12/28/09

Dear Agnes Pilgrim,

Thank you so much for writing back to me. The things you write are true. And I believe they are the symptoms of the disease and not the cause. They are the heart attack, not the over eating and fatty foods that caused the heart attack.

For me, the thing that is causing all this sickness and "dis"-ease is the modern way of hunting. Most of us no longer hunt in the old way as human beings, and we have therefore lost our knowledge and understanding of the interconnectedness of life. Today we hunt money, as individuals, and in doing so we are also hunting the land, and the water, and the air, and killing all of it in our mad quest for survival. Also, we are not hunting as free interconnect peoples, we are slaves on the plantations of the companies that own everything and have taken away our ability to survive without them. We have also lost our knowledge of ourselves as people, as tribes. Strong, powerful tribes capable of defending ourselves and all that we hold sacred.

But it does not have to be this way. We can create companies that help us live in the modern world, but with reverence and respect for all of life. Companies modeled on the Iroquois Confederacy, the Nez Perce nation, the Aniyunwiya. This is nothing less than the rebirth of the tribes, but in a new form, in a corporate form, with the respect for elders, the sophisticated methods of resolving conflicts, the mutual care, the role for each member of the community to play, that the First Nation peoples pioneered and refined.

I believe that the healing of ourselves, so that Mother Earth will love us again as people living in harmony, will only come with the healing of corporations. Today they are like medieval kingdoms run by greedy and cruel lords, but it does not have to be this way. Corporations can be like the Great Nations of this land, and the Great Indigenous Nations of other lands. They can be fair and just and formed for the good of all and not just to serve the greed of the few.

This is the vision of the old and the new that was given to me by the Great Peacemaker of the Iroquois. This is the path I am told we must walk.

I see the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers calling on all people to become indigenous again. To join the work of liberating ourselves from economic servitude, joining in a great new confederacy and taking our power away from the corporate monarchs and forming new companies to hunt together as people again. To hold sacred all that Mother Earth has given to us, in her love, to sustain us. To have reverence for the resources we need to make use of for our survival, and to use them as efficiently as possible. If we strike at the heart of how corporations are structured, we will not need to go to war over water or anything else. We will have won before the first battle begins.

You have the heart, the sense of urgency. You have given the voice to the voiceless. I believe I have the practical solution to make it happen now. We need each other to do the great work that needs to be done. I believe that the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers have the moral authority and respect to get many people to listen and hear this message and to join together to take the action needed to change things now, before it is too late.

If I were to travel to Oregon with my sister Elizabeth, would you have any time to council with me? I seek your wisdom and your vision to make my vision stronger. I wish the opportunity to show you that what you are working on, and what I am working on, will be easier if we work together. Maybe your physical presence at the Sacred Capital Conference is not needed. Perhaps we could do a live press conference that links all Thirteen Grandmothers around the world in a call for all people to become Indigenous again, to join this Great Economic Alliance for the Earth. To stop giving their power to companies that are killing the planet and to work to liberate themselves from needing them.

The time is now Aggie. I need your help.

With Hope, Determination, and Love,

Michael


agnes pilgrim wrote:
> Dear Michael:
> Thank you for your wisdom regarding our planet.
> .I'm so busy doing a lot of these things. I see a
> water war in our future we sure need to protect
> our waters keep big companies from taking over.
> Without water all life dies. Animals are being in-
> croached upon all over our planet.Their food in
> many places becoming scarce. Just came back
> from Australia some lakes are dried up and all
> you see is a big sheet of white salt! Wells coming
> up salty.Maybe Our Earth Mother is angry at us
> as we don't talk to the water and tell it IT'S Sacred.
> We know water can hear. It is not us adults who
> own the world it's the little people and we are not
> taking very good care of her. We got polution in the
> water,air it's all around us. We all have to do a better
> job. I pray people will wake up and be more sustainable
> You have a nice Holiday Love Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim.

12/23/09

Hello, my name is Michael Rogers and I was given your contact information from Elinor Ostrom.

I am working on organizing my community economically around the concepts she is working on regarding community pool resources and organizational economics. She said that you may be open to talking with me.

I own a cabin resort on the western slope of the High Sierra near Lake Tahoe. Our local economy has been devastated by the hit taken to the building industry. We had allowed a mono-culture economy to develop that was not diversified enough to withstand the "pest" infestation from Wall Street.

Specifically, I am planning a conference on "Sacred Capital" with the goal of encouraging people to think about capitalism and economics as neutral tools, (like a hammer that can be used to build a house, or hit someone on the head with). There is such a strong anti-economic perception that is taking hold in my community and I hope to bring more holistic, equitable and efficient uses of economic theory to inspire people to work together to take care of each other and embrace an interdependent economic vision.

I am in discussions with the local indigenous community to in essence "welcome" the new migrants to this land to join a coalition to build a more equitable, resilient, and decentralize (democratic) economy. I believe the moral authority of this action would serve as a great catalyst to getting people to come together. However, I hope that the meat of the conference is specific scientifically verifiable information that outlines the effectiveness of complex adaptive structures, the "design parameters" of successfully managed community pooled resources, and systemic best practices for management of forest "assets" for continued abundance in all its forms.

What I am looking for is assistance in articulating at the conference the specific "design parameters" that Ms. Ostrom has been developing, and hopefully finding someone locally who might be willing to participate in the conference as a presenter. This is a project that is being started with few resources, however we will be developing a budget for the conference that will include compensation, including a really nice cabin on 160 acres of High Sierra Splendor.

Thank you for your consideration. I eagerly await hearing from you after the holidays.

With Hope and Determination,

Michael Rogers

12/23/09

Dear Ms. Baker-Pilgrim,

I am writing you because I have been inspired by your words and I believe we share a vision for healing and because you have met my sister Elizabeth and she says that you have a great and loving spirit.

What I have to say will sound a little odd, but I cannot say what is in my heart using mainstream, dominant culture phrases.

I believe that the spirit of the Great Peacemaker has spoken to me. He has giving me a vision for healing the people by calling all the "warring tribes" together to form a new great confederacy to nurture us as, and teach us to be, human beings again -- E Plurabus Unum (out of many, one).

This confederacy is to take a very specific form. It is a marriage of the old and the new. I am a mutt. My ancestors are the Kings of England back to William the Conqueror and Charlemagne, but I am also lost Aniyunwiya who walked our trail of tears to Oklahoma, then during the time of the dust bowl migrated to Los Angeles when an "Indian Oky" was the lowest wrung on societies' ladder and proceeded to pass for white. I have many ancestors, but I consider myself 100% Native American. And the time has come for us all to become Indigenous again. But to do that, we need to form the lost ones into the Next Nations and strengthen and empower the First Nations and then join together as equal, respected partners, for only in the context of ourselves as a "people" can we be Human Beings.

The core of this new vision is "Sacred Capital". The marriage of the First Nations belief in the sacred regarding the earth and all that she provides to care for us, and the economic structures of the modern economy. 2007 was the tipping point in human history. It marked the rise of the corporate state. It was the first time that of the 100 largest economies of the world, more than 51% are now corporations, not nation states. It is primarily "unsacred" capital which is consuming the beauty of the earth, poisoning two leggeds, and four, and eights, and so on. It is "unsacred" capital which is imprisoning the people, dividing us from ourselves as interdependent beings, taking away and defiling our sacred lands that have nurtured us as human beings, and removing us to environmental barren "reservations" and where we cannot get what we need truly survive and where we are forced to work on the economic plantations of a ruling class.

Aggie (if I may be so bold), the Kings have returned, and all people and animals and rivers are in peril, but together we can heal our economic structures by looking to the wisdom of indigenous people who have not yet forgotten how to be human beings.

My vision tells me that the first step is to offer my vision to a coalition of First Nations people on my land this Summer. To ask them to embrace the idea of Sacred Capital and then to suggest that they call out to the lost people and ask them to join them in building a new sacred economy. The "moral authority" of this act would be a powerful catalyst to start this much needed shift. To encourage all of us to stop empowering the "unsacred" economy with our purchases and creativity. To ask people to come together and form a sacred Bank so that we can take our power back. That Bank will take our sacred capital and lend it to build new businesses, or buy old ones, that are based on sacred principals including the Great Law of Peace. From there the creation of an insurance company that will operate on the principal of taking care of it customers as efficiently as possible. From there I see the building of radically resource efficient communities that are built around people and eliminate the need for automobiles and fossil fuels as much as possible and leave as much land we can for the four leggeds and winged animals and for the creation of pure water and air.

The good news is that these economic concepts can actually be more powerful than the current dominate economic structures. See the work of Nobel Prize winning Economist Elinor Olstrom (http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1229 this link takes you to an interview where she talks about the efficiency of "community pooled resources" and how they lead to less "over harvesting of resources and more equitable distribution of benefits).

I know this is a lot, and I hope I have not over whelmed you. I would love to come to Oregon to met with you in person and discuss these matters, or offer you a cabin in the Tahoe National Forest to enjoy (www.shinneyboocreek.com) if you are ever passing thru the land I call home.

Please give me the benefit of your wisdom and advice. I wait in excited expectation for your reply.

With Hope and Determination,

Alisgia Awohali

12/21/09

Dear Ms. Ostrom.

I hope that things have calmed down for you a bit after your great honor. The Noble Prize has given me the opportunity to discover your work, as well as many, many others I am sure. I realize that you may not be able to respond to this, given all the world attention your recent fame is sure to have brought you. However, I am writing anyway in an attempt to get your perspective on the work I am doing and to possibly have you speak at a conference I am organizing on "Sacred Capital". So, here goes nothing . . .

I have been working on redirecting the huge body of organizational design that has gone into good civic governance and applying those methodologies to corporate governance. Some of the good design parameters being checks and balances, separation of powers, and elected leadership. I hope to be the catalyst for an economic evolution modeled after the American governmental revolution. As your work so clearly shows, good democratic governance is far more efficient, effective, and equitable than hierarchy. I am not a scientist, I am a public entrepreneur and I excited about the social, environmental, and economic benefits that could flow from a shift to good corporate governance, just as the shift to good national governance was the catalyst for our current abundance and ease.

The purpose of the Sacred Capital Conference that I am organizing this Summer at my resort in Northern California is to create a public awareness of the benefits of good economic organizational design. I am attempting to make the connection between the American Indigenous People's concept of sacredness and the management and governance of economic capital. I believe the indigenous concept of sacredness to have been a mechanism of social governance and resource management that lead to their pooled resources being managed for abundance and to avoid over harvesting. The challenge is that we don't hunt deer any more, we hunt money. But if we could apply some of the same reverence (i.e. acknowledgment of good organization design parameters) to the acquisition of capital, that the First Nations applied to the acquisition of the resources they needed to survive, then perhaps we could move our society away from the insatiable orgy for independent means, and over harvesting, towards more interdependent, decentralized, and efficient community control of economic resources.

I am in discussions with Anges Baker Pilgrim, one of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers who are speaking up for future generations, and whom have a great deal of authority among the under 40 crowd. My plan is to convene a council of First Nation representatives to discuss the concept of Sacred Capital, and the benefits of community pooled resources. My hope is to have a broad coalition of First Nation leaders agree to a plan of, basically, welcoming the latest wave immigrants (post 1492) to join with them to build the New Nations. These New Nations would be what I call "Policorps", hybrid organization structures that blends the three engines of our society -- the best of democratic governance, entrepreneurial creativity and energy, and the social cohesion and mutual care of traditional community. I believe the inherent dramatic potential of this event would be broadly covered in the international media and online, helping to bring attention to the good work you and others like you are doing and hopefully leading towards structural changes in how we organize ourselves.

I hope that you might come and help convince the gathering of the real, tangible, scientifically verifiable benefits of community pooled resources, thus blending the sacred with the science. If your schedule does not allow it, I hope that there is a brilliant graduate student or colleague who might want to spend a week in the High Sierra off the Yuba River talking about the future.

With hope and determination,

M