John Perkins Q&A

Introduction:
I caught up with John Perkins, trained shaman, environmentalist and former “economic hit man” at the Chicago Green Festival on Earth Day. After leading trips to the Amazon, Andes and elsewhere to work with indigenous peoples for 15 years, Perkins now travels to meet with world leaders and shakers.

Through books and lectures, Perkins shares shamanic techniques and stories - with five books under his belt on these subjects. In more recent books, he exposes the inner workings of the modern American empire. His latest book, Secrets of the American Empire, followed his best-selling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Q: Do you miss the trips and visits with indigenous people?

I miss the trips very much. I still go to Latin America a lot. I spent New Years Eve 2007 with Eva Morales, the President of Bolivia. I was just in Nicaragua with President Ortega’s people and I’m going to Ecuador to meet with President Correa. I’m still very involved in Latin America but Confessions of an Economic Hit Man opened up a new arena. My roots are still very much with the indigenous people and indigenous people have played a major role in the Bolivian politics and Ecuadorian politics.

So it’s been natural for me to move into this arena along with them. The shamanic work I started in the 60’s was when shamanism was pretty ‘out there.’ Even in Ecuador and Bolivia, shamans were outside the mainstream economy and mainstream politics. Since then, both they and I moved into looking at a global picture, the political picture and the governmental picture. I think there is a certain synchronicity and magic, in that shamanism believes in the power to transform, to shape-shift individuals and cultures, which is really what we need to do now, shape-shift culture.

In South America, there has been a major shape-shift. In the last elections, seven countries representing over 80 percent of the population of South America voted for the anti-corporatocracy president. These are not anti-American presidents, contrary to what our press often calls them. They welcome Americans with open arms and they love our ideals. They love what our Declaration of Independence expresses but they hated being exploited by corporations - and that’s what they voted against. That’s what they’re trying to put an end to: exploitation.


Q: After writing 5 books on shamanism, were there challenges shifting to your current books?

For years I delayed writing about my life as an 'economic hit man' (EHM) because the time didn’t seem right, I was bribed, legally, by being hired as a consultant, and I had a young daughter. And I didn’t think anybody would pay attention. During those years, I wrote books on shamanism because I wanted to express those ideas and I was always aware there was a large part I wasn’t telling, which was my economic hit man story. Nonetheless, I was telling an important part of it, to me, about transformation, about believing in change; the story of indigenous people.

I was with the indigenous people on 9-11 and when I came back to the states, I immediately went to Ground Zero, still smoldering, still smell burning flesh. As I stood there looking down on that awful pit, I realized I could no longer postpone writing about things that I knew about EHM and the creation of this empire. Because I realized that most Americans have no idea why we are resented and even hated in so many parts of the world and I needed to get the story out so Americans could understand.

This isn’t in any way to condone mass murder, whoever committed it at Ground Zero, but it is to say that at that point, I knew it was time to write the book I had put off writing for so long. In doing so, it really integrated the shamanic belief in transformation and shape-shifting with what I knew about shamanism and what I knew about globalization and building the American empire and the extreme importance of changing all of that.

Q: You’ve written about the prophecies of indigenous people, such as the “Eagle and the Condor.” What do these legends say?

The legend of the eagle and the condor and legends in every indigenous group I have ever worked with - in the Himalayas, Inuit peoples, in the Middle East, Central and South America and North American people like the Hopi. Legends in all these cultures say we are in a time with great potential for transformation. All these legends tell us that this transformation is really about connecting the heart and mind, which have been separated for a long time. Some cultures in the world have gone the way of the heart – the condor culture in that legend. Other cultures have gone the way of the mind or science - the eagle culture in that legend. These prophecies tell a story that at about the time of 2000, these two cultures – the eagle and the condor – have potential for coming together and taking us to new levels of consciousness. So we soar, we evolve into a new species with a new level of consciousness.

Q: Are the indigenous people feeling hopeful?

They are very hopeful. That’s why throughout the world, so many indigenous people have come out and are sharing their stories with us. They’re sharing their belief systems, their healing techniques, they’re sharing so much with us. I was deep in the Amazon on 9-11 and we learned what was happening at the Trade Center because I was on a 2-way radio at that very hour talking to our pilots in the Andes to make sure the planes were going to fly in 2 days later and pick us up. While I was on the shortwave radio with the pilots, they were listening to a commercial radio station and they said “Your country is under attack.” For 20 minutes, they stayed on as they relayed messages they were getting from commercial radio to me.

The Shuar people, and a couple days later the Quechua people, both said this is the beginning of the realization of the legend of the eagle and the condor. As they said, if I’m an eagle and you’re a condor and I’ve been raping you for 500 years, which is what the legend said would happen starting in the 1490’s with Columbus, the eagle would threaten to drive the condor into extinction. If you’ve been raping me for 500 years, and suddenly you say ‘let’s fly in the same skies.’ My response is: prove it. Prove that you really want to.

The way they look at it is that 9-11 was a test to see how eagle people would respond. I often hear as I travel around the United States that eagle people feel they have not responded well and we immediately attacked Iraq. But condor people tell us that is just the U.S. government and that 9-11 has awakened the eagle people and, in fact, the war in Iraq has awakened us. It’s been 6 years since 9-11. They’ll say, that’s a very short period. The way they look at it is that although our government responded one way, the vast majority of eagle people have not bought into that. 9-11 has helped shake us awake.

Q: Switching to American politics. Do you have a dream ticket for the 2008 Presidential race?

I don’t have a dream ticket. My basic premise is that, at least up until now, it really hasn’t mattered whether we have a Republican or a Democrat in the White House or running Congress as far as creating this global empire has been concerned and as far as this very small percentage of the world’s population consuming such a large percent of the world’s resources and creating so much pollution. That goes on under all administrations. And at least until now our politics have been run by corporations, so every major politician in this country is beholden to big money at one level or another and they’re all very aware of this. So the solution is to change the goal and basic premises – of corporations.

Corporations need to be good citizens instead of having as their goal to make a few rich men a lot richer. We need to transform ourselves from imperialistic capitalism where a few men make all the decisions to democratic capitalism where the goal is to make a better world for everybody - Everybody – whether they live in Kenya or the Philippines or Bolivia.

From that standpoint, the personalities of the people in Congress and our White House haven’t been terribly important during the last two or three decades. Every one of them had to raise phenomenal amounts of money, and most of that came from people who run big corporations.

Obama seems to be pursuing a course to change it. But we’ve never seen that happen successfully. I don’t know if it will be successful in the next election or not, but I do know we must change our corporations. I’m extremely hopeful we can do that because we’ve been doing it on specific issues: Protecting forests, getting rid of aerosol cans that destroy the ozone layer, cleaning up rivers, bringing women and minorities into more powerful positions in the corporate world. We’ve done a great deal to change corporations. We need to recognize that they are completely dependent on us to consume whatever they are selling. They’re dependent on us for labor pools, money and financing so we have a lot of power with these corporations.

We also need to remember that running these corporations are human beings. All of the people I’ve ever met who run these corporations are concerned about future generations. They have children or they have nephews and nieces. And they don’t want to be bad people. They don’t want to destroy rainforests so children don’t have good water or clean air to breathe – they don’t want that. But they operate under an assumption which we’ve all basically agreed to and that is that maximizing short-term profits is the goal of corporations. There is no reason for that to be the goal. There is no law that says that holds sway over corporations, so we need to give these people a new mandate. We the people need to do this.


Q: What are some of the most exciting ideas, people or businesses on your radar right now?

In the Secret History of the American Empire, I discuss NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) that have changed corporate America significantly, such as Rainforest Action Network, Pachamama Alliance, Amnesty International, Moveon.org, and Civil Rights Movement. I think these are the real harbingers of what is to come. They’ve been extremely successful and have paved the way for us to know how to move to the next phase. They’ve taught us how we can successfully foment change.

Now we need to jump to a new level, which is not to simply zero in on more Band-aids for the wounds, which is what most of them have done successfully, and very necessarily, to stop the hemorrhage and bleeding. Now we all need to zero in on changing the system, which is the true disease, the root cause, the idea that five percent of the world’s population is consuming so much of its resources. These organizations have all been pathfinders. They have guided a path and an approach that can be successfully used to turn this whole thing around.

Each one of us needs to follow our own passion. Some of us want to work for animal rights, some for children’s rights, some for women’s rights, some for Portuguese rights or the rights of colored people or whatever, some of us are fighting hunger, some of us are fighting oil companies, some are fighting for peace – and they’re all important.

So every person out there should make a commitment to join one of these movements and support it with your time, energy, money or all of these – whatever appeals to your passion. Then look inside of yourself and see what your talents are. Some people have the talent of having a lot of money and they can donate to the cause. Others can write, others can sing, others can organize. We each need to offer those talents to the movements we most believe in.

(end) (c) Keri Lynch 2007