AKANTU INTELLIGENCE
Contextualizing Original Wisdom for Troubled Times
The Institute primarily work in two ways:
Preserving and sharing knowledge from various wisdom traditions in accessible, relevant formats.
Hosting physical gatherings and ceremonies to deepen the experience of knowledge.
The Lakota language is primarily a language operating in verbs - in feeling action or actuating feeling - not in descriptive nouns of subjugation and objectification.
Wicasa roughly translates into “a gift from the stars”. When we put this word with Akantu, Akantu Wicasa is an experience of integration with all Nations of Life, not just the human. The aim of the Institute is to transmit knowledge that cannot be taught but can only be experienced. Hence, we focus on sharing knowledge but also creating embodied experiences through gatherings and ceremonies.
The experience is an act of feeling the presence of another being in acknowledged coexistence. Once you have become a "relative" you become a wise one, an ancestor and descendant, simultaneously.
Being quiet, gentle, peaceful, still and listening may begin to open the experience of "being human" in the Lakota Paradigm. Listening is a way of being present in the art of living. The feelings generated determine the creation experienced. It is the knowledge of a people that cannot be taught through books, media or presentation, or in public. It can only be learned through intuition and experience. The body is connected to the "breath" and silence is comfortable in Akantu Wicasa and it is not a description of an isolated self or a mental definition but rather an experience of human kindness, oneness, harmony, integration, and balance.
The Lakota people have suffered intergenerational trauma from having their language oppressed by government, religion and educational systems. Now we are here to free the energy – to recognize the wakan – to understand our relationship, responsibility, awareness and how we Wicasa Akantu have the ability to make something live or make something die.
The Wakan (“Mystery”) is everywhere and it is the Maka Si Tomni: "surrounding the universe within your arms”.
We carry the knowledge of the Earth to be called upon when needed.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse
Founder of Akantu Intelligence
Tiokasin is an author, teacher, activist and accomplished musician. He is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the founder, host and executive producer of First Voices Radio (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) which has been running since 1992, first with KAOS in Olympia, Washington and then with WBAI in New York City. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He was also awarded New York City’s Peacemaker of the Year in 2013. Tiokasin is a “perfectly flawed human being” and a Sundancer in the cosmology of the Lakota Nation.
