back it goes. So if that story is coming out of Siberia, it's either referring to Siberia or the Eurasian continent, depending on what point in the Ice Age we were in whenever that story originated. But it's got to be one of the oldest stories in the world. So the language about Turtle Island, because so many of the tribes share that story here, people often think of it as meaning North America, but what it really means is the earth and its origins.

D. Firth Griffith:

Taylor's book Rediscovering Turtle Island, a first people's account of the sacred geography of America. It was published last year in June of 2024, and it is an exploration of the indigenous cosmology and history of North America. So much of this conversation here today, in this episode, is also encased very eloquently and beautifully in Taylor's writings. I encourage you to check it out. The book Rediscovering Turtle Island is available really anywhere you get your books. I hate to provide too brief of a summary of the book, but if I can add just a few words, but if I can add just a few words, it examines the complexities of the indigenous legends and creation myths of this land and reveals many common oral traditions that span across much of North America. It explores the history of Cahokia, the Mississippian mound builder empire, told to the voice of Honga, a native leader at the time. It also presents quite a chilling and subversive and wonderful revisionist history regarding Thomas Jefferson, the expansionist doctrine of the early American West and the idea of manifest destiny. It is an amazing book. I encourage you, if this conversation is at all piquing your interest, if it is grabbing at your heartstrings, if Taylor's words are living to you in a way that you want to step a little bit deeper in.

D. Firth Griffith:

I encourage you to check out his book Rediscovering Turtle Island. Turtle Island, you know, you read Vine Deloria's work, whether or not you pick up God is Red, or Custer died for your sins, or Red Earth White Lies, I think all of these books of his speak to. There is a settler, colonial mindset that likes to unify ancient mythologies into a single narrative and then it bastardizes that narrative into a binary view of left and right, white and black, good, bad, top down one zero. And so it linearizes it. And I think in the book God is Red, vine talks quite a piece about Christianity and how Christianity turns all other creation stories into mythology and how Christianity turns all other creation stories into mythology.

Taylor Keen:

I think it's just a part of the human ego right. We all think we're right about everything and that's amplified with paradigms and dogma of religion.

D. Firth Griffith:

I have found it to be very true that it is also the necessity of the colonizer to have that ego, to maintain that ego, because the second that a modern man, it is also the necessity of the colonizer to have that ego, to maintain that ego, because the second that a modern man, especially white settler, colonial, from another area of Turtle Island, this wonderful mother earth, were to realize in their own way, in their own time, that maybe we didn't make the right decisions in the past, that life now has to change. And so if we're comfortable in that modern life, no matter what that may or may not look like, we have to hold the past in some sort of regard, some maybe sort of improper regard, and then maintain that forward progress to feel secure, to feel safe. I think we see that in agriculture, which I want to get into with you. I think we see that in politics, we see that in social development. I think there's many ways we can look at it. I think maybe, before we jump too deep, this conversation, it's a quote from Vine Deloria Jr's work.

D. Firth Griffith:

God is Red. Vine writes who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things? Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As long as the long-forgotten peoples of their respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of North America will finally discover that for this land, god is red. It's interesting. I've read that quote a hundred times and I've never noticed that says as the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim, he's talking about the whole earth. I've never noticed that.

Taylor Keen:

What does that mean to you as a European?

D. Firth Griffith:

I'm curious Well.

D. Firth Griffith:

I think that's one of the main reasons I I am so excited and also petrified for this conversation because over the last year, um due to another mentor and friend, um shilletazania maori mokopona, a grandmother of the Waitaha people in New Zealand, she challenged me.

D. Firth Griffith:

She said how can you meet us until you meet yourself is more or less what she said, and so I've dove headlong down a path of remembrance into my own ancestral lineage and my own ancestors and my own people. I am at one moment inspired to, as he says, reclaim the ancient heritage in our respective continent, to relearn these ancient languages, to look at our past, to see how colonization has ravished our land, so that we can then pack it up and ravish yours. That, to me, is the last year and maybe even the next life. But then, on the other hand, I'm not in Ireland, I'm not in Western Europe. My great-grandfather left during the potato famines and colonization of England of the 1840s and 50s into Irish countrysides and all of that, and so I live here now. So, on the other hand, it's how do I, as a Western European transplant that didn't ask to be here, become kin with this land, right, with the God of this land, with the people, the land itself, etc.

Taylor Keen:

And so I'm both inspired and unbelievably paraphrase, because I can't recall the exact verbiage, but he was quoting Chief Luther Standing Bear of the Lakota people, who was a chief in the 1920s, 1920s, and he's upset about language that he was hearing from Americans about the land, and again I have to paraphrase. But he said they call this land a wilderness because they do not understand the contours of her rocky spine. Their blood and bones have not been in the land long enough for the mother to recognize them. Do they not miss their own sacred mountains or sacred waters? Miss their own sacred mountains or sacred waters? And so that is a notion that I explored. I know I'm not doing it justice to what he actually said, that's how I interpreted my heart, but it speaks of a relationship that I refer to as by blood and bone, meaning that when our temporal bodies pass, indigenous peoples widely believe we should be interred into the ground, not cremated, and I think that tradition goes to the fact that our blood and bones, our DNA, are going back to the mother and she knows us that way. And any peoples who have been here less than oh, we'll say 300 years, we can say 500 and be generous. Should they not look to the peoples who have been here for tens of thousands of years to understand this land and what the relationship to this continent is supposed to be? And for me, everything begins and comes back to and ends with where Vine left us with his teachings and by God is red. I believe at least to me that's what he was referring to was to understand that at the heart of indigenous religion, if we can use that term, is it's all about sacred geography and all about learning to respect the land and to love her as one would love their own mother. And anything less than that religion, in my opinion, is not going to be enough to enable us as human beings to prosper in these lands. Desecrating the lands, altering it to our own whims and we've talked about this before.

Taylor Keen:

But even the notion of my mentors, jane Mount Pleasant and we were discussing how, in the American Green Movement, there was a notion that they were saving the planet, and her retort to that and to the writings of Wendell Berry in regards to the unsettling of America was interesting. You know, basically you're saying you're a savior of the problem that you created as Europeans and that it ignores 15,000 years plus of indigenous environmentalism, and by that there's a lot of politics around whether indigenous peoples were living sustainably with the earth. Well, nothing says living sustainably with the earth more than doing it for tens of thousands of years, tens of thousands of years. So, regardless of whether you think the rise and fall of great indigenous civilizations such as Cahokia and the Anasazi, and why some of those regimes, societies, collapsed Some say that it was indigenous peoples not living sustainably, overusing resources, trees, et cetera, over farming Regardless we're all still here, and to me that's a living testament, for we have a lot to teach people and we have a lot to reclaim for ourselves. That was the real reason behind me wanting to try to document what I could, and my work, known as Rediscovering Turtle Island, was to try to wrap my own mind around who are we and where do we come from. Or if we don't know where we've been, we don't know where to go in the future. But to me, everything comes back to where Vine started and left off, whether that was Custer died for your sins or the world in which we used to live.

Taylor Keen:

I can't remember if it was the foreword or the afterword, but his son, phil, wrote that, because Vine's last work was published posthumously. And again I'm paraphrasing. But Phil said you know, we lost my father in the autumn of his life and he wished he would have lived a little bit longer. And I understand that sentiment. I feel the same about my father and I understand that sentiment. I feel the same about my father, but I don't need him here to know what he would have said as a call to arms.

Taylor Keen:

When are we going to listen to the plants and animals again? And I thought that was very fitting to bring up with the excerpt that you read from God is Red, where Vine was alluding to that but these simple notions of understanding and revering plants and animals and regarding them as nation states as they will, nation states as they will, anything less than that, and we're not showing respect for the land that sustains us and should help us adapt and thrive. And that's what I mean about facing adversity, adapting, thriving in my prayer that we need to reclaim a religious relationship with Mother Earth. And who better to teach us than the people who have been here the longest? There's lots of politics around immigrants and I couldn't agree more. Let's look to the people who have been here for tens of thousands of years and not 300 years. I don't know if that's going to be controversial for your listening community or not, but that's how I feel.

D. Firth Griffith:

I hope all of this is. I think stories are here. Tales, oh, they're here to wake us up. I think they're here to startle us. I'm in the middle of writing a book, a second book, into a series. The first book is a I would colloquially call it a mythological retelling, which I know you've read and have enjoyed and been so wonderfully blessed to receive a blurb from that book from you, and so I know you know it. But the second book in the series is a horror very similar to Stephen in this mythological world, where trees really did talk and now we've killed all the trees and our world is a horror. We live between horror and hell, and not that we should live there for a while.

D. Firth Griffith:

I agree with everything you said in your prayer, but there's a certain portion of our populace today that needs to be. They need a vision, they need to see, I think, to be startled, to be woken up to the reality. They need a vision, they need to see, I think, to be startled, to be woken up to the reality. One of the things that I would love to discuss before we get too far away from it, because I want to get back to heritage and the people of all of the different continents, of Turtle Island, mother Earth, rising up to reclaim this kinship, this nationhood, of all of these kingdoms, if you will, the plant nation and the animal nation. And I want to get to that, I really do. But before we do, I don't want to jump too fast through the red and green tension. The green is trying to heal a world that we destroyed. This is the work of Wendell Berry. Everybody always thinks that I'm a fan of Wendell Berry. By the way, he was a great writer. He could put words together, it's true. But I get so excited when I talk to people like you who don't see Wendell Berry as God incarnate in the white world around us of agriculture which, please, let's talk about that too, but anyways, it's the green world is, you know, let's just say whitey's trying to heal the world that we destroyed initially, while also calling ourselves saviors for doing it.

D. Firth Griffith:

And then you have the other side, which is living in harmony, living in kinship, the, the very fluid imaginative science that you're talking about, that many others, like great, great cachette and even find a loria, and in parts talks about that fluid understanding of this imaginative science. And those two sides are are, in my head counterposed to each other, because on the one side and I guess this is a question, I want to see how you understand it and maybe you can help us perfect our understanding even further but on the one side, you have patience right. When I see the indigenous attitude to the land as the land, when I see traditional ecological wisdom and knowledge, that is, place-based, long-term relationship between humanity and our kin in place for a long period of time, I see patience. Maybe there's 10 other words that you can pick that are better than that, but generally I see patience. When I look at the green movement, when I look at regenerative agriculture, I see the opposite that we have to be building soil, organic matter as fast as possible. We have to be forcing biodiversity to return and to bud and to prolifically spread its wings over every possible surface of earth as fast as possible. There's carbon in the atmosphere. We have to put that into the soil again as fast as possible. There's haste. You might even call it an urgency, but it still smells like haste. It's the opposite of patience.

D. Firth Griffith:

How did maybe? And you can come at this with so many different ways. I know you're in the middle of writing another book and you're studying this from one side and the other side. So I know this is an open question, but maybe how did these two sides come about? I hate the idea that there is sides, but how did these two ends come about? Sides come about. I hate the idea that there is sides, but how do these two ends come about? How might the work of Wendell Berry and others, like Wes Jackson at the Land Institute, for instance I mean, you can give so many different examples seem like a very good thing but in fact might actually not be a good thing on the back end, in the relational end, the spiritual end, et cetera? And maybe how do we start to formulate a language for moving forward?

Taylor Keen:

I like the way that you've sort of framed things around urgency and haste and patience and I think that's spot on my mind is certainly around these topics right now as I'm writing about a lot of this. I think the fundamental difference between the red and the green comes down to ego for sure, about who is right, who is right. And when you look at any aspect of American history, speaking of the United States of America, you're going to see a lot of patterns, but certainly referring to the dominion over the land and not respecting the land first. When we look at what Charles Mann, a friend and mentor to me, what he refers to as the Columbian Exchange, what he refers to as the Columbian exchange, so um giving an acknowledgement to Christopher Columbus and the beginning of the European colonization, um, just the fact that that alone is viewed with um such reverence in the United States. It's a national holiday. It was the beginning of massive change for the lands of the Americas and we can look at it through the lens of guns, germs and steel. We can look at it as European agricultural methods. Coming here, we can fast forward almost 250 years, which will be the anniversary of the United States, anniversary of the United States and see a massive transformation. Ecocide and genocide are not too lofty of terms.

Taylor Keen:

I don't think how much of the natural landscapes are still there. We seem to in this country have an obsession with farming. I've been writing about that extensively of late. Our intellectual property has been protected around farming. The amount of subsidies that go into reinforcing American farming. It's transformed the landscape. I don't know the data on Nebraska per se, but my friends over at Hoxie Seeds in Iowa have been on their podcast a couple of times and I don't remember what. Percentage of 1% is still natural prairie, but most all of it has now been commercialized and most of it turned into agricultural lands. It's as if that has become the tool of religion to not take over everything entirely, but it dismisses what was happening here before the European till coming into agriculture. Um, not, it's basically a, a not fully understanding of um, how the land should be productive, um, regenerative agriculture, um is a topic that we've both discussed. Again. I put it into that same framework of trying to correct all the ills of what European agriculture has brought unto itself. We don't need to look any further than the Dust Bowl here in the United States to understand what impact we had as Americans changing the landscape of Mother Earth. It's a lack of understanding and it's a matter of not respecting the wisdom of the people who had been there. And that's still the case today.

Taylor Keen:

There are so many examples where I find the arrogance of the green movement because it refuses to acknowledge the wisdom of indigenous peoples and how we lived and how we lived. A base example would be just the framework of the three sisters indigenous agricultural lifeways that have arguably been around 10,000 years. But scientific community. I can point to my dear friends down at the Land Institute. I tried for four years to get them to embrace indigenous ag methodologies and I finally gave up, at least with the senior scientists, a lot of the younger scientists and interns. They were very much into it and they didn't have the blinders on that so much American thought is based upon.

Taylor Keen:

I've had plenty of time to think about this and where it came from, but in essence it's arrogance that we know better. I've heard the sentiment when referring to indigenous peoples and how we lived here. The arrogance comes back as they had their chance. Now it's our turn. We had our chance. What does that mean? That we should apologize for smallpox and Spanish flu, killing 85 to 95% of us. Is that why we failed? And so it's a very heavy topic.

Taylor Keen:

But ultimately, you know, this urgency and the haste is to me it's an aspect of a guilty conscious, because they know that their ancestors, in a very short amount of time, devastated the land, transformed things, nearly brought to the brink of extinction brought to the brink of extinction bison, wolves here in Nebraska, elks and then claim to be heroes for wanting to save it or to reclaim it. We live in a world that is on fire, and by that mean I mean literally the forest fires, um, that we see so much around. And this goes back to the mentality of not understanding this land. This goes back to teddy roosevelt and smoky the bear, and don't realize that fire is a natural part of the indigenous environmentalism, that if you don't burn then it will burn horribly at some point. And today there's still so much emotion about not burning things, and then we're devastated whenever they burn out of control, whereas indigenous peoples regularly burn things and protect it. And so this lack of understanding leaves us where we're at today.

Taylor Keen:

I tried to do my best to articulate what some of that thought might be, but it saddens me to know that very few listen or want to listen. But we have a lot to offer this world and how to live sustainably, and it begins with I like the term patience. To me, it's not just seeing beauty in what is around us, but marveling at the complexity of the systems that are around us. To find beauty in all that we see. I often go back to the teachings of the late John Trudell.

Taylor Keen:

Late John Trudell, who was a leader of the Red Power Movement during the occupation of Alcatraz in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. He was born here where I live, in Omaha, nebraska, and he was being criticized at some point for not being a real Indian, because he resided in cities, and his retort and again I have to paraphrase nowhere I could say it as eloquently as him, but it says you're, you're misunderstanding what it means to be indigenous. To indigenous is to know one's relationships with all the things around us, whether that be natural woods and the environment, or the cities in which we live that are considered industrial or urban asphalt, metal, alloys, plastics, even. They all come from the mother and I thought that perspective was very enlightening. To know that, regardless of wherever we're at, that is something around, beginning to understanding what it means to become akin to what is around us.

Taylor Keen:

Another thing that he said really struck me earlier in my life, and he was contemplating what might actually be possible by human beings against Mother Earth, and he noted that at our worst we could but burn the skin of the mother, meaning nuclear catastrophe, but the mother will live on, and to me that is a true understanding of what we're capable of as human beings. Going back to the teaching that I got from his people around the law of orders that the plant nation should be first, the animal nation secondary to them, because they depend upon the plants, and human beings must be down here, subservient to the other two. For if we put ourselves in dominion over the other two, we will but destroy ourselves. And that's what I was referring to in my mind whenever John Trudell talked about that. At our worst we will but destroy ourselves, but the mother will heal and live on.

D. Firth Griffith:

Stewardship is so stressful. There's stress in stewardship. I feel this as a farmer myself, someone whose life is to some degree very agricultural, because you have to be king. And if you look at Genesis 129 or 130 or wherever the verse comes from, the Hebrew word is kabash or kabash, which literally means like kingly rule, authoritative, powerful, top-down kingly rule, and. And when you look at, uh, american and exceptionalism, when you look at the manifest way of westward movement, when you look at missionaries in the church, when you look at the green, agricultural and ecological conservation movements over the last maybe 50 or 60 years, especially over the last maybe 20 years, I think you see the stress, I think you see the kingly dominion, I think we see the word kibosh in its truest form, which is stress and haste and urgency to fix problems that are urgency, like you said so eloquently, began in its first place. There's a quote that I I don't know, I feel like every time I talk to you, vine Deloria also lives, because I don't generally always remember these quotes, but I'll read this real quick. This is the beginning of his fifth chapter, that is, vine Deloria's fifth chapter in Custard Die for your Sins, which, by the way, you would be proud of me. I don't know if I made the right decision in in my major. Uh, I majored in computer science and math and then I also majored in history and the history department was doing like a white elephant gift or something like this, where you buy a book, generally a history book, uh, for some other you know alumni from the department, and for Christmas or whatever. And I was on the edge, I couldn't, couldn't figure if I was going to send him Rediscovering Turtle Island, your book, or Custer Died for His Sins, because this is like an American history major from a very conservative college and I think both of them would have been funny. I sent him. Custer Died for His Sins. I'll send him yours next year or something. I'll just keep peppering this individual with wonderful, wonderful books on true American history, if you will, anyways. So the fifth chapter begins, and oh, the number of times that I've read this.

D. Firth Griffith:

One of the major problems of the Indian people is the missionary. It has been said of missionaries that when they arrived they had only the book, the capital B book, and we had the land. Now we have the book and they have the land. An old Indian once told me that when the missionaries arrived, they fell on their knees and prayed. Then they got up, fell on the Indians and prayed. The first time, to be very clear, is P-R-A-Y-E-D and the second time is P-R-E-Y-E-D.

D. Firth Griffith:

You were talking about arrogance, you're talking about ego of these. Fix the world movements before it's too late. And so many people they don't agree with me on this. They think it's better to move forward in this direction. I don't know. I think you and I are both in uncomfortable in our own different ways, uncomfortable in some of the thoughts that we have, at least as it sits socially.

D. Firth Griffith:

But there's this massive documentary, the biggest documentary on regenerative agriculture and the green movement, if you will, it is my knowledge in the history of the movement. It's called Common Ground, which you would think would have a whole different flow from the title. But it doesn't. It's just about regenerative agriculture saving the world. And at the front cover is this very white, very standard, generally plains-based Nebraska, north Dakota, flat land, corn, flat land, so soy and wheat farmer, and so soy and wheat farmer, and he has these overalls on and he's standing in between a tilled field and then a no-tilled wheat field, you know not native grasses, and buffalo and elk and everything in between, and pronghorn and whatever, just tillage versus untillage. And he has this red cape flying in the wind, you know, as if he's like this superhero, and then he has a shovel in his hand as if his shovel is his. You know, as if he's like this superhero, and then he has a shovel in his hand as if his shovel is his. You know magical wand or sword of power, whatever sort of imagery this mythological figure, you know, is trying to convey on this cover.

D. Firth Griffith:

And it's always been so interesting to me that for so long I've talked about the regenerative agriculture movement being in the way that you describe it Not that I could have described it as well or from your perspective, but generally speaking it's failures, that is to say, it's haste, it's urgency in matters of trying to regenerate or force or control health back into systems, or that is to say, separating humans out of those systems so that they could be healthy, as if humanity leaving is a whole and healthy system in itself. All of these problems. But that cover was so unbelievably clear, illustrative to me of the problem. You have this old white row cropping farmer with overalls, a shovel and a cape flying in the wind, saying that this is common ground, this is how we can all come together and I think that's also very clear in how we approach I don't know if this is an improper term, but the indigenous reparations, how we approach the relationship between the human species of settlers and settler colonials and the indigenous peoples, and politically, socially, relationally, artistically right, that's what this image talks to. In my opinion, this documentary socially relationally, artistically right, that's what this image talks to. In my opinion, this documentary Anyways, that's all to say and lead to that quote I read from Vine, which is he goes right to the missionary, he goes right to the book and he goes right to the land.

D. Firth Griffith:

And maybe I misunderstand Vine's work, but he's not saying that the Christian or the human's relationship with the creator in the Christian way is in any way wrong in isolation. Or maybe it is. You can speak to that. I don't think Vine is asking for settlers to become red, but rather to leave their gods at the door and see the god of this land as red. Is that true? Is that accurate, or how do you?

Taylor Keen:

see this? I think very much so, and we've talked about this in the past and I think we should share it with your community here. But that whole notion of sovereignty is a church-based term to begin with. Whenever the conquistadors came over here, they were accompanied by religious leaders who the very first thing they did was anointed that God was with them and therefore they could lay claim to the land, which is not putting the land first, it's putting God first, and that notion has never left.

Taylor Keen:

God is the land. That's what needs to change for us to come to a more sustainable world way of being with the land. Regardless of what religion you come from, they all do say similar things God created us, god created the land, and we use the term one nation under God quite often, but maybe we should be talking about a red God, god living through the land itself, and we should have reverence for that first. And by the land I mean Mother Earth, all of the ecosystems which sustain it, and not look at it just as resources to plunder or to further our own ego.

D. Firth Griffith:

In essence, you know it's really interesting. I don't think I've really ever shared this publicly, but you're bringing it out of me, which I appreciate. So I was raised Christian and for many years I had many questions. And then I started to speak to some Jewish friends who understood the sacred texts in the Christian faith in their more original context, or at least read in their original language, in biblical Hebrew, ancient Hebrew, and a lot of the questions I had were either easily answered or if they presented problems the questions, if the questions presented problems, those friends who understood the sacred text, the Torah and the Old Testament, as which literally says when the gods began this creation and so in the original Hebrew it's gods, plural.

D. Firth Griffith:

This, that's weird. What do you mean? This creation, as if there's many creations, as if there's many ways that God, creator that is, finds relationship with his peoples, right. So you see a very disorganized or or or decentralized view there. It's. It's not one way, it's, there's many ways. But this is the way that I've given to you this people, and I mean it goes on. I can make some people very angry, but I keep, you know, keep going. But there's the next, the next sentence in the text, if the biblical Hebrew language has sentences which it doesn't, but the next phrase, if you will, speaks of a feminine divine spirit hovering over the water, and that's what creates. So even in the Judeo-Christian faith, the creator God is not only just many gods, which seems especially pagan to me in the modern understanding of that word, but the creator God is a divine female and she creates with breath, not with power. And then obviously it changes. But we see the modern translation of the ancient Hebrew Bible that goes through Greek and Koine Greek and it gets into English and English becomes a language of dominance and colonialism and imperialism and everything in between.

D. Firth Griffith:

And anyways, I could say a lot of things. But I dove headlong into Judaism. I learned the ancient Hebrew language, spent many years there, because it was my first step into realizing that to some degree, what the modern, very popularized Christian missionaries had taught is a version of a very older document, a very older relationship between a certain people and that certain people's God. Well then, I got my ass handed to me, if you will. My world got shaken because what I never realized growing up in the Christian church, where the Christian church sees everybody who is not Christian as a human being that should be Christian, right, like that's the desire. That's what Vine writes about. That's what I know you can speak about for hours.

D. Firth Griffith:

In my stupid brain I truly thought that all religions wanted this. Like I was raised within the certain religion that wanted to have missionaries, so I thought all religions had their own missionaries. Well, it's false. Holy cow, was it false? I got so much flack from true Jewish rabbis and scholars and friends that said Daniel, we, we don't want you to become Jewish, like, no, you're not Jewish, you're not, you're not culturally or ethically Jewish, that you're not, you're not welcome here. But I bring that up only to say that to some degree, the Christianity that I see as very detrimental and I think we agree and I think Vine would agree, or at least I would agree with Vine and I would listen to you with.

D. Firth Griffith:

The only way is this way period, end of story. It's not even a religion that's built upon a sacred source, a sacred foundational source and text that would agree with itself, and so in that way it is defensive from both sides. It's defensive from the future, that is to say in its active missionary work as it proselytizes and moves forward, but it's also very defensive in its backwards way, meaning that we have to totally retranslate the Old Testament in order to fit our own worldview. So Christianity is a religion that's split between the future and the past and it has to remake both of them in order for it to survive, and that, to me, is very uncomfortable. I realize this is now a conversation in Christianity and we're a little bit off track, but I see that same problem writ in the very white little bit off track, but I see that same problem writ in the very white, very colonial dominance over the ecological scene of saving earth. To me it's a same story.

D. Firth Griffith:

We see a two-way defensive attack forward and backwards in Christianity.

D. Firth Griffith:

And I think we see a two-way defensive attack both forwards and backwards in, let's call it just regenerative agriculture, which is we have to looking backwards, defending ourselves backwards.

D. Firth Griffith:

We have to recast our past, and this is very Wendell Berry-like, as the indigenous had their turn, they failed, or nobody was here when we came in the early 1700s without ever realizing that 93% to 97% of them died either with genocide or smallpox.

D. Firth Griffith:

And so we have to recast that history. Or never before has any nation ever so lived that was guided and guarded by the principles of freedom and liberty and enterprise and familial bonds, as if the American system is unique in that way which obviously we know it's not, both in a world sense but also just in a North American sense. So, like Christianity, regenerative agriculture has to redefine our past, and then we have to egotistically and very arrogantly defend the future, which is control biodiversity's return, control soil health's return, control the animals to be productive and profitable. Right, we have to turn agriculture into a state of stewardship, not a relationship, because as I understand it and maybe this is a fine, I mean like please address anything that I've said positively or negatively, but also maybe this is a fine transition into your organization with seed and indigenous seed saving.

Taylor Keen:

If we can go back to the point that you made about the film Common Ground and I've not seen it just because I don't think I can stomach it, but just the image of the farmer in overalls wearing the cape with the shovel is, I'm sorry but it's laughable to me. And the cape with the shovel is I'm sorry but it's laughable to me and in my mind, what I was envisioning. So that's the green version of saving the planet. It's still monocrop culture, right crop culture, still not embracing diversity of seeds or including other plants or God forbid animals and trees. To me, when you were describing the cover there, if you and I were to make a similar movie, the cover would be of woods and plants and animals and maybe a picture of a human family somewhere way back in the back of it.

Taylor Keen:

Yeah, children in the back playing yes, amongst all of it. I'm not trying to control everything about it. Yeah, children in the back playing yeah, amongst all of it and not trying to control everything about it.

Taylor Keen:

To me, that's what the future is, and with the last 10 years of exploring what sacred seed can mean, it began with seeds, for sure, and that's at the heart of everything, but it's really become um to me, more about helping people to understand all of which we are discussing right now the complexity of um indigenous environmentalism. I still love to plant. We just got all of the gardens in Omaha's. Our teaching is to plant around the new moon, which is today where I'm at, and even understanding what is the wisdom of that, I don't think that we could even fathom why that would be so important, and even though I've been doing it for 10 years, I grasp at straws trying to figure out what that might mean. But does it have something to do with the impact of the moon and water within us within the land? I don't know, but those are our teachings within the land. I don't know, but those are our teachings. Our teachings from the Omaha also prescribe a division of labor between the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine around planting. And when I started Sacred Seed, of course I went to elders within the tribe and asked for their blessing, but also advice and stories. And even though we've been colonized for 150 plus years, tidbits of that knowledge is still there, and I remember my mother recalling a teaching to me and she said when it comes time for planting, have only women of childbearing age plant the seeds. And so, 10 years later, I'm still marveling at what that means.

Taylor Keen:

Coming back to what it might mean to live red and I know that's a dangerous term because appropriation can be a very dangerous thing but most of the seed ambassadors or people who are interested, many of them come from the regenerative ag movement, some of them are scientists, some of them just love plants. But when we go back to those structures and where I separate the men from the women by prepping the soil, whatever that might mean, bringing alluvial soils to help make mounds, making compost, lifting up some of the ground cover that might be there, and then watching the women take over and have the men step back, and it just seems a natural way of doing things. And I've never encountered any group who didn't enjoy going back to some of these original teachings, any group who didn't enjoy going back to some of these original teachings, and even after 10 years of doing it, I'm still trying to understand those small tidbits of wisdom that were given to me by elders within the tribe, but just those things alone, combating so much arrogance. Along the way, I've come to learn that a lot of the indigenous heirloom seeds are drought resistant not drought proof, but overwatering what that does to things, not planting them together in the three sisters methodology. I constantly have to battle with scientists if I'm doing projects with them because they won't plant them together. They have to plant the beans over here and the corn in a row over here, and that's not how it was meant to be. So it comes down to an arrogance of thinking it's right, but I'm hopeful that the next 10 years of sacred seed will just begin to further understand things.

Taylor Keen:

But the primary teaching is that the seeds and the plants are teachers and if we can just acknowledge our place in that world we'd be a lot better off. But to not look at a seed as an object but as a teacher to be studied patiently over time. We have a notion called blood DNA. That I think is very important, that if we put our mind and heart in the right place, the ancestors are going to help teach us. Ancestors are going to help teach us.

Taylor Keen:

Another one of the things that I got from the elders in my tribe, especially from my clan, when I asked for permission to try to return the sacred red corn to the Omaha's which had been lost. For I don't know how long we pick a number of, say a hundred years, something like that. And again all these little tidbits of wisdom came out. Uh, some publicly, some privately, some then some later. Um, they told, sing to the corn. And it seems to be um, um, on the level of the humanities. Uh, something beautiful. But I still ponder at um, why, scientifically, is that so important? Is there something to our energy, our thoughts, our vibrations that when we sing to the corn or talk to plants it's important? But all of these things come down to a difference between the red and the green or the red and the white.

Taylor Keen:

Vine wrote a lot about this that for European cultures that time is linear and that for many years one could try to erase the past and just move forward and get away with it. In the age of perfect information that we live in now, that's no longer possible. The crimes of the past are not forgotten, they're brought back up continually. Time frames was circular and repeats itself, whether that's ages or fires or epics or generations. Time is thought of as very differently and I don't know if we spoke about this in our first podcast, but the whole reason I wrote the book Rediscovering Turtle Island had to do with the seven generations prophecy.

Taylor Keen:

In particular, it comes from the Dakota people, but I believe all of us Siouans were at one point one tribe and I find the prophecy very important had to do with the breaking of the sacred hoop of the Sumian people, which I often will just go back to the impact of smallpox. As if that weren't enough, many point to the massacre in the 1870s at Wounded Knee up in South Dakota, and that broke the sacred hoop. And the prophecy says for the next six generations that we would suffer, and Lord knows indigenous peoples have suffered here. Indigenous peoples have suffered here, but with the coming of the markings of the return of white buffalo calves and true albinos, that that would mark the age of the seventh generation. And the first one was born in 2001,. And the fourth the important number four always was born in 2007.

Taylor Keen:

And I was challenged at that point to understand my role and what that meant, because, as a member of the sixth generation, I'm supposed to be a teacher and I was admonished for not knowing all of my stories, my tribal stories, and that while I was well-educated in the white man's world, I had a lot to learn on the indigenous side. So I took that to heart and Rediscovering Turtle Island is my attempt to try to teach what I think is important. Going back to our creation stories, what it means to live red. I lean pretty heavily on Vine's work to define what that means and I'm trying to come up with an extension of it for book number two, post-colonial indigeneity that by still grasping onto fighting settler colonialism to use the framework we're giving it power, because it's not just about and now we're getting into the world of becoming kin, not forgetting, but losing, letting loose of that paradigm to guide us through everything, to guide us through everything. I think that we need to begin to figure out what happens after colonialism, for if we voice it and give it power, it continues to have strength.

Taylor Keen:

And so for me that journey has been turning inwards, um having the patience to know that um I can still be free and be an indigenous um in the world that surrounds me, um that I can hold on to what notions that I I have, whether it's the teachings around agriculture and seeds, but I can be sovereign in my own world and in my own mind at any time. I'm still not quite sure what that all means, but I know that I'm moving in that direction. Sovereignty of oneself, and it means going inward and trusting that by putting my hands into the soil and planting the old way that my ancestors are going to speak to me through plants and animals and experiences. And that's what I mean in my prayer. May I be saved, may I find that peace.

Taylor Keen:

And we have to love ourselves if we're going to love anyone else. We have to love the earth if it's going to be able to love us back. And extracting everything and trying to control everything and have dominion over everything takes away the point. Why can't we just be with it? Back to the cover of our documentary film? It's just going to be a whole bunch of nature and children playing way back in the background. I don't know if people will get it or not, but I think it's genius, yeah before.

D. Firth Griffith:

Before we end this um, because I we have so much more to unpack, I do have one pressing question. I think it's really healthy for me to meet my ancestors and reclaim what it means to be myself, right To have that sovereignty of oneself. But I do not live in Ireland. My ancestors came from Western Ireland, both Western and Southwestern Ireland. Ireland. My ancestors came from Western Ireland, both Western and Southwestern Ireland. But if I were to return to my home, say County Mayo or County Cork, I would not be welcomed. My sacred spaces would be new to me, it would be not home, but it is home.

D. Firth Griffith:

I live on the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains, on the very western periphery of what the Powhatans called Seneca, maka, or the ancient home of the Monacans, the Okaneechi, the Matapanee, the Saponi peoples. It's not Ireland, and so, to some degree, my question is I'm Irish but I'm not in Ireland, but I'm also not Monacan, I'm also not Okaneechi or Matapanee or Saponi, and neither do these neighbors want me to be. So what should I be, what can I be? What am I?

Taylor Keen:

A human being. To me, this is we're at war with our ego, right? We're at war with our ego, right, All of us. And that's what a lot of these battles are about. I'm a quarter Irish, that's where the name Keene comes from. My great-grandfather was an immigrant who wanted to come to Southwestern Missouri and then my grandfather to Oklahoma. They wanted to be cowboys and, like many others in the Cherokee, there was a strong bond between the Scottish and the Irish, and maybe it's because we were all hill and mountain people.

Taylor Keen:

But there's something within that. If we can just kill our ego about who belongs where, and if our heart is true to the land, maybe that's how we become kin. But it includes having an understanding of that history, which I'm glad that you do, brother. If we can go inward and to make our religion the earth, the land, that God is the land in the land, in the earth, and we treat it as reverently as we do our religious books, as we do sacred objects within churches, if we realize that the secrets of the Ark, of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are simply right in front of us in the land every day, are we not free? Are you not free with your family on your land there, spiritually, you know how you're raising your children to be a part of the land. Will not the meek inherit the earth? Well, not your children, who are of the earth now. To me, that's freedom and I want to live that way.

D. Firth Griffith:

Thanks for listening to this episode with my friend, my brother Taylor Keene. This episode with my friend, my brother Taylor Keene. As I have said throughout, if you've enjoyed it, please pick up a copy of his magnanimous book Rediscovering Turtle Island. I think you're going to enjoy it. Stay tuned for episode two coming out sometime next week or something like this, where he and I will be discussing mythology and the unified creation stories of our pasts and well, so much more. We'll see you then.