Reaching Back to Traditional Teachings: Diné Knowledge and Gender Politics

As Diné, we must understand the traditional teachings that were once in place through oral traditions and teachings. There are many troubles Diné (Navajo) women and Nadleeh (Two-Spirit) people face from outside the community, but due to western influence, we endure the same effects from within our own Nation. Through this paper, I aim to propose resolutions to move our Nation in the right direction for social change and build a community of acceptance by reaching back to traditional teaching philosophies without the influence of cis-heteronormative patriarchal structures. I argue that adoptions of these western institutions have severe effects on Diné women and Nadleeh (Two-Spirit) livelihood and well-being. In this paper, I examine three areas of Diné philosophy and cosmology: (1) the central role of K’é (family) and the matrilineal clanship, (2) Diné women and Nadleeh voices in our creation stories, and (3) Hozhó, the beauty way, to understand the masculine and feminine energies of Diné cosmology in order to address the importance of women and Nadleeh on Dinétah.

Investigating principles that underlie frameworks for Pacific health research using a co-design approach: learnings from a Tongan community based project

Co-design is a relatively new method employed in public health-based interventions to identify problems, generate and implement solutions through harnessing knowledge and creativity of citizens and staff . Researchers use different co-design steps in the design and implementation of intervention programmes. The co-design approach has been successfully used in redesigning health care services to fit the needs of the consumers and has extended to develop health interventions for communities . In New Zealand, co-design methods have been used to develop health interventions among minority and indigenous groups. Previous research highlighted that co-design fits well when collaborating with these groups as it allows tool redevelopments and re-fining based on the socio-cultural needs of participants. This method captures and understands the needs of the Tongan community, as well as foster expression, reflection, and sharing to inform the development of the intervention. The generation of discussion in co-design aligns with the indigenous knowledge of systems, creation stories and oral stories which provide a culturally empowering way to generate discussion and insights from Tongan communities.

The Chicken and the Egg

Which comes first, divine agency or the calculations of diviners? Both are integral to divination, other predictive methods, and the ‘hatching out’ of new creation stories among the Nuosu of Southwest China. In this article, I present ethnography on divination in which eggs evoke the person’s position in the world while the bodies or bones of chickens are indices of health or prosperity. When cracking open raw eggs, peeling open slaughtered chickens, or reading chicken bones, diviners creatively draw upon the assistance of spirits and their own calculatory reflections in ways that encourage internal variation within their craft. Through case studies on illnesses and a new family tradition, I show that Nuosu inhabit a hybrid world that features cosmological proliferation, to which the creativity of divination responds.

“Eternity roll’d wide apart”: The Creation of the World and Man in William Blake’s The [First] Book of Urizen in Light of Emanuel Swedenborg’s The Last Judgment

Beginnings are usually regarded as either hard or energizing times that set our inner world in motion. However, there is a beginning that is more important for humanity than any other: the origin of human life and of the world. The knowledge of our origin and the mystery concerning the beginning of the world have been the most intriguing and most engaging issues since man became aware of their own physical and spiritual existence. For many centuries, it was the duty of religion to provide humanity with a teaching about their origin and the foundation of human dignity. However, the 18th and 19th centuries were critical in the treatment of the biblical creation stories in Europe. The debate between misinterpreted creation myth accounts and scientific theories led to a sharpening confrontation between religion and science, but it also divided the believers and resulted in the birth of new theories. Emanuel Swedenborg, an influential theologist of the period, wrote detailed commentaries and genuine tractates related to the topic that influenced the ideology and art of William Blake, a versatile and ingenious artist and thinker of the era, whose influence is still significant today. The aim of this study is to highlight the parallels and contrasts between Blake’s Genesis myth and Swedenborg’s teachings, mainly through the unusual pairing of The [First] Book of Urizen and The Last Judgment, to show the connection between Swedenborg’s unorthodox views and Blake’s ideas about the creation of man and the world.