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Earth Love

6/24/2019

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Pegi Eyers

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“The ecological crisis is deepening our love for the Earth. We are being called to love more fully, and to express our love in more powerful, visionary and effective ways.”[1]  Drew Dellinger
 
“The holiest words I’ve ever read or thought or sung or prayed, were praises, praises for the world. And if I die tomorrow may the last words that I know, be praises, praises for the world”[2]   Jennifer Berezan
In these times of massive change, our most important task must be to bond with the land, to revere nature again as our Ancestors did, and to see ourselves as part of this thin and fragile biosphere, Our Earth, the source of all life and our spiritual home. The love of the land has always been central to our most cherished dreams and memories, and if we delve far enough below the surface of the modern mechanistic overlay, we will find that Gaia has been patiently waiting for us to return. As Frances Weller says, “We miss the world and the world misses us.”[3]  By interacting with the Earth through our eco-mind and human senses, our hearts naturally open to a space of unconditional love - full of gratitude for nature’s abundance, and for the gift of life itself.  When we experience the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures that are nature’s enchantment, we naturally realign with the fascination and magic of "naturans” - our luxuriant green world, the kingdom of the plant spirits, and the intrinsic harmony of natural law.
                                                   
Of course, in a humancentric society, there is a huge lack of knowledge about the natural world, and the human/nature separation is painfully extreme, leading to callous attitudes and misguided fears.  “We cannot win the battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.”[4] (Stephen Jay Gould)  Educating ourselves on the landforms, plants, trees, creatures and seasonal patterns in our local ecosystem is a life-long undertaking, and in the meantime, there is so much to love in the natural world. Graceful horizon lines, stalwart trees, soft breezes shaking the seed pods, animal tracks, sinewy snake tracings, endless variations in leaf and stone, patterns in sprout and decay, feathered shade and bird song all speak to the senses, and we can hear the charm and delight of the creatures endlessly calling their names. Are we listening? What are they telling us? When we hear the voices of Earth Community, we become transfixed by the many distinct expressions of beauty, spirit and practicality, and we also learn that Mother Earth is suffering from our disregard and disrespect. If we hold the ethics of care for all life, the best way to restore balance and peace with the Earth is to feel her, know her, listen to her, be open to her gifts, and ultimately, to love Her. Entering the “timeless time”  of ancestral mind is an excellent way to bond with nature, revere nature, and with love, express the earth-honoring ceremonies that align us with The Sacred that dwells in ourselves, all beings and the natural world.
“The earth is boundless love, a profound source of joy – the earth is humankind’s great educator.”  Daisetz Suzuki
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If we don’t experience nature fully, how are we going to love nature, and if we don’t love nature how are we going to respect and protect Her? Love the land! Go out to the natural places, transmit your love to Mother Earth and all the different spirits, elements and creatures, and practice gentleness with yourself and the land. Both the macrocosm and microcosm of Gaia are sentient in countless unique ways, and Her response to your biophilia, reverence and positive energy may surprise you.  As re-earthing, ecomystic and animist practices confirm, nature spirituality can give rise to ecstatic experiences, and the ability to see into the soul of things that matter.  We are but a humble part of Earth Community, and if human beings started to worship the trees, plants, animals, birds, insects and elements as the “supreme divine beings” of the universe, industrial civilization would probably collapse overnight! To revere the elements, creatures and landforms of nature as sacred and inviolable divinities might be just the turnaround this monotheistic patriarchal system requires.
 
A wonderful practice to adopt is “Earth Blessing” - the recognition that spirit flows through the land, the elements and all beings, that our entire Earth Community is  sacred,  and that each  moment  is a  gift of vitality and joy. The essence of love is found everywhere in nature, and love is the ultimate vibratory field for the plant kingdom, the kinship of the creatures, the nurturing power of the feminine, and elements such as the water. Blessing and being blessed, expressing our wonder and gratitude for nature and the regenerative life force with song, chant, drumming, prayer and reflection, creates an atmosphere of celebration and love between us and the non-human world. By evoking the spiritual realms, and acknowledging the sacred in ourselves and the land, we are expressing a powerful force of unconditional love that empowers all of our connections in Earth Community.    
“Elders, poets and philosophers in all cultures, including our own, have expressed a similar sense of brotherhood or sisterhood, of mutual compassion and common interest with the rest of the living world - a relationship that can only be described as love.  It's source is ‘fellow-feeling’ - the knowledge that we are, like all other forms of life, Children of the Earth and members of the same family.”[5]   David Suzuki
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Our search for belonging and all things external is the result of our rift from nature. Yet we have the capacity to heal from this disconnect, to “be love” and express a daily appreciation for life, for the food that nourishes us, and for the ecotones where we live. The Earth is part of us, linked to us body and soul, and by spending time in nature we become re-rooted in place, and preserve that timeless bond, or spiritual ecology, at the forefront of our lives. Loving the earth means to cherish wild nature above all, and to honour the sacred elements of earth, water, air and fire. To embrace the Great Heart in nature is to locate an ancestral worldview immersed in the land just waiting to be rekindled, and to be enveloped in The Sacred during the seasonal cycles and daily round of our lives.  Nurturing our own hope and positivity is essential, as we return to right relationship with the earth’s sacred body (of which we are a part).
 
Loving the Earth with a fierce devotion may mean that we view the damage being done to nature as attacks on our own family and kinship group. The despair and rage we feel as witnesses to terracide, animal exploitation and the everyday callous disregard for the land can be channelled into creating awareness, resistance efforts, the earth rights movement, and by rejecting the numbing and destructive values of Empire. “Fighting for our survival in the 21st century is less about defeating the  aggression of  an external  enemy than it is about finding new ways to love the land.”[6] (Taiaiake Alfred) By opening our hearts to the Earth in our thoughts, words, actions and cultural life we find sacred purpose in the co-creation of an earth-honoring society, and restore much-needed balance. Our re-enchantment with the natural world is essential for devoting ourselves to eco-activism, environmental healing, earth restoration and rewilding, and the future rests with us!

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 To the woman in the earth,
 Who is my first and ever beloved.
 Whose smiles and rages and storms and weepings
 And tremblings and lashings and eruptions
 And ripenings and witherings and musings
 Are my life, my terror,
 My thought, my wild joy
 And all of beauty I ever want to know.
 Who takes me into her after every journeying,
 Who is my source, my end, and my obsession.
 Paula Gunn Allen

EARTH LOVE is an excerpt from the book Ancient Spirit Rising:
Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community by Pegi Eyers 
NOTES
[1] Drew Dellinger, “Study Guide,” Occupy Love: Revolution of the Heart, Dir. Velcrow Ripper, Fierce Love Films, 2013  www.occupylove.org
[2] Jennifer Berezan, Praises for the World Song and Chant,  SOCAN/ASCAP, Edge of Wonder Records, 2002   www.edgeofwonder.com
[3] Francis Weller, “Five Gates of Grief,” Robert Bly’s Minnesota Men’s Conference, November 4, 2013 
[4] Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010
[5] David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, Greystone Books, 2007
[6] Taiaiake Alfred, “Opening Words,” Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations, Leanne Simpson (editor), Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2008
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, decolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Amazon.com 
Stone Circle Press  ​ 
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The Green Burial Movement: In Conversation With Emma Restall Orr

6/17/2019

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Interview by Pegi Eyers

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Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve ~ photo © Emma Restall Orr
Emma Restall Orr is a spiritual teacher and priestess. As former head of the international Druid Network, Chief of the Order of the Yew, and Joint Chief of the British Druid Order, she was a spokesperson for British Druidry for several decades and appeared in a wide variety of TV programs, including Pagan's Progress, Secrets of the Stones, Lost Civilizations, The Unexplained and The Real Merlin, among others. In 2004, she founded Honouring the Ancient Dead, an advocacy group working for the respectful treatment of ancient human remains. The group also speaks out regarding the Stonehenge Visitor Centre and other displays that include or interpret ancestral human remains. Her current focus is Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground, part of the growing movement towards natural, woodland and green burial grounds in Britain. Her most recent book, The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature was published by Moon Books in 2012. My interview with Emma Restall Orr was conducted via email in 2013.
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Pegi Eyers
You are best known for work in Druidry, but you are now concentrating on another project. How did your work in both Druidry and the repatriation of ancient human remains lead to your interest in the green burial movement, and the opening of Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Preserve?

Emma Restall Orr
Sun Rising is an expression of the practical ethics I feel are fundamental to my spirituality, my religion, to my understanding of both Druidry and animism. It can take a lifetime to grasp and hone our ethics, and to work out just how those ethics do indeed play out in every decision that we make, but if we don't make every effort to walk our talk, we are effectively without ethics: our spiritual beliefs are, literally, valueless.

When my fourteen years of full-time motherhood drew to a close, I needed to forge the next step of my life, and the challenge I set myself was to create a project that was as close to 100% ethical as is possible within the heart of our Western culture. This meant creating a viable business that offered something essential, that left behind more of value than it consumed, that was both environmentally and socially sound. Sun Rising is that project. By providing a simple funeral service, I offer families and individuals an affordable, beautiful and very personal alternative to the funeral industry, which is all too often a profiteering racket without genuine care. In our sixteen acres, we are creating a nature reserve within which people can be buried in peace and serenity, in wildflower meadows or with a tree planted on the gravfe. Such a place of peace allows many the courage to die with grace, releasing themselves into its tranquillity. It is a profoundly healing place.

The landscape here has a great deal of history — Saxon, Roman and older. Being in such serenity, one can feel the ancestors, one can almost hear the songs of our people in the breeze, feeling ourselves walking upon their paths, watching the sun setting just as they did for millennia. It is a place where we can lose the overlays of chronology, and feel utterly connected within the timeless unity of nature in itself.

Of course there are many ways of walking our talk; that a burial ground was my choice is perhaps simply an expression of my Plutonic soul. I feel comfortable amidst trauma where others are not, I am familiar with pain and death. I am utterly incompetent at small talk, but I can sit with the dying for days and can work with individuals shattered by grief. It is an important part of growing into and through our human "self to understand just what, who, how we are as individuals, and to utilize our particular qualities to the best of our abilities. This is how we make our ancestors proud, and offer something to our descendants that is of real value.
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Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve
Pegi Eyers
What a beautiful affirmation of how being connected to nature allows for the overlay of past and present. Sun Rising is unusual in that it is both a burial ground and a nature reserve — how did this green vision come to be?

Emma Restall Orr
Yes, the overlay of past and present, and indeed future potential, is fascinating to me. Searching for communion with deity as and within nature, in part what I am striving to understanding is what nature is in itself, in other words, not through the filters and veils of our human and individual perception. My explorations, in line with various other mystics, philosophers and seekers, is that time is a construct of that perception, and not inherent within nature as we perceive it. A religious practice based on such a belief inspires us to work in ways that integrate past, present and future.

With respect to Sun Rising, there was both spiritual vision and very practical elements that guided us to create a site that was both burial ground and nature reserve. Practically speaking, we believe that in a century, a well-established nature reserve is likely to be an exceedingly precious haven within an overpopulated and overdeveloped landscape. We have hares breeding, lapwings nesting, owls and orchids on our ever- growing species list, which is wonderful to witness.

Spiritually, our vision is entirely commonsensical: nature heals. Whether we are facing our own death, coping with a loved one's immanent dying, stupefied with the shock of their death, or standing in the storms and floodwaters of grief, the song of the skylark lifts something within us. The dance of butterflies over wildflower meadow offers a moment's relief. The breaking open of soft green leaf buds reminds us that life renews itself even after the harshest of winters. I find an immeasurable strength in nature.

Pegi Eyers
Can you speak about the popularity of the green burial movement in the UK and how Sun Rising fits into this movement?

Emma Restall Orr
The green burial movement began in Britain almost twenty years ago, and there are now over fifty dedicated natural burial grounds. A natural burial ground offers a beauty that attunes with folk who tend their gardens and watch the birds, who run in the hills and wander the woodlands. It is also good for people who want the absolute simplicity of a good farewell. At a natural burial ground, you can create an exquisitely beautiful funeral for very little expense, with no funeral directors, no hearse, no pretension, just the family and the bird-song, giving thanks and saying goodbye.
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Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve
Pegi Eyers
Can you describe the natural means and methods that are associated with green burials?

Emma Restall Orr
First of all, we encourage burial, not cremation. Crematoria use massive amounts of fossil fuels every day to incinerate our dead. Whatever your religious tradition, there is no ethical foundation for using those resources so wastefully.

We also encourage the use of ethically-made coffins and shrouds. Probably the best we offer is a woven willow coffin made from English-grown willow. These coffins are not within everyone's price range (around $1000), so we have less expensive alternatives as well. The latter are wonderful for creative families to personalize: grandchildren paint on them, families and friends write messages and prayers all over them.

Of course, we don't require that a coffin at all: the eco-purist can be buried in an organic hemp shroud, sheet or woollen blanket. What we don't allow is chipboard wood-veneer coffins, plastic linings or handles, coffins that can cost many thousands of dollars. Furthermore, we don't permit the burial of embalmed bodies: there is no good reason to embalm a loved one, other than to line the pockets of the funeral directors.

Burial — as opposed to cremation — recaptures the carbon stored in our body. If we bury without embalming in simple, ethically-made coffins, we are making much less of a damaging impact on the earth with our death.

Pegi Eyers
What has been most rewarding for you, as you attend to the crossing-over process?

Emma Restall Orr
Perhaps the most important is the reward of knowing that we have been of service. It is an extraordinary honor to accompany someone through the last period of their living, facilitating the peaceful release that allows for what we might call a "good death." What I have gained for myself is harder to express, but it has something to do with the recognition of mortality, and the need to live consciously, moment-by-moment. I know more than ever that it is not worth arguing or losing relationships with people I value, because sometimes fate does not allow us the time to mend those ruptures. It is worth working hard to solve our inner conflicts and find ways to enjoy life, because there is no point in struggling so that "one day we'll be okay," when that day may never come.
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Sun Rising Coffin Bier
Pegi Eyers
How can we incorporate the awareness of mortality into our spiritual practice?

Emma Restall Orr
It is important to allow death to be a part of our lives. The death of a loved one is far more traumatic in families and communities where death is kept away from the hearth and home and not spoken of at all. Losing someone in such a situation means that those involved suddenly find themselves in wholly unfamiliar territory, and are prone to needing others to step in and take control. As a result, they are likely to feel disempowered by their experience, and grieving process becomes far harder than it need be.

How do we allow death to be a more comfortable part of our lives? Talking about the ancestors is important, beginning with parents or grandparents. Keeping alive the memories and teachings we shared and gained from being a part of their lives allows us to keep open the possibility of talking about their death, how we miss them and grieve for them. Being aware of the ancestors whose lives, whose skills and needs shaped the landscape around us, is another way of remembering the ancestors.

At Samhain in my family, we remember the dead, and also think of our own death. We review our Wills and update information that will aid those who have to tidy up our lives should we die during the coming year. We consciously think about our own dying.

There are many ways that we can more directly engage with the energies of death and release. There are many gods who embody the processes of dying, of death, of existence beyond death, and of the dead. There are named gods from various pantheons and forces and beings whose presence we may feel but whose names we may never know. Working with these gods can be helpful. But to be honest, there are not many who need to have such a close connection with death.

Pegi Eyers
What do you believe about life after death?

Emma Restall Orr
Over a quarter-century, I've been in conversation with people of many different traditions: learning, seeking deity, engaging in ritual, meditation and visioning and working with death. Over that time I have become increasingly uncomfortable with metaphysical dualism: the idea that mind and matter are different sorts of stuff, and that the soul/ spirit resides in the body and that at death that mind (soul) flies free to be elsewhere.

This idea is deeply embedded in modern materialism, in which the soul or mind is dismissed as an illusion, a mere epiphenemenon of the brain. Metaphysical dualism is an extension of the principles of anthropocentric dualism, a system that devalues nonhuman nature.

I do not believe in the perpetual existence of the soul in any way that perceives "soul" as a coherent individual entity that is separable from matter. I see each apparently-separate form as integral to the whole, from the tiniest particles of being to the totality of the universe. All of it is in the perpetual process of cohering into emergence, and dissolving back into formlessness, within the minded wholeness of nature. On that basis, there is a cycling within the vast becoming of nature, but it is not one we can call "reincarnation of the soul."
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Emma Restall Orr
Pegi Eyers
Your recent book The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature is focused on a contemporary resurgence of an animist worldview. How can this transformative perspective be disseminated?

Emma Restall Orr
The animist perceives subjects where the non-animist perceives merely objects. I call myself a radical animist: to me, the very category of "thing" is questionable. Since consumer culture is based upon the exploitation of things, animism poses a serious challenge to it.

If every part of nature is populated by subjects, each of which has a right to thrive no more or less than we ourselves do, how do we survive? Every decision we make must be made with an awareness of the impact we have on those around us, out of respect for the other's right to exist and thrive.

The answer lies in the dissemination of peaceful inspiration. I have found that I am more likely to get someone's attention, and change their attitude towards nature if they can feel my soul as peaceful. Finding that peace — through the dissolution of self in natural integration — is the core of my spiritual practice.
 
Pegi Eyers
Thank you so much Emma, it has been indeed a pleasure. The Ancestors must be very proud of you!

Emma Restall Orr www.emmarestallorr.org
 
Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve, Tysoe U.K. (near Stratford upon Avon) http://sunrisingburialground.co.uk

This interview originally appeared in Witches and Pagans Magazine #28. 
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, decolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Amazon.com 
Stone Circle Press  ​
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Letters to the Earth

4/12/2019

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On April 15, 2019 "Letters to the Earth" were read at events around the world. Hosted by Extinction Rebellion and @CultureDeclares, this was an opportunity  to think beyond the human narrative and bear witness to the climate and ecological emergency.  How does this existential threat affect the way we wish to live our lives, and the action that we take? Written to or from the Earth, future or past generations, those who hold positions of power and influence, or to other species, this is my contribution.    #LettersToTheEarth 
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Pegi Eyers 

Dear Mother Earth:

Humanity is not a monolith, but a very large group of us decided to move away from your embrace long ago.  Why any human collective would want to become alienated from our other-than-human relatives in Earth Community, and leave the sacred circle of Indigenous Society is a mystery, and a mistake of the highest order. Without the reciprocity with you we have always known, the misguided among us broke natural laws and built vast civilizations misusing your elements, minerals, metals, clay, mountains, forests, plants, watersheds and animal labor.  

Without any care or respect for the well-being of the natural world, artificial cities were created through domination, greed, waste, ecocide and plunder. And as the insatiability of all this urbanity continued to attack Indigenous people and the land, the agenda of the Colonizer led to more abuse from fantasies like the endless growth paradigm, and dangerous new forms of industry and technology.  Today, the dark engines of our destructive civilization have culminated in a worldwide Empire that encircles us like a snare, and continues to shape human reality.  And yet, here in the 11th hour, millions of us are waking up to the impossibility of believing in these lies, and we are acknowledging that the systems of capitalism and endless growth are not compatible with the life-generating design and natural systems of the planet.
 
Dear Earth, please know that many of us have never stopped loving you, being embedded in you, and knowing you as Sacred and the source of all spiritual life.  We now see that there are countless ways the living magic and the primal matrix of the Sacred Earth Mysteries are returning to our lives, in the shape of things, the ancient shadows and the hidden meanings. The eternal Indigenous archetypes that weave natural law into human life continue to arise, and are showing up RIGHT NOW in profound expressions of resilience, resistance and the return to Earth Community. Beyond the toxicity of the rectangular-steel flatline, concrete-girded industrial world, the truth of the tribal human soul and the touch of the tribal human hand continue to manifest, and guiding forces are already in place for the collective recovery of our Ancient Spirit and return to eco-sanity.  

​Because of you, Our Beloved Earth, we continue to access a deep well of ancestral knowing, and your Web of Life continues to sustain all beings with the everlasting restoration of healing and new growth.  And even though some humans among us accept the illusion of separation from the natural world, please know that the earth-emergent ones are awake and aware, and ready to embrace your harmonic intelligence once again.  Dear Earth, as your Great Heart continues to thrive,  please do not give up on us.
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, decolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Amazon.com 
Stone Circle Press  ​
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Taking Issue With "We Are All One"

12/17/2018

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Since the early beginnings of the hippie era, teachings have appeared from diverse sources (including the prophecy of Indigenous elders), that emphasize the message of a collective movement toward world peace and harmony - a unified consciousness or “One” - and that the qualities of kindness and compassion will be integral to the survival of our species.
 
“As we move into the future we will work, laugh, play, study, vote - to renew democracy and renew the lives of all.  The new mestizaje is the joyous birth of a new humanity. No more barriers, no more racism. The past will not be forgotten but will be blended into the new bodies and cultures that will emerge out of our coming together not in battle or conquest, as in the days of old, but in Love, which is the only force that can unite us without destroying us. That is the way to world peace and harmony, and we struggle, dream and work for that future.”[1]  Virgilio Elizondo
 
The concept of  the "One” can refer to a “unified consciousness” either within or without, and can be examined from different angles. The great mystery traditions and literary canons worldwide confirm that humanity shares knowledge of the “One,” a vibratory field that connects all things, a place of universal love and enlightened rapport with the Divine. Alternatively described as “the cosmic unity of One energy,” “cosmic consciousness,” “the unmanifested absolute,” the Over-soul,  Indra’s Jewels, “the mind of God,” “The Word,” “the music of the spheres,” the Tao, shizen (Japan), the Akashic Records, “the unified field,” “the field of compassion,”  “the universal essence,” “the source,” “pure being,” “the global brain,” “the holographic realm,” “the conscious universe,” “the great chain of being,” Gnosis, Logos, Unio Mystica, uBuntu, “embracing all that is,” “a unity of being that underlies everything,” “the frequency domain,” “the power of creativity that supports all life,” “zero-point field” or the primordial OM, this field of energy is found in the inner worlds of human awareness and our core being, which aligns with the invisible realms and outer worlds of tangible form.

Variations of the “unified consciousness” can be reached by opening the heart, prayer, fasting, visioning, dreaming, drumming, focused intent, magical workings, “in the zone” creative or athletic pursuits, yoga, and meditation practice. I have experienced the “One” many times myself, in dreams, meditation, reverie, focused creativity and times of intense illness.  There is no doubt that this multi-level, multidimensional state exists and is within reach, and has been accessible throughout human existence. Many versions of the indigenous “shamanic journey” enter this layered space for healing, spiritual guidance and problem-solving on behalf of the tribal group.  However, the contemporary use of language is inadequate to describe the “One,” and better lexicon choices may be “matrix” or “web.”  

The term “oneness” is also problematic in that it assumes a universality to human experience, whereas there are utterly endless ways to experience, interpret and assign cultural meaning and cosmologies to the web. “Oneness” also implies that accessing the matrix tends to be a communal activity with a group of people (which can happen) but when fully examined, experiences are often of a solitary nature.  
                                                                                                                  “Spirituality started to emerge from within us, rising up in each person like a great tide of love, inspiration and Oneness with the source of our being, activating  us by  the  millions.  I  felt  the  great  light  that  the mystics speak of radiating outward from within us all. Then in a flash, I felt all people on Earth, and the Earth itself, being healed spontaneously.  In that moment of revelation, I felt waves of unconditional love for the whole planetary body and all Earth-life spreading through millions of us.”[2]  Barbara Marx Hubbard
 
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The contemporary movement toward universal unity, “Oneness,” “The Law of One,” “One Spirit,” “One Mind,” “One Vision,” “One Energy,” “One Blood,” “One People,” “One World,” “One Tribe” or “Unitribe” is emerging from all directions - multifaith theology, perennialism, New Age spirituality, noetic philosophy, alternative lifestyles, pop culture and yes, even Turtle Island Indigenous Knowledge. Manifesting today as the collective impulse toward a global consciousness, the “One” implies an ideal and utopian coming together of humankind in love energy, mutual cooperation, harmony and peace.

Contributing to this ideology is the work of scholar and visionary Joseph Campbell, who as a beloved “change agent” created the opening for many contemporary seekers to embrace the spiritual life and “follow their bliss.” Campbell promoted the idea that the mythology from any cultural tradition could be seen as an aspect of the universal “One Myth” or “monomyth.” Now critiqued as an over-simplification, and the “profoundest flaw in mythological thinking,”[3] this kind of reductionism leads to the breaking down of cultural diversity, and also allows for the normalization of cultural appropriation.  Being immersed in the ethics of  Eurocentric patriarchal scholarship, Joseph Campbell could not see that the specific religious property and/or spiritual practices unique to each cultural group should be preserved, not stripped of ethnographic context. Diversity should be the priority, not universalism, and contrary to the popular “One” meme, “all religions are not different paths up the same mountain – they’re different paths up different mountains.”[4] (John Beckett)
 
From mythology to the study of the human mind, the new philosophy of Noetics, metaphysic theory and contemporary quantum science have all suggested that the interaction of human thought and the connectivity of our belief systems (known as the “noosphere”) can actually impact the biosphere, pointing to a form of shared consciousness. Many visionaries claim that 2012 was the beginning of a new era for humanity, as we evolve into a group consciousness more in alignment with universal law and focused on unconditional love, “which does not judge, exclude nor adhere to one perception.”[5] (Jan Porter)  The ethereal idea of a Golden Age for humanity does seem to have taken root, and many believe that it is possible to emulate the way of the universal mind, the “One” beyond all physical limits. Variations on the “One” meme promote a “new dimensional shift,” an “evolutionary transition,” a “quantum leap forward,” and a “new world dawning” for both humanity and the planet itself. But, as the exalted concept of the “One” continues to find popular usage, we need to bring clarification and examine it from a more grounded perspective.
 
“One Tribe” or the “One” should not mean coming together in a uniform monoculture or some kind of “global order.”  All beings are subject to the laws of nature which stress that species diversity works better  than homogeneity,  and that  diversity  is  essential  to  a  healthy ecosystem. This principle applies to the human community as well (however much we have distanced ourselves from nature), and diversity is the keystone to healthy, thriving human populations. Traditional Indigenous societies were well aware of this natural law and established the clan system, also putting taboos in place to prohibit marriage within one’s extended family. Today, it is extremely important for us to develop an appreciation for cultural diversity, and a tolerance for different peoples, stories and sensibilities. But if in actual fact humanity did come together into “One Tribe,” it would spell the end of us.  As Daniel Quinn says in “The Story of B,” “a multiplicity of tribes and cultural groups in diversity has worked for millions of years and hopefully it will continue for millions more.”[6]

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For further clarification, those in the spiritual community may want to re-examine their over-use of the meme “We Are One,” as it could, on some level, be associated with or linked to secular thinking i.e. the neoliberal globalization that perpetuates the hegemony of Empire, colonization and capitalist control. The current push toward globalization actually promotes inequality between cultures and nation-states by applying unrealistic undemocratic standards of homogenous economic exchange, and denies the importance of locally-rooted culture, which naturally gives rise to a healthy diversity of Indigenous Knowledge and ancestral wisdom systems.
 
It is also troubling when we notice that the neo-liberal concept of “inclusivity” and the contemporary meme of “Oneness” is led by a majority of privileged white people, some very wealthy, suggesting yet another form of white hegemony, or perspectivism. It is mostly the dominant society that promotes universality, and white people are leading the charge, making sense of the interrelations for “One,” interpreting it for everyone else, and moving us all forward into a utopian future.  Also, as Ward Churchill points out, the overuse of the Lakota expression “mitakuye oyasin” (we are all related) and the “One” meme by New Age capitalism allows for cultural appropriation. “We are all related, we are all the same, which means we are entitled to anything of yours we want.”[7]  The beautiful illusions that the “love and light crowd” hold dear come from a place of privilege, which makes it easy to ignore their shared history with the disenfranchaised, and to deny any accountability for their white racism.  In reality, the “One” concept may work for the privileged, but it is hard to imagine marginalized groups having the agency to pursue the interconnectivity of “Oneness” with the oppressor, while engaged in counter-racism work, resistance, and daily survival.  What an insult it must be for people of colour to hear “We Are One” coming from the dominant society that is the source of their unrelenting oppression!
 
“You asserting to me, especially in the face of me critiquing your privilege and racism, that you consider ‘all people equal’ and that you ‘treat all people the same,’ denies my experience, and affirms to me your complicity in white supremacy. We do not have an equal experience of the world, and your supposed equal treatment can never be experienced equally.”[8]  harshbrowns
 
To reinforce the “One” vision it is easy to find obvious similarities and commonalities between cultural groups, but this is hardly the point.  Perhaps it is only people devoid of spirituality that need to find similarities between cultural traditions to buttress their own miniscule understanding and practice of holistic ancestral thinking.  Beyond a basic knowledge of and respect for the sacred keystones in other Indigenous groups, I have noticed that First Nations folks do not indulge in comparative multifaith theory, and it may be a good idea to examine why.  Knowing they already have ancestral alignment with their own traditional knowledge, they embody the tools and treasures of their own specific worldview and Indigenous Knowledge, or are in the process of unpacking them.  Why call yourself a member of the “Rainbow Tribe” when you already belong to a specific First Nation, the Michi Saagiig Nishhaabeg, for example?  Fortunately, the more appropriate memes of  “Different Yet All One” or “Unity in Diversity” are gaining currency, which is also in accord with the phrase “All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer.”[9] as put forth by Chief Arvol Looking Horse.
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​Perhaps the utopian dream that the world will someday exist in peace and love is just more magical thinking, as there is another aspect of natural law that avows our entire existence to hinge on the balance of opposing forces. Beyond any cultural understanding, interpretation, worldview or philosophy, natural law states that by default, the introduction of any concept automatically summons its opposite.  As Pagan leader Selena Fox says, “harmony is not the absence of conflict, but the balance of forces.”[10] 

And, despite what New Age philosophy advises, the Americas are not going to mystically “wake up” one fine morning.  There is no “Oneness” in the quotidian world right now and no amount of ethereal prayer, visualization or wishful thinking is going to make it so. The way that the concept of the “One” continues to be touted by the spiritual community as a philosophic solution to every problem of human life allows spiritual seekers to disassociate themselves from any type of meaningful activism, resistance or political activity. “What changes culture is legislation, regardless of how much one pleads for divine intervention.”[11] Derek Beres

Parroting over and over that “We Are All One” allows the “spiritually enlightened” to imagine that this is already the case, and enables the privileged majority to ignore the activism “in the street,” “on the ground” or at the grassroots level that would create the conditions for equality or the metaphysics of  unity to actually unfold.  The most reprehensible aspect of New Age thinking is spiritual bypassing, or the refusal to look at uncomfortable realities (“only focus on the positive – by examining the negative you add more negative!”) which implies a serious level of solipsistic self-deception, and encourages the indulgent behavior of living in a fantasy world.  Overlooking the human rights struggles of our fellow humans is morally wrong, and what spiritual seekers perceive to be a move toward enlightenment in the collectivity of the “One” is actually the position of a coward, who has no interest in confronting injustice, or engaging with the reality of serious social issues beyond their cocoon of privilege.
 
“What I want to criticize are not New Age practices - some of which strike me as possibly beneficial, others as grossly counterfeit - but the way New Age notions discourage engagement with social problems and political realities.”[12] Michael Parenti
 
It can also be argued that members of the Settler Society should clean their own house first, by claiming their ethnic karma and becoming accountable to the oppressed peoples of Turtle Island. Equity comes before equality, and placing ourselves behind First Nations peoples in a subordinate position that propels the most oppressed forward is the only solution. Follow the Turtle! Working toward real change by being responsible for our white privilege and serving to end racism in the real world are the steps we need to take before we begin to think about such abstract and colorblind concepts as “Oneness.”  
 
“There will be no social justice, no anti-racism, no feminist emancipation, no liberation of any kind for anybody on this continent unless aboriginal people win their demand for self-determination.”[13]  Sunera Thobani
 
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“The most misused phrases among self-proclaimed ‘allies’ of indigenous peoples are ‘we are all related’, ‘all my relations’, and ‘we are all one.’  Most often it seems to mean ‘we are all the same’ - a mantra used to sidestep the discomfort of discussing colonialism, and the fact that there are those who suffer from colonialism, and those who benefit.”[14]  Barbara Low
 
“I am a little bit tired of all my non-POC friends posting the endless feel-good ‘We Are One’ memes, while they never lift a finger to change the status quo, which they benefit from every single day.  I have a handful of friends who realize the price of their privilege and walk their talk, and are true allies in making change, but literally, it's a handful.  In my experience, the ‘love and light’ brigade tend to be very hyper-focused on their own personal growth while rarely extending that effort to the greater community. Only privileged people can afford to be that way. Some of us have to deal with the reality of ‘what is’ on a daily basis, and no, it's not unicorns and rainbows.”[15] 
Juliana K'abal-Xok
 
“By denying the spiritual and political autonomy of native people, the New Age rainbow people subvert whatever good intentions they may have about multicultural community. What gets created is multicultural white middle- class dominance in yet another form.”[16]   Myke Johnson
 
“I call on white people to admit that the Rainbow Nation is a myth, and until we truly are able to recognize the humanity of all people, we cannot claim to be post-racist.”[17]  Gillian Schutte
 
As I see it, the true danger in practicing the consciousness of the “One” is to ignore or bypass what is precious and sacred about the specific place and community where we are actually living.  At the core of the Indigenous Knowledge common to all human groups is a revered focus on the environment, plants, creatures, cycles and elements of nature in our homelands, not on gratuitously importing other things that are pleasing. The “One” principle may work on an etheric level, but like angelic visitations, extraterrestrial assistance, starseed messages, galactic guidance, planetary alignments, “ascension” and other lofty New Age beliefs, it reinforces an abstract, vertical spirituality away from and separate from the Earth, instead of promoting a horizontal vision which encompasses the Earth, our one beautiful and precious home.  

According to eco-visionary David Abram, New Age thinking and scientific reductionism share the same misguided principles that separate us from the land. “New Age spiritualities abandon nature entirely, inviting their adherents to focus their intuitions upon non-material energies and disincarnate beings assumed to operate in an a-physical dimension, pulling the strings of our reality and arranging earthly events according to an order that lies elsewhere, behind the scenes.  Commonly reckoned to be at odds with one another, conventional over-reductive science and New Age spiritualities actually fortify one another in their detachment from the Earth, one of them reducing sensible nature to an object with scant room for sentience and creativity, the other projecting all creativity into a supernatural dimension beyond all bodily ken.”[18]
 
In a society detached from nature, popular claims such as “the purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness” can be seen as more liberal navel-gazing, and I also take issue with the New Age concept of “evolving to a higher state,” as I feel it to be a hubristic and delusional goal focused entirely on humancentric objectives, with an arrogant disregard for the human place in creation. We don't need a new and more enlightened way to inhabit the earth - Indigenous cultures (including our own in Old Europe) existed comfortably and sustainably on the planet for millennia, exactly the way human beings are supposed to be living. We already have an honourable niche within the circle of all life, and it is supercilious to suggest that we transcend it, or place ourselves above or beside the interconnected web. It is our responsibility to use our human intelligence in service to that network, and to embody reverence in our relationships  with  the  more-than-human world.   

It is not about  the narrow confines of the self, our shadowplay with other human beings, our imaginary connection to a “divinity” outside the earth’s sphere, or our incestuous interactions with our own linear concerns, creations or technological wizardry.  Clearly we have lost our respect  for other beings and the natural world, the very elements that give rise to life itself, so how can anyone claim that humanity is “evolving to a higher state?” It seems to me that the moment we step outside of the Sacred Circle, give up our connection to the Earth and our humility in the face of the Great Mystery, and start to dominate and control creation, we immediately lose any potential to actualize a spiritual existence.
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“We have to stop with the idea of creating peace on earth and begin with creating peace with Mother Earth. We have tried the first alternative for thousands of years and look where that has led us - now is the time of the Original Ways, the Native Ways.”[19]  Tiokasin Ghosthorse  
 
As we move away from the alienation that was imposed on us by the scientific paradigm, we become empowered to reconnect to the land and the cycles of life, and to engage in the recovery of our essential eco-self and ancestral knowledge.  An important part of our practice is to reflect on the love and harmony between people, and to honor the unique diversity that is the human experience. All beings are distinctly separate but forever connected in the Circle of Life and Earth Community, and we would do well to embrace our “Unity in Diversity.”  Perhaps there is a groundswell of consciousness that is birthing the next cycle of our collective human journey, but if our communities evolve into tribes, may our spiritual practices reflect our “Oneness” with nature and our beloved landscape, the place we call home.
 
“What many people – even spiritually alert people – seem to miss is that we are all creatures of this earth, this planet, this biosphere.  And there’s no escaping this condition.  Wisdom is epi-phenomenal to life on the Earth - any claim to wisdom that doesn’t make us more cognizant of our relationship to trees, insects, dirt and water, is probably a false claim.  This is not to say that there’s nothing ‘transcendent,’ but that whatever ‘transcends’ our earthly condition must be rooted – like a Great Oak, Ash or Willow Tree – in Air, Fire, Water and Stone.”[20]   Montague Whitsel
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NOTES
[1]  Virgilio Elizondo, “The Sacred in the Latino Experience,” Americanos: Latino Life in the United States, by Edward James Olmos, Lea Ybarra, Manuel Monterrey and Carlos Fuentes, Little, Brown and Company, 1999 
[2] Barbara Marx Hubbard claims that the planetary birth epiphany she experienced in 1992 signaled the “next turn on the spiral of evolution, the planetary shift, the birth of a new Earth and a new universal humanity.”  From Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanity’s Great Shift to the Age of Conscious Evolution, Shift Books, 2012
[3] According to Robert Ellwood “a tendency to think in generic terms of people or races is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking.” The Politics of Myth: A Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell, SUNY Press, 1999
[4]  John Beckett, “Unfortunate Effects of Joseph Campbell,” Under the Ancient Oaks: Musings of a Pagan, Druid and Unitarian Universalist (blog), March 2, 2014  (www.patheos.com)   
[5] Personal communication, Rev. Jan Porter, author and Spiritualist Minister, 2011  (www.inspiredsoulworks.com)
[6] Daniel Quinn, The Story of B: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, Bantam, 1997
[7]  Ward Churchill, Indians are Us?  Between the Lines, 1984
[8]  “Good White Person,” harshbrowns, (blog), September 13, 2011
(http://harshbrowns.wordpress.com)
[9] Statement in solidarity with the Idle No More movement by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, NDN News - Daily Headlines in Indian Country, December 31, 2012
[10]  Selena Fox, transcript, Pagan Spirit Gathering Press Conference re: Dianic Rituals and Transgender Inclusion, June 2012.   (www.selenafox.com)
[11] Derek Beres, “Why Marianne Williamson Needs To Face Reality,” Yoga Brains, 2012
[12] Michael Parenti, “The New Age Mythology,” Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, St. Martin's Press, 1994
[13]  Sunera Thobani, speech at the conference “Women’s Resistance: From Victimization to Criminalization,” 2001, Herizons Magazine, Winter 2002  (www.herizons.ca)
[14]  Barbara Low (Mi'kmaq), Facebook comment, 2013
[15]  Juliana K'abal-Xok (Mayan), Facebook comment, 2013
[16]  Myke Johnson, “Wanting to be Indian: When Spiritual Searching Turns into Cultural Theft,” Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice, 2011  (https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com)
[17]  Gillian Schutte, “Dear White People,” Thought Leader, Mail & Guardian Online Network, 2013.  (www.thoughtleader.co.za)
[18]  David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, Vintage Books, 2011 
[19] Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Cheyenne River, Itazipco/Mnicoujou and Oglala Lakota) Facebook comment, January 2013
[20] Montague Whitsel, Wellsprings of the Deer: A Contemporary Celtic Spirituality, 1stBooks, 2002

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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.  Amazon.com 
Stone Circle Press 
 
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Dear Greenmantle ~ Review Rebuttal

11/14/2018

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PEGI EYERS
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Well it was bound to happen. All the positive reviews from experienced activists, academics, community peoples, and folks willing to take up the social justice learning curve, and boom (!) my book Ancient Spirit Rising falls into the hands of someone who is, well, uninformed. I’m open to valid critique on style or content of course, but when a review contains outright errors based on bias, it’s hard not to speak out!  This was the case with publisher Paul Pearson, who recently reviewed Ancient Spirit Rising in his UK-based Pagan magazine Greenmantle.

Not to generalize, but I've noticed that folks in the UK make predictable errors when it comes to Settler-Colonialism and contemporary native/non-native intersections here in the Americas, and carry a lot of normalized racism. So here goes, as I address the more glaring misconceptions in Paul Pearson's review.

Dear Paul Pearson/Greenmantle, here is your full review, with my comments on each section:

[PP] "Drawing on cultural studies and contemporary social justice, Ancient Spirit Rising examines the loss of our vital ethno-cultural connection to tribe and place, and why there is a trend to borrow identities from other cultures. To be sure, this is a passionately written volume, as most dealing with cultural appropriation will be, and there is much to ponder and learn here. The author’s relationship with the Turtle Island First Nations is fascinating, deeply felt, and supported by some thoughtful analysis. As one would expect, her discussion of historical colonialism and its effects on the indigenous cultures in Part One is not an easy read."

[PE]  Nice - thanks!  Very good so far, but we must continue.

[PP] "However, Eyers not only details the racism, appropriation and cultural destruction of the indigenous culture, but also looks at how such wrongs can be repaired. Part Two of the book falls into a recognizable Pagan “How-to” mode for Animistic practice and Bioregionalism - and most particularly into the 'make it up as you go along' school, which is widespread and perfectly valid within modern Neo-Paganism. It is a shame, however, and not acceptable to all
modern Pagans, to discount the past altogether. Much more could be said about eco-spirituality, and this merely scratches the surface."

[PE] OK fine, but the last two sentences are completely puzzling, as I do write 3 full chapters - the core of the book - on the different features of Ancestral Mind, Animism and pre-colonial worldviews, in thought and action, and how to recover those dynamics in our lives today.  I'm not sure how ASR is contributing to "discounting the past" for modern Pagans (or any other movement) but perhaps you missed those passages entirely.  And how exactly can a book entitled Ancient Spirit Rising discount the past, anyway? (LOL) As for including more on eco-spirituality, there are countless sections scattered throughout the book that fit squarely into that genre, so I'm thinking that you may have missed those as well.

[PP] "While most agree that 'appropriation = bad,' the reality is a highly contentious spectrum of opinions and, self-evidently, not everyone will agree with her position on it. To me it strays slightly too far into self-loathing and racial guilt, and yet without addressing the issue posed by her as a white person writing on behalf of the First Nation in question. There is no acknowledgement of the true complexities of the issue such as, to give just one example, those tribes who have fully welcomed respectful and sincere students, or indeed those individuals within a tribe who have done so while others have not. Thus the book can seem a little heavy-handed and biased, limited in its scope without a balancing counterpoint."

[PE]  OK, so here is where I get to defend my thesis (LOL) and discuss your most serious misconceptions and errors.  1) Cultural appropriation is NOT a set of opinions (newsflash!) but a systemic system of dominance, and the final process in the colonization agenda, within a colonizer/colonized dynamic. This is explained at many points in the book, and that regardless of opinion - either native or non-native - the actual definition of cultural appropriation still applies. (You know, the definition that is agreed-upon by the overwhelming majority of activists, academics and community peoples.  But you have yet to catch that nuance, unfortunately.) 

2) I can't break the news any better on "self-loathing," but unfortunately this phrase is shorthand for white supremacy, as it points to your inability (and that of many other uninformed white people) to consider that critiques of "whiteness" are maybe NOT taboo. To your mind, being white is beyond reproach, which indicates on your part some seriously embedded white superiority and racism.  The reality in today's world, Paul Pearson, is that White Studies is an official department in academia, and the unpacking of white supremacy, racism and white fragility is growing by leaps and bounds across the entire social justice spectrum. Examining our own whiteness, our role in Settler-Colonialism (especially for those still living in the UK - the seat of Empire), our ongoing complicity in those systems, and what we can do to address historic and contemporary injustice is NOT "self-loathing" but a necessary step toward making amends and moving forward into a decolonial future.  A dark and ironic aspect of your "self-loathing" statement is that yes, it does exist, but it develops from the internalized colonization and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that people of colour and other marginalized groups carry from being oppressed by Empire.  (You know - the same Empire created by YOUR country and forced upon the world!)  And here's where your statement falls completely apart, as white people have not been socialized to see ourselves as white, so if we do experience "self-loathing" it certainly has nothing to do with ethnicity. You cannot hate what you do not know! I take great care in Ancient Spirit Rising to stress that instead of "white guilt," responsibility is our best way forward.  It is evident that you did not actually read the book, Paul Pearson, as you would have found that I advocate for self-empowerment and love for all people, and that I hold the vision for a healthy coexistence, and our "Unity in Diversity."

                     "Being honest about Empire isn't self loathing,
               it's accepting responsibility for how we perpetuate it."  
                           Lola Archer Pickett, Wild Playground

3) As for "tribes or individuals who welcome respectful and sincere white students" of course I discuss this dynamic widely in Ancient Spirit Rising, and advocate for cultural sharing.  There is no counterpoint required, as my entire thesis is devoted to learning from the values of First Nations!  We need to absorb all we can about First Nations to practice good Allyship, but the difference however (and the nuance that you seem to have missed), is that when the white person takes on elements of the Indigenous cultural or spiritual property as part of their own identity, this crosses the boundary line and falls into the exact definition of cultural appropriation (as already discussed). There are other issues of "adopting in" that I don't need to go into here, but again, identity theft is considered to be the worst form of cultural appropriation by the overwhelming majority of activists, academics and community peoples - both native and non-native. 

4) As for "heavy-handed and biased" (!) 3 whole years of research  into the most accurate and up-to-date definitions within social justice today, and synthesized for the benefit of readers everywhere, can hardly be described as "biased" - and dealing with serious issues in our society is never a walk in the park.  There is probably no kind way to offer these truths, and calling them "heavy-handed" is just a reflection of your own fragility Paul Pearson, and your inability to hear them. 

[PP] "It is noticeable that anti-appropriation sentiments are sometimes identical to aspects of 'folkish' (racist) rhetoric, and arguments that they come out of a different history have validity but can only be taken so far. (Are the Celtic or Saxon cultures, as those of a conquered people, unavailable for use by those of Norman descent, or whose parents emigrated to another land? Some Celtic reconstructionists believe so.)"

[PE]  Wrong again Pearson. I am fully aware of the xenophobic “folkish (racist) rhetoric" on white ancestral recovery that goes on today in white supremacist and Neo-Nazi spaces, and I address it head-on in the section "Ancestral Origins and Cultural Recovery."  By conflating anti-appropriation work with folkish rhetoric it sounds like you are sympathizing with the latter, or at least that you have no clue how to differentiate between the two, which are completely opposite in terms of harm and healing.  And  since you missed that part in Ancient Spirit Rising, here is a brief synopsis.

"The modern movement to retrieve and practice specific ancestral traditions makes absolutely no claim to an ethnic hierarchy, separatism, or superiority over others, but rather promotes tolerance, peaceful co-existence and cultural recovery for all peoples. Unfortunately, instead of celebrating our ethnocultural roots, the separatist notion of 'racial pride' has been so warped by Eurocentric white supremacy in recent times, that many modern white folks now consider cultural or ethnic integrity to be taboo (for white folks, anyway). Meanwhile the fear is very real that the perverse 'racial purity' agenda of the white nationalists, white supremacists, eugenicists and nazi cults could rise again, and we have to be on guard, but ethnicity aligned with cultural traditions is the way humanity has been self-organized for millennia all over the world, long before the fabrication of 'racial science,' German occultism, or the invention of white superiority.  When we look to the colonizer/colonized power imbalance that is our legacy, and the realities in the Americas today, racist or anti-racist white folks who are in no danger of dying out from genocidal attack simply sound ludicrous when making the rules for cultural preservation. The psychoses of Eurocentrism, White Superiority and Ethnic Hierarchy ('racial' stratification) are the only issues that need to be called out and addressed, not the reclaiming, celebrating or practicing of specific pre-colonial earth-rooted ethnoculture(s) by any individual or community."

[PP] "From my own experiences with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, I am fully aware of the adoption and cultural theft of practices and spirituality, and have written passionately about it myself. As such I can appreciate much in this book. Well researched and crammed with references and footnotes, this is a volume that gives food for thought, but no easy answers."

[PE]  Why thank you!  I can only hope that you become more informed to write about cultural appropriation in the future. In terms of critiquing whiteness, we have to hold the tension between acknowledging inner and outer white supremacy without becoming defensive or over-emotionalizing the challenge, as we can easily continue to replicate racist behavior.  And it is telling that there is a common thread in the English perspective, that makes you the only reviewer of Ancient Spirit Rising so far, to object to a dialogue on whiteness. The unpacking of racism in the UK is only at the very beginning stages, and there is a lot of work to do~!
 
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
www.stonecirclepress.com   
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Finding Our Long-Lost Ancestral Traditions

9/26/2018

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PEGI EYERS

Transcript of my presentation at the conference Shatitsirotha Boodiwewin/ Re-Igniting the Sacred Power of Creation: Essential Knowledges for Transformative Action  hosted by Trent University, Indigenous Environmental Studies and Sciences, April 22-24, 2016.  Such an amazing time!
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My name is Pegi Eyers, and I am the author of the award-winning book Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community.   I live here in the Peterborough area - Nojogiwanong in the language of the Michi Saagiig Nisnaabeg, who are the original Earthkeepers of this land.  As I wrote my book I also went on a personal learning journey, and I would like to invite you to travel with me through the many themes in Ancient Spirit Rising, and how I discovered the links between them.  
 
I have been blessed with a wide range of learning experiences and close proximity to First Nations friends and community over the years, and  the starting point for my book began right here at Trent University.  At an Elders Gathering in 2010, I heard revered teacher and traditional Midewiwin leader James Dumont say that, "Everyone needs to get back to their own Indigenous Knowledge.”  I was stunned by this remark, and how he was referencing two important points at the same time.  First, he was referring to the harm that is being done by white folks who take on the spiritual and cultural property of First Nations and assume native identities, and secondly, he was giving us a great blessing by implying that Indigenous Knowledge IS the collective birthright of all humanity, and that we all have original Indigenous Knowledge (or the acronym IK).  And what resonated with me on a deep level in James Dumont’s monumental directive was the unspoken understanding, and the paradox perhaps, that reclaiming earth-connected cultures and recovering tribal ways will be the best way forward for all of us, in times of massive change. 
 
Yet just where was our IK located as non-native people, and how did those of us descended from the Settler Society lose our ancestral connections in the first place?  Like a long-lost trail gone cold, this inquiry is what drove my research and  writing toward the completion of Ancient Spirit Rising.  What I found out is that in our rush to colonize the Americas, we gave up our bonds to our places of ethnic origin, and our indigeneity as connected to those lands. Consciously or not, with the founding of the Americas, we sacrificed whatever spiritual ecology and ancestral knowledge we still held from our homelands, and the result today is a serious lack of interest in having any ethnocultural identity whatsoever, or even why that would be important.  Belonging to a giant nation-state like “Canada” or the “USA” is not an “ethnicity” or even a “culture” in the strictest sense of the word, unless you count patriotism or capitalism as your ideals, which in my view are questionable loyalties. Finding our long-lost ancestral tradition is a huge challenge, but this is exactly what is being asked of us by James Dumont and countless other First Nations academics, thought leaders, activists and visionaries.  
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Now as a deep thinker and spiritual person I had spent many years observing and sometimes even participating in the world of New Age Spirituality, and even though I was put-off by the white folks pretending to be “shamans” or Indigenous, I did not fully understand at the time how “Native Spirituality” had been normalized as just another genre or niche modality in our endless array of spiritual choices. But thanks to a great deal of  “tough love” from my strong First Nations teachers, plus my own research on cultural appropriation, I soon learned the truth about this modern phenomena.  

Of course, the first objection social justice activists hear over and over (mostly from people who don’t want to give up “Native Spirituality” because it is just so much fun) is that intercultural sharing is normal and has always happened throughout time.  Yet the truth is, that healthy cultural exchange can only take place between societies that are on equal footing, without one dominating or oppressing the other, and that the sharing is done in a respectful way under the direction of the sharer. This is certainly not the case here in the Americas, as the oppressor/oppressed and colonizer/colonized dynamic has been the driver for building Empire, and guess which side of that relationship we are on as white people?   And just because one is spiritual, or Pagan, or New Age, or feminist, or neoliberal, or whatever, does not give that person a “pass card” from being a member of the dominant white society.
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As an extension of the racism we hold and our white privilege and power, cultural appropriation goes on without the permission of First Nations, and is just another extension of the same colonial agenda, which moves first to seize the land, then the resources, and finally, elements of the Indigenous cultural identity that have already been subjected to genocide. More than just the lifting of ideas, practices or physical objects, cultural appropriation and identity theft dominates the way oppressed groups represent themselves to the world. This interference, stereotyping and loss of basic human dignity violates fundamental human rights, and in response to the problem, First Nations worldwide have come together to formulate the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,  a document that protects spiritual property and re-instates much-needed cultural boundaries.
 
Learning how the widespread and seemingly innocent New Age “Native Spirituality” genre was such a serious issue, I went on to explore in my book the full range of questionable and delusional beliefs, in what I have come to call "New Age Capitalism."  After that highly volatile chapter I then connect the dots by examining Settler-Colonialism, the origins of racism, the erroneous science of “racial theory,”  white privilege, false nationalist narratives, and the need for ethics and a moral code in all walks of life.

Concluding with a section on giving back to First Nations instead of take-take-take, I outline how we can engage in Allyship, solidarity and social justice work, and I even throw in a poem or two for good measure!  The 16 chapters that comprise the first part of the book are hard going - challenging many of the assumptions we hold and shaking up worldviews - but in contrast, Part Two of Ancient Spirit Rising I assure you is very uplifting and empowering.
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The good news is that the call to reclaim our own IK can be reframed by the many new exciting movements already happening in Rewilding, Primitivism, Deep Ecology, Animism, Paganism, Druidry, Ecopsychology and Celtic Reconstructionism, and our cultural recovery is well underway. There has never been a time before in human history when DNA testing, genealogy, historical records, myth and archaeology have been so readily available, and if somewhat challenging, reclaiming our own ancestral knowledge is not all that difficult.  Yet the process of re-indigenization and becoming connected to place must also mean rejecting Empire and the dictatorship of the western paradigm, with its unsustainable economic system, religious dominance, white supremacy, intersectional oppressions, harmful technology and all the philosophies that are killing the planet.
By unsettling the settlers, and declaring ourselves as earth-connected peoples once again, we are reaffirming a return to ourselves, to a respect for all life, to earth-connected culture,  and to honoring the Earth in all we think, say and do.  What could be more important?
 
To truly walk the talk of the new paradigm will mean spending a lot more time in nature than we already are, to see the world again as an interconnected part of the whole, and to experience creation as our Ancestors once did.  In Ancient Spirit Rising I set out in clear and detailed charts the aspects of Western Mind that we may want to revise or discard, and elements of Indigenous Mind that we may want to encourage or embrace on our healing journey. If reclaiming our own ancestral wisdom traditions just don’t make any sense to us whatsover, there are other movements to adopt such as earthing, permaculture, post-peak living or the Transition Town movement that can reconnect us to community, land and sustainable values.  And ultimately, we cannot do the work of ethnocultural recovery without working as Allies for First Nations in social justice at the same time, and moving together toward retribution, reconciliation and hopefully in the end, peaceful co-existence.  
 
In closing I would like to say that I am not a self-proclaimed “spokesperson” for First Nations community. I am simply passing on information and data that I have gathered over time, and you can do the exact same thing should you feel the urgency of this important knowledge.  And in accordance with what First Nations are telling us, it is up to those of us in the Settler Society to inform and educate our fellow white citizens on the colonialism, racism, genocide, oppression, assimilation and cultural appropriation that has decimated Indigenous societies in the Americas since Columbus made landfall, and that is exactly what I am doing. First Nations are experts on their survivance and resistance to Empire, yet it is time for Settlers to also take up the struggle.  It is the members of the dominant society that need to reverse racism, and finally, to take responsibility to clean up the mess created by the white supremacist founding of Empire in the Americas.
Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change. 
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Dan Longboat/Roronhiakewen/He Clears the Sky (Haudenosaunee),
Event Visionary, with Team (R) and Pegi Eyers (L)
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Keynote by Vandana Shiva
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Our Struggles Are Not the Same

7/12/2018

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White Feminists in Solidarity with Indigenous Women

PEGI EYERS 
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                             DEAR WHITE WOMEN ~
As members of the dominant European society who created racial, gender and class inequality in the Americas in the first place, many of us have reached the conclusion that to take responsibility for our unearned social power means demanding full human rights for ALL women. As we take on social justice work to right the wrongs of history, and act in solidarity with Indigenous women who have been oppressed by Empire, we enter a liminal zone. The interface between oppressor and oppressed is a shifting ground of assumptions, protocol and intercultural sharing - a borderland of hearts and minds offering anger, rebuke, confusion, kindness and sorrow. And at the same time that we are reclaiming earth-based paths that value reciprocity with all life, we must ensure that our work as allies does not replicate colonialism, or impact Indigenous women in the Americas with more negativity, such as white perspectivism, knowledge domination and cultural theft.
 
Once lost in the hegemonic agenda of Empire, we are finally waking up in unprecedented numbers from the patriarchal mass delusion that oppresses women, the Earth and tribal peoples that live in connection to Her.  It has taken us centuries to finally rebel against the horrors and inequalities of white male supremacy (!) and our liberation is well underway. White feminists, libfems and radfems are working hard within a vast coalition, to shift our society to the egalitarian values that embody cooperation and inclusion, instead of hierarchy and control.  There is evidence everywhere of a collective movement toward a paradigm offering personal and planetary healing, community cohesiveness, earth-connected sustainability, biophilia and peaceful co-existence. We are also being asked at this monumental time to choose between collaborating with, or resisting racial injustice.

For white women, our  unchecked privilege and unexamined racism sabotages our potential to work toward common causes, and perpetuates divisions. Of major concern is how feminist ideology has failed to acknowledge the historic difference between white identity and Indigenous women, and the incorrect assumption that native and non-native women are working through the same liberation process. Yet our oppressions are not interchangeable, as white women seek to reject or overthrow the patriarchy, while Indigenous women are working toward the recovery of their own traditional culture, sovereignty and self-determination. It does not seem to occur to white feminists that the struggle in the dominant society for women’s rights has no equivalent in Indigenous resistance efforts that seek decolonization.   “There is a difference between fighting for ‘rights’ and fighting against ending occupation, imperialism, and femicide.  When we seek ‘rights,’ we are asking to be integrated into a system that aims to destroy our entire existence.” [1]  
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Our trajectories are not the same, but it is true that ALL women have been oppressed by the hetero-patriarchy since European landfall in the Americas. Our experiences could not be more different, and yet for countless years all of our voices were denied, suppressed, criminalized, and unwelcome at the table. Indigenous women have been excluded, spoken over and ignored, and during the entire Christian era in Europe (and later in the colonies) white women were expected to be silent, obedient and invisible.  The legend is passed down that when learning of the status of white women at the time of first contact, First Nations were so shocked they said, "What kind of demented people would marginalize, enslave and denounce their own women?"

To make things even more complicated, patriarchal oppression did not exist in indigenous societies, and is a colonial overlay, the racist agenda being to devalue both genders and set up false hierarchies where none existed before. Traditional indigenous societies were egalitarian and based on the model of the consensus circle, with the emphasis being on gender harmony rather than gender equality.  “The Indigenous Circle of Life philosophy more appropriately embodies Aboriginal women’s conceptions of human nature, their political philosophy and their strategy for social change and liberation.” [2] 

In our own era, there are other major differences in perception. Not surprisingly, many Indigenous women deny the white-directed universal notion of a "Global Sisterhood" (Newsflash!) and reject the principles of modern feminism by situating it as a movement directed entirely by white privilege. Indigenous women may also object to the widely-circulated idea that we share identity or experience simply by virtue of being women, and possessing the same nurturing and reproductive female anatomy.  For white women, we continue to cause offense by ignoring the legacy of colonialism (which is our own history), and discounting First Nations counter-narratives as equal to our own. Many white feminists also have a delusional tendency to insist on a "post-racial automatic harmony" in the face of ongoing systemic racism and institutionalized white supremacy. In fact, there is NO level playing field in our shared spaces, and to expect otherwise is to dismiss Indigenous identity and impose yet another form of assimilation.

“There is a reductionism inherent in liberalist conceptions of unity, and from the Aboriginal perspective, the best laid plans for native/non-native partnership may always have the feel of homogenization.”[3]  We need to be aware that in all sectors of culture and society - including movements and subcultures like Feminism, Paganism, Wicca, Goddess Spirituality, Cultural Reconstruction, Rewilding, Permaculture, Transformational and New Age - neo-liberalism claims a universalist, humanist approach while having an effect on WOC that is the exact opposite. 
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Unpacking our colonial history as white women ("Herstory") allows us to identify our blind spots and omissions.  In the 1450–1700 genocide of the Burning Times (otherwise known as the “Women’s Holocaust”), we lost our European wise women, keepers of the Old Ways, ,and “waeccan” healers. Forced to comply with the total supremacy of a “man’s world,” we were the passive and suffering victims of Empire, or the supporting cast and game players who internalized the patriarchal values and were complicit with the colonial directive. Until the flowering of first-wave feminism, we were dominated by the patriarchy for millennia. And as much as we have achieved emancipation and empowerment today, we need to realize that the privileges we experience as white women are the result of  white supremacy.  As the T-shirts say,  "I Am a Genocide Beneficiary" and “I Benefit from Colonialism." The gifts and amenities  we take for granted in our daily lives have come at the high cost of human suffering, and the near-annihilation of both Indigenous peoples and the land.
 
“There needs to be struggle in order to lay out a path to co-existence, and that the process of being uncomfortable is essential for non-indigenous people to move from being enemy to adversary to Ally.” [4]
 
The truth about Settler-Colonialism is hard to take, especially when we learn that our own values were stolen, and how many of our people lost their lives as a result of the structural violence endemic to Empire. As we were forced to assimilate into the monocultural white mainstream of the Americas, we left behind our traditional European languages, foods, music, games, rituals and spiritual expressions. During the collective dementia of expulsion and immigration, we sacrificed our European histories and spirituality, our love of place, our deep connections to the Ancestors, and our most important cultural keystones.  In exile, our survival mechanism kicked in, our traditions were traded away, and our cultural loss forgotten in the promise of a new land and a new life. 
 
“The Settler Society were all displaced - they all left something behind, and that must be why they are attracted to Native Spirituality.” [5]
 
Today, as the modern descendants of the Settler Society, we need to examine how this immense cultural soul loss has led to our collective and personal dysfunction, and how the stories of our disconnect are at the root of our ongoing spiritual hunger and yearning for holistic earth-connected community. Clearly this exile from our own ancestral knowledge is the contributing factor to our romanticism and appropriation from the vibrancy of Indigenous cultures. There are other serious issues and oversights to be found in today's white feminism community, including:

1) The invisibility of Indigenous women, 
2) not knowing the history of Settler-Colonialism or the First Nations in our own area,
3) ignoring how colonization, cultural genocide and assimilation are not just historical "artifacts" but are still happening today. "It's all in the past" is an offensive statement of white oblivion and entitlement,
4) treating the sacred cultural markers of First Nations as a marketplace to "exotify" our own ideas and offerings,
5) coasting along and being complacent with colonialism,
6) not doing our own work in self-education, and expecting Indigenous women to do the "heavy lifting,"
6) not acknowledging our white and class privilege up front in every situation,
7) being a “Becky” - a type of white woman who “exists in a state of racial obliviousness that shifts from intentionally clueless to intentionally condescending," [6]
8) spiritual bypassing i.e. "I'm too evolved for these dialogues," "We Are All One" and rejecting social justice or allyship,
9) gaslighting  and "blaming the victim" with New Age beliefs such as "everyone creates their own reality," 
10) making assumptions, upholding stereotypes and imposing our own values and beliefs (known as "white perspectivism"),
11) obvious forms of white supremacy, subtle acts of racism such as microaggressions, and
12) not knowing how to work as allies for the legal struggles and battles of Indigenous women against the Settler State. 
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So what can we actually do, to act in solidarity with Indigenous women?  Among other initiatives, the Allyship Framework is a great model that allows us to draw close and give back to First Nations, as accomplices in the struggle for racial justice.  Here are some other excellent ideas:

1) Recognize that your own bias, lack of knowledge and misconceptions can be interpreted as discrimination or racism,
2) center the voices of Indigenous women - listen and learn - and use respectful communication at all times,
3) be aware that protocols exist, and demonstrate cultural respect by making it a priority to learn about them,
4) recognize that gender roles may vary among Indigenous families, and observe local practices and protocols,
5) understand how lateral violence and internalized oppression show up in Indigenous community, and
6) stand with Indigenous women who are doing important work, become a helper, raise funds for Indigenous causes, attend events, follow pages and blogs, and offer support as needed.

In today's white spaces of conferences, events, academia and the empowerment circuit, there is a hopeful movement toward  "inclusivity."     And yet, this may only be the first step.  According to the Allyship Framework, what we really need to be doing is include Indigenous women in our dialogues and initiatives from the very beginning, and place them in the prominent position. Fortunately, the resurgence of women in governance and key leadership roles continues to rise in every cultural and ethnic group, including Turtle Island First Nations.  And our job as white women is to develop good intercultural competency skills, normalize the activist-spiritual path as one and the same, and work toward dismantling racism and white supremacy.

As time goes on, transformational encounters between Indigenous and white women will continue to happen at the personal level, with the goal to communicate and heal social relationships. This aspect of reconciliation requires an expansion of intimate heart-knowing, and a capacity to acknowledge the residual pain of historic and contemporary injustice. “One can forgive but one should never forget.”   It’s a monumental leap to go from colonization to mutual co-arising, but as ALL women now share Turtle Island, we have an obligation to respond to the Seven Generations code. [7]  And through the ongoing work of decolonization, bonds to the land and holistic teachings evoked from our own ancestral wisdom traditions hold the key to restoring the hearts and minds of  individuals and communities. 

A renaissance of healing, collaborating, rebuilding, and re-visioning is happening in Indian Country, and for Indigenous women the future looks positive for the continued resurgence and reclamation of self-determination and traditional Indigenous Knowledge (IK).  In terms of commonalities, ancient matriarchal societies in Europe provide models for their descendants today, and many First Nations have never relinquished their matrifocal status. For example, in the Haudenosaunee world, as Earthkeepers and life-givers the Clan Mothers hold the highest authority, and are skilled at making decisions affecting the well-being of the entire tribe.  

Today, finding our way home means relinquishing our white privilege and engaging with social justice, which is synonymous with spiritual values such as balance and interconnection.   Restoring the traditional earth-emergent and matrilineal structures that existed before, can be part of reclaiming power for ALL women.  In the meantime, the way forward is to work in solidarity with the First Nations of Turtle Island, who continue to resist the genocide, colonization and oppression forced upon them by the flawed mega-experiment of Eurocentric Empire in the Americas.  And to align with true human beings everywhere, who seek to bond with the land and practice their authentic Ancestral Wisdom.  
 
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NOTES
1. Poesia, “Death of Empire: Decolonizing Feminism(s),” Shades of Silence (SOS) Colors of Revolt, June 5, 2013 
2. Grace J.M.W. Ouellette (Cree),  The Fourth World: An Indigenous Perspective on Feminism and Aboriginal Women's Activism, Fernwood Publishing, 2004
3. Sam Grey, “Decolonising Feminism,” Enweyin, Vol. VIII, 2003-2004 www.academia.edu/1330316
4. Taiaiake Alfred (Kahnawake Mohawk), Introduction, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling and Reconciliation in Canada by Paulette Regan, UBC Press, 2010
5. Lee Maracle (Stó:lō),“Idle No More: Looking Back, Moving Ahead,” panel discussion, Lakefield Literary Festival, 2013
6.  Damon Young, "Where 'Becky' Comes From, And Why It's Not Racist, Explained," The Root, April 27, 2016, quoted in "White People Are Noticing Something New: Their Own Whiteness" by Emily Bazelon, The New York Times, June 13, 2018
7. It is an important teaching of both the Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee to consider the well-being of the Seven Generations yet to come in all endeavors, and this responsibility requires the ethics of sustainability and care. Ultimately, the tribal landbase, well-being, cultural traditions and collective identity in the past, present and future are all enhanced and protected by this directive.
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Excerpts previously published in Whatever Works ~ Feminists of Faith Speak, edited by Trista Hendren and Pat Daly, A Girl God Anthology, 2015  >link<   
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon.com 
www.stonecirclepress.com  
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Ally Mistakes - Oops ~!

7/7/2018

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PEGI EYERS

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In our work as Allies to BIPOC we need to stay away from the methods of the colonizer, which include perpetuating stereotypes, patronizing behavior, the use of perspectivism (assuming others share our worldview), or making rules for the disenfranchised group. It is quite possible that BIPOC hear the solutions and aspirations as offered by white people as patronizing, arrogant and ill-informed. Assuming we know what BIPOC communities need in terms of western ideology or infrastructure, and imposing these “benefits” on them intentionally (or with subterfuge), is known as the “white savior” complex.

White people are not heroes or heroines riding in on a white horse to save everybody (!) we are assisting a group of people who already have a plan in place. Allies cannot presume to know about the experience of BIPOC, or to speak authoritatively about BIPOC community. Targets of oppression are experts on the totality of their oppression and we need to listen to them. Our task is to be mindful of how power is operating in any given context, to think before speaking (if we must speak), and to let BIPOC voices be heard. We are cautioned by experienced activists to understand that our anti-oppression work is not about the needs of the ally, or to feel good about ourselves. 

It's about the needs of the targets NOT to be oppressed!

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"First Nations Peoples and the decision of Canadians to stand
alongside them, will determine the fate of the planet." 
The Guardian
more on Allyship >HERE<  PDF download   "Good Allies" by Pegi Eyers
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon.com 
www.stonecirclepress.com 
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Love from the Earth

5/6/2018

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PEGI EYERS
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All my life the clock has been ticking, and the ideological pendulum has been swinging. Finally, my awareness has come to rest in vital knowledge – that I was raised by a false paradigm on “Kanata” and that I am living on stolen land. This shattering reversal of reality transformed and radicalized me, but I don't feel disempowered.  For to use a common cliché, “the truth will set you free.”  I am a white woman, a Gaelic Scot born into the colonizer agenda, the great Empire-building project, "the grand and glorious experiment” on Turtle Island. And at the same time that I am a product of the status quo, life choices have given me an acute awareness of colonial oppression.  I consider myself blessed to be thriving in the traditional homelands of the Mississauga Anishnaabe, and I battle with cognitive dissonance and the dismantling of my whiteness every day.  For example, the “acknowledgment of territory” so popular in white spaces can only go so far, when it is Indigenous flags that should be flying on municipal buildings, and the land repatriated and returned to First Nations. 

I woke up from a childhood cushioned from reality and blind to the walls around me, walls that separated people of color from those privileged by Empire. Yet with each new layer of whiteness and coloniality I unpack within myself, my personal obligation and responsibility to tear down those walls grows in equal measure. 
NO MORE WALLS
Terra Nullius | NO MORE WALLS
The Doctrine of Discovery | NO MORE WALLS
The Papal Bulls | NO MORE WALLS
Manifest Destiny | NO MORE WALLS
White Supremacy | NO MORE WALLS
“Racial Science” | NO MORE WALLS
Monotheistic Religion | NO MORE WALLS
Genocide and Slavery | NO MORE WALLS
Settler-Colonialism | NO MORE WALLS
Cultural Imperialism | NO MORE WALLS
The Military Complex | NO MORE WALLS
Corporatocracy | NO MORE WALLS
Ecocide | NO MORE WALLS
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Back in the 1980’s I was a teenager living in various regions of British Columbia, traveling here and there as the impulse struck.  With my young husband, we eventually put down roots in the Similkameen Valley, just before the first wave of First Nations resistance and resurgence began to rise. Day after day we witnessed members of the Smalqmix community arriving at the bar, where the cheap beer kept flowing and the cowboys kept singing. “Welcome to the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”  In those days we offered many rides home, giving “safe passage” to our native friends, taking them back to their dark and broken shacks, with no running water or warmth in the winter.  I hold the despair etched into the actions of this devastation.
    
One day we found ourselves drifting through Hope B.C. and decided to sleep under the stars on the bank of the Fraser River.  We approached a circle of Stό:lō folk beside their nets and liquor bottles, and in the common way of vagrants everywhere, were immediately made welcome.  Language and cultural differences were definite barriers, but at the moment the need to set the nets and harvest the salmon took priority. As the evening wore on, the drinking took center stage.  Farther down the rocky shoreline, I fell asleep listening to the sing-song Stό:lō speech.  Screams in the night woke me, as inebriated people ran back and forth along the riverbank as a Stό:lō man became caught in the current. His body washed up downriver many days later, and I hold the despair etched into the actions of this devastation.  

Fast forward through a kaleidoscope of cultural events; teachings from the Elders; pow wows; Indigenous arts, books, film, theatre and music; and First Nation friends who sparked my life for decades.  Deep in the canyon of city streets, I pass a crouching woman with long black hair hidden in the corner where bus shelter meets skyscraper wall.  Urgent with my own necessities and agendas, I feel helpless in the face of such obvious need, and press on. What happened to this Indigenous woman? Her Toronto was not my Toronto, and I hold the despair etched into the actions of this devastation.
 
A few years later I am working in an art gallery in a mall, and an Indigenous artist appears day after day to take his cues from the paintings. Over coffee, I hear he has a terminal illness, in addition to PTSD. What is PTSD?  It is being pushed beyond one’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual limits not once, not twice, but repeatedly: over and over and over. I see the dark spirits circling above this man, both from his own Ojibway heritage and the other chthonic realms.  I hold the despair etched into the actions of this devastation.  
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In recent times I have reached middle age. Empowered by the words of Haudenosaunee and
Anishnaabe Elders, I
notice the cultural appropriation rampant
in my own community,
mostly by my white
sisters who practice
New Age Spirituality.  
I distance myself immediately and learn all I can about white privilege and Allyship Theory.  I hesitantly enter solidarity spaces and become bolder as confidence grows. From both native and non-native people, I encounter hostility, denial and confusion. I hold the despair etched into the actions of this devastation.
 
I continue to do anti-racism work on principle, and as a Settler-Ally, I know I have no right to speak.  Then, a prominent academic tells me that keeping silent is an extension of the colonial agenda to infantilize us all, and I try to stay in middle ground.  I learn how kind words can change lives.  But in the shadows, the tears of Indigenous people continue to flow, and my care is yet another burden, another misguided platitude that does not fit the healing pattern.  I hold the despair etched into the actions of this devastation.    
 
YOUR VOICE
Mi’kmaq | YOUR VOICE
Innu | I AM LISTENING
Sahtu Dene | YOUR VOICE
Algonquin | I AM LISTENING
Anishnaabe | YOUR VOICE
Odawa | I AM LISTENING
Haudenosaunee | YOUR VOICE
Cree | I AM LISTENING
Blackfoot | YOUR VOICE
Lakota | I AM LISTENING
Syilx/Okanagan | YOUR VOICE
Stό:lō | I AM LISTENING

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I am listening.  First Nations have called me the enemy, and it’s absolutely true. My people have been the carriers of genocide and slavery, and are the worst disseminators of racism the planet has ever known.  I am privileged, I am white, and I carry the same colonial patterns of violence endured by my Ancestors, that were then forced on everyone else.  No longer can I pretend that white people are the authority on human nature, and I need to just sit, beyond redemption, with the harm that was done. It may be beyond my power to remove the burden of history or the trauma of POC, but I can be accountable and make amends. I can continue to change my own beliefs, and decolonize my inner and outer reality.  And with the agency that belongs to me alone, (i.e. the "power of one") I can fight for the rights of Indigenous people and the land - as writer, ally, friend. And as I dismantle my whiteness, I know that my life’s work is to honor the Earth in all I think, say and do. And above all, to reject the patriarchal ethics that dominate our humanity and the land.  

Suddenly, in the midst of the activism, rallies, discourse and friendship, an idyllic vision rises in my heart.  Should I speak of it?  Do I dare?  My vision touches on “inclusivity,” which is linked to neo-liberalism, white privilege and power. And yet regardless of blowback, I continue to hold a vision of hope. It will not go away.  It is based on mutual healing.  Without pretending we are all the same, my vision is of a thriving collective of diverse folk bonded to the Ancient Spirit of the land.  
 
HEALING
Post-colonial | HEALING
Anti-colonial | HEALING
Decolonial | HEALING
Honoring the Treaties | HEALING
Indigenous Sovereignty | HEALING
Repatriation | HEALING
Restitution | HEALING
Protection of Lands and Waters | HEALING
Respect instead of Appropriation | HEALING
Native/Non-Native Alliances | HEALING
Intercultural Competency | HEALING
Re-landing | HEALING
Ancestral Knowledge | HEALING
Reconciliation | HEALING
Peaceful Coexistence | HEALING
Unity in Diversity | HEALING
The Circle of Earth Community | HEALING
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Can we allow the Earth to heal us?  That is the vision, and the rejuvenation of our ancient and timeless connection to the land in the face of massive change, as our way forward.  Can we hold on to this vision with all of our might?

                                            VISIONING

Pre-colonial and Indigenous societies all over the world know Mother Earth as sacred, and the source of all life, enchantment and joy.  Without exception, the wisdom and cultural traditions of all people emerge from the land.  Not to know this is to remain disconnected from the Earth, the source of our spiritual ecology, and to perpetuate the goals of Empire that separate us from our embeddedness in the natural world.

How do we bypass the dominance of modernity and go directly to the source of our eco-being? We – eternal reflections of the Great Mother – red, yellow, black, brown and white – all of us, People of the Earth – are sacred vessels for spirit, ever loving, ever perfect, always blessed. We are strong in our bones as the Earth is strong!  When we reclaim our true power, our circles form in bonds of protection, and we speak for the green realm, for all beings. 

We align ourselves with natural law and care
for Earth Community,
and when we return to the source of all knowing
– an intimate and humble interaction with the land - experiences in companionship with the elements, spirits, and
forces in nature are
available equally to all.
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Recovery from colonialism has no timeline, yet our urgent task is to reclaim the sacred essence that spirals us back, to our deepest and most ancient connection.  Nourished by the web of life that sustains us all, we become re-rooted in our own earth-emergent heritage, our own ancestral traditions, and our own rites of passage.  And in a true coming-together of hearts and minds in emotional integrity and right relationship, we find our way home to peace, and then, to peaceful co-existence.

The love of the land is the only true wealth we have – we are part of the Earth and the Earth is part of us!  And in this fledgling love, a small fire in the darkness, the spirit is luminous in every person.  Before time and before place, there is something we all share.  We are each a spark of the Great Mystery, in our primal being we are whole, and nothing has ever been broken. Knowing our true heart’s home on the land, we hold ourselves gently, in perfect love and perfect trust.

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"Love from the Earth" originally appeared in Confluence: Youth
​ Passageways Journal Volume II, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2017. 
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon.com 
www.stonecirclepress.com
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The Problem with Far-Away Ecotherapy and Nature Connection Retreats

2/28/2018

1 Comment

 
BY PEGI EYERS
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At this point in history, with late-stage capitalism and climate disaster events coming at us in waves, how can anyone justify going on nature-bonding trips to exotic locations? This activity is particularly absurd when it applies to members of the Ecopsychology community, who could be providing important role models for other folks. If a particular demographic or professional group focused on nature connection fails to take a stand on reducing our carbon footprint, why should anyone else feel motivated to change?
 
Travel to exotic locations is a privilege, not a right, and in terms of carbon impact, a typical 747 aircraft burns 4 litres of fossil fuel each second! A flight to Australia from Europe creates 4.5 tonnes of carbon. By comparison, traveling 2000 km by car emits less CO2 than one transcontinental flight, and the average emission per capita globally is around 1 tonne.  In the face of these devastating statistics, it may be a good idea to ask ourselves if we care enough about the Earth to just STAY HOME!

Going on "retreat" from the ecosystem where we actually live is a strange phenomenon, coupled with the promise that we will make a "special connection" with nature that somehow doesn't exist at home.  The lure of exotic experiences is a big draw, such as "enjoying rhino tracking" or “respectfully encountering dolphins in the wild." Yet isn't it possible to find the magic and mystery of nature, and the beautiful creatures of Earth Community, right in the ecosystems of our own home places, that need our care and attention?
 
Travel to exotic destinations is made possible by socioeconomic privilege, and especially the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation. We hold a lifetime of conditioning from society that tells us to enjoy our wealth and privilege, with exotic travel being one of our most popular normalized pleasures. (Next to body care, fancy clothes, restaurants and live entertainment, that is!) We have also been indoctrinated to admire the ultra-rich and emulate their jet-setter lifestyle (whether or not we will ever be ultra-rich). We have to ask ourselves if members of the nature-relatedness field really want to follow these aspects of the capitalist paradigm, that promote the excess consumption of both material goods and experiences?
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Another diversion that often comes up with "nature retreats" is the option to "meet with the local indigenous people." From our positionality in the west as members of the dominant society, this suggests a number of ethical considerations.  Is the meeting superficial or based on long-standing relation-ships? Meeting with the more enterprising of the local people can be seen as "tokenism," as one or two individuals do not speak for, or represent the concerns of the entire Indigenous community. And even if a local tourism industry has sprung up to accommodate western travelers for economic development (often under the guise of "intercultural sharing") there is still an underlying consideration (and a macabre one at that). How ethical is it to normalize the subjugation that our own Colonial ancestors created in the first place? The eco-tourism or "teachings to outsiders" industry is one way for Indigenous people to recover from Colonialism, but coming in with paternalism or white saviorism can be perceived as just more neo-colonialism. Adding insult to injury, in all our variations the presence of white westerners obstructs the sovereignty of  indigenous societies, and their right to live free of colonial pressures within their own landbase and epistomology.  

Instead of fleeting encounters with Indigenous folks, a better approach may be to contribute to the cultural survival of specific indigenous nation from afar, and practice good Allyship to support healthy boundaries and the principles of non-interference.  As have the Indigenous people in Hawaii, the Kogi in Colombia have recently asked North Americans to JUST STAY HOME. Their beleaguered ecosystems are becoming more and more fragile, and it is increasingly seen as an extension of socioeconomic privilege to assume we can travel anywhere just because we feel like it, and insert ourselves into the precious homelands and narratives of peoples in other places.
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If you are a member of the Ecopsychology community and decide against traveling to an exotic location for nature connection, a public statement outlining your objections, including your assessment of the carbon that has been offset, would be most welcome.  And thank you for your inspiration!
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon.com 
www.stonecirclepress.com
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    The recovery of our ancestral roots, and the promotion of social justice & environmental activism as interwoven with our spiritual life. Engaging with the interface between Turtle Island First Nations and the Settler Society, rejecting Empire and embodying the paradigm shift to ecocentric society.




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