Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #364 Taylor Keen -The History of Indigenous Culture and The Prophetic Times We Live In

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

This was my first time meeting Taylor Keen and I absolutely hope to have him out to the farm sometime for more. He is an incredible bridge to not just indigenous wisdom, but wisdom at large. He’s the author of an incredible book, "Rediscovering Turtle Island", which I am chewing through. He also founded the organization Sacred Seed which is dedicated to preserving agricultural seeds indigenous to Turtle Island. Hopefully we get into it in the next one. Today though, was an incredible history/cultural lesson from Taylor. Can’t wait to have ya back brother.   Connect with Taylor: Website: RediscoveringTurtleIsland.com  Instagram: @taylorkeen7    Show Notes: "1491" -Charles C Mann  "1493" -Charles C Mann    Sponsors: Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Caldera Lab is the best in men’s skincare. Head over to calderalab.com/KKP to get any/all of their regimen. Use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off Bioptimizers To get the ’Magnesium Breakthrough‘ deal exclusively for fans of the podcast, click the link below and use code word “KINGSBU10” for an additional 10% off. magbreakthrough.com/kingsbu  Paleovalley Some of the best and highest quality goodies I personally get into are available at paleovalley.com, punch in code “KYLE” at checkout and get 15% off everything! - Optimized Paleo Podcast  To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Twitter: @KINGSBU  Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. Today's guest is a very special guest, a man named Taylor Keene. My brother, Jose Stradley, hooked me up with him and turned me on to him via Meat Eaters podcast and a couple other important ones. Taylor Keene is someone whose work I've recently found, and especially after getting to pick his brain a little, I can't wait to dive into more of his work. He's the author of Rediscovering Turtle Island, a First Peoples Account of the Sacred Geography of America. And akin to people like Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake and, uh, God, what's the other guy's name?

Randall Carlson. There's a different picture of our past, and it's important that we all understand it. What really got me excited about having him on is his work keeping the wisdom of his people alive, specifically for the purpose of contributing to the fulfillment of the seventh generation prophecy. He paints a much clearer picture of it in this episode than I could right now. Probably by virtue of writing a book on it, Taylor doesn't disappoint on being able to weave together multiple aspects of his cosmology to communicate a point, the storyteller. Not only is Taylor a strong link in his people's chain of oral tradition. He is an active elder for his people and a fucking gem of a human being. He has so much wisdom. I really wish I could unpack the entire book with him because there's so many great things in here, even just reframes on what we come to

understand, you know, and done in a way that's less confronting than maybe someone from the woke community would put it, but in a way that really is eye-opening and shifts consciousness around how long have these lands been inhabited and what did culture look like here? Because there was culture, there were cities, there was all sorts of shit. That was one of the most highest density of population in the planet was here in the Americas. So fascinating stuff. Love Taylor. You guys are going to dig this one.

Share it with a friend who's interested. Anything, indigenous wisdom, anything of that sort. Graham Hancock, they're homies now. Plant medicine. We dive into that a little bit, which was cool because Taylor's gotten into it since the old podcast that I heard from him in 2021. So lots of cool stuff here. Support this podcast by sharing it with a friend and support this podcast by checking out our sponsors. We're

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Taylor Keen, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. It's an honor, and I'm really excited. I'm also excited. I just ordered your book, your first book. So I'm very excited to dive deeply into that. You share so many threads that I followed from a different angle. Some of the threads that Graham Hancock has brought forth and really open up a lot of people via Joe Robbins podcast and things of that nature of a different history of the Americas and a

different history than what we've been told. And so much of that, I think, is important. It's important to recover what was lost before it's lost, but it's also important to recover the whole picture. And my life has been deeply impacted through indigenous peoples. My boxing coach who passed away was a mestizo elder and Mayan. And he brought, bring me out for sweat lodges at the Ohlone tribes, Northern California reservation. And that was kind of my first introduction into working with things with respect and reverence, intention, ceremony setting. Eventually that would lead to work with plant medicines and,

and many other great things that I owe him so much of my life is to my coach, Weetzie. So it was interesting to me too, when you guys were talking about some of the similarities in the Pantheon and potentially where people migrated up from South America northward. So I would love to dive into that stuff. But first, as you did on that podcast, I would love for you to introduce yourself in your traditional way and unpack what that means and why that's an important piece of who you are. I'd be glad to. I'd be glad to. So that is my mother's tribal language.

We call ourselves Umaha, means the people that move against the current. And within our tribe, we have two different moieties. We have the Sky Clans and the Earthen Clans. And I'm from the Earthen Clans and the earthen bison clan. And the name that I carry is Bagheesha, which literally means the mane of the buffalo. All of these attributes, in essence, for Plains people, if you have a healthy bison herd, you have a healthy tribe. And so all of those

attributes of a healthy herd become the names that we use in our clan. And there's only a fixed number of them. And it's not based off of individual acts. The names are given four days after birth, and then it's our responsibility to embody and become those names as we get older. So mine is the Alpha Bull, which can be a difficult role, but I think I've gotten there. Yeah, I'm just thinking of other threads too, because there's so many places I want to take this,

but I have a regenerative farm here we call Gardeners of Eden. And a big piece of that has been coming to listen to the land. And also what's missing here. I'm in Central Texas, South Central Texas, and thinking about the decimation of the bison has led to such a rapid change here you know there's there's the adage of of and of course from a farming standpoint

letting things rest and coming into that resting cycle and at the same time how much has changed with the loss of the bison you know we have trees growing you know all these different directions where the bison would previously roam you know they'd they'd maybe stomp out a sapling and rub their shoulders on a tree so the branch was low. It would allow the tree to move up and out and create the grasslands in that way. So yeah, I'm thinking about a lot of things here, but let's dive in. If you'd like to, dive into one of the stories you shared when you were growing up about how you actually stepped into that title, because I know that story. I think it's a great story.

And the day you claimed your name and stepped into it, I think it's really cool. Well, right when I returned back home here to Nebraska as an adult. And I got invited to go to an all-night plant medicine meeting, the POD ways. And it was a nice honor. They asked me to be the fire chief. And there's three or four main roles. And the fire chief, that's a hard job. And I was kind of asked at the last minute to take on that role. Usually I would be responsible for getting my own wood and making sure that it's cured and all that. And I quickly discovered that it was partially green wood and it was wet,

basically for a very difficult fire and the role culminates at the midnight prayer and so our road chief you're supposed to get to that certain point and then no one's supposed to move. But that fire is symbolic of spirit that she may come in and touch our hearts and give us peace and love. And the road chief's prayer was long and I knew the rules, fire belongs to men. And you're supposed to sit very still while he's doing that prayer, which meant that my fire was going down and getting a little smoky.

And all the young men that were in the ceremony all know that if I allow, they can come and tend to the fire. And those teenage boys, young, early 20s, one after another, they came up trying to want to mess with the fire. And I knew the rules, and they didn't know the rules, and they kept trying to want to stoke the fire, and I would shoo them away. And finally, I got tired of them coming up and I just curtly said, it's my fire. You all need to sit down, be patient. He's praying. And that stopped it. So when he got done and took his main tobacco and we put it in the fire. I stoked the biggest darn fire you ever saw and all those

boys cringed. And we always come out at sunrise whenever the morning star goes into the apex of the teepee. And then we take a break for a little bit. The Omaha's, we have a first and second breakfast. We have a ceremonial and then we have a eggs and bacon type of thing. And then the main thing that ends the ceremony is a noonday meal. And all the good people who wanted to come and partake of the blessings of all the prayers, but didn't want to sit up all night, they come to that meal and then they pick someone to be the orator. And one of my grandpas from the Klan, and he goes around and addresses, especially all the chiefs that had a role in the night and talks about something memorable that went on

and things that were said and shares that with the people and kind of summarizes everything. So when he got to me and he said, grandson, nice to see you home and glad to see you taking care of grandpa fire. And he kind of looked around at everyone else. He says, if you ask my grandson here, what his name means, he's going to tell you, it Bison, Maine. But that's not all that it means, grandson. And he looked back at me and he says, because that's the name that I carry as well. And he said, you finally earned your name last night. And he said, I'm going to tell you the rest of the meaning of your name now. And as he explained it, he said, I'm going to tell you the rest of the meaning of your name now. And as he explained it, he said, those bulls all fight for the right to sire the herd. And they'll battle and rut.

And eventually, one of them will become dominant. And all that testosterone and adrenaline will fill its body and its head will elongate till it almost touches the ground that hump on the back gets massive and and big and the very final thing like a silverback on a gorilla will that that big mane comes in so he said you finally earned your name as the Maine Bull because all those little bulls were coming up trying to take over on your fire. And you finally got tired of it and told them all to sit down.

After that, they all teased me within the tribe and they called me Pretty Bull. But that's my name. And I most recently earned the title of, we call our leaders Nudahonga, which means the first of the bulls. And I served as chairman of the board for our tribe's economic development corporation for 10 years. And so I finally earned my name and I had to rule with an iron fist in that corporation to get it back into shape. So I've done my job in the tribe. I like that.

You're doing your job for humanity as well. Something that you guys finished with on that podcast was the discussion of, of seven generations and you being of the sixth generation, you know, in this, in the seventh generation, being one that will finally listen to the wisdom of the elders across, across culture. Yeah. And that being, you know, such a big reason you actually took the time and dedication to write your book. Let's unpack some of that, the, the story of the seven generations first, and then let's dive into your book.

Well, the background for it is probably as important as the prophecy itself. And we have to kind of set the backdrop there. Indigenous peoples, one of the things that is not known about our history was the impact of smallpox. So somewhere, probably Spanish conquistadors, whether it was transmitted by them or horses or dogs, it doesn't matter. We know from the most recent pandemic, one way or another, you're going to get it. And with smallpox, it was devastating. So somewhere around 1500 and some portions of the country, maybe it didn't happen until the 1700s, but it impacted the same everywhere from the northern tip of Canada to southern portions of South America. It was all the same. At the very least, 50 percent of the people died.

And in many places, 85 to 95 percent, which is what you saw here in the heartland around Nebraska. So the Pawnees, which had been in this area for 3,000 years, were once numbered prior to the smallpox between 14 and 21,000. They were down to 1,400. The Omaha's over 3,000 down to 330. Poncas were at 2,000 and down to 200. And mainly in the heartland, those waves came 1,800, 1,830, 1,860, roughly. And that was the decimation. So I always encourage people to have to think about that a little bit. Pick your hundred favorite family and friends and know that only five of them are going to survive. It would be almost a collective memory loss,

especially to an oral-based culture. And somewhere within all of that, add on top European settlers coming and colonization, acculturation, not only death of the bison, which all happened around the same time, the plant ecocide, nearly of bears and elk and bison, but also the plants that were there as well. Invasive species of trees came in, different grasses. European farmers tilled the land, changed the face of everything. Somewhere within all of that totality of things, that was the beginning of the age of suffering and that went on for six generations and that's tied to a story about white buffalo calf woman i was told the prophecy by a dakota spiritualist

and we all sort of knew that the end of it was going to come about whenever the white buffalo calf returned. And in this case, it was the physical manifestation of that white buffalo calf. And the prophecy has told to me, and there's much more to it that I don't know or understand. And I'll leave that to the Dakota people to share. But whenever there were four of them born, that brought about the age of the seventh generation, and that happened in 2007. And as you said, all of those individuals of the seventh generation for indigenous peoples, they're going to be the ones who are going to lead our nations to stand tall again. For the non-indigenous populations, they're the ones who are going to be ready for our wisdom. I believe that it's something around a balance between humans and plants and animals and mother earth.

But it might be more than that. It might be understanding ways of tribal thinking that we can incorporate back into humanity. To me, the tribal structure is probably one of the most powerful structures there is, because unless you kill all of us, you can't kill us. So I've always embraced that tribal structure. The tribe comes first in that identity. And I think there's a lot of lessons that we can learn from what's happening right now.

So the seventh generation is coming of age at this point. And it's also the prophecies supposed to point towards a cultural and historical resurgence, which is why I wrote the book. It was my attempt to answer some of those questions as a teacher, some very basic ones. Who are we and where do we come from? That unto itself to unpack is a lot. How long have we been here? That's one of the questions that I'm constantly perusing through research and papers and books and different podcasts and everything else. But right now, the clock's been pushed back way past the Clovis first theory. You mentioned Graham Hancock and his work, America Before,

really does a good job of explaining the bias of anthropology and the antiquity of some of these sites. But footprints found in White Sands, New Mexico, pushes back to 23,500 years ago. And some of the work, paleoanthropologist Dr. Paulette Steeves, her gut says at least 40, and some of the sites might push towards 100,000. So the antiquity of humans being on this continent, we all know it's a beautiful place, but it's probably been inhabited for a very long time.

I think it's an important piece to understand and break down from all angles as well. On the podcast, you mentioned the fact that, and there's a hundred reasons for any of these things, but why would it matter that indigenous cultures had actually been here for far longer than they're stated to be? And you talked about society being made of a general religion and then mass food production, right? Can you break down those themes and concepts? Yeah, there's just so many misconceptions out there. I think most people think of Indians in terms of cowboys and Indians, which really there wasn't much interaction between the two. Settlers and Indians, absolutely, but in the wake of smallpox.

And so really trying to understand some of this complex history. I believe that there's a mentality that goes back to original contact. And I, in my book, I talk about it as the founders dilemma of America but in essence there's something psychological going on with the way that people think about Native Americans in this country I've always said indigenous peoples are the most misunderstood topic in America and of American Indians anything about our religion is the most misunderstood so there's uh it's been simplified um there was a dehumanization of indigenous peoples at a certain point all you have to you know do is look at

Hollywood or recent films um Costner's recent film, and you'll see the bias within there of the settler versus the Native American and glamorizing pioneers, et cetera. But the reality is that indigenous peoples have been here a long time. Because of the impact of smallpox, you understand why there was nomadic tribal peoples moving about. But that wasn't always the case. We find that places right outside of St. Louis, for lack of a better term, we call it Cahokia. And it was an urban experiment from an indigenous perspective,

starting around 900, going to around 1350. And at the city center of this earth and mound complex, it was rapidly built by lots of people, tens of thousands of workers. And it was an economic trading empire. So everything from copper from the Great Lakes, obsidian, precious stones, East Coast marine shells, chert, exotic feathers, and this trading empire may have reached down towards Mesoamerica. There was a similar experiment with the proto-Puebloans. Some call them Anasazi.

That's not what they call it. And it was just part of anthropology sort of coming up with all these terms when they're really just ancient ancestors. And so you see the rise and spread of mass food and religion. Mass food primarily around the Three Sisters agricultural complex, which definitely comes out of Mesoamerica. The question of when it came out

of there is constantly changing and evolving. It was thought that it came up through the southwest, which I'm sure is partially the case, but now we have found corn before 900 out in what is now New England. So who knows how many migrations of mass food came up, but certainly in the Great Plains around places like Cahokia, you see the ceremonial use of corn around 900, and by 1,000, it was exploded. Where there was corn, there were people. And whether or not it was causal for the people or not, I'm not sure, but cosmologically, it's everything. First mother, corn mother, every tribe has some massive impact from the introduction of corn into our life ways. and other wild crops known as the Eastern Agricultural Complex, plants like marsh elder and different types of grains and grasses that were probably used medicinally. We've also, I'm just starting to get into this,

you'd mentioned plant medicines, but morning glory, datura, these things were probably used in a ceremonial aspect around the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. And I'm just getting into this work a little bit better. A dear friend of mine, P.D. Newman, he's also got a book coming out on inner traditions. The title is around Native American shamanism, but it's really looking at the role of plant medicines in ancient Native America. And I was skeptical at first, but he presents a pretty definitive case of where these plants were being found and also its impact on creativity and cosmology even. There's a relationship between first mother, sometimes she's called the old woman who never dies, and the Torah.

Some anthropologists make illusions that there was sacred feminine cults, moon cults. I don't necessarily like those terms, but I get what they're saying. All things male are fire and all things sacred feminine are water. And so you have that ceremonial distinction. But all of those things went into this cosmological story of the tree of life, the tripartite realms, upper and lower and middle, first father, first mother, their children, and in many cases for the Sumian people, a superhero of sorts whose name was Redhorn. And that story, along with the food, is what propelled people to come to Cahokia and to have the first big urban experiment. At the city center, like most downtowns, a lot of people don't live down there, there was between 15,000 and 20,000 people at the city center. In the outlined communities, whether they were agricultural or satellites or suburbs, there was between 150 and 200,000. So it was the third largest city in the

world at the time. The Grand Mound there by the Grand Plaza was the largest edifice north of Teotihuacan down in Mesoamerica. And most people don't know this history. And this has been the focus of my book and my interest. What was a hobby has now become an obsession and an obligation to share with others all the stuff that I've learned about ancient Native America. I love it. I appreciate your time and coming on this podcast. There's a couple angles I want to take, so I'm just trying to iron it out in my head maybe what's the best path. Yeah, just to the plant medicine piece, my first introduction to the three realms was in South America working with ayahuasca.

And right when you spoke to the tree of life in the three realms and I was listening to you previously, I was like, yeah, that's cross-cultural. That's across the Americas. It is something that's very deep. But the thing that rings true with your friend that's studying plant medicines is that it would be wrong of me to say that indigenous people know about every plant, know about everything, but the knowledge base that most cultures held of their surroundings, their environment, and what uses anything could be from a medicine to a plant to a food thing, that actually is fairly common, right? And so you hear like origin stories of the first people who worked with ayahuasca, they say tobacco was the first teacher plant and based on tobacco they were able to know and find in the jungle where the vine was

where the tricuna was and the bridge that and how to make that brew that the plants told them almost universally and they may have different stories on how that happened but the plant spoke to them and so that that uh that resonates highly with me that even in other cultures because i always asked about that you know what were some of the ways in which the northern native americans would work um with rites of passage and things of that nature and commonly it would i would just hear about the vision quest no food no water for four days which in and of itself is a huge ceremony, but not typically plants, not until peyote and Quanah Parker and that came on full steam. But I just imagine things grow everywhere. You go to the Pacific Northwest, there's mushrooms everywhere. I would assume that

indigenous cultures in those places would understand what those mushrooms do. Absolutely. And this is just a chapter that I'm diving into. That's also potentially one of future books to think about for me is really understanding the impact of plant medicines in ancient Native America. I believe that it's the inspiration for much of our cosmology. You mentioned the tree of life. That seems to be almost universal in our DNA, and I believe plant medicines were used all around the world. Back to Graham Hancock, he was working visionary and supernatural as the impetus for rock art, and that's also an area that I'm very interested in. I've got a whole stack of new books in my library on rock art. But for me, so much of that story was embodied in a place

where my mother's tribe, the Omaha's, were at previously before landing back here in Nebraska. So we're going back in time a thousand years. And one of those satellite communities around Cahokia was a place called Picture Cave. And it's privately held. And at least for a while, they allowed academics and photographers and some of the Osage people to go in there. And so there's wonderful anthology, academic work done around the interpretation of all those. But we just have a treasure trove of the cosmology from that time period, as I mentioned, stories of first father and first mother and the Thunder Twins and battling giants and going to the lower realm,

certainly to me seems inspired by Mesoamerica. But the version that we have up here in North America has its own unique flair and differences. We have Thunderbirds, the messengers of the sky people. Lightning comes from their eyes. And all these things I discuss in detail a bit more in the book. But rock art and plant medicines, it all seems to be tied together. And at a certain point, I think it helped humanity evolve and gave us stories. And there's something about the universality of it all that I find very, very intriguing. The tree of life is everywhere.

I've got a slide in some of my presentations that I refer to as the epiphany of the tree of life. And it was when I was doing my research at a certain point i realized there was a tree of life in mesoamerica and uh ancient china and uh the mystic judaism capitalistic uh tree of life that's haim uh exodrill from the north and i got my little book out my colored pencils and i drew it all out and they all line up together and that was like mind-blowing for me that somehow that that that's what ties us all together whether we connect with that through plant medicines or we find it through fasting and prayer and meditation but to me that is the true story of death, resurrection, rebirth, and ascension that

seems to be common throughout the world and something that I seek in my own life to be able to experience. And I went through a vision quest as a young man and had a powerful experience there but um i'm open to work personally with plant medicines to continue my evolution as a human beautiful well if you need any recommendations i'm happy to help um yeah i want to talk i want to talk about the title of your book and something that you had mentioned you know that could because you, the podcast I listened to is right after your book was released or right around when it was released. The potential backlash of talking about, you know, major migrations as a theory of when humans got here to the Americans via South America and worked their way up as opposed to coming across the Bering Strait as the only means of people getting to these lands. And the thing that I couldn't help think of was the original

people being an island people. I don't know if you're familiar with Matias DiStefano. He's a good buddy of mine. He's been on Gaia TV, has many programs. But that was my understanding of Lemuria. And I'm not sure if you've connected those dots to the original space, the island people, where you guys came from. But that was the first thing that popped in my head. So I figured I'd mention to you. Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. I love talking about Lemuria and Atlantis as conceptions because growing up as a Cherokee as well, I'm from two tribes. I mentioned this in the book, but as a young person, I remember hearing our origin story

for the first time that we come from an island in the east. Some tribes have in the west, and that's probably the one that points to the Pacific and Lemuria. But in our story, an island in the East, and its landscape had volcanoes, and there were large turtles, and eventually there was an ancient apocalypse that caused the island to become subsumed by water and I take it as some sort of tsunami or something else and those that survived escaped via waterborne craft and they became our Cherokee ancestors that became our seven clans. And our story says that we escaped from the island. Grandmother Spider wove her bowl of silk and carried the embers of our one great fire with us.

And that we came across to South America and then migrated up north over the Great Old Man or the Mississippi and found our way up to where our language, or at least our most recent language family, is Southern dialect of Iroquoian and the Cherokee's closest relatives are the Seneca's. So that story to me points towards some sort of ancient apocalypse. And you mentioned Graham Hancock. He's become a friend of mine. And these are the things that we talk about. Some of these other stories, I know the relatives of the Omaha's, the Mandans, they also have a flood narrative, and it's in all of our ancient stories. At some point, I want to dive more into all of those wonderful tribal stories and share them with people. Cherokees coming from the ocean, I assume that that was in the Atlantic, but as we know, there are ancient seafarer cultures all over the world, the Polynesians, the Maori, the Fijians, the Tonganese, the Hawaiians. That unto itself is a fantastic story.

I love anything about Rapa Nui or Easter Island. All those names have been appropriated towards a Western Christian mentality for most of us in a popular sense. But I have Maori friends and Hawaiian friends, and I love to hear all their stories. And it seems to be a common element. I don't know why academia fights so much about things like Atlantis and Lemuria. But for me as a tribal person, I believe our ancient stories and that there were islands that are now lost. And at some point, we're going to hopefully recover a lot of that ancient knowledge too. I love that. I'd love for you to break down too for some people, you know, like that.

For many of my listeners, I'm sure they've listened to different podcasts and gleams and different things. But I'm in a bubble within a bubble, you know, like having been introduced to sweat lodges in my twenties and really getting to experience that firsthand and getting to learn from, you know, from, from different people and getting to travel the world, even getting to experience different medicines in that way. Um, talk about some of the core, the core ideologies that differ from the tribal understanding, being connected to the land, all my relations, versus manifest destiny and some of these key codes that were brought with people that came to the Americas. It's the language of colonization and most of the discovery doctrine. And I go into painful detail in the book about how it came into our legal

system and Thomas Jefferson's incorporation of the British notions of the doctrine of discovery into our legal system through the Cherokee nation trilogy cases. But at a certain point, you know, international law was basically violated. All the treaties were violated and left us with a structure that had to be explained. Ultimately, all of that language goes back to just a whole different mentality and this sort of divine right of manifest destiny,

which again goes back to me, this psychological perspective. When you take something that's not yours, you're going to come up with all sorts of stories to justify it, limiting the amount of time that indigenous peoples have been here. That makes it less of a crime, perhaps,

that somehow we blew this opportunity. That one I hear more often than not, and it's very painful for me to hear that. You guys had your chance and now it's our turn. All of this led to domination of the land. I think a lot of it points to genesis and uh a man shall have dominion over everything and native conception is entirely different um we think of everything in sort of a circular fashion and ages and ages of fires and all these different perspectives,

that prophecy ultimately was shared with me by an Odawa elder out of Canada, now around 15 years ago, the law of orders. And I think that explains things well. For there to be balance and harmony between the humans and Mother Earth, our mother, the plant order needs to go first in priority. And secondary to the plant is the animal nations,

and they're second because the animals depend upon the plants. The most special of all the orders is us, the human beings, and we should keep ourselves in check beneath the plants and the animals for if we put ourselves over the other two will destroy ourselves. So that as a model explains things that we need to protect our plant and animal resources. That's the true sense of sustainability. But just the notion, and in the book I refer to it as thinking red and living red, but just trying to explain some of these notions.

And we need indigenous peoples to really understand this. The knowledge can't be taken outside of the culture or the context of our indigenous way of thinking, but that's why there's teachers to help explain some of these notions. to not just take, take, take from Earth Mother until we learn to respect and to love her as we would love our own mother, then anything short of that is just going to hurt us in the end. That we find a way to live sustainability with the land the way that you and your family do. To truly understand the relationship as a human being to be a part of the land and to truly love it is what I think is a part of my message as I've learned about the prophecy of the seventh generation and what's important in this world. I could keep going on and on but the main thing is to find that balance in one's own personal life

with mother earth and and to develop a love and from that only good things can come I love that I wanted to ask you how familiar are you with the Hopi prophecy I know that's not your tribal lineage but it appears to be something that's like constantly resurfacing and on the precipice of something in addition to the return of Great White Buffalo Calf Woman, that we're in the time of the Hopi prophecy, as they say it. I'm not as familiar with it, but I'm sure it's probably similar to ours. They have different ages and the world has been corrupted by different things. And I know that they have a different narrative and all of the Southwestern cultures seem to have a whole different history than those of us in the Plains.

But I would like to learn more about it well i would like to learn more about it too but i won't regurgitate what little i know now do you feel like with especially now that you've really gone down this path and you have been a bridge your entire life between the the ancient wisdom of your tribes and then also the modern world you know even from the businesses that you work with within your tribe and now as a teacher um and a speaker when you see things like regenerative agriculture and things like that and a part of you might be pissed off because you're like this is the ways that we always did this now you you're just figuring this out again and you want to tag it something cool like regenerative agriculture.

Is it uplifting to know that there's more people coming online to different practices in that way and more people? You know, obviously, I think about this all the time with plant medicines. It's a thin line to walk where this benefits humanity. And there's a lot of ways people can fall off, either through the corporatizing of plant medicines, the medicalization of ceremony. There's so many things there. But at the same time, when done with respect and right relation, it can be some of the most powerful tools that we have.

And hearing about just the wave from documentaries like Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, Biggest Little Farm, just how much people are starting to adopt, you know, a return to the older methods in terms of how we relate to the land and how we tend the land. I mean, I've definitely thought a lot about that. I've got lots of friends in the regenerative ag movement. And yes, I do he details a lot of indigenous ag methodologies, including thought of the land, but it was curated. If there were fruit trees here or nuts bearing trees over there, it's because they were planted. And the role of fire, the role of what we call biochar today, terra preta in South America, at a certain point there were massive populations, especially if we're looking at the antiquity of

you know 25 to 100,000 years ago who knows how many different ages have happened here but certainly we're finding aspects of all of these larger populations and they had to be fed so within that history there's lots of lessons to be learned. To me, the most poignant one is the one around fire. And with so many invasive species of trees, I think of a lot of the European evergreens that don't make it, that were planted as part of the conservation movement in the 1970s, and they become fodder for fires and we live in a world where fires are burning everywhere and the cause of it is we're afraid of fire so indigenous peoples regularly burned everything and it kept things under control that's just one of the lessons that

we've have to learn now and i love working uh with folks around prairie restoration and the role of fire and reintroduction of bison there's a place not too far from me that's managed by the nature conservancy called Broken Kettle up near Sioux City Iowa and they regularly burn the land and plant seed bombs and bring back all of the native prairie and incorporate bison. And it's just magical to see what this land used to look like. And when you see the pollinators come and the deer come and lay down and all the tall grass and the bison are there and plants get reintroduced, their hooves aerate the soil. It just goes on and on and on.

I think it's wonderful. It doesn't matter to me how we get there, but we got to get there. You can call it regenerative ag. You can call it whatever terms you want. But I think if we all put our minds to it and continue to study and learn more, we're going to be able to figure out a new way to live that was probably once embraced a long time ago. Sounds to me like you and your family are doing it down there. It's not easy, I don't think. We've got a lot to learn, but we're surrounded by awesome people to learn from.

We've got good buddies out in Fredericksicksburg about 90 minutes west of austin they run a rome ranch and they got about 1500 acres beautiful bison farm uh all regenerative learned from a guy in winjana virginia named daniel firth griffith he's big into creating wild lands and and you know even beyond regenerative and um you know really understanding that whole picture of being in right relation. There was a black bear mom with her cub on the land. And rather than trying to kill it or shoo it off, he left one of the moms that was suspecting a calf near her so that calf could go back to that black bear mom.

Oh, I love stuff like that and we yeah powerful careful of nature we should embrace it and only beauty comes out of that yeah just incredible it's inspiring to me and there's a lot to learn and yeah it's like i feel just stepping into this i'm a first generation farmer i've never family didn't grow up in the city you know never never understood much of this and had uncles that did it conventionally, not what we're doing here, but you know, there is a, there's a lot we can glean from the internet and getting introduced to the right people has been really, really a cool thing to get to get our hands in the dirt and, and raise my kids in this way has been really powerful. I'd love for

you to talk here about, you know, some of the myths before we got on, you talked about Bigfoot and the Yeti and just different things, you know, that, that, that seem far out there from our perspectives, but I find myself, you know, like if you rabbit hole a guy like Graham Hancock, it's kind of hard to not look into the fact that all the ancient texts talk about giants. It's kind of hard to look, not, you know, look over the the fact that there might have been at one point in time eight different humanoid species on the planet simultaneously. Neanderthal potentially being one of the last that lived in tandem with us. I have 96 percentile Neanderthal in my

DNA report. We could co-mingle with some of these. Even amongst some of these. And even amongst, you know, some of the indigenous people in Central America and Mesoamerica, like there's four foot tall men, you know, like it seems like a different, you know, they're human, but there's also, it's a big difference, you know, especially for me being six foot four. I don't think people, I mean, maybe you have, you know, I'm maybe you have a, you know, I'm sure you have a different perspective, but I'd love to get your perspective on, on, you know, these different beings and what that meant. What does that mean cosmologically? You know, when you talk about, you know, coming from the seven sisters and really tracking who you are and where you come from,

how does all this stuff fit into it as well? Well, that's the story of the beginning before the beginning, our journey from the stars. And that's how I begin the book. I refer to that chapter as Cosmogenesis. Many of the tribal groups in North America have some version of the earth diver story. And ultimately, this says that we come from the Seven Sisters constellation, we travel through the dark rift of the Milky Way, and then we found ourselves here. And when we first came, it was an entirely a watery planet. And those souls transmuted into animal forms. Those animals change based off the stories of the tribe, which only proves to me that it's a very old story for it to have changes and variations.

The Algonquins and Iroquoians often have a woman who fell from the sky. In the plains, we don't have that version. Ultimately, one of the animals dives down into the primordial waters and comes up with clay. And the common element is that turtle puts the clay on its back and the land is born out of there. So that was to the title of the work. Symbolically for me, it was part of my journey to rediscover that story and everything about Turtle Island, but hopefully it's going to be an opportunity for others to understand that story as well. Mythology is everything. Parables are everything. Every culture has, as you mentioned, stories of giants and little people.

I think of the Pict culture and the Gaelic cultures, and there's so many things that are similar around that. And it becomes something. Those stories are the foundation for our conception of the world. So I'm very interested in diving deeper into our stories around sky people and Sasquatch. It's been sensationalized, appropriated, and maybe even a sort of controversial way, at least from a native perspective, because those are sacred beings to us.

I think many people want to think about the fact that they're a physical species. I don't know. I know that we refer to them as the other race. Some of the stories that I've gleaned from tribal friends up in the Pacific Northwest is that they are there to protect the plants and the animal nations from us. So that's an interesting spin. And that's what I'm hoping to explore is more of these stories. Dr. Artie Sixkiller did a bunch of stuff with encounters with sky people.

I would like to continue to do some of her work. She's a fellow Cherokee. So all of these stories are something I want to explore further. And the hope for humanity is that we'll find more about ourselves through these stories and find out more secrets about sustainability and how we can live in better harmony with the earth absolutely i wonder uh too is i didn't hear you talk about it before but you know with with the the origin story of coming from the seven sisters and the pleiades what are your thoughts on extraterrestrials because Because I mean, I know Graham Hancock's intent is that they're not coming here via travel and some anti-gravity craft, but it's likely

interdimensional beings that are able to cross through different ways. And it seems like that's built into the origin myth is that interdimensional beings crossed through here into this plane and then existed now on the earth. I'm curious how much, if you've even looked at that, or if that's something you're just not interested in at this time. No, that's the sky people, all of our, I mean, that's where we come from. We come from the stars. And I'm very interested in understanding what that means. Those are the rulers of the upper realm and where we come from.

In the ancient stories, that's where Redhorn comes from. He is a being from the upper realm and has many, many powers. And as he blends his progeny with humans, they become a part of us. And the Thunder Twins embody those powers of the upper and the middle and the lower realm and all those stories that go along with it. So I think I would probably have to agree that some sort of interdimensional or something that we've unlocked in the past to understand. Maybe they're just immortal souls that work with us sometimes or share knowledge if we're in the right mind frame and do the right things. Take care of ourselves, the role of plant medicines.

I don't know, all this is stuff that I'm interested in and I would like to see where it goes. Very cool. What would you leave, what would you leave us with for, you know, my kids are born in 2015 and 2020. And, you know, for those that are willing to listen and to learn, where would you send them? What would, what would be important for your kids to go through in terms of rites of passage and ways of initiating them into proper people in the world? Well, at some point, that is the role of ceremony. And almost all the tribes have some version of it. Mine was a vision quest. And I think that's important, especially for young men to experience hardship like that and learn to be alone and to be quiet and contemplative.

And if you really want spiritual growth, you have to fast. and take care of the body that was given to us and to channel one's mind towards good things and being kind to yourself and self-compassionate. All of those things I think are important. Ultimately, the role of ceremony is some version of spiritual death and rebirth. So I would encourage everyone, especially young people, to find their own way for whatever that journey is

when it comes of time when you're of age to go on a journey and adventure, to challenge yourself physically and to seek some type of spiritual death and rebirth. And you come back an adult and a true human being. It's beautiful. Well, I really look forward to whatever you have next in store for us. And I really appreciate your time coming on the podcast.

Is there anything you'd like to mention before, a place you're going to speak at or anything like that, that you have coming up you'd like to mention before, a place you're going to speak at or anything like that that you have coming up you'd like to promote? Oh, I just love to interact with people who read the book and have some questions. Folks can follow me at taylorkeen7 on Instagram. I've got a webpage for the book,

www.rediscoveringturtleisland.com. And love to talk about the prophecy of the seventh generation and how we can all do our part to save this beautiful world that we call home. Thank you so much, Taylor. It's been a pleasure having you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. you