A Different Way of Seeing
Many of us move through the modern world with a persistent feeling of being disconnected—from each other, from the natural world, and even from ourselves. We’re taught to navigate a landscape of constant competition, to manage our fears, and to climb ladders of achievement, often leaving us feeling stressed and fundamentally unfulfilled.
These foundational beliefs about how the world works feel like universal truths, but they largely stem from a single, dominant worldview. For millennia, however, other, more ancient perspectives have offered a radically different map for navigating life. Indigenous worldviews, rooted in a deep, reciprocal relationship with the Earth, provide a set of operating principles that are not only more balanced but can feel startlingly counter-intuitive to a modern mind.
This article explores four powerful principles from these worldviews that challenge everything we think we know about the power of our words, the purpose of fear, the laws of nature, and the very nature of our own potential. They offer a profound opportunity to unlearn what feels normal and rediscover a more connected way of being.
Fearlessness is a sense of trusting the universe that moves beyond courage, where you don’t need that emotion of courage to keep pushing yourself to take a stand
1. Your Words Have Real, Physical Power (More Than You Think)
In the dominant worldview, words are often seen as tools for description, persuasion, or control. We use them to label our reality. From an Indigenous perspective, words are far more fundamental: they are sacred, powerful vibrations that create reality. They are understood to be mankind’s most potent drug, capable of shaping physical outcomes.
This principle is powerfully illustrated by the phenomenon of “spontaneous hypnosis.” During times of extreme stress, a person becomes hyper-suggestible to the language of a perceived authority figure. Four Arrows, an author and scholar, recalls learning about this as an EMT. He shares the story of a paramedic arriving at the scene of a multiple-car accident. A woman was bleeding from several wounds. The paramedic, acting as a calm authority, put his thumb on her forehead to get her attention and said with confidence, “Listen to me. You are OK. Stop that bleeding now.” The woman’s bleeding stopped. Later, when a bystander shouted a panicked warning, the patient’s fear returned and her bleeding began again. The paramedic repeated his directive, and once again, the bleeding ceased. His words, delivered with authority in a moment of crisis, directly influenced her autonomic nervous system.
The same hypnotic power exists in our own self-talk. One executive suffered from profuse sweating before every business meeting. When asked what he said to himself beforehand, he replied, “I look at my watch and I say, ‘I have to be on time.'” The simple shift in his internal script from “I have to be on time” to “I want to be on time” removed the stress and eliminated the problem. A single word change de-hypnotized him from a state of anxiety.
“Words were originally magic and to this day words have retained much of their ancient magical power.”
This principle invites us to become more mindful and truthful with our language. The words we speak to others and to ourselves are not empty descriptors; they are creative forces shaping the world in real time.
2. Fear Is Not Your Enemy; It’s Your Teacher
Modern culture teaches us to treat fear as a signal to fight, flee, suppress, or deny. It is an enemy to be conquered or avoided. The Indigenous perspective offers a radical reframe: fear is a teacher. Once the immediate fight-or-flight response passes, fear becomes a catalyst—an opportunity to consciously practice a virtue like courage, generosity, patience, fortitude, or humility. The ultimate goal is not the absence of fear, but fearlessness—a deep and abiding trust in the universe.
Consider the story of a man afraid to jump from a 30-foot cliff into a deep river. On his first attempt, he mustered all his courage. He made the jump, and while the experience ended in relief, it was stressful. Relying on courage alone takes up energy; used over and over, it can lead to burnout. He was glad he did it but had no desire to ever do it again. This is where many of us stop.
Before his second jump, however, he received a different instruction: use courage to get to the edge, but the moment your feet leave the rock, let go of the emotion of courage and move into a trust in the universe. The difference was profound. Instead of a tense plunge, he experienced the jump in what felt like slow motion. He saw an eagle flying overhead and a salmon in the water below. He felt the air, the coolness of the water, the bubbles rising around him. The experience was no longer about conquering fear but about a rich, connected, and enthusiastic participation with life. By shifting from courage to trust, the experience transformed from a stressful trial into a moment of deep connection.
With Indigenous worldview, Fear (once the immediate fight or flight responses passes) is a catalyst, an opportunity to practice courage, generosity, patience, fortitude, humility, or honesty.
What would change if, the next time we felt fear, we stopped asking “How can I get rid of this feeling?” and instead asked, “What virtue is this fear inviting me to practice?”
3. Nature’s ‘Law’ Isn’t Cutthroat Competition, It’s Cooperation
We are often taught that the natural world operates on a “dog eat dog” principle. The phrase “survival of the fittest” is commonly used to justify a worldview based on ruthless competition and hierarchy, where domination is seen as the natural order of things.
This, however, is a fundamental misinterpretation, stemming more from neo-Darwinians than from Darwin himself. While Darwin wrote about competition, the source material asserts he came to believe that “survival of the fittest was more about cooperation, symbiosis and reciprocity than competition.” The natural world is not a ladder of domination; it is a web of relationships.
This is clearly visible in the social structure of wild horse herds. Observers first focused on a “dominant stallion,” then shifted their focus to a “dominant mare.” But the full story reveals a more complex and cooperative reality. The herd’s cohesion is maintained through a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” ethos of reciprocity and partnership, not through a simple top-down hierarchy.
This shift in perception is encoded in Indigenous languages, which often present a direct philosophical and political challenge to the core tenets of Western thought.
Living beings are referred to as subjects, never as objects, and personhood is extended to all who breathe and some who don’t. I greet the silent boulder people with the same respect as I do the talkative chickadees… The language we speak is an affront to the ears of the colonist in every way, because it is a language that challenges the fundamental tenets of Western thinking that humans alone are possessed of rights and all the rest of the living world exists for human use. Those whom my ancestors called relatives were renamed natural resources.” — Robin Kimmerer
Seeing the world as a community of relatives rather than a pyramid of resources changes everything. It suggests that cooperation, not competition, is the true law of nature—a law that could transform our own approach to our communities, our economies, and the planet itself.
4. You Weren’t Born to ‘Climb the Ladder’; You Were Born Whole
In Western psychology, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a foundational concept. It presents human development as a pyramid to be climbed, with “self-actualization” sitting at the very peak—a state of fulfillment one can only achieve after satisfying all lower needs. This model implies we are born with a deficit, striving to become whole.
In the summer of 1938, Maslow himself spent time with the Blackfoot Nation, hoping his observations would validate his budding theory. What he discovered, however, fundamentally challenged his entire premise.
Maslow learned that the Blackfoot people did not operate from a place of deficit. They did not strive to become self-actualized. Their worldview held that they were born self-actualized. Their primary goal in life was not to climb a ladder to achieve wholeness, but rather to maintain the wholeness they already possessed and to live out their unique purpose for the good of the community. This was not about fixing something that was broken, but about embodying a sacredness that was inherent from birth.
This discovery fundamentally challenged his hierarchical theory. Yet, in what could be called the “Maslow Syndrome,” he failed to integrate this profound wisdom into his famous pyramid, essentially dismissing it due to the anti-Indian hegemony of the era. It stands as a powerful example of how the dominant culture can encounter transformative truths and still choose to ignore them.
This principle is profoundly empowering. What if personal growth is not about a relentless climb out of inadequacy? What if it is about remembering, reclaiming, and expressing the complete and powerful self you already are?
Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Original Wisdom
These four principles—that words create reality, fear is a teacher, nature is cooperative, and we are born whole—are more than just interesting ideas. They are guideposts from a unified kinship worldview that sustained human beings in relative balance for most of our history. They remind us that the dominant, competition-based worldview is just one story, and it may not be the one that serves us or our planet best.
By challenging our most basic assumptions, this ancestral wisdom invites us to reclaim a more connected and meaningful way of living. It offers a path back to balance, not by adopting a new set of beliefs, but by remembering a very old one rooted in kinship with “all our relations.”
If your deepest instincts are wiser than you’ve been taught, which of these truths are they calling you to listen to first?