The Power of Silence — Listening Before Speaking
Many Native American traditions teach that silence is not empty space but the presence of the sacred — and that the person who has learned to be silent has learned the most difficult and valuable of all arts.
Anthropologists observing Native American council meetings were consistently struck by the comfort with extended silence — a silence that Euro-American observers found unbearable but that Indigenous participants recognized as productive deliberation. The Lakota aphorism 'listen or your tongue will keep you deaf' encodes the teaching that speaking before listening is a form of spiritual blindness. For the Anishinaabe, the elder who speaks rarely but precisely is honored above the eloquent speaker who fills every silence. The Dakota philosopher Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) wrote extensively about the centrality of silence to Indigenous spiritual practice: 'Silence is the very voice of God.' In a civilization drowning in information noise, the Indigenous teaching of silence as a spiritual practice may be its most urgently needed gift.
Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. If you can achieve it, you will know that spirit is alive in the world.
Psychologist Peter Suedfeld's research on the Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique (REST) confirms that extended periods of silence and reduced sensory input produce measurable increases in creativity, insight, and psychological wellbeing — validating the physiological basis of Indigenous silence practices.
The Soul of the Indian
Written about in
- What Native American traditions say about elders
Councils leave long pauses that outside observers found uncomfortable. The pause is counted as part of the thinking, and answering too quickly as a kind of deafness.
- What Native American traditions say about what to say and what to leave unsaid
Ohiyesa, the Dakota physician writing in 1911, described silence as the balance of body, mind and spirit rather than the absence of speech. Observers of Native council meetings recorded long pauses they found unbearable and the participants found productive. The default position in this tradition is not talking.