Do The "Ends Justify The Means"?
I was asked this question recently and after much research I am able to come up with an anwser. Life is about the journey not the destination. If we loose our morals along the way for the ends, then we have become what we do not want as Indigenous peoples. It is because of these morals, principles, and values that make us Salish, Kwakwaka'wakw or Nu-Chan-Nulth. We have already been roped, and raped of many of our values that were deeply woven into our lifestyles, what little we do have left we cannot bargan or trade off for more materialistic wealth. Ownership is not worth more then our real power, which is our way of life.
Realizing this has also insighted me in how our current leaders think, act and work. They figure they can bargan our values to create benifits for the people. I guess this is what our anscestors thought our leaders of the future would be like. By trading, very little of what we have (our values, morals and principles), we can get benifits. But it will never be worth it.
Posted elsewhere, but relevent here:
Alan Watts has some thinking about this. He says that if musicians and dancers did their thing like people in business did their thing, i.e. only aiming at results, then things would get absurd quite fast. Imagine�there would be composers who only wrote finales, or better still, final chords. Or dancers who simply came on stage and assumed the final position of the ballet, and there would be rousing applause for the excellent and perfect results.
Nope�life is all about the journey, and this work is about the stuff that happens between point A and point Z. And living that life well, and serving groups of people well, truly is an art.