This is a ceremony that was performed the day before the prime minister of Australia made an official apology to the Aboriginal people for past wrongs.  I'm so moved by the power of the sounds and images of this video, as if it enacting something deep within me: the wild human entering the world we have come to know as normal and dancing his clear-eyed vision there.  The so-called “modern” ones are left with an unsettling awareness of how alien they have become from their heritage as members of the Earth community.  The indigenous ones place their deep witnessing in the halls of power, like a piece of fact in the middle of a myth, like when they say at the end of a story, “And that’s why rabbits have short tails.”  Their dance brings reality to the fable of foreign invasion and domination.   

In recent weeks I find myself again uneasy about the escalated tensions with Iran, my motherland.  For the moment, the one sane thought I can manage is that someday, an apology, a healing dance, a face-to-face awareness will come to pass.  No one will hide from the past wrongs that were committed from weak parts of our collective psyche.  The wild indigenous wisdom of the Iranian land will rise up and sing out loudly in the middle of that evil eye that was cast, dissolving the poison, like an island being covered by water.  The water that flows is the recognition of our commonality and need of each other to be whole.