The story of my year begins and ends in Manhattan, my personal mecca for international visas. On 7th avenue, in the center of the blaring sirens of this industrial wilderness, there is an ashram. It is where I stay to keep my peace, and enjoy a community practice of Kirtan.
The practice of Kirtan is simple to speak, but it’s incredibly beautiful to be within. To practice Kirtan is to enjoy and respect how all people, things, and objects show up to the practice. Hold the space with love and care, and you will yourself be upheld by that space.
I have been a traveler on Earth, and this year was my first time returning to America in quite some time. It brought a lot of reflection, and a lot of memories.
My entire life, I have been walking in two worlds, as natives call it. There’s the world we come from: tribal elders with trickster humor, our rituals and our respect for the land that we live on, because we know that we are the land. I made it back to a Gathering of Nations where we hold direct communication on issues with the US Government, and to my first powwow since the pandemic. It was incredibly healing to be surrounded by regalia again, and to get to see not pride in the eyes of those dancing, but the respect they hold for their sacred role as knowledge keepers. To see my culture lived, vibrant and beautiful.
I really, really love a good powwow. Stadium or backyard, it don’t matter to me. But I swear, if you ever get the chance to go to one I want you to watch the dancers, then I want you to watch the grass under their feet. I swear, and I really do believe this, I have seen tall grass dance to the beat of that big drum. That is my world.
Then there is the world that many of you only know, the one that built the black roads that streak across the sacred plains and streaks white lines across our skies. Most natives walk into that world when they get their education, and they take it back home. I was not one of them, I became a person of that big world, and I found myself somehow in a seaside town in the United Kingdom. It’s where I’ll have permanent residence for the rest of my life.
But my morality, and my worldview, that comes from the elders who raised me.
I’ll give you the best advise I ever got in life. It was a few years ago, after a cybersecurity overview to a few local tribal leaders to brief a ransomware attack on Indian Healthcare Services. One of the elders, the upside down smile type where you can never tell what they are really thinking, he followed me outside to thank me, then he yelled this across a parking lot, as if it was the most important thing he could ever tell me, and to this day, I think it probably was. He simply said this:
“Remember, that wherever you are, wherever you go in life, when you are representing us, you’ve got nothing to give but gratitude.”
Those exact words, they changed my life. Those words taught me to look for gratitude in everything I do, and I design my career around the people and places that give people a reason to show up knowing they’ll be recognized for their hard work. It’s a thing I think we’ve lost in Open Source.
Gratitude can come in language and in action, and even animals practice it. When I see it practiced it looks a lot like just taking care of things, and those who inhabit those things. It starts to look a lot like Kirtan.
I believe that it is with very deep intention that we call people who mold, create and ideate in open source our “maintainers”.
I think it’s always so strange to think of open source as this business practice.
Equally strange to see it as a philosophy.
It’s gratitude and care for the things we’ve built together.
It looks like taking care of things.
It looks like taking care of eachother.
I chose to work in Open Source because this work lets me show up in a way that will make my elders proud. These are the years of my life where I will learn the lessons that I’ll be sharing when I become an elder.
I am incredibly lucky to have lived in the same lifetime as Wilma Mankiller, she was the best chief we’ve ever had. I am lucky to have her example, but I’m even luckier to have had the elders who helped me in my life. My tribe is in Oklahoma, and my university is in California. I pretty much lived at my school’s Intertribal Resource Center (shout out to UCSD ITRC, love ya'll and I’ll be back to talk about cybersecurity and sovereignty soon I promise). I met a few elders who really made me who I am today from that part of the world, and I got to see all of them at the gathering of nations this year, and to give them the deepest gratitude I’ve ever felt: gratitude for helping me to become the person I am. Gratitude for showing me what integrity, wisdom and community values really look like when it’s done right.
For the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m not walking in two worlds anymore.
I am becoming an elder, and I’m moving in the world as someone who might become a C suite executive or the Chief of my tribal nation. I genuinely live a life in which both are possibilities, if I ever see myself back in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised how very different we are from the standard culture that surrounds us, particularly from the priorities of those who live to climb the career ladder. I simply move in a way where I feel that my work is doing the most human good possible, with the time that I have on Earth. I am a technical expert, but I know that on the most important days of my life, I’ll be evaluated for the way that I treated the world and the people around me.
I work with OurWorlds to see culture and story and language stay strong. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve gotten done in the last three years, and if you find yourself in San Diego, go to the public library and check out our latest instalment of native language revitalisation through virtual reality. It was so moving to see the words and to hear the young speakers keeping their language, and the valuable worldview it will provide them. This year alone, my nation rang a bell 70 times for every language speaker we lost. 60 from Western Band, and 10 from Eastern band. I do this work to honor them.
The evolution from child to elder is something unique. In the general culture you simply call it “growing up” but that’s really not it. I think it’s a different thing. It’s choosing to live in a way that brings together the world of those before us, so that we can create a better future for those to come.
It is a very different type of leader than the corporate world creates, but I think it creates a clear headed decision maker. The kind of leader that thinks through consequences, asks for advice, and considers negative externalities before a lawyer would.
That’s my journey. One I’ll be on for the rest of my life.
Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of this wonderful journey.
If you’d like to know how we say thank you, here it is:
Wado.
See you at the next powwow.
The practice of Kirtan is simple to speak, but it’s incredibly beautiful to be within. To practice Kirtan is to enjoy and respect how all people, things, and objects show up to the practice. Hold the space with love and care, and you will yourself be upheld by that space.
I have been a traveler on Earth, and this year was my first time returning to America in quite some time. It brought a lot of reflection, and a lot of memories.
My entire life, I have been walking in two worlds, as natives call it. There’s the world we come from: tribal elders with trickster humor, our rituals and our respect for the land that we live on, because we know that we are the land. I made it back to a Gathering of Nations where we hold direct communication on issues with the US Government, and to my first powwow since the pandemic. It was incredibly healing to be surrounded by regalia again, and to get to see not pride in the eyes of those dancing, but the respect they hold for their sacred role as knowledge keepers. To see my culture lived, vibrant and beautiful.
I really, really love a good powwow. Stadium or backyard, it don’t matter to me. But I swear, if you ever get the chance to go to one I want you to watch the dancers, then I want you to watch the grass under their feet. I swear, and I really do believe this, I have seen tall grass dance to the beat of that big drum. That is my world.
Then there is the world that many of you only know, the one that built the black roads that streak across the sacred plains and streaks white lines across our skies. Most natives walk into that world when they get their education, and they take it back home. I was not one of them, I became a person of that big world, and I found myself somehow in a seaside town in the United Kingdom. It’s where I’ll have permanent residence for the rest of my life.
But my morality, and my worldview, that comes from the elders who raised me.
I’ll give you the best advise I ever got in life. It was a few years ago, after a cybersecurity overview to a few local tribal leaders to brief a ransomware attack on Indian Healthcare Services. One of the elders, the upside down smile type where you can never tell what they are really thinking, he followed me outside to thank me, then he yelled this across a parking lot, as if it was the most important thing he could ever tell me, and to this day, I think it probably was. He simply said this:
“Remember, that wherever you are, wherever you go in life, when you are representing us, you’ve got nothing to give but gratitude.”
Those exact words, they changed my life. Those words taught me to look for gratitude in everything I do, and I design my career around the people and places that give people a reason to show up knowing they’ll be recognized for their hard work. It’s a thing I think we’ve lost in Open Source.
Gratitude can come in language and in action, and even animals practice it. When I see it practiced it looks a lot like just taking care of things, and those who inhabit those things. It starts to look a lot like Kirtan.
I believe that it is with very deep intention that we call people who mold, create and ideate in open source our “maintainers”.
I think it’s always so strange to think of open source as this business practice.
Equally strange to see it as a philosophy.
It’s gratitude and care for the things we’ve built together.
It looks like taking care of things.
It looks like taking care of eachother.
I chose to work in Open Source because this work lets me show up in a way that will make my elders proud. These are the years of my life where I will learn the lessons that I’ll be sharing when I become an elder.
I am incredibly lucky to have lived in the same lifetime as Wilma Mankiller, she was the best chief we’ve ever had. I am lucky to have her example, but I’m even luckier to have had the elders who helped me in my life. My tribe is in Oklahoma, and my university is in California. I pretty much lived at my school’s Intertribal Resource Center (shout out to UCSD ITRC, love ya'll and I’ll be back to talk about cybersecurity and sovereignty soon I promise). I met a few elders who really made me who I am today from that part of the world, and I got to see all of them at the gathering of nations this year, and to give them the deepest gratitude I’ve ever felt: gratitude for helping me to become the person I am. Gratitude for showing me what integrity, wisdom and community values really look like when it’s done right.
For the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m not walking in two worlds anymore.
I am becoming an elder, and I’m moving in the world as someone who might become a C suite executive or the Chief of my tribal nation. I genuinely live a life in which both are possibilities, if I ever see myself back in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised how very different we are from the standard culture that surrounds us, particularly from the priorities of those who live to climb the career ladder. I simply move in a way where I feel that my work is doing the most human good possible, with the time that I have on Earth. I am a technical expert, but I know that on the most important days of my life, I’ll be evaluated for the way that I treated the world and the people around me.
I work with OurWorlds to see culture and story and language stay strong. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve gotten done in the last three years, and if you find yourself in San Diego, go to the public library and check out our latest instalment of native language revitalisation through virtual reality. It was so moving to see the words and to hear the young speakers keeping their language, and the valuable worldview it will provide them. This year alone, my nation rang a bell 70 times for every language speaker we lost. 60 from Western Band, and 10 from Eastern band. I do this work to honor them.
The evolution from child to elder is something unique. In the general culture you simply call it “growing up” but that’s really not it. I think it’s a different thing. It’s choosing to live in a way that brings together the world of those before us, so that we can create a better future for those to come.
It is a very different type of leader than the corporate world creates, but I think it creates a clear headed decision maker. The kind of leader that thinks through consequences, asks for advice, and considers negative externalities before a lawyer would.
That’s my journey. One I’ll be on for the rest of my life.
Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of this wonderful journey.
If you’d like to know how we say thank you, here it is:
Wado.
See you at the next powwow.