Henna Maria is a woman with vivid clarity of mind and courage of the spirit that has some important truths to share with the world.
Here, I wish to do my own small part to ensure the medicine she has gathered and refined is able to be disseminated and received by those who need it.
What she invites us to consider may not be easy for some. She invites us to look through the eyes of our own indigenous ancestors at this would around us, and then make choices based on an ethical compass based in applied animism, voluntaryism and bioregionalism.
She does not hold back in offering us a vivid description of the Monster Of Modernity in how it is a system that has weaponized multigenerational trauma in order to sever our connection to the earth and our own indigeneity.
As Henna Maria stated in the video above :
“This is why there is such a systemic attempt to destroy all indigenous culture and replace it with a sterile one world government. It is an attempt to completely de-soul and degenerate humanity. In addition, Energetic and physical influences like our bloodline, frequency of our environment, quality of our terrain, purity of our water, air, food, soil and climate inform and build the energetic, emotional, physical body. These influences dictate what kind of a temple we are building to house our soul. And if the vessel is not built well, there are certain elements of the soul which cannot be expressed.
Hinder the temple, disable the soul. So to summarize, There are two different ways we are being malnourished, impoverished, degraded, demoralized and dehumanized today through the culture which molds the soul and through the physical and energetic influences which build the body.
Since our modern culture has been stripped from nearly all elements which actually facilitate the growth of a soul from infancy to spiritual maturity, there is hardly any true culture left in the West.
But when we understand the law of cause and effect, we can begin to change the cause. In the Gospel of Thomas, Verse 70, Yeshua the Christ says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you”.
This is a master key. This is a golden key to healing humanity.”
Some people have chosen to throw the memory of their indigenous ancestors under the proverbial bus, internalizing the dehumanizing narratives inculcated into them through multi-generational propaganda systems imposed onto our modern day lives by statist regimes and remnants of Roman imperialist propaganda still rattling around in religious institutions.
Henna invites us to remember and honor our indigenous ancestors instead. They were not perfect (and I am not saying we should not seek to emulate them exactly) but that does not change the fact that we have much to learn from our ancestors that held and lived by animistic worldviews.
We know from ethnographic and historical research that many human cultures have held biocentric and animist views and also lived in balance with their ecosystems. For example in books like The Dark Emu and The Largest Estate On Earth the authors explore how Australian indigenous peoples created advanced riparian zone and tidal zone enhancing farming systems that involved reverence and recognition of the spirit of eels and other beings they farmed and hunted, in Tending the Wild the author explores the oak forest tending people of California that see trees as elders, teachers and providers and in dissertations such as Lyla June’s Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Regenerative Food and Land Management Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History she explores how many peoples of pre-colonial Turtle Island shaped entire ecosystems regeneratively with an animistic ethos, in Ropes to God: Experiencing the Bushman Spiritual Universe, Bradford Keeney describes the African Bushman tribe’s innate connections with their surroundings. Keeney has a number of works on the Kalahari Bushman peoples, and they all are fascinating accounts of people who clearly recognize the equality of themselves and all life and who work to build spiritual connections to that larger world. We can see many more examples of these in the Graeber and Wengrow book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (where they explore the concept of human freedom, among others).
In fact, the idea of an animistic and biocentric society is so threatening to those carrying anthropocentric views that indigenous cultures carrying such views are often the tragic subject of mass genocide and intentional cultural erasure (and inserting implanted anthropocentric sociopolitical worldviews in the place of animism). This is what the government of Canada and churches did in the residential schools here.
Today, it is widely accepted by psychologists that children are naturally animistic, but this way of seeing and interacting with the world is often lost in the process of Western schooling. Children innately tend to directly perceive the life, consciousness, and feelings in rocks, trees or the sun and natural forces, a concept first detailed by Jean Piaget. This “enchanted thinking” is typical in pre-government school thinking dominated stages (ages 2-7).
While people like Jean Piaget described innate animistic perceptive capacities of children in the context of being an immature state that eventually gives way to “logical reasoning” (which according to him, means thinking only humans are sentient). Being an atheist that covets the idea that sentience is unique to humans, he associated young children’s animism with their ‘primitive thought’ claiming children remain animists until they reach a more “advanced and rational” stage of development.
However others in that realm disagree. For instance, Child development psychology research published in ‘Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood’ (2023) that challenges traditional Piagetian dismissal of animism, proposing instead that children’s animistic perspectives represent ‘a matter of care’ that fosters ethical thinking and relational approaches to the world. They describe the children’s relationships with trees, rocks and toys as friends (that they perceive as persons) as creating safe practice grounds for emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and social interaction.
Intact place based (Indigenous) cultures do not only see children’s innate animistic perceptive capacities as healthy and natural, they actively foster this intrinsic way of knowing the world through elders sharing stories about tree, stone, river and earth spirits, our relationships and responsibilities to those beings and thus guide their innate knowing to become a valuable ethical compass.
The Creation story of Sky Woman Falling (depicted in the art below and described here) is one such example.
That means that it does not matter what genetics you have, your natural inclination when you arrive on Earth is to Indigenize to the place you were born (develop relationships with your fellow non-human community members involving a recognition of them as beings with spirit, agency and deserving of respect). It takes the brutal brainwashing of the Prussian education system (which is what the Canada government, US government and many other “developed” national governments use as a model for their school systems) to suppress that innate animistic characteristic in children and make them fearful of expressing that intrinsic and natural way of perceiving.
The proponents of techno-optimism, transhumanism and “Bright Green environmentalism” would tell you that we can have our cake and eat it too, but they seem not to care whether or not we end up living in a planet that is a giant open pit mine and factory farm.
I personally do not think human habitation of an area necessitates the depletion of resources and means that forests nor other species will die off. (for more info: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/are-there-limits-to-growth )
Human habitation of an area can actually increase biodiversity, water quality and beauty rather than diminish it.
I have found evidence of this all over the world.
Some of our animist ancestors them left behind a measurable and quantifiable legacy of increased biodiversity, soil depth, beauty and self-perpetuating food production systems that we still benefit from today (centuries to millennia later).
The pictures shared in the note above show two ancient food forests in Canada (the first over 7000 years old in northern bc and another over 150 years old on the coast), one in Morroco (over 2000 years old) and one in Ecuador (over a thousand years old). There are dozens more examples of ancient food forests all over the globe in almost every climate zone. All of them still produce food for humans, wildlife, build soil, clean water, provide spiritual nourishment and beauty today. The Yumbo people in what is now called Ecuador achieved similar increased biodiversity and permanent food forest engineering persisting for millennia, their neighbors in the Amazon jungle acheived similar amazing ecosystem scale food forest design and also created the Terra Preta soil which still benefits farmers today
For more info on this ancient regenerative agroforestry system in Ecuador, read this:
Human beings are not innately ecologically degenerative.
Anyone that tells you we are is pushing misanthropic propaganda. While increasing our population even more may not be wise, our currently great numbers could translate into great quantities of food forests, regenerative ocean gardens and regenerative home gardens that increase beauty, biodiversity, stabilizing erratic weather, cleaning water and leaving a legacy of abundance and spiritual nourishment for future generations.
The same human hands that destroy can create wondrous things … humanity can be a balm for the living earth instead of a plague. It requires a shift in perspective and abandoning inherently anthropocentric and degenerative belief systems like statism, embracing animism and our refocusing our creative gifts locally to our watersheds and bio regions. It requires a handful of seeds and a heart full of faith and it necessitates embracing an animate worldview that promotes reciprocity based relationships with our fellow beings.
It requires changing how we view the beings that nourish us as food. It involves listening to the trees speak and the seeds whispering stories. This is not something I can do myself, it will require community scale expressions of these knowings.
In my article on designing Bio-Cultural Refugia I spoke to this by saying
Through nurturing ethnoecological ancestral seeds we can help to create the antidote to multi-generational amnesia, anthropocentrism, apathy and “plant blindness”.
Through each of us excavating the ancient Regenerative (ecologically literate, Reciprocity based, animistic and reverent) knowledge, worldviews, technologies, techniques and traditions of our ancestral past we essentially receive the stories whispered to us in the heirloom seeds of knowledge passed down to us by our ancestors.
Through our taking decisive action to germinate those seeds of knowledge within the substrate of a holistic vision for the future (with a foundation of modern Regenerative soil science, a culturally enriched (globally connected) information base and modern mycological science) we can accept the gifts of place based wisdom from our ancestors and give those Regenerative seeds of knowledge new found vigor, potential, anti-fragility and purpose.
What we are essentially doing when we engage in that process intentionally is an ethnoecologically defined form of ethnogenesis.
For more info, watch:
Henna Maria is essentially someone that is engaging in active ethnogenesis and I think more of us should be following in her example in our local bioregions.
She is leading by example and inviting us to decolonize our minds and choose to indigenize to place. This is very much going to be something I focus on in my next book.
Thus, I shared the video above.
OP: https://odysee.com/@TheGreaterReset:4/Cultural-Revival-henna-maria2025:5
How I became aware of this “conference”, why it is offering an extremely valuable service and how you can give back
Over the past few years I have been grateful to virtually attend the People’s Reset (previously called “The Greater Reset”) online thanks to a recommendation from James of The Corbett Report.
Several of the presentations in past years (such as Lyla June’s presentation titled “Architects of abundance: indigenous regenerative food and land management systems and the excavation of hidden history” from back in 2023) have been a huge inspiration for me and my work in designing regenerative food systems. Lyla’s presentation sent me on a deep dive to research regenerative pre-colonial oceanic gardening practices and that resulted in me writing an entire chapter for my next book on the subject (which I published as an article on Substack here).
Elizabeth’s presentation this year is inspiring me in different ways and will likely result in similar enrichment in ideas and perspectives that will result in me providing a framework for a more holistic approach to designing food forests in my previously mentioned book in progress.
So these “conferences” (now referred to as “activations”) are having a real impact on people’s lives, empowering individuals, enriching communities and inspiring people to become their best selves and envision a way to put their unique gifts to use for the benefit of not just mankind, but the living Earth as well. That is a sacred service which I recognize as valuable, and so I have donated what I can to help ensure that Derrick Broze and Miriam Gomez can continue to create events like this going into the future. I hope you will donate too if you can, as these people put a lot of their time and effort into creating this platform that uplifts so many, and essentially gift it to the world for free. Honoring their act of faith in embracing gift thinking in the form of a donation keeps the gift in motion so they can continue to do their important work creating parallel voluntary societies and emergent regenerative cultures/communities.
You can donate to their important work via the link below:
https://thegreaterreset.org/donate/
