Our colonized mindsets make authentic self-care an act of irreverence for the hegemonic systems leading us to the bring of extinction. Covid-19 might have reminded us of this, but it hasn't. If triage is about examining problems in order to decide which ones are the most serious and must be dealt with first so as to save the most people, we are not doing it well enough. In fact, the colonized mind cannot save itself.

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Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation,

and that is an act of political warfare. " Audre Lorde

The pandemic is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.Arundhati Roy

Deciding whether one's health profile calls for going to a doctor or not is tricky during the best of times, let alone now. Health education has made it so. Whether what we know stems from formal schooling or costly advertisements, our understandings about "healthcare" are sourced in consumerism and greed. The result is our dependence on that which is outside our own considerations. Our colonized mindsets make authentic self-care an act of irreverence for the hegemonic systems leading us to the bring of extinction. Covid-19 might have reminded us of this, but it hasn't. If triage is about examining problems in order to decide which ones are the most serious and must be dealt with first so as to save the most people, we are not doing it well enough. In fact, the colonized mind cannot save itself.

The worldwide focus on the Corona virus is an example itself. The first mistake in priorities is our scant attention to why it is here and how we can prevent it or a worse pandemic from arising again. Many priorities exist beyond learning to wash one's hands, taking time to enjoy one's children or starting a new hobby. A wide range of other options exist from beginning to question anthropocentrism to ending xenophobia. Just focusing on the hypnosis of our words would be an important priority. Even the noun-based, human-centered English language I am now using contributes to the kind of categorical, materialistic, dualistic, selfish, fear-based, inflexible thinking that colonizes our minds. Loss of our original verb-based, Earth-centered Indigenous languages is in fact one reason for the increasing diseases in the world. Although the non-Indigenous languages will never recapture place-based wisdom, while we attempt to make saving them a priority we can at least begin to understand the worldview that the languages represent. After all, there would be little reason to speak an Indigenous language if one did not think Indigenous.

Whatever language we use, making healthy decisions requires serious ongoing meta-cognitive work about why we think as we do. Only with it can we can effectively assess priorities in life. With such self-knowledge, we break with the conventions of social hierarchy and rediscover our interconnectedness with all. We will learn that many, if not most of conventional health perspectives in a colonized, profit-driven culture minimize self-authority, fearlessness, honesty and holistic preventive perspectives. Without such self-knowledge, the best we might hope for in a pandemic might be that an ambulance can reach us, that the driver will have an appropriate mask, and that we'll arrive clean hospital with a new ventilator. Then we can pray there will be drugs to help us stop suffering if a vaccination is not available. If it is, we won't question its safety. If things do not go well, as we take our last breath, we can at least be satisfied that we did our best to access the medical establishment. Perhaps if we leave a 5^th grade child behind, we can take satisfaction knowing they too will pass Standard #3 of the California Common Core State Health Education Standard entitled "Accessing Valid Health Information" that mandates "All students will demonstrate the ability to access and analyze health information, products and services."

It may be interesting to note here, by the way, that the Common Core Health Education Standards are largely informed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which also reflects colonized systems. The list of financial contributors to the CDC include the majority of the large pharmaceutical companies. Revolving doors between private industry and the CDC or FDA are well known. Studies have shown that its alliances with polluting corporations have also misled the public about the heath consequences of pollution that kills around 9 million people annually. In many ways, its own triage ignores some of the most dangerous contributors to poor health in the world and possible solutions to them. As for cancers that kill half a million people in the United States every year, the CDCs priorities for cancer screenings and cancer medicines fall short of trulynsignificant benefits as well, while ignoring important preventive and potential curative priorities.

Perhaps I am a case in point as relates to much of what I have asserted so far. In 2008, I felt a tumor in my abdomen and jumped into the conventional medicine rabbit hole. The diagnosis was non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Three respected oncologists in three countries emphatically prescribed surgery and/or chemotherapy "ASAP." As an Oglala Lakota Pipe Carrier and Sun Dancer, I knew I would not make a final decision without doing ceremony and entering into dialogue with the Spirits. Still, as if hypnotized against my will, I found myself on the operating table in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, getting another biopsy by the physician who was planning on removing the tumor. When the needle-like instrument he was using slipped off the side of the tumor and he exclaimed "¡Híjole!" I came to my senses. I told him I was sorry but I was done. I got up, allowed the nurse to put a bandage on the puncture hole, I walked out of the hospital.

When I arrived back at the small fishing village where our home was, I told my wife what had happened and commenced making the fire for my inipi ceremony in the temazcal (Sweat House). When I was done, I told her that I had decided to walk away from all conventional medicine and just align my life more carefully with the Indigenous worldview precepts I championed in my academic work for many years. My focus on "walking the talk" would include a stronger emphasis on:

* Courage and fearless trust in the universe

* Generosity and a socially purposeful life in behalf of future generations

* More heart than head

* Seeing animals, insects, plants and water as teachers

* Recognizing words as sacred vibrations

* Using trance-based learning (self-hypnosis) continually for healing and highest potential

* Inseparability of knowledge and actin

* Seeing time as cyclical

* Complementary duality

* Humor

* Seeing self-knowledge as vital

In addition I exercised twice daily in sunlight so as to maximize Vitamin D. I ate only organic foods, much from my moringa trees and nopales cactus. I drank only coconut water. I managed my stress better. As months and then years went by, I continued to feel my tumors shrink until I could no longer feel them. In 2012, four years after the initial diagnosis, I went back to Puerta Vallarta for an MRI to avoid the radiation from CT. After three hours, the technician said my heart was so strong, it kept moving the tumor and it was impossible to get a good picture. I bit the bullet and told him to give me the solution for the CT and he made the arrangement. When finished, I waited patiently for the radiologist and the oncologist, neither who knew my history, seemed amazed as they compared the the images with those from 2008. Finally one exclaimed joyfully in English, "Very good. The chemo worked!" When I told him I did not do chemo, they could not believe it, but it has shrunk to around one centimeter.

Jump forward to 2019, eleven years after the original diagnosis. I am a healthy 73 year-old man, surfing and playing handball as strong as ever, but having let go of my intense focus on ceremony, diet and stress management during the past year or so, using workload and writing projects as excuses. One day, I felt something in my stomach area and felt a rush of disappointment when I palpated a large tumor. It had returned. The feeling of strong disappointment quickly turned to humility, however, when I "heard" the tumor tell me, "Duh, what did you expect? You know what worked and what didn't. You know you have had the wrong priorities for a while. And what a hypocrite to teach the path you were successfully walking while you take another direction!"

When I let the news out to close friends and family, they convinced me to confirm a return of the cancer a PET scan. The tumor was a little larger than the original, almost 7 cm, than in 2008. The report revealed an aggressive cancer, noting a "Standard Unit Value (SUV) of 22 in the tumor.

NM PET CT, Skull. Base to Thigh. 12/31/2019. 12:45 PM.

73 year old male seen for restaging lymphoma dx 2008.

Findings: Soft tissue tracer avid mass within abdomen and retroperitoneum consistent with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma remains similar in appearance to PET/CT performed 10/07/2019 at 6.5 cm transverse by 4.2 cm AP with SUV of 20 (Reference value of liver SUV 2.2)

I took the information and began Googling away. I learned an SUV of 5 was considered serious. I learned that when lymphoma comes back, it comes back strong and that two spontaneous remissions in a row seemed never been recorded. Once again, the hypnosis of colonial hegemony took hold for a moment. "Maybe I should do the damn chemo now" I thought. I could get through it I knew. Then again, I thought, if I did it once, why couldn't I do it again?! After all, I did let up on what worked.

I am writing this piece on April 20, 2020. I have resumed the priorities that make the most sense to me. I'm still alive, surfing almost daily, being fortunate enough to be on a private beach near the best long-board surfing in Mexico, while all the surrounding public beaches are closed owing to Covid-19. I am writing more than ever, mostly to help bring attention to how the colonized mind based on the misguided dominant worldview that has been operating for thousands of years is the cause of the pandemic and how we must stop ignoring this fact. However, while doing the work I have returned to a more diligent practice of Indigenous worldview-based ways of being in the world. The tumor is still there, but does not seem to be growing. I am trusting the universe and meeting it halfway with my actions, staying in dialogue with the Spirit World via ceremony almost daily. Although I have a sense of urgency in behalf of future generations with my teaching, presentations and articles, my belief that we are spirits inhabiting a living body, whether human, plant or other animal, as we have done before and will again allows my urgency to be without stress.

My message is for all to wake up to whom we really are so we might have a chance to curb the pandemics, wars, extinction rates and climate change for the 7th generation. This will require decolonizing our triage strategy in the meantime. I briefly close with a way to do this via "The CAT-FAWN Connection that can be studied in more depth via my books, including Primal Awareness, Point of Departure and Teaching Truly and R. M. Fisher's text, Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows. CAT stands for "Concentration-Activated Transformation." Ultimately, most of our thinking, feeling and actions stem from trance-based learning, either intentional or otherwise. Ceremony is a way to take control of it, as is self-hypnosis coupled with honest meta-cognition. FAWN represents the four forces (Fear, Authority, Words and Nature) that we must self-explore to determine why we make the assumptions we make. If we assume a colonized perspective for each instead of our original Indigenous one, trance-based learning will lead to imbalance. If we understand these four forces with decolonized thinking and use intentional trance-based learning to reprogram ourselves, we can heal and return things to relative harmony.

Authors Bio:
Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) is a professor at Fielding Graduate University. Former Director of Education at Oglala Lakota College, he is a made-relative of the Oglala and a Sun Dancer. Selected by AERO for their text Turning Points as one of 27 "Visionaries in Education" and recipient of a Martin Springer Institute for Holocaust Studies "Moral Courage Award" for his activism, he is the author of more than 20 books, praised by such notables as Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Henry Giroux, Darcia Narvaez, Greg Cajete, Sam Keen, Thom Hartmann, and many others. His books, chapters, articles and videos on Indigenous Worldview and its applications for sustainability can be accessed at fourarrowsbooks.com. He lives with his artist/photographer wife in a remote section of Mexico on the Costalegre. There is also a book on his work entitled Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows by R. Michael Fisher (Peter Lang, 2019).