Review: Ilarion Merculieff’s Wisdom Keeper

Ilarion Merculieff’s book, Wisdom Keeper, outlines not only his life but the history of his people, the Unangan (Aleut) of the Bering Sea.

I was fortunate to be able to meet with Merculieff last week, and he told me their traditional greeting is Aang Waan, meaning: 'Hello my other self.' He shared that his Elders taught him Nothing is created outside until it is created inside first. Merculieff’s given name is Kuuyux (coo-yuch). “It means an arm extended out from the body, like a messenger from the Aleut to the modern world. I got the name when I was four years old by the last Kuuyuch. He gave me his name, which is a name given to one person in each lifetime amongst my people.”

As he outlines in the last chapters of Wisdom Keeper, the Elders teach:

We are angry at others because we are angry at ourselves. We criticize others because we are critical of ourselves. We are separated from others because we are separated from our hearts. We may hate others because we may hate ourselves. We trash the environment outside because we trash the environment inside. We are judgmental about those on the outside because we are judgmental about ourselves first.

The most unselfish thing we can do is heal ourselves first. We can’t offer to the world that which we do not have.

Merculieff goes on to say “If I want peace I must practice, think, feel and know peace within. Then I can offer it to the world. If I want to eliminate separation in the world, manifested in such things as wars, violence of all kinds, racism, destruction of the environment and all such ills, I must first heal separation in myself. The Elders say that we must look at the root cause of anything before we can heal. The root cause of separation is separation of the heart.”

Such wisdom, coming out of phenomenal personal and intergenerational trauma. Listening to the audiobook of Wisdom Keeper, I was stunned to learn that the Unangan people were enslaved first by the Russian government for the fur seal trade, and then after an 1867 treaty with the USA, enslaved by the US Government until as late as the 1960’s.

When they first invaded, Russian fur traders executed all of the Unangan shamans, and would retaliate harshly to any resistance by killing or starving entire villages to death by destroying their kayaks (each one of which took more than a year to build).

Under US rule, the Unangan were relocated during the war, their houses trashed, only to be returned after the war to continued servitude in support of the US tax base and income of the fur companies. Only a letter smuggled out to an Alaskan newspaper enabled the world to learn of the harsh conditions of their enslavement, and it took an act of Congress to restore them full rights as citizens. The collective and individual trauma of their community resonates with all that was perpetrated against so many First Nations throughout the world, much of which continues to this day.

Archaeological evidence from the Arctic beaches of thousands of years past shows that the Unangan originally thrived on what was the most densely populous piece of coastline in all of North America. They were an egalitarian culture with equality between the genders. Before the coming of the Russian fur traders, Unangan hunters navigated the harsh ocean waters of the Bering Sea in skin kayaks 22” wide and 17-20’ long. So skillful and in touch with their surroundings – they could navigate without being able to see the stars (there is all of 20 days of sunshine a year in those regions due to the thick summer fogs).

The Unangan travelled as far south as California and Argentina (recently confirmed with Tribal elders there that they have shared names between the two Tribes). Merculieff wrote, “The real human being navigates by the spirit that lives in all things, feeling the energy of the sea and land, watching the direction of swells, animals, gut sense, and heart-sense, without thought of any kind.”

Merculieff himself described sitting at age six with the men who were hunting Stellar sea lions from the beach. Perched on a rock in the cold at such a young age, he found himself lulled by the sounds of the wind and the waves. (The connection between the Unangan and the sea lion is 10,000 years long, comparable to the connection of the plains Tribes to the Bison.) By the young age of seven, Merculieff realized that his elders were not lulled as they scanned the seas, but were instead intently and fully present – for hours at a time. He was able to begin to access this fullness of presence, something that extended throughout his life, whether hunting and fishing, or seeking to navigate the sometimes stormy waters of his own life.

He warns that the Bering Sea is dying – where once there were more than 4.5M fur seals, there are now less than 500,000. And this is not due to hunting, which was outlawed, but to overfishing by the factory fishing industry and due to climate change. Merculief and the Islands of St. Paul and St. George are seeking to launch a National Marine Sanctuary – but are facing resistance from a conservative state, Alaska, and of course the Fishing industry is also opposed. The goal is for this sanctuary to become a scientific research center – featuring ? Native ways of knowing, ? Western science.

“We need to talk in a unified voice.” Says Merculieff. ?When he was a child, Northern fur seals numbered 1.2M now only 435K. These seals migrate as far south as California. Merculieff warns of even faster changes in Alaska, with every species they observe in decline. David Attenborough recently came and filmed a story, finding that all the foraging species were suffering. Overfishing, global warming, sport hunting are all contributing.

Decades ago, the Unangan Elders sought to tell scientists about the declines they were observing, but their concerns were dismissed as “anecdotal.” Not to be put off, they hired scientists to document all of what they were observing, resulting in an extensive, trans-disciplinary Russian Academy of Sciences report, the result of their partnership to pinpoint what was going on in the Bering Sea. While the report was published in the USSR and in Canada, it was not published in the USA – the peer review board said it was “primitive science” because the Russian scientists had collaborated with the Unangan.

Merculieff mentions in beginning of the book how true integration and embodied being-wisdom is the most compelling leadership for the future. This is the type of embodied leadership we need to overcome the challenges we face as a human race.

My decade of chronic illness has been like traveling to the moon and back. The landscape was stark, barren, but also had a crystalline beauty because I was not sure, moment to moment, if I would survive. It is from this perspective that I was able to experience his words, his stories, and his life so deeply.

All that he wrote about navigating without the stars, navigating by the spirit that lives in all things, without thought of any kind. I felt this all so strongly -- like a memory I can’t quite remember. So remarkable and wonderful, his lyric descriptions of his youth by the ocean, and finding natural one-pointed eternal mind on his own by age seven.

Merculieff wrote about his coming to know of the sacredness of life, the unity of all life, when the spirit of a sea lion he had just hunted went right through him. Excited, the young Merculief told his Elder the entire story, who responded in Unangan Tunnu, simply saying “Good.” A universe of affirmation in a single word – you have apprehended the truth of a wider reality, now you know what the Elders know.

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In the second half of the book, Merculieff shares a message from Hopi and Maori Elders who say we are at a choice point for humanity: we can either come together and begin to thrive in that mutuality, or we face certain destruction.

The Elders call developed, dominator culture “the reverse society” because we have turned every natural law upside down.

What Merculieff and other Indigenous authors I have recently reviewed offer is a vision of a different and deeply re-connected way of being in the world than we have been raised with. They are generously sharing with us what they would term how to become a real Human Being. May we begin to hear those who are reaching out from First Nations with voices such as theirs – and may their words help us see, feel, and to begin to embody this better way. To be a Human Being in a good way, from the heart.

Note from his website: In 2017, Merculief gathered 13 Elders from around the world to discuss the state of Mother Earth, and what humans should do now. The Elders agreed for everything to be filmed; even ceremonies, which is unprecedented. A message was co-created. The https://wisdomweavers.world ?website explains somewhat what we're attempting to do, and shows a 14-minute video, translated by volunteers into 15 different languages, and was shared globally by Rueters News agency for Earth-days 50th anniversary in April 22, 2020 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-earth-day-indigenous-idUSKBN2221G7 .

If you are interested in supporting the work of WisdomWeavers please reach out, as they are planning the next worldwide gathering of Elders to address the ongoing crisis and opportunity before us, and to show the way to young people to begin to live and to lead from the heart.