Unshod with D. Firth Griffith

God Is Red: Stories That Never Die, A Journey Into Indigenous Mythology with Taylor Keen, Episode 5

• Daniel Firth Griffith • Season 4 • Episode 37

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In this 6th installment of the God is Red series, Taylor Keen (Omaha / Cherokee) takes us deep into the womb of Earth Mother to explore the ancient and living stories preserved in Picture Cave, a sacred site containing Siouan rock art dating back 1,000 years. The first half of the episode is a passionate storytelling that bridges millennia, where Taylor unveils the cosmology of his ancestors through vivid tales of First Man, First Woman, Morning Star, and the Thunder Twins.

As Taylor explains, these aren't distant myths but encoded memories that continue to resonate in the blood and spirit of indigenous peoples today. The conversation then unfurls into why ancient peoples sought to document oral traditions in rock...

Whether you're indigenous to the Land below your feet or not, these ancient stories offer profound perspective on what it means to live in right relationship with land, community, and Spirit. They remind us that mythology isn't just about preserving the past—it's about creating possibilities for a more beautiful future.

Learn more about Taylor's work HERE.

Learn more about Daniel's work HERE.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

Hello, welcome to the podcast. This is the sixth episode of the God is Red series. Technically, we're labeling it episode five because we split episode four in half. This is the sixth production of these yarns between Taylor Keene and myself. If you've been enjoying this series, we want to thank you for being with us. It is interesting.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

The first episode of the series has just many, many, many thousands of listens and then they drop off as they go, and every time we publish one of these episodes we're always losing a great amount of subscribers, and that's fine, really wonderful to be able to provide this space for people to self-identify, see where they sit in this world and place themselves there. I think that's a very healthy thing and, uh, I'm grateful for the opportunity really grateful and honored for the opportunity to sit in this way to these thoughts in podcast form and to deepen the relationship between these cultures. This episode, this yarn, is really just story time with Taylor. Towards the end of the episode, we talk about the location of myth and landscape within migratory peoples and topics like that, but the first half is just uncut. Taylor telling the stories, the ancient stories that are represented in Picture Cave, which you'll learn more about as we jump in, so without further ado. God is Red Enjoy.

Taylor Keen:

I just wanted to begin our conversation, brother and thanks Creator Spirit. Thank you for this wonderful gift of life the ability to see and to feel, and to hear and to understand, to love, to hurt and to heal. May we all face adversity and then survive, adapt and thrive as peoples. May we all forgive, be forgiven and be free. May we all be saved, be at peace, be kind to ourselves, show ourselves self-love. Creator Spirit, we thank you for all the plant nations and the animal nations. Guide and direct us towards the truth and the light. Aho ewi dawangangere all my relations Well.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

Thank you, taylor, it's a blessing, a pleasure to be with you. I'm really excited for today's conversation. It's been a while since we've been able to sit down and connect and yarn together. We're just finishing up the conversation.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

All around mythology, and the word that I keep coming to is remembering, and I can't help but consider the act of remembering being rebellion in the truest sense, not in an iconoclastic sense or in an authoritative sense or in a warring sense, just in the true sense.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

Remembering as rebellion. So much of our people's cultural, our spiritual and our communal history was eradicated upon colonization and the spread of Christianity and Rome and all the things that happened about a thousand to two thousand years ago, and many of my friends, colleagues, live their lives trying to remember, to participate in this rebellion. But there's always this outright unpeeling, a little bit impossible in the material world to take out the language of the colonizer from our ancient oral traditions. But when I talk with you I get so passionate, I get so excited, I feel so blessed, I feel hope. By sitting with you I also feel like I get to sit with my own ancestors. While I am imperfect, it does bring me great pleasure and joy. So thank you for joining me one last time here as we deal with mythology and as we anticipate more conversations to come.

Taylor Keen:

Thank you for having me. So I'm deep in the middle of the process of writing the second book and I've began and we've talked about this about my nonprofit Sacred Seed, and I've gotten all that written and the rest of it is going to be a deep dive into a very sacred place that, uh, for lack of a better term is known as picture cave and, uh, I've been studying it for the last 10 years, for sure, whenever the anthology from a number of anthropologists, scholars, came out on it. But I had heard about it five years previous whenever some of my relatives told me about being able to go in and what their experience was like. And I mentioned that in Rediscovering Turtle Island. But the stories that are encased on the walls, the iconography that's being told through the rock art, is what I've been obsessed with trying to understand and piece together. I have come up with a name for the second book. I decided to call it Rediscovering Turtle Island, part 2, volume 2. I don't know exactly how, but the title is Finding the Divine Within. So in the first couple of chapters I'm talking about my work with Sacred Seed, but it's really an extension of Thinking Red and Growing Red and I wrote most of that, the philosophical chapters of book number one, probably 10 years ago. Chapters of book number one, probably 10 years ago. So I feel like my thoughts have advanced and I think we've talked about this a little bit. But describing the notion of what I'm calling post-colonial indigeneity and trying to escape the confines of the settler, colonial paradigm Because I think that limits us as indigenous peoples Talked about remembering as an act of rebellion and that goes along very well with what I've been able to eke out in my thoughts so far on this. But from a tribal perspective, stories are everything and from everything that I'm learning as a human being, I'm trying to be able to bring some life back to those stories and that's the main point of the book.

Taylor Keen:

Finding the divine within has several meanings. One is we all have trauma. We all have trauma. We all have hurt Tribal populations. It's around us constantly. It's the gift that never stops giving intergenerational trauma and in my own life, trying to process my own wounds and to heal and to feel divine is partly what that title means. But it also has to do with the role of the plant nations in relation to these sacred spaces and I've been inspired by the work of my friend and brother, pd Newman, who wrote a book that was published through our joint publisher called Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, and it has to do with psychoactive plant medicines, entheogens and, loosely translated at least, that's what it means to me finding the divine within, and so I add a lot of these rock arts. Graham Hancock and his work, visionary, speaks about this too. But at some point a long time ago, our ancestors found the power of these plant medicines, joined with them, and from those came mythology, the stories, and oftentimes we look to the stars to tell us those stories. All of my work, all my research around Picture Cave just seems to confirm that it's such a powerful place. The concept of Picture Cave is so important because in the rock art is the Zoonogen Genesis stories. I'm going to go into storytelling mode.

Taylor Keen:

So the first human beings come from the upper realm. First man, first woman, first father, first mother. They all have many names. The Sueans call him in many cases White Plum, and she has many names. The Mandan call her the old woman who never dies. Cherokees call her Mother Corn, as they came together in union. He lives in the sun. First man, first woman lives in the moon, and when they came together, they ended up having six children, three boys and three girls. The oldest male is known as Morningstar, and to the Shiawara-speaking Suians they call him Redhorn. They call him Redhorn he who wears human head earrings and he who is hit with deer lungs. Of the three girls, the eldest is known as Evening Star and ultimately she is impregnated by a ray of the sun and gives birth to the thunder twins the Omaha's call them stone or rock and the gray wolf, some tribes call them Thunder and Lightning, some call them Lodge Boy and Thrown Away Boy or Spring Boy.

Taylor Keen:

And at a certain point, tragedy befell Evening Star and she encountered a spirit from the lower realm. All of the spirits in any of the realms can take human form and they can freely move between the different realms Not the case for us human beings. And they called him Sharp Elbow. And at some point Eveningstar encountered Sharp Elbow and somehow she insulted him. He decides that he's going to take her life and take her babies from her, from her womb, and stone or rock is left in the corner of her lodge and the gray wolf was tossed into a spring outside of the cave. And eventually their uncle, the brother of Evening Star, morning Star or Redhorn, comes and finds the scene and doesn't know about the other twin and only knows stone or rock, and raises him.

Taylor Keen:

The other twin, the Gray Wolf, was raised by water spirits, was raised by the chief of the water spirits, the power of life, even resurrection, and so the and all of these stories. The twins are always connected, as we know, twins are. And Stone finds his brother, the gray wolf, and they play together and eventually Morningstar Redhorn figures out that there's another one there and in a sense tricks him and captures him, tricks him and captures him. And in all of those stories he's been affected by his rearing by the water spirits and by the great serpent himself and he's developed a long nose and long ears and eventually, to tame him, morning Star trims his ears and trims his nose, but his eyes are always different. They're often shown as big and round, like the great serpent itself. The great serpent has a serpentine body, has the face of a beaver and antlers like a deer, has sharp teeth and when it takes its avian form it has wings.

Taylor Keen:

It is comprised of All three of the realms part upper realm, part the middle realm and part of the lower realm. So in some stories he has claws and in some he has hooves, like a bison or a raptor. And then the stories begin around the adventures of First man White Plum. There's a power equal and opposite. There's dualities everywhere. But the upper realm and the lower realm were the first to exist and they are meant to be in powerful opposition to one another, in a balance. But the temptation of the power of the lower realm is too great for first man and he desires to understand it, and so he sends down his emissaries, two spirit wolves, and they encounter a water spirit and are eaten by it.

Taylor Keen:

First father becomes emotional and angry and decides to travel down to the lower realm, which is dangerous for him. But he goes down with some of his compatriots. But he goes down with some of his compatriots and in some of the stories they engage in a underworld stickball game. In some of the stories they say it involves gambling for the highest stakes. But the water spirits sometimes they're called snakes, but they take many different forms. The water spirits sometimes they're called snakes, but they take many different forms.

Taylor Keen:

The water spirits, through cunning and trickery, defeat First Father and his compatriots in this epic challenge and the price of losing is death and First Father and his compatriots are decapitated. Of losing was death and her father and his compatriots are decapitated, which brings an imbalance into the upper realm, because first man is the sun and the world goes dark, and so his body floats headless and soulless back up to the upper realm where first woman finds his soulless body wandering around in her lodge on the moon, and she is enraged as well and mournful of her loss but knows that it needs to be remedied. She calls upon her grandsons, stone and the Gray Wolf, summons them to her lodge on the moon and she paints them for war and gives them powerful weapons of the upper realm, including a great mace and a great spear, and she paints the gray wolf in all black, which means All out war, no prisoners, annihilation. And they descend down With their Uncle, morningstar Redhorn, and they encounter the water spirits and they defeat the one who took first father's head. It's a beaver water spirit and they defeat all of the water spirits in one way or another, including the great serpent himself, and they take him captive, and in the ways of all the plains people today, those captives can be returned to the one that suffered the loss, in this case his first woman and she can do what she wants with him Can be killed, can be tortured or can be adopted. And that's the path that she takes because she knows the power that he carries In his human form. He's known as Snakehide and in the stories he has the mark of the Thunderbird, the forked eye design on his eyes, and he has antlers like a deer, and she becomes his consort and in the process she's endowed with the power of resurrection. And as they ascend back up, there's an iconic image of Morningstar bringing the head of First man back up to the upper realm and it becomes a story of death and resurrection and ascension. And as he's restored back to life the void that was left from, and as he's restored back to life the void that was left from, his interactions in the lower realm create a space and First Woman assumes her guise as Grandmother Spider and she weaves our world together. The middle realm and balance is restored again.

Taylor Keen:

The twins have many adventures. They battle with the race of the giants and defeat them Eventually. The story of the history of Redhorn is revealed and his brothers are constantly teasing him and his clan name is he who Is Hit With Deer Lungs, and it has to do with the powers and the taboos of that name. In some of the stories, first man feeds his eldest son with the lungs of the deer to make him move quickly and to move lightly, and in some of the stories the twins become intertwined in a battle with the giants many different contests. In one of the stories there's a race, and the giants, of course, are bigger and faster. He who is hit with deer lungs turns himself into an arrow and shoots himself forward to win the race. The Giants won another contest and so they have a stickball game and the twins and their compatriots win.

Taylor Keen:

And so the same fate has happened to first father, happens to the giants, except for one of the giants. She begs them to not take her life and offers her hand in marriage to lungs, marries her and, not understanding all of the stories, she hears the brothers teasing him about the deer lungs and in a scene they're in the kitchen and she's cooking and she feigns to throw the deer lungs at her husband and the other brothers say no, no, no, stop, stop, don't do that, we're only joking. And it's at that point that Morningstar reveals his true nature and he says to his brothers and to his wife. No, you should not tease me, because I'm not really your brother. I'm from the upper realm and I'm the fifth of the beings that Earthmaker sent for the salvation of humanity. With that he spits into his hands and he has one big braid down the side and he caresses it and it becomes the color of red ochre. He spits again and rubs his ears and little human head earrings appear and they have their own life and he becomes Redhorn. And all of their adventures between he and his friends as they traverse the upper realm and the lower realm, all of these stories that I've been sharing are encased in the rock art. That's the iconography of this place we know as Picture Cave.

Taylor Keen:

Stepping out of story mode for a little bit, I'm sure I'll go back in.

Taylor Keen:

I've been. That's the work of book number two is to understand the connection to it. Ever since I've encountered any of the stories or the imagery, it's just resonated so deeply inside of me and I know those stories and I know them to be true. And that's the part of remembering as rebellion, because all of our tribal peoples, all of our tribal ancestors have all been oppressed, acculturated, meant to take on someone else's God, and it's incumbent upon us to find the past, try to understand it and, with the help of the ancestors, we can. And that's what this book is really all about. That's the finding the divine within. Through all the hurt and the pain that we all experience as human beings, there's truth in these stories, our past We've talked about this concept before but blood DNA, that the meaning of these stories is hid within us. And if we can only find the peace and the truth within ourselves and we find salvation, your words, uh, both in the beginning and, and the idea of remembering um.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

Like so often whenever we talk, I always have some delirias close by um.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

Can't help myself and in the afterward I think you and I've you really can't. It is interesting. Most of the feedback I've gotten of these uh conversations include both the purchasing of some uh deloria vine, deloria jr book and your book, and it's cool to see them together. I think they go hand in hand. But here I got Cusser Died for your Sins. In the afterwards Deloria writes and to some degree, why he's writing the book.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

The afterwards begins with the very sentence writing this book, as I have, and then he describes it. But he says and this is a quote he says Indian people today have a chance to recreate a type of society for themselves which can defy, mystify and educate the rest of American society. And before we started recording, I asked you and I wonder if you want to put some words to this here on the recorded portion of our yarn it's interesting that when you're telling these stories there's a living texture to them. Certain beings have certain names and then they have also other names depending on the clan, the tribe, the nation, the location of the peoples holding the stories, and so there's a living texture to them. The living texture doesn't stop there at the nomenclature, but it's obvious there in the n holding the stories, and so there's a living texture to them. The living texture doesn't stop there at the nomenclature, but it's obvious there in the nomenclature as rock art, as pictographs if you will, stories painted deep inside the womb of Mother Earth, in these caves. It becomes something permanent. It doesn't lose its living texture, but it does don a new cloak, a new canvas over its living weave or living form.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

And I just wonder, looking at this book Custer Died for your Sins to the idea that the American Indian today has the power to remake and mystify American society, whereas all of the colonial and genocidal history of the American society is always the opposite. It's always been mystifying and demonizing but also re-educating the Indian society, the indigenous, the native societies of this land, and so what he's writing now is a reverse of that history. I think that that that America is going to be trained, not not the American Indian. And there's power there. And maybe you want to talk about it. But what do you? What do you think if we could put a motive in these people's hearts for why they took an oral story with so much living texture to it and put it onto material rock walls, like what? Maybe a simple question is why? But also, maybe more deeply. I'm asking who, for who is this remembering?

Taylor Keen:

for I've tried in so many ways to try to intuit who was doing it, by by what right and for whom. To answer your last question, I'm going to start by just understanding the movement of my ancestors. So we know that the Siouan peoples came out of the Ohio River Valley somewhere between 700 Common Era and 1,000. And they moved down the Ohio River the translation of the phrase the Omaha's still have a word for that river we passed by. There is what it translates as and then, at the mouth of the Mississippi, um, began to move up the Mississippi to the confluence of the Missouri river, which we all translate as uh, smoke on the water. In Omaha we say Nish, say ni shuda, and that's the area where Picture Cape is and you see the rock art beginning roughly around 900 and continuing to somewhere after 1200. But from my research I've found that most accounts and there's divergent accounts on all of this that's saying that the Siouan language split into different groups, one being is the tribes of the Biloxi, the Ofo and the Tutelo. The Western Sunan became Lakota, nakota, dakota, and I'm still trying to research of when they all split. But within the last 2,000 years, thousand years, the other two groups became the Degiha, which comes from an Omaha word. Speaking to the different clan divisions, you have Sky Clans and Earth Clans. That is one trait that all of the Giyam Suians have. The other group is known by the language group, the Shere-Weir, which is the Ho-Chunks, or Winnebagoes, ioways, otoes and Missouris and somewhere in that time period the Degi-Haw were all still one group until around 1200 or so, which puts us in that carbon dating range for when the images were put down at Picture Cave. But the stories that are encased in the rock art on the walls, many of the stories belong to the sheer weir and I'm intuiting some of those whenever I was telling those stories. He who wears human head earrings is an Iowa name. He who is hit with deer lungs belongs to the sheer weir as well. So it's my sense that all of us were there.

Taylor Keen:

The Degiha and the Shere were maybe not all of the different groups that ultimately became separate tribes. At a certain point, part of the group became separated and floated down the river, ultimately becoming the tribe that the Omaha, as we call them Gahpa, means the downstream people, and the other four groups were known as Umaha people that move against the current and, as time goes along, eventually the members of the Degiha. So you have Omaha, ponca, osage, kansa and Quapaw. So we have the separation of the Quapaw and at a certain point the Omaha's and the Ponca's split off, but always remaining close, and the Kansa moved down the Kansas River, as it's known today, and the Osages went down the Osage. So we know that as the backdrop. But after a great migration and I'm sure there was a reason that they had to leave we know that there was a great drought in the Mississippian and the Ohio River valleys Somewhere in that time period. That would probably help push them out. But don't forget that in that area is where all of the early mounds were constructed.

Taylor Keen:

So I come out of mound builders and then, upon reaching Picture Cave, intuition says that they began to explore for a sacred place to share their stories with one another and eventually they felt the power of this great hill and they discovered the cave there and there's great medicine probably there. And they started with one of the most important stories. It was about the great serpent. So you have the great serpent encased on the shrine of the rock art picture cave. Below the great serpent is an image of the gray wolf, the dark twin, and he's shown with big round eyes and has sharp ears, commemorating the relationship between the dark twin and the great serpent who raised him, and all of the rest of the panels there's so many there but that rock art, or the stories that I was telling you, the adventures of first man, stories of first woman and her becoming the consort of Snakehide and getting the power of resurrection and life, and battles of the twins in the underworld and their battle with giants I'm still learning, trying to interpret and understand. But the underworld is a reverse of the upper world. So in the rock art within the cave everything's inverted, so the lower realm is above and all of the stories about the upper realm are below.

Taylor Keen:

From the geological studies that have been taken of the research within the cave it's a permeable sandstone and there's a lot of silicate matters in there and from some of the images that were documented in there with the right light they twinkle like stars and they're everywhere my guess is that they felt the spirit that resides within the cave. We speak of certain places of sacred geography. All things sacred have a spirit and they discovered the power of this place is my intuition and they knew that it was the spirit of the great serpent that resided within there and it became a place of teaching. And this spanned for hundreds of years the documentation of some of these stories, and it's my intuition that the original purpose in documenting was that it was a ceremonial space, difficult to get to arduous a journey, and then the descent into the cave, into the womb of Mother Earth, became a spiritual death and rebirth. As individuals prove themselves worthy or were gifted with visions or understandings, or perhaps the gift of art, then they were the ones who documented these stories.

Taylor Keen:

All around the site is a micro ecosystem. There's a natural spring. That's a part of it in any sacred sites Serpent Mound in Ohio it's close to a river. This has a spring that pours homage of the spirit of the serpent and the stories of the ancestors as to why they were entombed there in the shrine of the cave, and that individuals could make the difficult journey to go within the cave and to experience those stories for themselves and ultimately, as a way to remember them.

Taylor Keen:

Maybe they knew at some point in the future that we would be challenged, and I've spoke of the prophecy of the seventh generation and the generations of suffering. So maybe they knew that and that was part of the reason was to encapsulate these stories so that, just in case, if something happened to the people, then there would be a way for us to know so. For whom? Certainly for indigenous peoples, but if you subscribe to the prophecy of the seventh generation is for us all. These stories are so important and as indigenous peoples, we need to remember them and to be able to bring these stories back to life and to give it life again. I think that's part of my purpose as a human being on this earth is to try to do that, and it's part of my personal mission to try to continue the work of people like Vine. I'm imperfect, but I think this is my purpose in life. Let's try to do this to help recall all these stories for everyone.

Taylor Keen:

It's incumbent upon me, as one of the teachers of the seventh generation, to try to take these types of things on, and Picture Cave is, in my opinion, one of the most important rock art sites in North America, as all of these stories that I've shared are on the walls there. Picture Cave is over a thousand years old, but the stories are perhaps thousands of years old. I've been trying in my research and writing to understand where they originally come from. I've been trying to understand all of the parallels in between the stories that come out of the Mayan Popol Vuh, because there you have first father and first mother and the hero twins as well, and from what I've been able to research so far, that's where those themes originally come from.

Taylor Keen:

But we don't know. Going back to your earlier question as to why document those stories in Picture Cave, the thought just came to me that after the migration and a people come to a new land or maybe even come back to a place, because there are some theories that it wasn't the first time that we were that far west. But if you're bringing your sacred stories to a new land, what better way to introduce yourself to the land than by enshrining those stories in a sacred place that centers the people, becomes the womb of the universe, the center of the universe, anaxes Mundi. That feels right to me, that they introduced themselves to a new land by telling the land their stories.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

It makes me remember a story in Irish mythology. It's called the Le Borgabale Ren, the Book of Invasions, the story of a marriage in Gloomville, son of the Milesian, son of Mill he's called. I think I've talked to you about this in the past. But they arrive on the island which will become ireland on these ships and the sovereignty sisters iru, fadla and banba, they manifest in the clay and they, they don human form. They come out of the ground if you will, the spirits do, and you call that the other world. They come out of the other world and they don human form, they put clay on and then they send nine waves against these ships to send them back to test humanity, to test their will, their spirit. And the humans make it to shore. After calling, they invoke the name of Ireland and they say Blessings to you, allelu, that is to say we invoke the spirit of the land. Let us come, allelu. They meet the three sovereignty sisters and Fadla, one of the sisters, looks at him and she says Introduce yourself. And he says my name is Amerigen Glunglio or Amerigen White Knee or of the White Knee. He says my name is Amerigen Glunglio or Amerigen White Knee or of the White Knee, and his brother Eberdon, cocky old bastard, you know. He says I'm Eberdon and I'm here to settle, you know in a very strong way. And Eru says if you leave your gods in the boat, but you can bring your stories, call the name, call the land by my name, eru or Eirin, which then obviously became Ireland you may come. And Eberdon basically says, no, I'm good, I'll just, I'll bring my rubble. He says I'll come with rubble in my pockets, that is to say the land that he came from. He's going to carry it with him in his bastardized way. And she says no. And so he gets on the boat and they call back on these waves, and the wave is Tontue, which is like an earth-shaping wave. A lot of linguistic historians believe that Tontue is like a glacial force. It's a word reminiscent in the Irish language, in the old Irish language, that speaks to glaciation what ice does to land, and eschers and creates the land as it retreats. So it's a very, very ancient word. And that's the word. That's the wave that she calls up smasses his ships to smithereens and Amerigen then gives this infamous poem about becoming. It's a poem of becoming.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

He's a Bardic priest, or Shanakhi is a renowned storyteller with power, like a shaman almost, but a storyteller that has shamanistic power, and he invokes the land and he becomes it. And so the three sovereignty sisters, they go underneath the hill of Tara, which is still a very, very sacred place to Irish peoples. The Hill of Tara, it's the seat of kings, it's where Lu Lamphada, who becomes Samultanak, means of the many talents who many believe is our first father or son. Just lu is to some degree, this um creator, deity, um father, son, figure in in our mythology and that that's where he is birthed and that's where he comes to his power. So the hill of tara is the sacred seat of these three sisters that go into the land. When a marriage, it invokes their, their powers, and it's his act of becoming.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

But my point in bringing it up outside of just general interest, because I know we've talked about that a little bit before, as you're saying, like when you're coming to that new land, regardless, let's say, if it was your first time, or just returning home after a long period of sojourning, as may be the case with certain peoples invoking the land's spirit, regardless of what that might mean, painting on walls or just writing a poem, seems to be what the ancient peoples are telling us and I can't let the moment pass without also calling into memory how bad and horrible Western culture is at that very thing. Which is interesting, that it's one of our first stories. One of our oldest stories is how not to settle poorly. It's one of our first and original stories and yet you know, to some degree it's what we are worst at.

Taylor Keen:

I think these are very powerful thoughts that we're discussing here the connection of land and stories and, ultimately, it's the necessity to connect with them again and to bring the stories back to life.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

Yeah, there's a meeting component in in mythology that I don't think is often discussed the meeting component, like I know one of the oldest archaeological sites in Ireland and generally in that region. Because if you get back about 6,000 BC so 8,000 years you get into a world called the Doggerland, and the Doggerland is the shallow peninsula underneath the Irish Sea, the North Irish Sea. That was land for hundreds of thousands of years. It was dry land and it's about twice the size of the modern day British Isles. So you know Britain, scotland, wales, cornwall, the Isle of man and Ireland equal about half the size of the land that was overwhelmed by the water when the glaciers melted. And so you know there's a lot of homeland that for hundreds of thousands of years people were living in. That, you know, is now under 100, 200 feet of water. So there's a lot of lost history there.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

But the oldest site in this region that we found obviously Doggerland presents issues to that is 900,000 years old, 900,000 years old and I mean it's a really, really interesting site. Maybe one day we'll talk about it. But just the idea of return like this isn't our first time. You know, when a marriage came to the shores in Meriru, it wasn't the first time, I think the settling, the manifest destiny of American colonialism, the idea of I found it, it's mine, illustrates the opposite of that the degeneration of myth and the truth and the living fabric of that myth, especially for the myths that I know, the myths that are written in me, I think it's true. It's a true degeneration of what myth stands for the meeting and re-meeting of land and peoples, or land and life, or life and land or land, as yourself, land as yourself Powerful.

Taylor Keen:

I want to go to Ireland to learn these stories.

Daniel Firth Griffith:

I want to go to Ireland to learn these stories. I want to go to Ireland.