Host + Podcast:
The podcast “The Critical Social Worker: A Revolutionary Storytelling Podcast” hosted its 42nd episode on February 11th. The host of the podcast Christian Settler had a guest speaker named Ilarion Merculieff. The title of this episode is called “Heart Wisdom and Talking Circles: A Dialogue with Ilarion Merculieff.” This podcast uses diverse experiences, stories and perspectives to create change and understanding within ourselves and the world. Christian Settler Is a professor among other roles that works at University of Alaska in the Social Work field. This podcast can be found on multiple sites including: Spotify, Apple, Podbean and YouTube. The link for this episode is provide down below:
The Critical Social Worker: A Revolutionary Storytelling Podcast Episode 42
Guest Speaker:
Ilarion Merculieff, the guest speaker in this episode, is a Unangan Elder known for his advocacy for indigenous rights and the environment. Merculieff grew up on St Paul Island receiving traditional Unangan education contributing to his view of the world and approach to life. Merculieff stated in the beginning of the episode that the meaning of Unangan is translated to people by the sea. Unangans use this name to refer to themselves instead of the name given to them by their former oppressor as it is their original and meaningful name. Merculieff has worked with people from all walks of life working towards his goals listed above. He uses talking circles in all of his work to create meaningful conversations that lead to change and open dialogue. In talking circles, he says we have to listen without agenda in order to receive the message even if you don’t agree with what they are saying.
Heart VS Mind
While listening to this podcast Merculieff spread the message on how to lead a different life and make peace with not only yourself but with the world around us. From making small decisions to making huge steps forward most people lead with their mind instead of their hearts. The mind is logical and rational while our minds are pure and all knowing. Merculieff gave an outstanding powerful definition of being a real human being: “being present in the moment and the heart.” The heart is present while the mind is always in the past. He states that the mind’s job is to implement what the heart is telling you but people at this point in time have reversed the order. Merculieff made the point that we have to retrain our brains to let our heart lead us instead of our minds. We have to live in our hearts’ wisdom. Merculieff also stated that thinking with the mind causes conflict and war while leading with our hearts never guides us wrong. He also said that it is critical to change consciousness in order for us to survive. “This change of consciousness will create a vibrational feel around the mother earth which will be one of love”, I interpreted this quote as saying when changing from mind to heart we become one with mother earth and we can create/become love and peace. He also lets us know that mother nature will survive no matter what but we as humans are getting to the end of our time if action is not taken as the mind is sabotaging us. He told a story about his upbringing, where he starts training and acting like seabirds at the age of six by not thinking. It took him a couple of months but in the end, he got to his goal. So, he started to apply what he learned from the sea bird to his hunting. He said in that shift he could feel the sea lion before it came up from the water. He could also feel with the halibut what size, gender and how it was going to struggle. This is just one example of how important and powerful leading with the heart can be.
Applying this to Our Lives:
This message of leading and shifting to the heart is very powerful as it reminds all of us that we need to unite and become one not only with mother earth but with each other in order to make a difference for peace and the earth. In doing so we can make great change and action that will make impacts that can be seen for years to come. Some of us are on our way to becoming social workers and this idea is so important as we have the power to make huge changes in people’s lives but in order to do that, we need to have certain skills and knowledge. But if we can shift to the heart, we will be able to make more of an impact as our decisions will be full of empathy, compassion, love and knowledge. Another amazing quote that was said by Merculieff: “Focus on the world you want to see and not the violence and things that have done to me”. To me this quote is telling me to step outside of myself and focus on what change I want in the world in order to achieve it. Which is very important for social work as we have to all step outside of ourselves each time we are working. Merculieff teaching of the heart’s wisdom is important not only to our work but also to us in our personal lives as said before the heart is never wrong. Stepping forward we need to learn how to apply this teaching in order to be the best versions of ourselves. As revolutionary social work is all about constant self-review and working towards our best versions of ourselves by questioning our thoughts and actions and this should be one of our first steps. There was so much more that was mentioned in the podcast, so I would recommend listening to it but if there is one takeaway is that stepping outside of western teachings into this Indigenous knowledge is one of the best things we can do in order to start anew.
