Meditations on the Fourth World

Meditations on the Fourth World
https://fourthworldchronicle.com/?s=fourth+world

Why name an indigenous media network Fourth World? At Fourth World Communications, there are two reasons; the political and the spiritual. Social scientists divide the world into categories; First World, Second World and Third World. Scholars recently coined new terms; developed and developing countries or the Global North and Global South. The new terms are seen as more inclusive, but still exclude hundreds of millions of people; indigenous peoples. Thus, the term Fourth World originated.

Center for World Indigenous Studies
According to the Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS), the political term Fourth World began to be widely used after the publication of the late Shuswap Chief George Manuel’s 1974 book The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Manuel defined the Fourth World as, “indigenous peoples descended from a country’s aboriginal population and who today are completely or partly deprived of the right to their own territories and its riches (Manuel 1974, 40).”

George Manuel (Shuswap)
Manuel’s description of the deprivation of the right to our own territories is seen today. Agents of multinational corporations still perpetrate environmental and cultural depredations on our lands with the full cooperation of agents of the sovereign state. We use Manuel’s definition for the political term fourth world. We focus our coverage on indigenous issues. However, for us the Fourth World is an important spiritual calling.

Wallace Mad Bear Anderson (Tuscarora)
In his book, Mad Bear: Spirit, Healing, and the Sacred in the Life of a Native American Medicine Man the late author Doug Boyd relates the teachings of the late Tuscarora medicine man Wallace “Mad Bear” Anderson. Mad Bear describes the Fourth World by relating everything in the physical universe is divided into four; the four seasons, the four quarters of a moon cycle, and the four cardinal directions (Boyd 1994, 33). He goes on to explain the whole history of the physical universe is divided into eras or four worlds.

Emergence of the Fourth World
He said that we were about to come to the end of the third world and would soon embark upon the fourth. Mad Bear explains the cycles of destruction and recreation in the transition from one world to the next. The transition is purification. He encourages people to be involved in it in a conscious and active way. We must wake up out of materialism, connect with the spirit world and cooperate with nature. Mad Bear said philosophical materialism, and its associated environmentally destructive technologies, have twice already nearly destroyed humanity (Boyd 1994, 34).

Fourth World Chronicle
Mad Bear’s words are prescient today. We confront threats of fascism, climate change and nuclear war. We accept Mad Bear’s spiritual calling to the Fourth World. We see this transition from the third to the fourth world as perhaps the final opportunity for humanity. It is our hope that Fourth World Communications will be a vehicle for consciously and actively participating in the transition.

Fourth World Chronicle Editor in Chief Matt Barkhausen, is a citizen of the Skarù•ręʔ Katèhnu•ʔaka (Tuscarora – People of the Cypress) Nation.

References

Boyd, Doug. 1994. Mad Bear: Spirit, Healing, and the Sacred in the Life of a Native American Medicine Man
New York: Touchstone, a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Center for World Indigenous Studies: Background on the Term “Fourth World”
http://cwis.org/GML/background/FourthWorld/ [Accessed May 18, 2017].