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What Would It Mean To Live In A World Informed By A Kinship Worldview?

By James Jesso

In this interview with James W. Jesso of Adventures Through the Mind, Darcia Narvaez, Kindred’s president, and Four Arrows, discuss their new book, Restoring the Kinship Worldview. Visit Adventures Through the Mind here.

The podcast explores various precepts of the Kinship or indigenous worldview that are presented in their book. Precepts such as “Courage and Fearless Trust in the Universe”; “Nonanthropocentrism”; “Ceremony as Life Sustaining”; “Centrality of Gratitude”; and “An Emphasis on Heart Wisdom”.

We also explore the basis of what a worldview is and why our guests propose there are only two, the indigenous/kinship worldview and the dominant/Western worldview. We go in-depth on the historical rise and impact of the dominant worldview and the intergenerational cycle of trauma it propagates; the left brain / right brain dynamic and how it aligns with worldview, perception, and behavior; how generations of anthropocentrism impact our capacity to perceive our interconnection with nature and each other; a substantial dive into death, dying, grief, and ceremony; and what it means to become fully human. It was truly a pleasure to feature Four Arrows for the first time, and Darcia Narvaez for the 4th time.

Kindred Resources

What’s a worldview?

A worldview is a delocalized general sense of how the world works. It’s a cosmology about what humans are, what they should learn, how they should behave and their purpose; how humans relate to the rest of the manifest natural world; and what is our relation to the unmanifest, the spiritual?

Download Kindred’s Worldview Chart by Four Arrows here.

Worldview and TEK

Worldview differs from traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) that is localized knowledge Indigenous/First Nation Peoples develops from deep experience in a particular landscape. 

So, there are two kinds of Indigenous knowhow missing in the dominant culture that are apparent around the world in First Nation Peoples: the Kinship worldview and TEK. Our book focuses on the former.

How did we lose the Kinship worldview? 

Our baselines for normality shifted over time in terms of child raising and cultural practices, downshifting human nature to primate levels. Allowing unfettered inequality has led to endemic Wetiko virus (cannibalistic greed). Modern societies operate trauma-inducing pathways instead of the wellness-promoting pathway we evolved.

How does the Kinship worldview differ from the dominant one?

See the Worldview Chart. Worldview” does not belong to a race or group of people, but Indigenous cultures who still hold on to their traditional place-based knowledge are the wisdom keepers of this original Nature-based worldview. All people are indigenous to Earth and have the right and the responsibility to practice and teach the IW precepts. All have the responsibility to support Indigenous sovereignty, dignity, and use of traditional lands.

“For non-Indians who are concerned about misappropriation, see the peer reviewed article,“The Indigenization Controversy: For Whom By Whom.” 

The Worldview Chart and introduction was created by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), a.k.a. Don Trent Jacobs, Ph.D., Ed.D. and originally published in The Red Road (chanku luta): Linking Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives to Indigenous​ Worldview, 2020. The chart is featured in Restoring the Kindship Worldview, 2022, by Four Arrows and Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D.  

Download your Worldview Chart poster or graphic below:

Kindred Worldview Chart Starry Night Background in PDF format: Download

Kindred Worldview Chart Starry Night Background in PNG format: Download

Kindred Worldview Chart in black and white for printing in PDF format: Download

Kindred Worldview Chart in black and white for printing in PNG format: Download

Related Terms:
James Jesso

MY NAME IS JAMES JESSO.

I LIKE WORDS AND CRAVE TO BETTER THE LIVES OF OTHERS BY THE MANNER IN WHICH I WIELD THEM.

I write stories to inspire personal insight, essays to educate supple minds, and books to build new conceptual paradigms of reality. I speak in the open domain, weaving my storytelling tendencies beyond written language and onto vibrational winds to open the hearts of those who choose to listen.

Following the path of my talents and inclinations to create with words, my mission is to build an accessible language for the otherwise indescribable challenges and blessings of being alive.

My mission is to create an approachable, engaging, and exciting conversational medium for people to better understand the complexities of themselves and the world. I seek to co-create linguistic, social, and conceptual platforms for the growing inclusion of people from various walks of life into the spiritually mature future of humanity.

PSYCHEDELICS, IN PARTICULAR, THE “MAGIC” PSILOCYBIN MUSHROOMS, PLAYED A MAJOR ROLE IN HELPING ME COME TO UNDERSTAND THIS MISSION.

They helped me step into my adulthood and into a deep understanding of what it means to be myself. They offered me such an incredible and valuable gift that I believe part of my role in this world is to represent them. This means being open, clear, and celebratory in my relationship to psychedelics while maintaining a responsible discernment sourced in a harm-reduction model for drug education. These substances, plants, and fungi are profound teachers and I seek to embody, distil, and translate the lessons they offer me in a way that unlocks them for others, as well as to educate people on how to do the same for themselves.

We are currently staring down the barrel of a dystopian future, and the only thing that locks us forward into self-destruction is our collective captivity to the archaic behavior of traumatized adult-children and the systems they have created. I truly believe that when used with skill and maturity, these psychedelics and the insights they offer us about ourselves and the world can free us from our psychic captivity, from the conditioned perceptions of a profoundly sick society.

But the potential for saving ourselves from ourselves extends beyond the psychedelics, as they only show it to us. It extends into how we show up in the world, how we show up to relationships, how we show up to ourselves. And so I seek with my writing and other works to inspire self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-compassion in a way that reconnects with our authenticity, the self that exists beyond all the bullshit we’ve been fed by systems and generations of trauma, violence, and fear.

Day to day I do my best to be the best version of myself, using presence, faith, and courage to dissolve and transcend the deeply conditioned structures in my sense of self that tell me I’m not good enough; that I’m not worthy; that tell me to settle down and fall in line. Each day I struggle somehow, yet each day I transcend a little further, and I want to help others find the platform that allows them to find that sense of transcending a little further each day. Be it psychedelic or not.

This website is a collection of what I have been doing along this path, a catalogue of creation, and a means to continue this mission of sharing in transformation. I have written two full-length books on the spiritual potential of the magic psilocybin mushroom and given many public presentations with the continued intentions of inspiring people face to face. I am also the host of the Adventures Through The Mind podcast, a project bred of merging my desire to commune with those who inspire me and to be a source of inspiration that lights up the whole world surrounding the receptive hearts of those who witness it across the internet.

Thank you for honoring my journey, thank you for honoring your journey.
With love,
James ♥

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