Meady's Musings: Have a Red/Green World Environment Day!-My Adventures at the Red Earth Festival 2009.

As you all know I was very excited about volunteering at the Red Earth Eco-Arts Festival last Sat 30 May 2009. It was in commemoration of World Environment Day which is today- Fri 5 June 2009...the idea being to have it the weekend before the day itself. A co-worker of mine...asked me what was all this thing he was seeing about me and Red Earth now...he thought it was Green earth...reminded me of two things in my musing mind simulataneously:

God's Green Earth

and of the title of one of my fav novels by Vickram Chandra

Red Earth and Pouring Rain- a cool book that makes me seriously appreciate the Indian monkey or not! :)

To be honest though this muser can't say for certain where the terms came from I'm thinking God's Green Earth perhaps biblical in origin or Christian like at least? And well seems Red Earth might be what native, aboriginal or first peoples world over might call the soil. I can say for certain there is another Eco Arts type festival of the same name in the US that promotes Native American Culture that just like most first people's culture world over lives as if the earth is part of their very essence as humans. And they are kicking off their celebs today! Check them out here...wish was attending that one too looks super cool!

However here on my island we had our own version of Red Earth. The Red Earth Eco-Arts Festival 2009 at our Chaguaramas National Park. Its main highlight was the first peoples of Australia...more so North Australia...and I was super excited to meet the head of the dance/culture group-Descendance that came here to perform- Ronaldo! It fact after having the heart felt moment to ask him how he felt about the movie Australia and to learn that generally they were good with it...like no, it wasn't just Hollywoodized the facts in the movie were generally true. And then to get to share with him for a moment how affected I was by the movie to learn about how intuitive the Australian first peoples were with the land so much so that the grandfather and son could communicate through it...he seemed to be moved too by my recollection of his people's ways and shared with me not only the environment like the wind etc but that his people could become like animals too (or at least be very in tuned with them? You should see Descendance do the Kangaroo by the way)...so I thought of Shamanism in the Native American people's culture...also asked about how he felt about their culture(Native Americans)....as I'm soon to visit a certain cavernous place, where well the Native Americans have artwork all over the cave walls...and he said yes they are very similar...and then I took a picture to remember the moment and the conversation!:)

For sure ancient Indian culture and religion is in itself an ode to nature as I said on my last blog post and on my Universal Collective Prayer (UCP) I often talk about it...you can check out this post about Hinduism's Ode to Water in the form of Mother Ganga...and as with the monkey business in Red Earth and Pouring Rain even monkeys are God! Check this post on UCP to hear bout my fav monkey himself! :)

So as I leave you with the sights and sounds of Red Earth Eco-Arts Festival 2009!

HAPPY WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY 5 JUNE 2009! ...and don't forget to Twitter for those trees man! :)
Seems as of two hours ago 10,000 trees will be planted today cause of those Twittering Tweets! :)

And check out Meady's Musings fan page on Facebook here to see all the pics in the Red Earth Festival 2009 album or my Youtube channel here to see all the vids. And of course feel free to become a fan! :)

Local Peoples:Hindu community and Kairi people of Caura valley together with Australian first people-members of the group Descendance bless the earth...