Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker, Dr. Loring Abeyta

Dr. Loring Abeyta

Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker

Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association Ministry Days

0001 Keynote: "America as 'Dry Drunk:' from Domestic Abuse to Global Bully"

Presenters: Dr. Loring Abeyta, Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker

Prepared for UUA.org by: Jone Johnson Lewis, Reporter/Editor

With an acknowledgement of the indigenous peoples of Texas and nearby, and then a poem from the novel Ceremony , Dr. Abeyta and the Rev. Dr. Tinker opened CENTER Day 2005 in Fort Worth , Texas .

In 1984, Kurt Vonnegut wrote about "War Preparers Anonymous," and suggested a simple solution to war: remove individuals who were addicted to war preparation from the levers of power. But, Abeyta and Tinker suggested, there is a danger of projecting responsibility for systemic problems onto specific personalities.

An analysis of President George W. Bush as "dry drunk" may seem to help us understand today's foreign and domestic policy, but it is more important to see America itself as the "dry drunk" and ourselves as part of that system. Instead of imagining that we can identify a few problem individuals and remove them from the levers of power, we must examine the levers of power themselves.

Tinker proceeded to tell the story of America 's history from the perspective of the many, many times that Americans turned to violence, beginning with the landing of the Puritans led by Captain Miles Standish in Cape Cod before they made it to Plymouth Rock, an incident which resulted in the theft of winter food from an Indian village. From the preemptive war against a feared Indian uprising -in which the European settlers invited the chiefs to a feast and then murdered them -through a manufactured war in 1737 through the 1890 violence at Wounded Knee to the forced incarceration of Indian children at residential schools, America has perpetrated systemic violence against so-called "primitive" and "savage" peoples.

Abeyta presented a way to look at the worldview and ideology that dominates any culture. A worldview includes assumptions about the order of nature, about the place of humanity within that order (do humans have dominion, for instance?), how this order relates to and is affected by time – and how virtue and deviance are thus defined. An ideology, she said, is like the road map to how to respond given a worldview. An ideology includes how human interactions are to be mediated by institutions -it describes a social existence, provides a critique of that existence, and then prescribes how the political system should be organized. Capitalism, communism, and liberalism are three different ideologies that arise out of the same world view -and each, in its own way, normalizes that world view or justifies that world view.

"What kind of program can we work," Tinker asked, to separate ourselves from a narrative that forces us to play parts? He continued his description of history by contrasting Native American "winter count" histories and the Osage War Ceremony with Hollywood 's image of Native Americans as "pretty violent." In a winter count, the people noted important events in a year, and these records show few military encounters, and very few casualties. The Osage War Ceremony takes 12 days before going to war, and the intense preparation means that all other activity is interrupted for that time. "A warrior culture," Tinker noted, "requires enormous wealth." On the return from the battle, there is a required ceremony of shedding tears for the enemy dead. "What would an American winter count look like?" Tinker asked. We forget what we do, and live with our illusions.

"Men must own their own privilege and sexism. Valuing women colleagues doesn't mean you're not a sexist." We separate ourselves, he said, from those who control and oppress – and that's an illusion. He told a story from Ceremony about the early violence in America . "They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves." Patriarchy, Tinker added, "is bigger than any man in this room, every man in the world. It has become systemic." A world view is bigger than our ideologies. We can adjust our ideologies and not our world view. Just changing parties won't help solve the real problems.

We must, therefore, begin planting a counter-narrative. As Tinker and Abeyla moved to answering questions, they stressed that a world view is not a personal choice: "Can you start speaking a different language tomorrow?" Nevertheless, what's critical -and what ministers can do -is to be involved in analysis and publishing to help keep voices from "being crowded out deliberately." We need to do historical deconstruction.

We also need to look at what liberalism is traditionally loyal to. This includes assumptions of American exceptionalism and constitutionalism. We assume that a combination of procedural democracy, citizenship, and the free market is the road to freedom and democracy. Yet this can, instead, be a deliberate attempt to "siphon off 'disturbed radical emotion." "We have perfected neutrality" as a safety valve to prevent radical outbursts.

Hyperindividualism, Tinker emphasized, is a major part of the problem -and liberal religious emphasis on hyperindividualism is not foreign to Unitarian Universalism.

Another question explored the role of neopaganism and earth-based religion. "A universalized solution like Christianity can't work; we need provincialism," Tinker explained. But, he went on, "made-up, invented rituals" aren't the same as rituals that came through so much time. Often, Indian beliefs are misconstrued: there's no "Great Spirit" except in English. Better translations would be The Great Other, or The Great Mystery. "It doesn't help to rip off others' ceremonies," he said. Instead, find ceremonies and rituals that put you in community where you are -and without epistemic violence.

Abeyta explored the question of how much violence is hard-wired. She appreciated insights we get from explorations of the brain and mind, yet expressed skepticism that we are properly considering cultural difference in such studies. "Science may allow us to make bigger mistakes," she added.

What to do? "It's going to mean risk, it's going to mean loss," they explained. Facing that reality is important. But we can also recognize that "we also have each other, great networks of mutual support.... What we need to build up with each other is trust."

They closed with a story about a Sundance that drew dancers from all over the country -some of whom then thought that the fact of their participation itself qualified them as medicine people. They were, Tinker suggested, "bit by the virus of hyperindividualism." Instead, what was important was that in dancing the dance, they would have one thought for its purpose: "That the people might live. That the people might live."

Dr. Loring Abeyta is a teacher, student, mother, and wife. She completed her doctoral dissertation at the University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies, where she has specialized in human rights and Latin America . Dr. Abeyta teaches a variety of higher education courses at various Denver-area institutions, including courses on race, gender, and class; cultural anthropology; eco-justice and social transformation; and U.S. foreign policy. She was a winner of the Templeton Foundation course award prize for a course that she developed and cotaught with her husband, Dr. Tink Tinker, on indigenous knowledge and Western science. Dr. Abeyta has traveled on several occasions to Latin America and the Caribbean, and has been a member of human rights delegations to Haiti . She looks forward to a career in teaching, research, and writing upon the completion of her doctoral degree.

Tink Tinker, a member of the Osage Nation, is professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff School of Theology. A long-time community activist, he currently serves on the leadership committee of the American Indian Movement of Colorado. As a scholar, he is committed to a scholarly endeavor that takes seriously both the liberation of Indian peoples from historic oppression as colonized communities and the liberation of White Americans, the historic colonizers and oppressors of Indian peoples. He is the author of Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide (Fortress, 1993); co-author of Native American Theology (Orbis, 2001); co-editor of Native Voices: American Indian Sovereignty and Identity (U. Kansas, 2003) and author of the forthcoming Fortress Press volume, Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation .

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