The Founder’s Path
Eldress Gloria Joseph & Sox Sperry
My name is Sox Sperry. I’m the initiator of Proven Sustainable™.
During my decades as an educator I've had the great fortune to be led by circles of mentors. These elders are the planters who have sowed the seeds for this project. I’ve been involved in many collective efforts to invite, in the words of Paulo Freire, “liberation (as) a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.” For the last 15 years I’ve done this as the primary curriculum writer for Project Look Sharp, integrating media literacy into core curriculum to enhance students’ critical thinking, metacognition, and civic engagement.
Why is this an important project for me?
As my friend, the poet Ketu Oladuwa says, “It’s all about relationship.” I was first introduced to the wisdom traditions that are at the heart of this collection through my relationships with three remarkable elders – Gloria Joseph (Cruzan heritage), Jim Koplin (German) and Joan Cassidy (Unkechaug, Huguenot). They each helped to shepherd my first immersion into Proven Sustainable lifeways when I was a student teacher at Taos Pueblo Day School in 1974. I must also call the names of Tonita Lujan and Crucita Archuleta as Taoseñas who modeled for me the practice of standing and seeing into the far distance as we shared recess duties beneath the snow peaks of Taos Mountain. In later years I was fortunate to share time with elders in other repositories of traditional knowledge, notably in Kiffinda, Guinea and in the Taoist temple on Mount Qing- cheng, Sichuan.
“Elders are more often listeners than speakers. And when they speak, they can talk for a long while without using the word “I.””
Jim Koplin and his grandmother, Vergas, MN
Tonita Lujan and Joan Cassidy, Taos Pueblo
My wife Lisa Tsetse and I now live on Gayogo̱hó:nǫ' (Cayuga) land. The ancient warrior’s trail leads from the Cayuga heartland of Goioguen and runs through the hillside behind our home in Ithaca, NY. The footsteps of the Cayuga ancestors are never far away. Nor are the footsteps of my own ancestors, a crew of mostly European descended folk who include white supremacists (Jacob), settler colonizers (Deacon) and patriarchs (Thomas) along with pacifists (John & Katherine), internationalists (Florence) and feminists (Catherine). I have all these ancestors inside me. You may notice them in the biases that shape this work. I recognize all these who have come before me as strands in the many threads that make up this web of awareness of myself in the world.