“Everyone needs to get back to their
own Indigenous Knowledge (IK)”
James Dumont,
Anishnaabe Elder & Traditional Teacher,
4th Degree - Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge
James Dumont
BY PEGI EYERS
Every journey has a starting point, and for my new book Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community it was the mandate I kept hearing from indigenous activists, scholars and visionaries all over Turtle Island, that all people need to return to their authentic ancestral knowledge. Highly-esteemed Anishnaabe Elder and traditional teacher James Dumont has been telling us that “everyone needs to get back to their own IK,” and Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe (Lakota) has proclaimed that “the effort to protect Mother Earth is all of humanity's responsibility, not just aboriginal people. Every human being has Ancestors in their lineage that understood their umbilical cord to the Earth, and to always protect and thank Her. Therefore, all humanity has to re-connect to the Indigenous Roots of their own lineage - to heal their connection and responsibility to Mother Earth.”
Every journey has a starting point, and for my new book Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community it was the mandate I kept hearing from indigenous activists, scholars and visionaries all over Turtle Island, that all people need to return to their authentic ancestral knowledge. Highly-esteemed Anishnaabe Elder and traditional teacher James Dumont has been telling us that “everyone needs to get back to their own IK,” and Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe (Lakota) has proclaimed that “the effort to protect Mother Earth is all of humanity's responsibility, not just aboriginal people. Every human being has Ancestors in their lineage that understood their umbilical cord to the Earth, and to always protect and thank Her. Therefore, all humanity has to re-connect to the Indigenous Roots of their own lineage - to heal their connection and responsibility to Mother Earth.”
Simon Brascoupe (Algonquin/Mohawk) vividly reinforces our thriving cultural recovery movement when he says that “the world will have to change its basic value system to save the planet. This is not to say that westerners should become like aboriginal people. But Western society needs to learn from indigenous people about respecting and living harmoniously with Mother Earth, and return to their own religious and spiritual teachings, their own ancient systems of knowledge, and their customs and practices that respect Mother Earth.”
 Simon Brascoupe |  Chief Arvol Looking Horse |
Turtle Island First Nations continue to speak out on on the need for all peoples to become grounded in heritage and place. As members of Earth Community, it is the birthright of the entire human family to be indigenous to the Earth, to appreciate and love the natural world, and to find our “indigenous place within.” (Planet IndigenUS) By returning to our earth-rooted belief systems, and “reintegrating ourselves with our indigenous selves, we simultaneously reintegrate ourselves with the rest of humanity.” (Ward Churchill) In addition to localization, re-landing and reinhabitation of place, the re-centering of First Nations values is a movement that needs to happen in every society worldwide, as it is “about re-indigenizing the peoples of the planet to the planet.” (John Mohawk - Seneca)
 John Mohawk |  Ward Churchill |
 Robert Lovelace |  Melissa K. Nelson |
The ancient and new idea of fusing our ethnoautobiography with the natural places we call home to define our nativization is addressed by Melissa K. Nelson (Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian). “We come from our DNA, our ancestors and our descendants – the strands of spiralling heritage that give us our roots and the threads to the future. Revitalizing indigenity means reclaiming the personal and ecological watersheds we come from, as part of our eco-cultural identity.” With a passion for the Earth as our common ground anything is possible, and as Robert Lovelace (Tslagi/Algonquin) suggests, being indigenous to place is achieved “when the human and ecosystem activity support and enhance one another.”
Many highly-regarded First Nations thought leaders and visionaries engaged in decolonization work apply the term “re-indigenization” to all those currently living on Turtle Island, but non-natives must avoid “indigenous” as an identity marker, reaching instead to our own ancestral traditions for authentic terms to self-identify such as Scots Gaelic, Ásatrú, Hellenismos or Romuva (for example). The term "indigenous" is highly political, is clearly defined in UNDRIPS/UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and belongs to the original First Nations of Turtle Island. As a clarification, it is helpful to think of "indigenous" as a verb, not a noun!
Recovering our specific ethnic or culturally-based indigenity is key, as suggested by Zainab Amadahy. “If the aim of decolonization is to rid ourselves of colonial mindsets why not centralize our own wisdom traditions when they enable us to think and act in ways that support our communities, including Mother Earth, Our Relations and the Great Spirit?”
Recovering our specific ethnic or culturally-based indigenity is key, as suggested by Zainab Amadahy. “If the aim of decolonization is to rid ourselves of colonial mindsets why not centralize our own wisdom traditions when they enable us to think and act in ways that support our communities, including Mother Earth, Our Relations and the Great Spirit?”
Zainab Amadahy
Additional declarations by First Nations leaders and their allies on the mandate to recover authentic ancestral traditions for all people.
“Ordinary people have to have their sense of moral injustice ignited. They have to come to understand that they are being called upon to care about what happens to the peoples and living things of this world. That’s a huge job, but that’s the spiritual call of the re-indigenization of the world.” John Mohawk (Seneca)
“Compared to indigenous ways of knowing, western knowledge systems contain zero knowledge, as they have completely lost their way in the past 500 years, and do not see the abundance in either people or the natural world. All of us are indigenous members of Earth Community equally - there is no higher placement of a master over another - and it is high time for all of us to become indigenous again.” Vandana Shiva
“Ordinary people have to have their sense of moral injustice ignited. They have to come to understand that they are being called upon to care about what happens to the peoples and living things of this world. That’s a huge job, but that’s the spiritual call of the re-indigenization of the world.” John Mohawk (Seneca)
“Compared to indigenous ways of knowing, western knowledge systems contain zero knowledge, as they have completely lost their way in the past 500 years, and do not see the abundance in either people or the natural world. All of us are indigenous members of Earth Community equally - there is no higher placement of a master over another - and it is high time for all of us to become indigenous again.” Vandana Shiva
 Vandana Shiva |  John Trudell |
“Because we are made up of the earth - our common ground, so to speak - we are all the descendants of tribes. We have genetic memories. Inside of our genetic memories, the power connection exists to our ancestral past. Each and every one of us is a descendant of a tribe.” John Trudell (Santee Dakota)
“We all sat before the sacred fire of life. We all came from the same blood. We are all members of one human family, and therefore, we are all indigenous to our beloved Mother Earth.” Chief Phil Lane, Jr. (Dakota/Chickasaw)
“Underneath our skin we are all indigenous people, but how much we choose to rediscover and revitalize this knowledge in our work and everyday life is a decision that has tremendous bearing on the future of us all. The knowledge of the Americas will begin to rise again, not only through the earth, but through the people of the earth. It will feel as if we are waking from a dream.”
Apela Colorado (Oneida)
“We all sat before the sacred fire of life. We all came from the same blood. We are all members of one human family, and therefore, we are all indigenous to our beloved Mother Earth.” Chief Phil Lane, Jr. (Dakota/Chickasaw)
“Underneath our skin we are all indigenous people, but how much we choose to rediscover and revitalize this knowledge in our work and everyday life is a decision that has tremendous bearing on the future of us all. The knowledge of the Americas will begin to rise again, not only through the earth, but through the people of the earth. It will feel as if we are waking from a dream.”
Apela Colorado (Oneida)
 Apela Colorado |  Chief Phil Lane, Jr. |
“The task for Settlers is to realize they have Settler mind and not replicate Settler-Colonialism. Settlers need to heal from what happened to their culture. With the fallacy of the melting pot, they were made to feel ashamed of their own culture(s), and were forced to become “American” or “Canadian.” However, Settlers are now required to stand in their full spirit.”
Faith Spotted Eagle (Yankton Sioux)
“Reconciliation with one's own Ancestors can lead to a very clear knowledge of what to do in order to bring about the sacrealization of one's own environment, so that the environment can become nurturing to the self.” Malidoma Somé
"The world is changing, and it's time to pay attention - for humankind to find value in our lives as intrinsically related to the other-than-human. Like our Ancestors before us, we may learn something about ourselves, and find insights in our oldest indigenous traditions. If we demonstrate respectful attentiveness to the world we live in today, it is likely that we will find new techniques, songs, practices, and even ceremonies for our life enhancement."
Daniel R. Wildcat (Muscogee)
“The door is open for people to return to the rituals and ceremonies of their ethnicity and their IK. After all we are all Indigenous to the earth, and we all have our own Indigenous Knowledge that we can draw on to guide us forward.” anonymous source (Algonquin Anishnaabe)
Faith Spotted Eagle (Yankton Sioux)
“Reconciliation with one's own Ancestors can lead to a very clear knowledge of what to do in order to bring about the sacrealization of one's own environment, so that the environment can become nurturing to the self.” Malidoma Somé
"The world is changing, and it's time to pay attention - for humankind to find value in our lives as intrinsically related to the other-than-human. Like our Ancestors before us, we may learn something about ourselves, and find insights in our oldest indigenous traditions. If we demonstrate respectful attentiveness to the world we live in today, it is likely that we will find new techniques, songs, practices, and even ceremonies for our life enhancement."
Daniel R. Wildcat (Muscogee)
“The door is open for people to return to the rituals and ceremonies of their ethnicity and their IK. After all we are all Indigenous to the earth, and we all have our own Indigenous Knowledge that we can draw on to guide us forward.” anonymous source (Algonquin Anishnaabe)
 Faith Spotted Eagle  Daniel R. Wildcat |  Malidoma Somé  |
“Mother Earth is indigenizing all of us – everything we need to know about the future will come from the land - how to live and how to correct our behavior. The land is going to shift our governance and economy, mental and physical health – it is the land that will indigenize us.”
Diane Longboat/Kahontakwas (Mohawk)
“A great many native people have a long-standing relationship with the natural world. But that relationship is equally available to non-natives, should they choose to embrace it.” Thomas King (Cherokee)
“Beyond race, ethnicity or political definitions, indigeneity can become a social ethic. In this way, the re-indigenized person or community is a perfectly integrated part of nature rather than separate from it. Life practices intent on TEK, and knowledge of the land’s local realities and regenerative capacity, become the guiding force for human occupation.”
Jeannette Armstrong (Syilx Okanagan)
Diane Longboat/Kahontakwas (Mohawk)
“A great many native people have a long-standing relationship with the natural world. But that relationship is equally available to non-natives, should they choose to embrace it.” Thomas King (Cherokee)
“Beyond race, ethnicity or political definitions, indigeneity can become a social ethic. In this way, the re-indigenized person or community is a perfectly integrated part of nature rather than separate from it. Life practices intent on TEK, and knowledge of the land’s local realities and regenerative capacity, become the guiding force for human occupation.”
Jeannette Armstrong (Syilx Okanagan)
 Diane Longboat |  Jeannette Armstrong |
"All humans have the right to return home, and become indigenous to this earth, to become real human beings living their full potential as caretakers of life, to become people with big hearts living in cooperation with each other and with other forms of life." Arkan Lashwala (Peru, Arawaka Ceremonial Center)
"Stepping outside our own cultural and educational framework is exceedingly difficult—difficult, but worthwhile. As we seek to redefine our evolving relationship with nature, the knowledge systems of indigenous people can provide useful models. But the goal is not to appropriate the values of indigenous peoples. As an immigrant culture, Americans must start to engage in their own process of becoming indigenous to this place and regain their roles as members of the ecological community."
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi)
"You white people need to find your own traditions. They're out there. You don't need ours." Vine Deloria Jr. (Lakota)
"Stepping outside our own cultural and educational framework is exceedingly difficult—difficult, but worthwhile. As we seek to redefine our evolving relationship with nature, the knowledge systems of indigenous people can provide useful models. But the goal is not to appropriate the values of indigenous peoples. As an immigrant culture, Americans must start to engage in their own process of becoming indigenous to this place and regain their roles as members of the ecological community."
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi)
"You white people need to find your own traditions. They're out there. You don't need ours." Vine Deloria Jr. (Lakota)
 Arkan Lashwala |  Robin Wall Kimmerer |
As we ponder the ethical questions of re-landing to place, there are also affirmations being offered by important leaders in the non-native social justice, transformational healing and ancestral arts communities. Here is a sampling of those voices.
“So what makes a people indigenous? Indigenous people believe they belong to the land, and non-indigenous people believe the land belongs to them. Can we commit to the land and each other? Let's hope so, because our current civilization is a one-time-only experiment. Once it has failed, we are going to have to re-braid ourselves back into the web of ‘all our relations’ - plant, animal and human. If there are future civilizations, they will be indigenous.”
Derek Rasmussen
“Each of us has the ability to act powerfully for change. Together we can regain that ancient and sustaining harmony, in which human needs and the needs of our companions on the planet are held in balance with the sacred, self-renewing processes of Earth.” David Suzuki
With or without modernity “we are hard-wired to experience everything our ‘deep time’ Ancestors experienced, and our own wildness.” Frances Weller
"The primary reason that white people, especially white Americans, appropriate from marginalized traditions is because they have been stripped of their own. And if we want white Americans to stop doing that, the best remedy is to encourage them to respectfully and carefully learn about and reclaim their own ancestral traditions." Alley Valkyrie
“So what makes a people indigenous? Indigenous people believe they belong to the land, and non-indigenous people believe the land belongs to them. Can we commit to the land and each other? Let's hope so, because our current civilization is a one-time-only experiment. Once it has failed, we are going to have to re-braid ourselves back into the web of ‘all our relations’ - plant, animal and human. If there are future civilizations, they will be indigenous.”
Derek Rasmussen
“Each of us has the ability to act powerfully for change. Together we can regain that ancient and sustaining harmony, in which human needs and the needs of our companions on the planet are held in balance with the sacred, self-renewing processes of Earth.” David Suzuki
With or without modernity “we are hard-wired to experience everything our ‘deep time’ Ancestors experienced, and our own wildness.” Frances Weller
"The primary reason that white people, especially white Americans, appropriate from marginalized traditions is because they have been stripped of their own. And if we want white Americans to stop doing that, the best remedy is to encourage them to respectfully and carefully learn about and reclaim their own ancestral traditions." Alley Valkyrie
How did those of us descended from the Settler Society lose our ancestral connections? In our rush to colonize the Americas, we gave up our bonds to our places of ethnic origin, and our indigenity as connected to those lands. Consciously or not, with the founding of the Americas the sacrifice of our spiritual ecology and ancestral knowledge, and the lack of white ethnic or cultural identity has affected our empowerment and psychological well-being. Not totally secure in our sense of belonging to the “new world,” we accepted the imperialist paradigm and expressions of false nationalism that were imposed upon us. The building of Empire has forced us to become caricatures of ourselves, and we endlessly sift through myriad identities and cultural surrogates while ignoring the treasures and truths in our own authentic ancestral traditions.
The call to reclaim our own indigenous knowledge can be reframed by the many exciting new movements in neopaganism, rewilding, primitivism and ethnocultural reconstruction that are happening today, and our cultural recovery is well underway. Yet our process of reindigenization 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 declaring ourselves as earth-connected peoples again we are reaffirming a return to ourselves, to a respect for all life, to earth-connected culture, to peaceful co-existence and to honoring the Earth in all we think, say and do. What could be more important?
The call to reclaim our own indigenous knowledge can be reframed by the many exciting new movements in neopaganism, rewilding, primitivism and ethnocultural reconstruction that are happening today, and our cultural recovery is well underway. Yet our process of reindigenization 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 declaring ourselves as earth-connected peoples again we are reaffirming a return to ourselves, to a respect for all life, to earth-connected culture, to peaceful co-existence and to honoring the Earth in all we think, say and do. What could be more important?
 | Read more on social justice, ethnocultural recovery, Settler re-landing, rewilding, ancestral connections, sacred land and animism in Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community. PURCHASE LINKS Amazon.com www.stonecirclepress.com |
Sources for Quotations in Order of Appearance ~
- James Dumont (Anishnaabe) “Introductory Remarks,” Elders and Traditional Peoples Gathering, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, February 12-14, 2010
- Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Lakota) Statement in solidarity with the Idle No More movement, Daily Headlines in Indian Country, December 31, 2012 (http://ndnnews.com)
- Simon Brascoupe (Algonquin/Mohawk) “Aboriginal Peoples’ Vision of the Future: Interweaving Traditional Knowledge and New Technologies,” Visions of the Heart: Canadian Aboriginal Issues, David Long and Olive Patricia Dickason (editors), Thomson-Nelson, 1998
- Planet IndigenUS: Celebration of Nations, Harbourfront Centre Toronto, August 2012 (www.harbourfrontcentre.com)
- Ward Churchill, Indians are Us? Between the Lines, 1984
- John Mohawk (Seneca), “Re-Indigenization Defined,” Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future, edited by Melissa K. Nelson, Bear & Company, 2008
- Melissa K. Nelson (Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian), “Revitalizing Indigeneity,” Bioneers Conference 2011, January 26, 2015 (www.bioneers.org) (www.youtube.com)
- Robert Lovelace (Tslagi/Algonquin), The Architecture of a Decolonized Society: Reindigenizing the Self, Community and Environment, presentation, Kawartha World Issues Centre (KWIC), Trent University, Peterborough, ON, January 18, 2013
- Zainab Amadahy, “Why Indigenous and Racialized Struggles will Always be Appendixed by the Left,” Unsettling Settlers: Where We Talk about Unsettling Our Settler Selves, August 1, 2012. (http://unsettlingsettlers.wordpress.com)
- John Mohawk (Seneca) “Re-Indigenization Defined,” Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future, edited by Melissa K. Nelson, Bear & Company, 2008
- Vandana Shiva, Sacred Seeds, Lecture, KWIC and Trent University, Wenjack Theatre, Peterborough, ON, November 16, 2014.
- John Trudell (Santee Dakota), John Trudell Speaks at Judi Bari Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. School, Berkeley CA, April 26, 1997
- Chief Phil Lane, Jr. (Dakota/Chickasaw), Global Indigenous Wisdom Summit, The Shift Network, November 18-20, 2014
- Apela Colorado (Oneida) “Indigenous Science,” Edges: New Planetary Patterns, Vol. 4 Number 1, June 1991. Apela Colorado, PhD (Oneida) is Founder and Director of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network, Lahaina, HI. (www.wisn.org) (http://ancestors-speak.blogspot.ca)
- Faith Spotted Eagle (Yankton Sioux), "Faith Spotted Eagle on the Settler-Colonial Mind-Set," Indian Country Today, January 17, 2017 (https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/native-news/faith-spotted-eagle-settler-colonial-mind-set)
- Michael Bertrand, Talking with the Ancestors ~ Initiation and the Purpose of Life, an Interview with Malidoma Patrice Somé, Race and History, 2000 (www.raceandhistory.com/Science/malidoma.htm)
- Daniel R. Wildcat (Muscogee), Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, Fulcrum Publishing, 2009
- Diane Longboat (Kahontakwas (Mohawk), "Indigenous Wisdom and Prophecies Are Helping Humanity Shift to New Paradigms," Global Indigenous Wisdom Summit, The Shift Network, November 18-20, 2014.Thomas King (Cherokee)
- Jeannette Armstrong, PhD, (Syilx Okanagan) “Indigenization,” TEDx Okanagan College , October 31, 2011(www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLOfXsFlb18)
- Arkan Lashwala, "Voces de Sabiduría Ancestral," Sacred Fire Foundation, February 13, 2018. (http://bit.ly/2n5whYb)
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2013
- Derek Rasmussen, “Non-Indigenous Culture: Implications of a Historical Anomaly,” YES! Magazine, July 11, 2013. (www.yesmagazine.org)
- David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, Greystone Books, 2007
- Francis Weller, “Five Gates of Grief,” Robert Bly’s Minnesota Men’s Conference, November 4, 2013. (www.youtube.com)
- Alley Valkyrie, "Cultural Appropriation, Nuance, and ‘Day of the Dead,’ " Gods&Radicals, November 17, 2017 (https://godsandradicals.org/2017/11/17/cultural-appropriation-nuance-and-day-of-the-dead)
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