Maslow Redux:

Integrating the Colonial and the Indigenous. . .

Dear Sisters and Friends,

I only recently began thinking of myself as colonial, but of course I am.

I am a direct descendant of English, Irish, Norwegian and Dutch people. My great-great-great-great (about 12 generations) was Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch colonial administrator who served as the director-general of New Netherland from 1647 to 1664 and was a major figure in the history of New York.

Doughty, Durand & Cole

Long before Henry Hudson “discovered” the Hudson Valley north of New York City where I live, the Mohican and Munsee Native American tribes, who had lived here for thousands of years, were living a rich life in the territory I now call home. The Munsee were also the tribe that famously sold Manhattan to Peter Stuyvesant in 1626.

I am finding myself thinking often these days about our need now to merge the colonial with the indigenous, sometimes referred to as “Two-Eyed Seeing” a concept rooted in Indigenous knowledge, particularly from the Mi'kmaq people of Eastern Canada. Two-eyed seeing refers to the practice of integrating and valuing both Indigenous ways of knowing and Western scientific perspectives to gain a deeper, more holistic understanding of the world.

I have lived in the Hudson Valley for about 30 years and have alway appreciated this famous and portentous Hudson River School painting above. Did the Native youth have any sense of what was about to occur? What would it have been like if the colonists and the tribes collaborated instead of the genocide that unfolded? There were so many opportunities to collaborate and learn from each other, and of course that did occur, but ultimately white people (mostly) got violent and dominating.

Maslow (and I will get to him shortly) talks about how mean the white people were who lived next to the Blackfoot reservation where he was doing his research in the late 1930’s.

Reading this recently started me reflecting (again) who were these white Europeans rounding the bend on the river. Who were we? Who am I? Are we still those people?

I decided to ask this question to ChatGpt. I asked “why did the colonists who arrived on Turtle Island (the Native American name for the North American continent) often behave in mean-spirited and dominating ways?” Here is the answer I got. (Italics are mine).

1. Doctrine of Discovery and Religious Justification

European colonization was underpinned by the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal and religious framework developed by the Catholic Church and European monarchies. It held that Christian nations had a divine right to claim lands inhabited by non-Christians. This ideology dehumanized Indigenous peoples and justified conquest. (The Doctrine of Discovery is still law in the United States.)

2. Capitalism and Resource Extraction

Colonists were often seeking wealth—through land, fur, gold, or other resources. Many colonies were founded as business ventures (e.g., the Virginia Company). Indigenous people and their lands were seen as obstacles to be cleared or exploited for profit.

3. White Supremacy and Cultural Superiority

European colonizers generally believed they were culturally and racially superior. They viewed Indigenous ways of life as "savage" or inferior, which they used to justify forced conversions, land theft, and violent assimilation policies.

4. Military Conquest and Land Hunger

European nations were in fierce competition for global dominance. Colonists came armed, often with military backing, and quickly resorted to violence if Indigenous peoples resisted displacement. Settler expansion was relentless, driven by the desire for land and resources. (Gaza come to mind?)

5. Settler Colonialism vs. Extractive Colonialism

Unlike some colonial ventures that were temporary or extractive (like taking gold or resources to send back to Europe), settler colonialism aimed to permanently replace Indigenous populations. This meant eliminating or assimilating Indigenous peoples was considered necessary for the success of the colony.

In short, colonists brought with them an imperial mindset—a mix of entitlement, greed, and racial-religious supremacy—that fueled domination and justified cruelty.

Yikes. I am ambivalent about AI but, in its present form, it is so often amazingly accurate.

In my decades of teaching negotiation or facilitating conflict, I have often used the work of Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, widely known for this hierarchy of need model to talk about needs/interests in negotiation and conflict. I have done this also on this blog, see “My Daily Practice”, (one of my first Substack posts, October 19, 2023), where I describe Maslow’s model and how I use it in my daily journaling practice to make sure I am taking good care of myself and not asking others (men) to do it for me like the good codependent woman I was so trained to be.

I learn a lot from writing – these blogs, my upcoming book Collaborative Hardball: Using the Power of a New Negotiation as Women to Change the World (in bookstores in the Fall!). For example, I was not aware of the Indigenous influence on Maslow until just recently and it has changed me.

Science and traditional knowledge ask different questions, but they can converge in a beautiful way — like tributaries coming together to form a river. Western science excels at the ‘how,’ while indigenous knowledge deepens the ‘why.’ When we bring them together, we get a more complete understanding of the world.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist, author, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

Maslow visited the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in Alberta, Canada, in the late 1930s and was deeply influenced by their community values, child-rearing practices, and spiritual worldview, which contrasted with the Western emphasis on individualism and competition. While Maslow’s popular pyramid places self-actualization at the top, Blackfoot teachings emphasize community actualization and interconnectedness as the pinnacle. The Blackfoot philosophy sees all life as interconnected, values humility, and promotes sustainability, reciprocity, and harmony with nature. Success is not individualistic but communal and spiritual. See https://gatherfor.org/blog/blackfoot-influence-on-maslow.

Indigenous people had so many things right when colonists first encountered them, and now have so much to teach our society about how to move beyond our global train wreck toward a more hopeful future.

“The best measure of a good outcome in negotiation” I wrote in my 10/23 blog, “is whether we have maximized needs satisfaction for all concerned. Pleasure is created by satisfied needs, conflict is created by frustrated ones. It’s that simple. This is true whether it’s about us individually, or large geopolitical conflicts like some of the horrors we are witnessing now on our planet. Humans are needs satisfying creatures and when our needs are not met, we will do what it takes to satisfy them if we can. Some people, because of income level, gender, skin color, etc. have a lot more capacity to get their needs met than others, even though all of us have every category of need. . .”

I still stand by this statement and still very much appreciate Maslow’s articulation of human need. I have seen the eureka on so many faces from folks all around the world when they realize that humans all have the same needs, just how we go about satisfying them is determined by culture.

But in reading now about Maslow’s interactions with the Blackfoot, I realize how individualistic Maslow’s model is in spite of the articulation of the human need to belong, and perhaps what he called “transcendence” and I have rephrased as gaia.

The Blackfoot had (have) the explicit focus on the “we” — something society so urgently needs more of right now.

As I quoted Paul Hawken in my post a few weeks ago “Homage to Gaia” (referring to the need for food) “According to Mohawk, these cultures were not based on money, and food was never sold. Mohawk described a culture where “everything that ever happens to you is watched. When you’re small, if you don’t thrive, they notice. If they feed you something and you don’t thrive, they notice. If they feed you something else and you do thrive, they notice. Every possibility they have at their fingertips can be tried; they are motivated to watch and see which foods help people the most. Not which foods help people make money, but which foods have the best biological impact, especially on young and old people.”

The tribe as a whole made sure your needs were met.

It’s time for a deeper integration of Indigenous knowledge systems into mainstream thinking – a convergence of the colonial with the indigenous and vice versa.

We need both the I, and the We.

Reflection questions

What is a belief you have had that you now no longer hold? How has it changed your experience of the world?

Imagine the convergence of the Western/colonial with the indigenous worldviews, or vice versa. What do you see, smell, taste, touch, hear?

What does Indigenous wisdom have to teach about what it means to bring the feminine to home, work and world, and how to negotiate and resolve conflict?

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