The Matthiessen Talks: Bridging the Worlds of Spirit, Art and Activism

The unsettling nature of current geopolitical events are troubling for many Americans these days, for any number of legitimate reasons. Tariff wars, real wars, genocide, cuts to social programs, inflation, warrantless ICE arrests, degradation of the environment, natural disaster victims in limbo, trashed 401Ks and the high price of groceries, to name just a few.

While uncertainty in the stability of one’s very existence is certainly cause for alarm, there are Americans among us who know a great deal about surviving troubled times — Indigenous populations who have endured centuries of injury and injustice imposed upon them by newcomers to this land who brought with them values and customs very counter to their own.

But if we pause and listen, there’s a lot that today’s citizenry can learn from Native Americans who have been there before and have fought to maintain their way of life in the face of repeated attempts to eradicate it. This Saturday, May 31, three of them will come to The Church in Sag Harbor to share their views and advice in a 2 p.m. panel discussion.

Titled “Bridging the Worlds of Spirit, Art & Activism,“ the panel will include Shane “Bizhiki Nibauit” Weeks, a cultural educator and artist from the Shinnecock Nation; Chief Oren Lyons, a Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan who serves as a Member Chief of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy (he is also an All-American Lacrosse Hall of Famer and Honorary Chairman of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Team); and his son, Rex Lyons, an Onondaga Nation Citizen, Eel Clan, a former world-class lacrosse player himself and coach with the Haudenosaunee Nationals and Rochester Knighthawks.

This event is the first of The Matthiessen Talks, a series inspired by the legacy of the late Sagaponack resident Peter Matthiessen — author, explorer, naturalist and Zen Roshi — whose books include “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” (1983), “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” (1965), “Indian Country” (1984), “The Snow Leopard” (1978) and “Men’s Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South Fork” (1986), among others.

The goal of the talks is to bring together voices that echo the author’s devotion to the natural world, as well as his deep respect for Indigenous cultures and his spiritual belief that healing the planet begins with healing oneself. These principles are rooted in the ongoing work of the Peter Matthiessen Center (PMC), which was created in 2019 by the author’s son, Alex Matthiessen, who now serves as the organization’s president, with help from others.

When asked during an interview about the focus of his talk on Saturday, Weeks said, “I’m going to talk about our traditional understanding of how humanity fits into creation. In our teachings, there are many times where our people forgot the original instructions that were laid out by the creator.

“Things go awry in our community — and the story of Turtle Island stems from that — our people forgot their ways,” said Weeks, referring to an Indigenous creation myth that refers to North America as “Turtle Island,” a land formed on the back of a turtle. It’s believed that when Native Americans stray too far from their ideal path, the creator sends a sign down to Earth to get them back on track.

“I’ll speak on that and our understanding of the natural law of this Earth,” he added. “How no matter how many manmade laws are in place, you can’t go against that natural law that’s been in place since humans have been on this Earth.”

Weeks adds that one of the biggest issues he sees right now is the mistreatment of the environment, “What we would call our other relatives — the animals, plants, waters. We understand we’re related to all of those things. To watch that with the lens of understanding that it’s going to affect us and how it’s not recognized or realized, it’s like cutting out your stomach or lungs.

“The prophesies say that we’re in a time now, if we don’t make the right decision as people, it will not work out in our favor.”

The ways of Indigenous populations was something that Peter Matthiessen was keenly in tune with, whether here on the East End or halfway around the world. For more than 50 years, the author lived on a six-acre parcel on Sagg Main Street in Sagaponack where he operated his Ocean Zendo meditation hall. After his death in 2014 at age 86, Alex Matthiessen was named executor of his father’s estate.

“There were taxes to pay, we had to liquidate some of his property,” Matthiessen said. “For a minute, I thought I would try to save this place and see if I can raise money to start an environmental and spiritual writers’ retreat at the property where he lived for 55 years.

“He wrote almost all his books there, and actively started his Zendo there in 1980,” he added. “So it was not just personally important, but it was important to the East End.”

But the proposition of saving the property and operating a writers retreat, while also maintaining his own professional life, proved daunting for Matthiessen. “I dropped the idea, sold the land and paid off the IRS,” he said. “It had never occurred to me that I wasn’t gonna be able to return to my childhood home on weekends for the rest of my life.”

Five years later, a couple of Zen students approached Matthiessen and said they noticed that nothing had been done with the property since it was sold — the roof was collapsing, with rain and snow getting in.

“They said, ‘if no one is doing anything with it, let’s buy it back for an environmental writers’ retreat,’” Matthiessen recalled. “Coincidentally, I had thought of the same thing by myself, but with a whole team, I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We started the PMC around 2019.”

The owner of the property agreed to sell it back and Southampton Town Community Preservation Funds were pursued to pay for the purchase. After three years, funding was in place, but at the last minute, the seller changed his mind and pulled out of the deal.

“We were very disappointed and started looking at other properties. Then we came up with the idea of The Peter Matthiessen Literary Prize,” Matthiessen said. “We wanted to create a prize, not only for environmental writing, but also social activism, Zen thought and philosophy.

“But it was not a typical literary prize with an award, a press release and then dinner and done,” he added. “We wanted [writers] to spend the next year promoting the ideas they were writing about — going to libraries, national organizations, engaging the media — to elevate it to something more powerful and enduring. We’re still going to do it, but we got feedback and some couldn’t quite commit yet, so we put this on pause.”

In the meantime, the PMC has hosted events at nonprofits across the East End in recent years, including Guild Hall, the Southampton Arts Center, the Parrish Art Museum, Sag Harbor Cinema, and now, at The Church for the first of The Matthiessen Talks. The goal of this new series is to create a dialogue between leading thinkers in realms that reflect Peter Matthiessen’s passion for the environment, social activism, Indigenous rights, spiritualism and writing.

Matthiessen felt that the ideal person to launch the series this weekend was Chief Oren Lyons, who had been a friend of his father’s many years ago.

“I called Oren — we had never met or maybe we did when I was little — and lucky for us, he agreed to participate,” Matthiessen said. “You’ve got this leading Native American thinker, lacrosse player and speaker in the country — and Rex is also a terrific speaker and lacrosse player — teaming up with [Weeks] our own young leader,” he said. “Not to lean too hard on Native Americans when we’re the ones f-ing everything up, but they’ll share their wisdom. They’ve seen the white man doing stupid shit for centuries, but nothing as serious and existentially threatening as right now.

“We’re looking for them to engage in dialogue with us and tell us how they see the world, in an nutshell,” Matthiessen added.

“It’s not good at all,” Oren Lyons said bluntly during a recent Zoom interview. “Everywhere you look, Trump has turned everything upside down. I don’t know his intention, but he’s very destructive for everything America used to stand for and is attacking it. The Native Americans, we have to prepare to defend ourselves before he turns his attention directly to us. All the environmental concerns are gone to the side. You’re in a political crisis now.

“You can’t talk about spirituality when the ship is going down. We’re heading for the life boats.”

It’s certainly a bleak assessment, but nothing Oren Lyons, 94, and his people haven’t witnessed before.

“For Native people, we’ve all been in a similar crisis since you guys got here,” he said. “The political crisis is real. You can’t stand still. You have to get energized right away. You have to stand and fight, you have to deal with it.”

Rex Lyons echoes his father’s sentiments and expounds on them: “The common denominator is money,” he said. “These people are willing to deal with collateral damage in order to keep their own wealth. They’re gonna bleed out too. There’s no escaping it.”

Though the situation is dire, Rex Lyons believes that lacrosse, a game that had its origins in the Indigenous communities of North America as early as the 12th century, is a way to build community through positivity. Oren Lyons, who was a highly recognized lacrosse player at Syracuse University in the 1950s, is the founder of the Haudenosaunee lacrosse team, for which Rex Lyons played in 1983 and later coached.

“In July, we’ve been asked to go to Wounded Knee to give a lacrosse tournament,” Rex Lyons said. “The world of lacrosse comes from a kind of humanitarian perspective. It’s the creator’s game and a way to bring people together in a time of polarization. I see this as a real tool to get people’s minds right.

“This medicine lacrosse I talk about has great strength to bring people together,” he said. “In this conversation, people are feeling helpless, and through spiritual strength, it’s the only way it changes. You show up, stand up at the front line. You gain that spiritual strength.”

“My dad was a very long champion of Indigenous causes here in the U.S. and worldwide,” Matthiessen added. “He even wrote about our native Bonackers whose families had been here for centuries — subsistence farmers and fishermen living hand to mouth. He was sensitive to environmental degradation and the plights of Indigenous people who have relied on and treated the resources with respect and care, with an eye toward responsibility.”

Many of Matthiessen’s books evoke the theme of protecting the people who respect the Earth. It was a central construct for the author throughout his life.

“I think I can say, Rex and Oren, that my dad was pretty well respected in the Native American community,” Matthiessen said.

“He was looked up to as a true ally in the fight for survival and he understood the spiritual side of the battle, which is foundational,” said Oren Lyons. “We’re in a profound spiritual battle and it’s been going on for some time and your father understood it. That’s how we’ve survived these 500 years on our side of this hemisphere, most of the relations we had was a person-to-person relation — that was the value — our relationship was between each other and nature.

“The value with the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria was gold,” he added. “The conversation was difficult because it was on two different levels that never met and still have not today. The value of our relationships was with one another, not gold.”

“I think it’s always important to end in hope, strength and unity with the heart and mind together,” added Rex Lyons. “You can’t defeat that. Use your good mind and heart and we’ll push back the dark forces.”

“The Matthiessen Talks: Bridging the Worlds of Spirit, Art & Activism” will take place Saturday, May 31, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 ($15 members) at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.