The Earth Medicine Alliance held its second annual conference entitled "Honoring the Spirits of Place" this past weekend in San Francisco, educating about and ritualizing the presence of the multiplicitous spiritual energies that enliven and empower the lands, waters and people of the Bay area, the lands of the Ohlone and other native peoples of Turtle Island.  It was a powerful expression of acknowledgement of the Spirits of place, of the mountains, of the oceans and rivers, of the Ancestors whose presence is palpable.  Earth Medicine Alliance does regular and powerful work around indigenous culture and spirituality, creating and maintaining ritual connection to Spirit and advocating for the safety and protection of the local and, therefore, the world's natural environment.

The workshops and ritual work organized by the conference are perfect examples of the work that must be done to deeply and necessarily reengage this society with the indigenous intimacy with nature and Spirit.  This kind of work and cultural practice is key to the ongoing and essential, fundamental work of sustaining our healthy human relationships with All That Is, with the goddesses, gods, spirits and Ancestors of our diverse, though unitary world.  It is in this unitary, harmonized world that we find the diverse expression of spiritual reality in the many ways that indigenous cultures have observed and experienced throughout all of human history.  It is the influence and energetic work of monotheistic socio-political initiatives like DC40 that threaten this spiritual diversity and pluralism that has been the standard of human experience for eons.  Jay B. McDaniel in "Earth, Sky, Gods & Mortals: Developing an Ecological Spirituality" says the following:

"In many respects the North American church - whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox - is still very much a conduit for the status quo rather than a home for the poor and powerless; an enemy of all that is nonhuman rather than a friend of the earth and other animals;  a haven of exclusivism and parochialism rather than a Way that excludes no ways." (pg.182)

McDaniel supports in general the notion that it is important to sustain our polytheistic and pluralistic relationships with Spirit(s) and, hence, with the peoples that hold these cosmological views.  Where he makes his mistake is to be captivated by the hegemonic force of monotheism, the relative cultural toddler in the family of world spiritual traditions.  McDaniel, even though suggesting some liberalist attachment to pluralism, claims that he is making a case for the preeminence of "God" and that the presence of any other spiritual experiences happens within that conception of spiritual reality.  He states that this ecological spirituality that he espouses must remain monotheistic, that it "recognizes the truth of that polytheistic psychology which affirms multiplicity, even in God" (pg.184).  His work never allows us to liberate ourselves fully from that christian and monotheistic hegemony, dragging us back, though quietly and 'politely' to the confusion and horror of the first initiatives of anti-indigenous conquest that gave horrid birth to the anti-nature and anti-indigenous concepts and politics of the modern age.  The DC40 initiative is destructive and apologetic of modern colonialism, exploitation and hegemony in general and in very serious form.  Sadly, even writers like McDaniel, who seem to acknowledge and "respect" the indigenous human dynamic that holds such truly grounded redemptive power and possibility, are victims of their own monotheistic hype, unable to fully protect and advocate for the pluralism that is and will continue to be the hope of our successful tenancy on the sacred body of Mother Earth.

The TI42 Initiative urges us all to involve ourselves with organizations like the Earth Medicine Alliance, East Coast Village/Ancestral Wisdom Bridge Foundation, Ancestor Bridge, Bioneers, Ancestral Events, Inc and so many other groups that exist to sustain human harmony with nature and Spirit, the spirits of the places our Ancestors have held sacred for eons.  We must continue to carry on our indigenous traditions, share them with our communities and with our children for all time and be able to clarify and reconcile the dominant and negative nature of christian political presence on Turtle Island and in the rest of the sacred world, modernized and indigenous.

Feet on the ground...step softly...walk in bravery....the Ancestors are at your side.

Think for a moment about how you interact with your world. What are you doing to make it a better place? That is the big question facing all of us: how are you bettering that which you will pass on to those who come after you?

There is often a feeling that to make a change the gesture must be large and grand. That isn't so. Sometimes the most enduring changes happen by being built upon the small, seemingly insignificant life choices. We have said elsewhere on this blog that pouring out an offering to the ancestors, deciding to engage with them is a powerful and potentially revolutionary act. That is a small, very personal thing but it has world-changing potential. Each person who honors his or her dead, who doesn't hide that connection, to integrates that sacred awareness into his or her everyday life is reclaiming space. That person is taking a firm stand against the depredations of monotheism and all it has wrought. Don't be afraid to go there. We firmly believe that it is possible to change the world one ancestor offering at a time.

Beyond that, as you go out and about  your day, think about how you choose to interact with people. People by the way includes the homeless man on the street begging for change. What can you do, as you move through your day, to foster the dignity within every person you meet. How can you move from a place of centered engagement into every single interaction and what might that mean for you and those you encounter? The greatest changes begin by consciously changing ourselves and the way we relate to *everything*.

Ideologies like the DC40 campaign aim to beat us down. They are ideologies founded in fear, intolerance, and hatred. they are ideologies aimed at sucking the authenticity out of life and most especially out of spiritual engagement. it rests upon each and every one of us to ensure that this doesn't happen. It is incumbent on each and every one of us to be the antidote to this poison, wherever it may rear its head.

Do not be afraid to speak up and out. Be the voice of compassionate reason. Be fierce in your committment to this work because in the end, if each and every one of us doesn't rise up to counter this assault and others like it (and whether we like it or not, that is exactly what campaigns like DC40 are: assaults) we will find ourselves once again in the position of our ancestors: of finding ourselves in a war of conquest, this time ideological but no less damaging, too late to muster the approproriate resistance--because conquest like this is all but incomprehensible to the sane, connected, spiritually engaged being.  

The resulting world is not what we want to leave to our children. What about you?

In the morning when you first awake, turn your thoughts to the ancestors and thank them for setting your feet upon the path of awareness.

As you rise and set your feet on the ground, or the floor that symbolizes stability and surety to us, give thanks to the earth, to the land in all its bounty for providing the nourishment that has kept you strong and helped you to thrive and grow.

As you bathe, shower, and dress, give thanks to the  Gods, to the Holy Powers and ask Their blessings throughout the day.

Each day is, as the cliche goes, a new beginning and that means each day is another chance to reconnect, to start one's day wisely and well. Each day is another chance to honor that three-fold fundamental connection that so informed our ancestors' world: to the Gods, the ancestors, the land itself.

We can do this thing called reconnection. We can restore our lost traditions and we can reclaim our indigenous filter. It all begins with that basic awareness of who we are and to whom /Whom we owe our gratitude. Take joy in this process. It is a joyous and joyful thing.

(and all those struggling to reclaim their indigeny,
all those struggling to throw off the yoke of conquest.)

Hold strong,
May your ancestors sustain you.

Hold strong,
May you never bow your head in this fight.

Hold strong against these people,
who come with their foreign Gods, foreign ways
and no ancestral voices to speak for them. 

The enemy comes offering bread.
The enemy comes offering books.
The enemy comes clothed in compassion
so that you will not see the poison behind their gifts.
That poison will destroy you.

Resist it with everything you have.
Resist it for your ancestors.
Resist it in the name of your Gods.
Resist it in the name of your people,
for your children,
so that they will have a future
in which their bellies and their spirits
will be fully nourished.

Hold fast, hold strong.
You are not alone in this fight.

Remember the sacrifices of your ancestors.
Remember the power and beauty of your people.

Do not allow the poison peddlers to divide you.
Engage, engage, engage
with all that nourishes you.

Drawn upon the wisdom and strength of your ancestors
And don’t ever let it go.

May you be nourished in all that you need.
May you ever hold fast.

I wrote this some time ago after learning that the new ideological position of Christian missionaries is that, as a colleague of mine wrote: “The un-G-O-D-ed folk of the world are now being referred to as "unengaged", not just "unreached".” We both wonder when this new position was taken and what it means to them. We also continue to take deep umbrage at that narrowly-focused target that gets placed on the backs of the world's otherwise QUITE fully and functionally 'engaged' indigenous people.” We are not unengaged. We’re  unbrainwashed. There’s a difference).

An African was born on Turtle Island upon land called Lenapehoking to parents who bestowed upon him a Scottish surname that most assuredly came to them through the ruthless system of the slavery trade.  Twelve of his formative years were spent in roamin catholic school that touted a prophet-shaman with hair of wool and feet of brass that supposedly came from a land called Nazareth though his story seemed to be controlled by people from a place that should have been called western Asia. 
He lives in a society that professes to embolden reductive science, individualism and an economic system that gives great power and influence to an "elite" class over and above the direct and abiding needs of most of the people, the land, nature and all cultures outside of its direct purview.  The people that hold the most power and influence in this society are male members of this culture from western Asia, popularly called Europe.  These western Asians have successfully created a society based upon a system of settler-colonialism that disenfranchised miliions of Native Americans from their land and cultures and brutally used Africans enslaved to provide labor over hundreds of years to create wealth for this settler-colony and most of the western Asian countries that are now in a place called Europe.

Into this context an African was born in New Jersey at a time when he could be called colored, Negro, Black, nigger or coon, amongst other confusing monikers.  He would be "educated" in a school system that was considered exemplary, but was not able to give him the grounding and validating knowledge of who he was or what his history and cultural legacy was.  It didn't even come close.   Actually, that "education" was so far from being able to inform him of his human identity that he had to separate himself fully from roamin catholicism after entering college before he could even make any substantive headway in that regard.  It would take him years before he would understand fully what the nature of his presence in and on Turtle Island meant and how he should conduct himself so that he could be considered sane and well-adjusted in a society that could not find healthy ways of validating his life and purpose nor respect the land from which his Ancestors had been stolen in acts of war. 

It was many long and difficult years before he would even know that the land he lived on and because of was called Turtle Island or that it's popular name, America, came from an indigenous name for the land, Amerrique, a name that meant "land of the wind", not from a man known as "Amerigo" Vespucci, whose name was actually Alberigo - he changed his name in an arrogant, but simple act of opportunism.  It was a long time before this man would gain the knowledge and confidence to walk upon the earth, no matter where he was, like the man his Ancestors had meant him to be.  This man had paid a high price to get to where he finally got to , but he knew his Ancestors had paid a higher price, that their tears, sweat and blood had paved the way for his growing awareness, an awareness that those Ancestors depended on.  There was no question about that.  He had learned to open up his spirit, his emotions, to these truths.  There was no question about what had become clear to him, clear down to his very bones, deep, deep down in his gut, wrapped up in the very core of his DNA.

He would take a trip to the land of the Ohlone people, a place the western Asians would call California.  He spent days riding in cars to different places with his friends.  He gazed out over a myriad of highways, as cars whizzed incessantly by, wondering of the struggle of the Ohlone, about the struggle of the land and water, of the resources, of nature that the Ohlone held and hold sacred, that provided knowledge and balance and food and sustenance and abundance.  He wondered about how many cars there were and how they affected the land and water and animals and plants...how they affected the people that drove them.  He wondered about pavement and how it affected Tenbalu, the spirit of Earth, underneath its thousands upon thousands of miles of heavy, heavy weight, of suffocating weight.  He wondered about how many trees had been cut down for those roads and why so many of the roads and cities and towns had Spanish names.  He watched birds fly overhead and wondered how many used to be there and what happened to the condors, how they , the largest bird on the continent had been pushed so dangerously close to extinction.  He wondered why the people that lived there now, in that place called California, didn't seem to practicing, why so many of them would participate in the destructive lifeways or, better, deathways of the peoples that would give the places and roads Spanish names, so many of them with the names that started with "san", a descriptor that indicated some kind of special or holy quality.  He wondered why these people did not recognize the sacred nature of the lifeways of the Ohlone and the other peoples that called and call this place now called California home.

He knew that the people who renamed these Ohlone lands and places  by these new names had brought with them a religions that didn't work for or with the Ohlone, nor with the land, the animals or the plants.  This same religion sought to rename the capitol of the settler-colony that had done so much damage to the lands and water and the original peoples of Turtle Island.  It sought to reestablish a new form of hegemony and influence over the land the peoples even though that same religion and the people and political structures that supported it had long since run roughshod over the land  and its peoples.

This African wondered how this could happen again, in a land already marked so deeply by bloodshed and pain, with all the tools of learning and research and knowledge that the society claimed to have, with all the clarity and perspective that history and experience could provide, when they all knew so much or could know so much about what had happened and what the history of the place was. He knew of the DC40 initiative and he wondered how this new insult to old injury could happen in this time and in this place.  He knew that this inult could come to no good.  He knew that the earth needed to be able to  speak to the people again and that an intimate relationship with the earth and with nature and with Spirit needed to be reopened and regrounded in the hearts and minds of the people.  He knew that the indigenous soul of the Ohlone, the native peoples of Turtle Island and all those others who now populated the land needed to speak up for the identity of the Ancestors and the traditions they gave so beautifully to their children, to all peoples...and to this African.

He knew it was time for all peoples living on Turtle Island to put their feet on the ground, the sacred land of Amerrique and tell the truth about how they got there and own up to the indigenous legacy that would be their redemption.

Oh my indigenous brothers and sisters,
hold your heads up high.
You were not sprung from your mothers' wombs
to make your oppressors comfortable.
You were not put upon this earth,
to accomodate
the disconnected, diseased panderers of hate,
and shame, and spiritual abrogation.
You were not given awareness
so that you could pour out offerings
to the God of your conquorers
and cannibalize your own children.
No. Seek your own ways,
and the ways of your dead.
They were wise and highly evolved.

Pour out offerings to the Gods of your people,
who followed you into slavery,
who stood by you through genocide,
who stood between you
and the spiritual penury
of monotheism,
Who sacrificed Themselves,
rather than see Their children perish.
Hold your heads up high
and know these things:

Your ancestors know your name.
You have a place.
You do not come from weak people.
You do not stand alone.
You, in your human skin,
whatever it may look like,
from wherever your lines might hail,
are magnificent.
You are your ancestral line walking.

So hold your head up high and proud,
and let no one, disconnected from their roots,
hold you down.
Do not accept the mental and spiritual chains.
Your ancestors worked too hard to free you from the same.
Praise them.
and walk with dignity and the strength
of thousands and thousands of men, women, and children,
bound to you by blood and spirit,
at your back.

By Manaya Aracoel

Colonialism is a system that requires collaborators in order to perpetuate itself. This fact has become increasingly apparent in recent days. While major news corporations would cover the smallest Tea Party get together, Occupy Wall Street was ignored by the Media until the level of collaboration with corporate interests became so ridiculously obvious as the scope of the movement spread that they were forced to acknowledge the its existence. Every colonized people has had a select few handpicked for slightly better treatment as long as they worked to advance the interests of the empowered and try to stifle the voices of dissent.

I have seen a lot of feedback about indigeny and the forging of alliances and the awakening of a pan-indigenous consciousness…and much of it centers on a fear of being perceived as radical or of alienating the dominant group. This begs the question: why are we so concerned with appeasing Christians when they are praying for our disempowerment and destroying our sacred items? Why are we so afraid to appear upset about the disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples? Which side are we on? And can it even be called equality if we achieve it by silencing our own voices and stifling our narratives as the price for inclusion?

There is plenty of lip service given in the larger neo-pagan community about wanting to be inclusive and wanting to connect and be friendly with indigenous polytheists practicing their ancestral ways. I’ve heard some bemoan the fact that the indigenous people are standoffish or suspicious of neo-pagan motives. Well, here’s an excellent reason why: as we speak there is at least one pagan news source that will rush to cover almost any pagan event no matter how small scale…and they have outright refused to cover the Turtle Island 42 initiative and I have to wonder why that is. It certainly sends the message that indigeny isn’t important for Pagans, which might come as a surprise to some of those self-same Pagans. So, if, at the end of the day, indigenous peoples do not trust the larger neo-pagan community, perhaps it is because we fear that they may be too attached to their white privilege to risk pissing off The Man. Perhaps too many of us with tans have had our conversations about race and conquest shut down by people who were concerned that we were “living in the past” or “angry” or “militant” or somehow oppressing white Christians by our failure to ignore our pasts and our present realities in order to accommodate their sensibilities. We may have been told that talking about conquest, genocide and slavery (particularly in interfaith settings) upsets the descendants of our conquerors. The message is that it is more important to pander to the dominant group than it is to be true to ourselves. Yet one cannot and should not talk about reclaiming indigeny without also talking about why it was lost in the first place, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.

Diversity is not about people of all colors and ethnicities being tolerated as long as they look, think and act assimilated. True diversity respects the multitude of experiences and faith and cultures being expressed to their fullest potential and celebrates the existence of difference even while asserting our common humanity. This is what the DC-40ers don’t get. And those who would ignore or silence the segments of the pagan or polytheist or indigenous population because “they might make us look bad to the Christians” are collaborators. And if they think the likes of the DC-40 are going to accept them, no matter how nice they play, they are also deluded.

We are at war. It is not a war we asked for or wanted. Indigenous people have been on the frontlines for centuries. It isn’t a war for commodities or for money, but for cultural spiritual (and often physical) survival against a colonial machine that would eradicate us. The DC-40 has openly declared spiritual warfare on everything and everyone who does not conform to their Dominionist Christian worldview. The time has come to awake, rise up and choose a side.

There is nothing that binds people together more powerfully than a mutual experience.  There is no more abiding and persistent mutual human experience than our universal relationship to the earth.  By mere and simple mathematical equation, we can see that the indigenous naturo-spiritual (human) dynamic, developed through millions of years of human presence on this planet, is the single most powerful unifying and fundamentally mutual experience humans have ever had.  From this intimate relationship with the spirit and energy of earth, humans the world over have created and developed amazing similar ways of seeing the world, though the cultures may "look" different - feet on the ground, we are ultimately one.  It is the mistake of modernity that destroys this deep concept of human oneness.

Our relationship to earth, to Spirit, to the spirit of place, to spaciality, to the geo-energetic, is the single most abiding expression of human unity, compassion and social harmony.

The (de)nature and characteristics of the DC40 initiative are ultimately divisive, dismissive of indigeny and disrespectful to the notion and belief that humanity has the tools and skill and historical cultural knowing to enact its own redemption.

Please read Vine Deloria, Jr.'s "God Is Red" and Malidoma Some's "Healing Wisdom of Africa", particularly his chapter and writing about Tenbalu and Tingan, the spiritual energetics of earth.

We are in a world that requires revolution.  We are in a world where religious fanatics seek domination of our minds, hearts, and most of all our spirits. We are in a world where 1% of the privileged few feed on the blood of the poor and the sweat of the strong. We live in a world whose lifeblood is being crushed by the claw of monotheism and its children: greed, the corporatocracy, misogyny, racism, prejudice, callousness, and hate. We live in a world that is crying out for help; most of all, we live in a world where everyone is called to make a choice and make a stand.

What *do* you stand for? Which side of the equation do you support and favor? I hear many Pagans and even Heathens talking about peace. Peace does not come through non-involvement. Peace does not come through closing one’s eyes and accommodating the status quo. Peace does not come from swallowing injustice after injustice. Peace is the outgrowth of engagement. It rises up from the hearts of men and women deeply, compassionately, fiercely engaged with the pain and suffering of their world. It rises up from the efforts of those engaged to change their world for the better. Peace is the child of those who stand up and say ‘no more. No more.” It is not complaisance. It is not ennui. It is not un-involvement.

In this world, the very act of reconnecting with our ancestors is a vital and revolutionary one. We are in a war and it will be won not with bombs and guns and armaments but with the force of thousands and thousands of minds, hearts, and spirits turning back to the nourishment of their ancestors, reclaiming the filter of their own inherent indigeny, and casting off the mental and spiritual chains of monotheism and conquest. Those chains run deep. They hold us tightly. They have wound their way through every aspect of our modern world. They are imbued with the poison that threatens even the process of reconnection. Let us be its antidote. Let each one of us, supported by our dead, in line with our Gods, be the antidote to two thousand years of spiritual oppression. Do not compromise. There is no room for compromise here. Do not sell yourselves into mental slavery. Do not collaborate with those who would and who do.

That is precisely what people like the DC40 group, the New Apostolic Reform movement, and many members of our Republican controlled congress (who, as of this writing, have just passed the ‘let women die’ bill, because obviously in their dominionist inspired world, women don’t really count) are doing: they are enslaving us, chipping away at our rights and freedoms little by little. We have all, as Americans, been sold the idea of freedom. We’ve never been taught, however, or encouraged to ask what that really means, and what safeguarding it on a personal level entails. While our government is sending us overseas in defense of “liberty,” we’re losing what few liberties we have right here at home. We are being kept so numb and dumb that far too many of us don’t even know when the chains are tightening about our spirits, our minds, our civil liberties. We do not realize that we are slaves to the machine. We do not realize that we have no more liberty than a cow being led to the slaughterhouse.

I end many of my emails with a quote from the great abolitionist Frederick Douglas: "Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without planting up the ground. They want the rain without thunder or lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

He was right. We are living in exactly that kind of struggle. We must be harsh. We must be uncompromising. We must never, ever, ever stop speaking truth to power. Most of all, we must never retreat, not a single inch, not a millimeter in this fight because no matter how hopeless a fight it seems, not a single one of us is in this alone. Our ancestors are gathered behind us urging us on; the spirits of all those who will come after us are desperately begging us to never give up, and across this sad and sorry world, more and more people are waking up.  Resistance is our hope. It is the gift we give to the future.

We live in a world that requires revolution. Resistance starts by the willingness to examine one’s filter. How have you been taught to see and engage with the world? What have you been taught to value? To whom have you been taught to pray? Why? Resistance begins by tearing down the mental bricks and mortar of that filter and seeing the world clearly. Reject the filter of conquest, most especially your own. THIS is why connecting to one’s ancestors is crucial: they can and will help each and every one of us do just this thing. They are aching for the opportunity because we were not meant to be slaves.

The Saxon polytheist who laid down his life rather than convert, the European Pagan tortured to death rather than abandon his ancestral ways, the Taino woman who took up arms to protect her people, the Apache man who fought the white soldiers to keep his people free, the African woman ripped away from her people and forced into the terror of the middle passage who kept alive the sacred stories of her tribal Gods, and thousands and thousands of men, women, and even children just like them did not sacrifice and suffer so that we could go to our deaths not knowing who we are and where we come from. We not only owe them better than this; we owe it to ourselves too.

Because persecution of indigeny did not stop with modernity. It is not a thing of the past. We are not only still reaping its consequences but it continues today more hidden perhaps, but on no less detrimental a scale. How many evangelists went to Haiti after the recent earthquake, bullying survivors into accepting their God? How many times have tele-evangelists referred to indigenous peoples as ‘savage’ and in need of being ‘conquered for Christ’? How many Pagans have had their children taken away in custody cases for no other reason than that they were Pagan? These are religions struggling to reconnect with their indigenous traditions. They may not be *there* yet, but they’re trying and in many cases experiencing a backlash. I could fill pages with contemporary examples.

The only requirement to change this is courage and a willingness to act. Look upon the world we have inherited as it is without flinching, and decide for yourselves if it is the kind of world you wish to leave your children.

Writer and Ancestor worker Laura Patsouris was recently interviewed about ancestors, ancestor work, and indigeny. This is a wonderful and informative interview and I encourage people to set aside time to listen to it. Toward the end, Laura talks about indigeny and how, if you go back far enough, all of us come from indigenous cultures. She talks about the effects of conquest and how the ancestors can help every single person overcome.

The interview is here: http://lamyka.libsyn.com/weaving-ancestor-worship-with-laura-patsouris
You have to scroll down a bit to get to it, but it's well worth it.

If you're looking for a way to get started in  honoring your ancestors, if you're looking for a way to strike the first blow against the effects of conquest: here it is.