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Eco-Agony - Presentation

11/20/2023

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Pegi Eyers at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) 

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Our Emerging Selves: Exploring Self and Nature through Creative Practice
(HDS Working Group)

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It was incredibly exciting to share my recent photo-essay "Eco-Agony" with my co-members in our Harvard Divinity School working group! I created a video presentation incorporating my personal spiritual journey with more recent artworks. The range of feedback and responses included comments such as "grounded and at one with the earth," "a metaphor for birth," "the fetal position," "birthing the new earth-connected human," "a sense of awe," and "grieving as a core piece of the work." For me, the underlying intent of "Eco-Agony" is the reciprocal relationship between humans and nature - one that is grounded in love and care. To engage with loving the land, is to experience the land loving us back.

Watch the Recording
ECO-AGONY 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 uncolonization, rejecting Empire, social justice, ethnocultural identity, Apocalypse Studies, building land- emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
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Decolonization & Uncolonization Defined: Implications for Ecopsychology

10/1/2023

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PEGI EYERS

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Decolonization is a relatively new concept for the ecopsychology community. This blog sets out the main definitions for decolonization and uncolonization today, to assist with actions moving forward, both in thought and action. The liberation of the colonized group from the nation state, or the removal of the Settler, do not apply to the dynamics within ecopsychology, but much can be gleaned from other definitions of decolonization that center Indigenous resistance, sovereignty, land restoration, and repatriations. Through solidarity and the Allyship framework, opportunities abound to assist First Nations in the struggle, and other initiatives are flourishing such as ethnocultural recoveries and the re-indigenization of worldviews that challenge colonial thinking and behavior. At the very least, those in the ecopsychology community have excellent opportunities right now to incorporate a fuller awareness of the ongoing colonizer/colonized relationship, model the restoration of nature-relatedness for all people, and educate others on good intercultural competency skills with First Nations.
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DECOLONIZATION & UNCOLONIZATION DEFINED
​IMPLICATIONS FOR ECOPSYCHOLOGY

With brand-new, and often confusing conversations on decolonization happening today in the ecopsychology sphere, a reminder of baseline definitions can be helpful before widening out to other interpretations. There are movements happening right now across ethnic and cultural lines that use "decolonization" to describe a wide array of practices. As applied to ecopsychology, do we need to re-examine how we use the term? From my positionality as a Settler in Canada of Scots Gaelic descent, I have identified seven principal definitions of "decolonization” as starting points for discussion, and for action moving forward.

(1) Break Free
​
The first and most basic meaning for “decolonization” is when a nation seeks to become free of the oppressor/oppressed regime imposed on them by a colonial power, and to physically and legally undo the colonial state or Empire, that has dominated their society. Dependency can be transformed to independence through nonviolent revolution or national liberation wars, and there have been several active periods of decolonization in modern times. For example, the breakup, or dissolution, of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century, the German, Ottoman and Russian Empires following WWI, and the Soviet Union following the October Revolution.
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2) Settler Removal
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The next profound meaning for “decolonization” is for the colonizer to “de-colonize” - that is,withdraw and leave the lands of the oppressed they have taken by stealth or force. Here in the Americas, there is a justified belief among First Nations that the colonizer (folks of European descent) should return to their lands of origin. So far, there are a few progressive Settlers who are exploring their own removal, yet for the majority this is far beyond our capabilities, or even our desire.

Everyday life in the homogenous American or Canadian nation-state does not support the yearning for a European homeland, or any substantial links. For many members of the diaspora the trail to Europe has grown cold, as our motherlines have been thriving on Turtle Island for 12+ generations. So, if it is impossible to leave the Americas (as much as we may want to) it can be helpful for Settlers to think of this directive symbolically, and to ask ourselves what exactly an America or a Canada would look like, if we were able to reduce our Eurocentric imposition, dominance, supremacy and power? And what would a re-indigenized society look like, if First Nations were in the ascendant position? In the face of such realities, we can be grateful for alternative approaches being offered by First Nations leaders such as Robert Lovelace (Tslagi/Algonquin).

"Indigenous peoples and Settlers have our own histories, where those histories have led us, and where the possible futures might lie for us together. Because guess what? We are here and now, and we’re not going to change that fact, but what we can do is change the possible futures that we face." [1]
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(3) Return the Land

For Indigenous freedom fighters, scholars and community peoples, decolonization cannot happen until the ancestral lands are returned. As the source for cultural keystone(s), epistomologies, TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge), food sources and medicine for good health, the land is deeply embedded in the communal heart and soul. At the root of Indigenous community, the priority to care for and protect the land applies to the Web of all Life, and the Seven Generations yet to come. In marked contrast, Empire has failed miserably in the protection of pristine ecosystems. Now, all people - including Settlers who reject the paradigm of endless growth and recognize the values of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) - can support the repatriation of lands to the original Earthkeepers and First Nations of Turtle Island.

In the truest sense of the word, for colonized Indigenous people
“decolonization is not a metaphor.”[2] Those in the dominant society are being asked to avoid using “decolonization” to refer to ideas or actions that do not hold Indigenous resistance, sovereignty, land restoration, and other repatriations at the center. As “decolonize” refers specifically to the repatriation of land and sovereignty to Indigenous peoples, Settlers are being urged to use alternate terms such as “uncolonize” instead.
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(4) Resistance & Resurgence

As a baseline in the Americas for colonized Indigenous people, “decolonization” is the active principle that attempts to undo the Settler State on a daily basis, both from within and without. Eurocentric dominance, white supremacy, racism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, slavery, land theft, imposed treaties, broken promises, relocation, forced assimilation, government manipulation, corporate control, psychic violence, and all the associated forms of oppression that continue to impact Indigenous people in the Americas are identified, confronted, called out, and resisted. One step at a time - and marking victories along the way - decolonization attempts to undo the colonization of the individual, the community and the land by protest, social justice activism, civil disobedience, education, cultural projects and legal battles. At the same time that the Settler State is challenged, the necessary recovery and rejuvenation of pre-colonial heritage, language and tradition is taking place, with the further preservation of culture(s) ongoing. A focus on health and healing translates into relationships that realign individuals and entire communities with their Original Instructions. The majority of references to “decolonization” by First Nations and their allies refer to these active principles of resistance and resurgence, and the ongoing education that supports and empowers those actions.
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(5) Neurodecolonization [3]
 
The minds of all people who navigate within Empire have been occupied, or colonized, by the memes and values of the Settler State. In today's era of massive change and climate  disaster, root causes such as monotheism, imperialism, white superiority, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, corporatism, resource extraction and binary political systems are rapidly being exposed as outdated frauds. Even if we have learned to thrive within the simulacrum of these human-created systems, the fact remains that Empire is toxic to all life, including our own. The conditioning and domestication we have received over centuries has translated into many artificial beliefs and habits. Already well-known to ecopsychologists today, here are some key examples of colonized behavior.

Placing human entitlement and humancentric needs above Earth Community,
•  a disconnect from nature and the normalization of urbanity,
•  control and domination showing up in our own lives with “me”
instead of “we” behaviors,
• implicit or overt judgement of people who don't fit the white cisheteropatriarchy ableist “norm,”
• intense competition and the “cult of the individual,” resulting in narcissism linked to low self-esteem,
• a measure of personal value situated on a hierarchy of wealth or class,
• a reliance on consumerism to provide “fulfillment” with fleeting pleasures, experiences and material objects,
• developing self-identity from the workplace, commercial enterprises and other disconnects from the real,
• a lack of rites of passage, low emotional IQ and infantile behavior throughout the adult years,
• a fear of the natural cycles of life such as birth, adolescence, aging and death.
 
The process of neurodecolonization challenges the memes of Empire (western thinking) in our individual or collective consciousness, and replaces that ideology or action with pre-colonial, or ancestral thinking. For ourselves, our clients and our communities, the move toward life-enhancing and creative patterns, and compassionate and inclusive solutions, can be a life-long undertaking. The key point to remember when engaged with the ongoing neurodecolonization of the psyche is that humans are not fundamentally flawed creatures. That is a myth perpetuated by industrial capitalism “in order to naturalize the behavior of violent imperialists. They are the insane.” [4]
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(6) Re-indigenization

Neurodecolonization and the reprogramming of the psyche can naturally lead to an interconnection with the evolving processes of all life, and return us to our essential bio-lineage. We are invited tolearn from, and emulate the values of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) systems without indulging in cultural appropriation, and a natural extension of this work is to recover specific indigeneities based on our own ethnoculture(s), 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?"[5]

Decolonization insists that we understand ourselves as we existed before modern civilization, and that implementing holistic solutions are vital to the survival of the human race. In these times of unlimited access to information, it is now possible to source a traditional earth-emergent way of life from our own root ancestral heritage(s) or European Indigenous Knowledge (EIK). For all people and disciplines including ecopsychology, the most exciting movement of our time is underway – to reject Empire and its toxic hegemonies, and to shift toward rewilding, spiritually-based ecological wisdom, uncolonized community, bioregionalism (if possible), and inclusion in the Sacred Circle of all Life. To recover our pre-colonial eco-selves we must stop taking our cues from the dominant society, and become spontaneously directed by the natural world.
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(7) We Have All Been Colonized

By the time our ancestors arrived on the shores of Turtle Island, honoring natural law and living in balance with Earth Community had already been outdated concepts for centuries in Europe. Our ancestors were part of a social organization based on hierarchy and control, and instead of taking their cues from the Indigenous civilizations already thriving in the “new world” they went on to repeat the colonial pattern. For our "woke" generation today, the challenge is how to approach reconciliation and make amends in a meaningful way. For those offering ecopsychology, nature relatedness or nature therapy services, here are a few questions to ponder as we engage with the process of uncolonization.

• Where do you see yourself on the decolonization continuum? Do you belong to the historic colonizer Settler Society or the colonized group?

• Are you recovering your connection to a landbase that has nurtured your people for generations?

• How can reparations be made to First Nations?

• Do you center Indigenous resistance in your uncolonization work?

• How are you educating your own cohort on issues of racism and oppression?

• Do you consider the recovery of your own heritage part of the uncolonization process?

• What habits in your thinking, or daily life, can be uncolonized?

• How can you dedicate more time to the rewilding of both soul and place, and the protection of wild nature?

At the local level, the popular “acknowledgement of territory” before public events provides a solid foundation for the uncolonization of self, family, community and the wider world. After decades of denial and ignorance, the unadorned truth of this “first step” declaration centers Indigenous reality, and is essential to the uncolonization journey. Find out whose land you are on, and honor it! [6]

In the Kawarthas region of Ontario where I live, this short statement serves as an accurate land acknowledgement.

"I acknowledge that I am living in the traditional territory of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, stand in solidarity with First Nations  land claim processes, support First Nations sovereignty and cultural recovery efforts, and respect the traditional values of the Curve Lake, Hiawatha and Alderville First Nations." [7]
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Implications for Ecopsychology

In terms of the seven definitions, how can practicing ecopsychologists & ecotherapists engage with “decolonization” more accurately in both thought and action? Points (1) Break Free and (2) Settler Removal do not apply to the dynamics within ecopsychology, and point (3) Return the Land reminds us that many First Nations feel “decolonization” must be applied to the total reclamation of Indigenous land and culture only.

At the time of this writing non-native people are still being cautioned to use the term “decolonization” sparingly, if at all. The key document “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang [8] has been re-published, circulated, and discussed all over the world. In many spaces, non-native people are not using “decolonization as a metaphor,” but others continue to use “decolonize” to refer to all kinds of activities, without consideration of the context, or respect for boundaries. Unfortunately, “decolonize” does seem to be the perfect term for the work people are doing, both in native and non-native spaces. The terms non-colonial, anti-colonial, post-colonial, or de-programming do not seem to carry the same meaning. Until the work of Tanya Rodriguez [9] an alternative term was incredibly difficult to employ. Her passionate stance in recent years offers “uncolonize” as the perfect term to describe the work folks of all ethnicities are doing, to unlearn colonial conditioning. I have adopted “uncolonize” wholeheartedly, and do not use “decolonize” in my own work. In reality, only people actively decolonizing from a nation-state would be correct in using the term “decolonize.” We are also reminded in point (3) Return the Land of the role that Settlers can play in every sphere of society, to bring change and assist Indigenous struggles with real action.

As point (4) Resistance & Resurgence outlines, decolonization is a set of ideas and actions embodied by First Nations and Indigenous community worldwide, from the grassroots to the highest level of NGO’s, international courtrooms, and governing bodies. Within this praxis, a possible role for ecopsychology practitioners today is to engage with Allyship theory, educate others on the principles of allyship, and lead by example by showing up for regional protests and movements.

“Allies are people who recognize the unearned privilege they receive from society's patterns of injustice and take responsibility for changing those patterns.” [1]
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​TANYA RODRIGUEZ   Decolonization, A Guidebook
For Settlers Living On Stolen Land 

In summary, points (5), (6) and (7) present ways the ecopsychology community can incorporate social justice, Allyship, pre-colonial thinking and ancestral worldviews into our practices and offerings. And yet, Settlers are still faced with many unresolved ambiguities in reference to our own connection to the land, and whose land are we on. Almost without exception, dialogues in ecopsychology on spending time in nature, continue to neglect the original First Peoples in approach and speculation. This neglect reinforces the stereotypical colonial notion that Indigenous people are a “thing of the past” and not part of communities that are surviving and thriving all around us. Also, the oft-suggested engagement with “spirits of place” by ecopsychologists could be considered by First Nations to be an assumption of epistemological and metaphysical superiority. We must acknowledge that the spirits in the land are already part of diverse Indigenous Knowledge (IK) systems, and may or may not be open to interloper peoples. Many metaphors in our European traditions like folklore, storytelling and  deep ecology are not transferable to landscapes in the Americas, and we must be willing to sit with those ambiguities. Ecopsychology may be finding “new” ways to connect with the land, but approaches can be conspicuously temporal, and not acknowledge that millions of First Peoples already hold strong spatial connections and beliefs. Many of the dynamics in the definitions (1) – (7) have an ethical dimension, and make an automatic appeal for a strong moral code, or position. For example, when ecopsychologists offer therapies, how can the non-acknowledgement, or invisibility, of First Nations be reversed? Perhaps there are ways to treat First Nations in addition to our other clients, for the PTSD, demoralization, soul loss and crippling ennui that have developed from the same separation from the landbase, the discipline of ecopsychology is designed to recover. In our nature therapy offerings, perhaps there is also a way to mention that First Nations have thousands of years of TEK embedded in place, and a much deeper and more nuanced connection to the land than Settlers. We need to be aware that statements and actions that do not exhibit our knowledge of these political realities, may be construed as Settler Colonialism all over again.
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And finally, for land acquisition “nature preserve” projects that offer nature therapy to the public, especially projects ostensibly partnering with First Nations, it may be a good idea to take the time and energy to assist First Nations in their very real and ongoing struggles with the settler state to recognize foundational First Nations claims to the land, the fallacy of Settler land ownership assumptions, the inadequacy of “treaties” as any meaningful guideline to land use or occupancy, the absence of treaties in many places, the ongoing attempts by the nation state to dissolve First Nations sovereignty, and the colonial agenda to assimilate First Nations into a fictional “multiculturalism.”

As part of the re-balancing that is occurring in western society, the field of ecopsychology focuses on excellent methods for breaking the stranglehold of industrial society.

​Compared to the eons that human beings have spent embedded in the primal matrix and in close kinship with the other-than-human world, our current malaise of modernity is the result of quite recent domestication, and ecopsychology reminds us of familiar strategies for overcoming the emotional trauma of our alienation from the Earth. May we explore the psychological benefits of nature relatedness, and introduce practices that ultimately reconnect us to our “ecological unconscious,” at the same time that we practice good intercultural competency skills, mutual respect, and peaceful co-existence with First Nations.
​

​Reprint from Academia.edu // February 23, 2023

​                                       NOTES
​
[1] Robert Lovelace (Tslagi/Algonquin), The Architecture of a Decolonized Society: Reindigenizing the Self, Community & Environment, Kawartha World Issues Centre (KWIC), Trent University, Peterborough, ON, 2013
 
[2] Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor, Unsettling America:Decolonization in Theory & Practice, 2012
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/decolonization-is-not-a-metaphor  

[3] Holding the values of western civilization, the colonization that happened on Turtle Island was rooted in structures thousands of years old. These structures have been, and continue to be patriarchal, imperialist, white supremacist, abled-supremacist, cisheteronormative and capitalist. Decolonization is both an outward process through resistance and action, and an inward process that examines deeply embedded patterns of thinking and behavior (otherwise known as internalized oppression). The term “neurodecolonization” as created by First Nations professor Michael Yellow Bird is a perfect description of this process. He requests that all references to the term “neurodecolonization” include an attribution to his work.
Neurodecolonization and Indigenous Mindfulness
www.indigenousmindfulness.com 

[4] Derrick Jensen, Comment on social media, Deep Green Resistance, 2015

[5] Zainab Amadahy (African American, Cherokee, Seminole), Why Indigenous and Racialized Struggleswill Always be Appendixed by the Left, Unsettling Settlers: Where We Talk about Unsettling Our Settler Selves, 2012
http://unsettlingsettlers.wordpress.com 

[6] Native Land, 2019 https://native-land.ca  Native Land is a survey of Indigenous territories worldwide maintained by Victor G. Temprano on Mapster. The maps are constantly being refined by user input.

[7] Pegi Eyers,  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, Stone Circle Press, 2016   www.stonecirclepress.com 

[8] Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor, Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory & Practice, 2012
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/decolonization-is-not-a-metaphor  

[9] Tanya Rodriguez (Boriqua), Tres Rosa on Medium, Decolonization, A Guidebook For Settlers Living On Stolen Land, December 26, 2020
https://gdiriseup.medium.com/decolonization-a-guidebook-for-settlers-living-on-stolen-land-57d4e4c04bbb    Uncolonizing Decolonization, April 18, 2012
https://gdiriseup.medium.com/uncolonizing-decolonization-6a88044f7589 

[10] Bishop, Anne, Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People, Zed Books, 2002
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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
Available from Amazon >here<
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Spiritual Extractivism

9/27/2023

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An excellent set of resources on cultural appropriation published by Unsettling America~!
From the Unsettling America archives:

What is Cultural Appropriation?  PEGI EYERS
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/what-is-cultural-appropriation

What, Exactly, Is Cultural Appropriation (And How Is It Harmful)?
MARINA WATANABE
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/what-exactly-is-cultural-appropriation-and-how-is-it-harmful/

Wanting to be Indian: When Spiritual Searching Turns into Cultural Theft  MYKE JOHNSON
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/wanting-to-be-indian

What’s the Difference Between Cultural Exchange and Cultural Appropriation?  JARUNE UWUJAREN
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/whats-the-difference-between-cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation

Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Appropriation? A text on culture, respect, allyship, and racism.  VEGETABLES FOR BREAKFAST
​https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/cultural-appreciation-or-cultural-appropriation

More.....https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/tag/cultural-appropriation
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Animist Quotes: Exploring the Animist Philosophy of Life

9/18/2023

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Reprint from "Mindful Ecotourism" by Kyle Pearce, April 29, 2022  www.mindfulecotourism.com/animism-quotes

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Some of the best quotes illuminating an experiential philosophy and ecological worldview rooted in nature.

1. “The experience of animistic consciousness wipes away the Cartesian distinction of an independent, rational self surrounded by a mechanical, dead universe. Gone is the hardened dualism of self and other, opening us to a form of apprehension that pre-historian Jean Clottes described as fluid and permeable: 'Fluidity means the categories that we have, man, woman, horse, tree, etc., can shift. A tree may speak. A man can get transformed into an animal and the other way around. The concept of permeability is that there are no barriers, so to speak, between the world where we are and the world of spirits.'

The world of spirit, for me, isn’t limited to ghosts, holy or otherwise. It means the innate, unique sentience of all beings, now hidden from us by the blinders of our a priori world view. In this way, animistic perspective is the great equalizer: you cannot poison the Earth if you instinctively recognize it as the organic extension of your own body and mind—indeed, as your body and mind.”    ― Robert M. Tindall

2. "Animism is worth considering (a) because it exists, (b) because it addresses contemporary issues and debates, and (c) because it clarifies, in various ways, the argument that the project of modernity is ill-conceived and dangerously performed."      ― Graham Harvey

3. "The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are our biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity—then we will treat each one with greater respect. That is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective."    ― David Suzuki

4. "Animism is not a belief but a worldview: The world is a sacred place and we are part of it. The factuality of this statement is not the issue. To say that the world is a sacred place is to make a statement about values, not facts. It’s a statement about what you mean by 'sacred,' just as 'money can’t buy happiness' is a statement about what you mean by 'happiness.' To put it all very simply, Animism isn’t a belief system, it’s a value system."   ― Daniel Quinn

5. “Animism is the way humanity has been deeply connected to the land and its seasonal cycles for millennia, in rapport and conversation with the animals, plants, elements, ancestors and earth spirits. The opposite of animism is the 'cult of the individual' so celebrated in modern society, and the loss of the animist worldview is at the root of our spiritual disconnect and looming ecological crisis. Human beings are just one strand woven into the complex systems of Earth Community, and the animistic perspective is fundamental to the paradigm shift, and the recovery of our own ancestral wisdom.”
― Pegi Eyers

6. "The distinction between life and lifeless is a human construct. Every atom in this body existed before organic life emerged 4000 million years ago. Remember our childhood as minerals, as lava, as rocks? Rocks contain the potentiality to weave themselves into such stuff as this. We are the rocks dancing. Why do we look down on them with such a condescending air? It is they that are an immortal part of us."   ― John Seed, Thinking Like a Mountain

7. “The elders were wise. They know that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; they knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to a lack of respect for humans too.”
― Chief Luther Standing Bear from the Lakota Sioux

8. “This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence, a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.”    ― Plato, Timaeus

9. “The crisis is at root one of perception; we no longer see the cosmos as alive, nor do we any longer recognize that we are inseparable from the whole of nature, and from our earth as a living being. But there is hope, for as the crisis deepens, the call of anima mundi intensifies.”   ― Stephan Harding

10. "What you intend when you approach something in the world determines, to varying extents, the degree of sensory gating that occurs as you perceive that phenomenon. Intent, task demands, cognitive template, and gating defaults all affect what you sensorally perceive when a part of the exterior world and you meet. More colloquially, all of us see what we expect to see.”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner

11. “People think they understand things because they become familiar with them. This is only superficial knowledge. It is the knowledge of the astronomer who knows the names of the stars, the botanist who knows the classification of the leaves and flowers, the artist who knows the aesthetics of green and red. This is not to know nature itself- the earth and sky, green and red. Astronomer, botanist, and artist have done no more than grasp impressions and interpret them, each within the vault of his own mind. The more involved they become with the activity of the intellect, the more they set themselves apart and the more difficult it becomes to live naturally.”   ― Masanobu Fukuoka

12. “Science is a dangerous gift unless it can be brought into contact with wisdom that resides in the sensual, intuitive and ethical aspects of our nature. For most non-Western cultures, nature is truly alive, and every entity within it is endowed with agency, intelligence and wisdom. This animistic perception is archetypal, ancient and primordial."    ― Robert Riversong

13. "Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human."
― David Abram

14. “Modern materialists and religious extremists alike lack the spiritual animistic reverence for non-human beings that every culture once understood as a given.”   ― Zeena Schreck

15. “Life is a planetary level phenomenon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable – the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.”   ― Lynn Margolis

16. “James Hillman so eloquently 'put it, 'It was only when science convinced us that nature was dead that it could begin its autopsy in earnest.' A living, aware, and soul-filled world does not respond well to autopsy.”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner

17. “I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals.”   ― Jagadish Chandra Bose

18. “Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.”  ― Erich Fromm

19. “You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here. Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.”   ―  Alan Watts

20. “There is no environment 'out there' that is separate from us. We can’t manage our impact on the environment if we are our surroundings. Indigenous people are absolutely correct: we are born of the earth and constructed from the four sacred elements of earth, air, fire and water. (Hindus list these four and add a fifth element, space.)”    ― David Suzuki

21. “Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.”
— Blackfoot Proverb

22. "The nomadic gatherer-hunters live in an entirely sacred world. Their spirituality reaches as far as all of their relations. They know the animals and plants that surround them and not only the ones of immediate importance. They speak with what we would call 'inanimate objects,' but they can speak the same language. They know how to see beyond themselves and are not limited to the human languages that we hold so dearly. Their existence is grounded in place, they wander freely, but they are always home, welcome and fearless."
― Kevin Tucker

23. “The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”    ― Terence Mckenna

24. “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”   ― Chief Seattle

25. “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eye of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity…...and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”    ― William Blake
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26. “One thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you. But if you don’t talk to the animals, they won’t talk back to you, then you won’t understand, and when you don’t understand you will fear, and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself.”    ― Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation

27. “Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.”    ― George Washington Carver

28. “Animists are people who recognize that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) towards and among other persons. Persons are beings, rather than objects, who are animated and social towards others (even if they are not always sociable). Animism may involve learning how to recognize who is a person and what is not – because it is not always obvious and not all animists agree that everything that exists is alive or personal. However, animism is more accurately understood as being concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons.”    ― Graham Harvey

29. “Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.”    ― Hippocrates

30. “In the oldest religion, everything was alive, not supernaturally but naturally alive. There were only deeper and deeper streams of life, vibrations of life more and more vast. So rocks were alive, but a mountain had a deeper, vaster life than a rock, and it was much harder for a man to bring his spirit, or his energy, into contact with the life of a mountain, and so he drew strength from the mountain, as from a great standing well of life, than it was to come into contact with the rock. And he had to put forth a great religious effort. For the whole life-effort of man was to get his life into contact with the elemental life of the cosmos. mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life. To come into the immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator, is the root meaning of religion …..”   ― D.H. Lawrence

31. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”    ― Rumi

32. “The animistic perspective has a long and distinguished philosophical pedigree. For some eminent philosophers such as Spinoza and Leibniz, and more recently Alfred North Whitehead, it was inconceivable that sentience (subjective consciousness) could ever emerge or evolve from wholly insentient (objective, physical) matter, for to propose this would be to believe in a fundamental division or inconsistency within the very fabric of reality itself.
Therefore each of these philosophers considered matter to be intrinsically sentient. The new animism that they espoused simply recognizes that the material world around us has always been a dimension of sensation and feelings–albeit sensations that may be very different from our own–and that each entity must be treated with respect for its own kind of experience.”
― Stephan Harding

33. "If we are to survive, we must learn a new way to live, or relearn an old way. There have existed, and for the time being still exist, many cultures whose members refuse to cut the vocal cords of the planet, and refuse to enter into the deadening deal which we daily accept as part of living. It is perhaps significant that prior to contact with Western Civilization many of these cultures did not have rape, nor did they have child abuse…. wish that we could say the same. It is perhaps significant that members of these cultures listen attentively (as though their lives depend on it, which of course they do) to what plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and stars have to say, and that these cultures have been able to do what we can only dream of, which is to live in dynamic equilibrium with the rest of the world."    ― Derrick Jenson, A Language Older Than Words

34. "Once the idea of a supernaturalistic creation is fully overcome, the idea returns that the universe must be self-organizing and therefore composed of self-moving parts. Also, insofar as dualistic assumptions are fully overcome and human experience is accepted as fully natural, it begins to seem probable that something analogous to our experience and self-movement is a feature of every level of nature."   ― David Ray Griffin

35. “Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.”
― S. Kelley Harrell

36. “Animism is a monist metaphysical stance, based upon the idea that mind and matter are not distinct and separate substances but an integrated reality, rooted in nature.”   ― Emma Restall Orr

37. “Everything in nature is alive and speaking. Our spiritual practice is about opening our eyes, ears and hearts to hear, understand, and communicate back. The elements, the Ancestors and the spirit beings that surround us want us to communicate with them. They want to work with us to heal the Earth, but they need our invitation.”   ― Starhawk

38. “Sympathy binds human beings to plants, animals, rocks and stars. Therefore they become beings rather than objects, fellows rather than things, and members in a circle of social relations.”   ― Peter Nabokov

39. “Animism, because it seeks to relate and converse with the world, rather than to define and control it, always renews itself. It wakes up every morning fresh and alive, and every evening it tucks itself to bed to dream again for the very first time. Since animism involves a relationship with the world, a living being that exists in the now, the present moment, what more relevant perspective could you find?”   ― Willem Larsen

40. “In tribal societies, there is so much to see and hear. The bear speaks, the river speaks, the rainbow signifies, the eclipse is a sign. The animistic personification of natural objects may be difficult for us to accept in any ‘literal’ way. Yet, judged solely on intellectual grounds, animism can be credited with a more sophisticated perception of physicality than Western Knowledge. Far from regarding matter as dead stuff, tribal societies perceive it as infused with mind, will, and intention.”   ― Theodore Roszak

41. “In the cosmology of the Haudenosaunee (often referred to as the Iroquois), the world around and all its features – rivers, trees, clouds, springs and mountains are regarded as alive, endowed with spirit and sensibility every bit as real as those of humans, and in fact of exactly the same type and quality as a human’s. Among the Iroquois this was called Orenda, the invisible force inherent in all parts of the universe.”   ― Kirkpatrick Sale

42. “We bring breaths of open spaces and hills, of sunshine, showers, and breezes. All of these are part of your being. Even if you live in the midst of a busy city, these natural things are home to you. They are part of the atmosphere of this Earth, part of the surroundings in which you live and grow. Even if your life and thinking are completely enmeshed in the human world, still you are part of our Deva world, which works for the perfect flowering of all life. This is your birthright. You may turn your back on it, but someday you will learn the truth and live in connection with all life on this planet. Only then will you tap your highest potential.”   ― Gentian Deva

43. “A human being is part of the whole called by us universe … We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”
― Albert Einstein

44. “When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature. We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.”   ― Henri Matisse

45. “The term environment refers to the external conditions or surroundings of organisms, whereas ecology refers to the relationships between organisms and their external conditions or surroundings, that is, their environment. The prefix eco (for 'ecology') is therefore more appropriate for my purposes than the adjective environmental because the kind of approach that I will be developing herein is one that attempts to break down the rigid distinctions that we tend to draw between ourselves and our environment. Instead of seeking to maintain these distinctions, this approach attempts to foster a greater awareness of the intimate and manifold relationships that exist between what we conventionally designate as self and what we conventionally designate as environment."
― Warwick Fox

46. “The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term ‘Gaia’ is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. And the world of bacteria is critical to the details of these feedback processes, because bacteria play a crucial role in the regulation of the whole Gaian system.”   ― Fritjof Capra

47. “I consider that this shift to an emphasis on our 'capacity to identify with the larger collective of all beings' is essential to our survival at this point in history precisely because it can serve in lieu of morality and because moralizing is ineffective. Sermons seldom hinder us from pursuing our self-interest, so we need to be a little more enlightened about what our self-interest is. It would not occur to me, for example, to exhort you to refrain from cutting off your leg. That wouldn’t occur to me or to you, because your leg is part of you. Well, so are the trees in the Amazon Basin; they are our external lungs. We are just beginning to wake up to that. We are gradually discovering that we are our world.”
― Joanna Macy

48. “Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior; it begins where the crustal rocks meet the magma of the Earth’s hot interior, about 100 miles below the surface, and proceeds another 100 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the even hotter thermosphere at the edge of space. It includes the biosphere and is a dynamic physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for over three billion years. I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries.

I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.”   ― James Lovelock

49. "Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox! This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the Earth, and sun, and stars – and love, poor blossom, we plucked from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.”   ― D.H. Lawrence

50. “In my opinion, no more destructive belief exists than the idea that we have escaped the constraints imposed by nature on all other species. We assume that by enabling us to exploit and alter our surroundings, our intellect has freed us from dependence on specific habitats. We believe we are no longer part of nature, because we have acquired the ability to control and manage the forces impinging on us. This illusion of escape from nature has been reinforced by our extraordinary transformation in this century from country dwellers to city dwellers. In an urban setting, we live in a human-created environment, surrounded by other people plus a few domesticated plants and animals, as well as the pests that have overcome our defences. Living among such a dearth of species, we no longer recognize our dependence on the rest of life for our well-being and our very survival. It is simpler to assume that the economy delivers our food, clean air, water and energy and takes away our sewage and waste. We forget that the Earth itself provides all these services, and so makes economists and the economy possible. We are biological beings, as dependent on the biosphere as any other life form and we forget our animal nature at our peril.”  ― David Suzuki

51. "Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease a herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence."
― Mourning Dove Salish

52. "A ghost is haunting modernity–the ghost of animism. It awaits us everywhere when we step outside modern reason’s cone of light, outside its firmly mapped order, when approaching its frontier zones and 'outside.' We find it in the imagined darkness of modernity’s outside, where everything changes shape and the world is reassembled from the fragments that reason expels from its chains of coherences.  ― Anselm Franke

53. “As a Zuñi Elder focuses her eyes upon a cactus and hears the cactus begin to speak, so we focus our eyes upon these printed marks and immediately hear voices. We hear spoken words, witness strange scenes or visions, even experience other lives. As nonhuman animals, plants, and even 'inanimate' rivers once spoke to our tribal ancestors, so the 'inert' letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless–as mysterious as a talking stone.”  ― David Abram

54. "Animism had its origins in two universal human experiences: (1) the sense that something invisible yet all-important leaves the body at the moment of death, and (2) the suspicion that dreams and visions make contact with a higher reality. Once the belief in a spiritual realm was established, it was only a few short steps to positing the existence of spiritual beings that stand behind nature, and behind the world as a whole."  ― Bradley L. Herling

55. “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”   ― Native American Proverb

56. “Climate crisis is a catastrophic culmination of modernity’s existential crisis. As many other environmental philosophers have noticed, this crisis lies in a profound dissociation within the modern man — separation from the environment and non-human life-forms, which are seen as lacking subjectivity and consciousness, as well as from his own body and other people within the competitive capitalist society. It is a crisis of anthropocentrism and individualistic solipsism. To adapt to the new climate, we need novel modes of perception which animate the non-human environment and life-forms (similarly as in the Indigenous, animistic cosmologies and ontologies).”  ― Clinamen

57. “Animism is often described as the imputation of life to inert objects. Such imputation is more typical of people in western societies who dream of finding life on other planets than of Indigenous peoples to whom the label of animism has classically been applied. These peoples are united not in their beliefs but in a way of being that is alive and open to a world in continuous birth. In this animic ontology, beings do not propel themselves across a ready-made world but rather issue forth through a world-in-formation, along the lines of their relationships. To its inhabitants this weather-world, embracing both sky and earth, is a source of astonishment but not surprise. Re-animating the ‘western’ tradition of thought means recovering the sense of astonishment banished from official science.”  ― Tim Ingold

58. Indigenous people view both themselves and nature as part of an extended ecological family that shares ancestry and origins. It is an awareness that life in any environment is viable only when humans view the life surrounding them as kin. The kin, or relatives, include all the natural elements of an ecosystem. Indigenous people are affected by and, in turn, affect the life around them. The interactions that result from this “kincentric ecology” enhance and preserve the ecosystem. Interactions are the commerce of ecosystem functioning. Without human recognition of their role in the complexities of life in a place, the life suffers and loses its sustainability. Indigenous cultural models of nature include humans as one aspect of the complexity of life. A Rarámuri example of iwígara will serve to enhance understanding of the human–nature relationship that is necessary in order to fully comprehend the distinct intricacies of kincentric ecology.  – Enrique Salmón

59. “Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.” —Fritjof Capra

60. “What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.”
― Ganga White

61. “Civilization may be the greatest bait-and-switch that ever was. It convinces us to destroy what is free so an overpriced, inferior copy can be sold to us later—often financed with the money we’ve earned hastening the destruction of the free version. The voices of civilization fill us with manufactured yearnings and then sell us prepackaged dollops of transitory satisfaction that evaporate on the tongue. Some throw up their hands and blame it all on human nature. But that’s a mistake. It’s not human nature that makes us engage in this blind destruction of our world and ourselves. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings thrived on this planet without doing it in. No, this is not the nature of our species — it is the nature of civilization, an emergent social structure in which our species is presently trapped.”  ― Christopher Ryan 

62. “We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”  ― Henry David Thoreau

63. “The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler’s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

64. “Animism is far from primitive, nor is it about pre-modernity because animism does not serve as a precursor to modernity. Rather animism is one of the many vitally present and contemporary other-than-modern ways of being human.”  — Graham Harvey
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7 Books to Deepen Spiritual Nature Connection - Roots and Wings

9/3/2023

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Thank you so much to Roots and Wings for including "Ancient Spirit Rising" on this illustrious list ~!

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​The wonderful scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel defined spirituality as “the part of the reality that cannot be captured by thought or language.” He also shared my belief that spirituality is not optional but essential for human existence. We all have moments when we experience something deep within us that is special and hard to describe. For me personally “awe” is a good word to use, when we are touched by something so pure and profound that we have no words to describe it. I truly believe that spirituality is essential not only for our well-being, but also that of our planet Earth. It’s as if we are deeply united in these brief moments and encounters. "Awesome" experiences are often related to Nature, which never ceases to amaze me. It’s also possible though to consciously practice spiritual nature connection, and here are some wonderful books to guide us. Alex Koster, Roots and Wings
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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 uncolonization, rejecting Empire, social justice, ethnocultural identity, Apocalypse Studies, building land- emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
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Indigenous Peoples: Key Trends

6/24/2023

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An excerpt from the article "Indigenous Peoples: Key Trends that Affect their Development" Part 2, by Yulia Nesterova, Research Fellow, University of Glasgow. Published in Impakter Magazine, September 28, 2017.

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A FESTIVAL-GOER WEARS A HEADDRESS . NOTE THAT INDIGENOUS HEADDRESSES BELONG TO SPIRITUAL DOMAINS OF FIRST NATIONS AND ARE NOT TO BE WORN CASUALLY, ESPECIALLY BY NON-INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. PHOTO CREDIT: OLLIE MILLINGTON/WIRE IMAGE

Cultural Appropriation

Another issue is the appropriation of Indigenous cultures – which non-indigenous people disrespect, misuse, and misrepresent. Cultural appropriation happens when a fashion, fine art or entertainment industry uses traditionally Indigenous sacred items and patterns (headdresses, clothing patterns, etc.) to make a profit. High-end fashion houses have been accused of abusing Indigenous beading, feathering, and other sewing techniques without any consent from Indigenous groups.

Cultural appropriation is not only a big business for Chinese factories or western fashion houses, however. It is an identity theft by non-indigenous individuals who imagine themselves as "tribal," "awake," and "spiritual" by wearing Native American headdresses, putting on "tribal" makeup, donning "Indigenous" jewelry and clothing, or living in a tipi during some sort of  "spiritual" festival.

As Pegi Eyers describes it, it’s an act of racism to use Indigenous cultural markers. Not long ago Indigenous people were killed for using them, and it interferes with currrent Indigenous attempts at “resurgence and sovereignty.” Pegi Eyers explains that "cultural appropriation dominates how oppressed groups present themselves to the world, and undermines their efforts to preserve their own traditions."

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​This year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an agency under the UN, was asked to develop “effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures” to stop the cultural appropriation of Indigenous heritage. It seems that open letters to non-indigenous people and other attempts to stop this cultural, spiritual, and identity theft aren’t helpful, and legal measures need to be taken to protect Indigenous communities from such abuse.

On the downside, it is clear that Indigenous people still have a long way to go to achieve full recognition. But, on the upside, the good news is that general awareness of their plight has been raised and that the road to achieve justice for them has been traced.  It now needs to be taken.

YULIA NESTEROVA

​"Indigenous Peoples: Key Trends that Affect their Development" Part 2, by Yulia Nesterova, Research Fellow, University of Glasgow, published in Impakter Magazine, September 28, 2017.  Access the full article >here<

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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 social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon
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Between Worlds

12/17/2022

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​A fascinating excerpt from "Between Worlds: Artful Auto/Biography and/as Pagan Healing"  by Gina Snooks, Electronic Thesis, The University of Western Ontario,  Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, 2022 

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Toward a Decolonised Paganism

Theorizing matters of inclusion and exclusion in Paganism also necessitates a critical analysis of how Paganism is complicit in epistemic violence through the erasure and theft of Indigenous knowledges. In this matter there are two points that require attention: being in right relationship with the land and its more-than-human inhabitants, and the misuse of sacred objects and practices by folks who are not part of the living traditions in which these objects and practices are located. Paganism requires that Pagans be in right relationship with the lands upon which they live and practice their religion. Indeed, independent scholar Lisa A. McLoughlin argues that Pagans’ identity depends on it. However, these relationships are complicated when Pagans are uninvited guests on unceded Indigenous territories, as is often the case in North America. Meanwhile, for settlers, their cultural and ancestral knowledges are rooted in the mythologies of lands located elsewhere — lands from which their ancestors were displaced, sometimes forcefully and at other times due to various forms of oppression, and lands upon which they themselves may have never set foot. Settlers’ history with Turtle Island, then, is not the same as it is for its Indigenous peoples, but neither are their histories the same “as our ancestors with their ancestral lands” (McLoughlin 1). To further complicate the matter, Oneida Nation of the Thames Turtle Nation scholar Lina Sunseri reminds us that identity is a complex matter and that national identities “are fluid and socially constructed” and “never complete” (29). Sunseri makes this point to elucidate that the distinction between coloniser/ colonised and insider/outsider are not necessarily neatly organized dichotomies in the context of settler colonialism on Turtle Island.

Further related to the topic of decolonising Paganism, Pegi Eyers postulates that one of the reasons that settlers gravitate toward and appropriate Indigenous knowledges (IK), particularly Indigenous spirituality, is that they are disconnected from their own (European) Indigenous knowledges (EIK) and earth-connected cultures that center around concepts such as animism and ecomysticism. Hence she claims that settlers need to acknowledge their own loss of culture that has led to their collective and individual dysfunction and examine how this loss is at the root of their “spiritual hunger” and “yearning for holistic earth-connected community” (48). Her stance aligns with Eduardo Duran’s (Apache, Lakota, Tewa) claim that the process of colonisation “affects human beings at a deep soul level” (14) and that many non-Indigenous peoples (of Turtle Island) may want to decolonise from the “collective consumer colonization that has been imposed upon them” (14) and which is ongoing.

To this point, Anishnaabe Elder and Traditional teacher James Dumont advises that “Everyone needs to get back to their own IK” (qtd. in Eyers 17). Following this logic, Eyers argues that Paganism offers a meaningful way for settlers to live in alignment with earth-based spirituality through the reclamation of their own ancestors’ Indigenous knowledges and that returning to these knowledges is a necessary part of the process of decolonisation. Thus, Paganism can be a way of living more harmoniously with the lands, the gods, ancestors, and other more-than-human beings. In reference to Gaul Indigenous knowledges, Anne Ferlat, similarly, postulates that reclaiming European Indigenous spiritualities through decolonial paradigms might “offer a route for healing both the collective and personal traumas resulting from waves of acculturation” (2-3) brought about by long histories of aggressive acculturation, colonialism, cultural exchange, migration and forced relocation.
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In alignment with these scholars and Elder Dumont, I contend that a decolonial approach to Paganism and a reclaiming of vernacular spiritualties rooted in one’s histories and cultures can provide a meaningful way to reconnect with earth-based holistic epistemologies, and that these practices can be part of the process by which human beings can begin to heal our collective soul wound. Nevertheless, this is not to imply that Pagan practices need not be examined and called out when they are themselves oppressive. Elucidating this point, Eyers also critiques Pagan practices that appropriate Indigenous knowledges by borrowing, blending, and creating new practices based on Indigenous sacred knowledges such as “aspects of vision quests, healing modalities and purification rituals from First Nations as diverse as the Lakota, Navajo and Cree. This artificial combining of cultural elements reinforces false ideologies and romanticizes stereotypes, and does nothing to strengthen actual First Nation communities and their recovery of nationhood, ancestral lands or cultural traditions” (157).  While Eyers promotes Paganism rooted in European Indigenous Knowledges as an alternative to North American Pagans participating in practices that appropriate the Turtle Island Indigenous peoples, Scott Lauria Morgensen is more critical. In fact, he argues that “despite the perception that adopting European neo-paganism keeps white members of settler societies from appropriating Native culture, neo-paganism itself is reinvented by them to gain a relationship to Native land and culture that does not feel like the conquest that they know they inherit” (116).

Underpinning these critiques of Pagan appropriation of Indigenous knowledges, is the understanding that White privilege means that many White people feel entitled to access the sacred knowledges of cultures to which they do not belong, under the false assumption that all sacred knowledge is open. This is so, despite that not all Pagans identify as White, because Pagan culture is largely (White) Eurocentric and many of the founders of the contemporary Pagan movement were White people who pieced together sacred knowledges from various diverse cultures. Indeed, part of the process of decolonising contemporary Paganism is to untangle this information as to avoid repeating such forms of cultural theft. What is clear, then, is that unpacking Pagans’ relationship with land (any lands) is a complicated matter that must also address matters of Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous land rights. Moreover, being in right relationship with land encompasses being in right relationship with people. Consequently, Pagans’ relationship with land cannot be disentangled from the broader landscape of settler colonialism, which is the structure by which Indigenous sovereignty has been eroded.

To the point of the misuse of sacred objects and ceremonies one of the most widely appropriated practices is that of smudging, which is a purification ceremony performed by smoking sacred herbs often referred to as medicines by Indigenous peoples. To be clear, many cultures worldwide use smoke to physically and energetically cleanse; hence, it is not the usage of smoke per se that is problematic. Rather the problem is when plants and medicines that are sacred to specific peoples are used out of context by people who have not been properly trained in that tradition mimic those rituals, or worse when these practices are commercialized. The usage of white sage is a prime example of this sort of misuse, which has led to an over harvesting of the plant. Another example is the performance of sweat lodge ceremonies (under that exact name), again by practitioners who are not trained, nor given permission, by elders or spiritual leaders in the Indigenous communities in which these practices originate. These practices are an act of cultural theft, but safety is also an issue when this ceremony is performed by untrained people, as is evident in fact that two people died at a retreat hosted by James Arthur Ray in Sedona Arizona (CBC 2011). As these brief examples demonstrate, Paganism can be complicit in the cultural appropriation of Indigenous knowledge and, in doing so, is complicit in the ongoing marginalization of Indigenous peoples.

Although, in this section, I have drawn attention to some of the issues within Paganism regarding racism, sexism, and cultural appropriation, it is also important to acknowledge that there has long been resistance to such practices by the Pagan community itself. Indeed, there is an ongoing movement toward making Paganism more inclusive and toward decolonising Paganism. On the topic of decolonising spirituality scholar Leela Fernandes writes “a decolonization of the divine necessitates a spiritual practice that includes a willingness to confront all forms of political and socioeconomic injustice…” (109), which requires a critical analysis of and willingness to address the myriad ways that spiritual traditions are decontextualized from the cultural political and historical landscapes in which they are located.

The problem, Fernandes argues, is that such an approach is based on “a form of spiritual appropriation that is void of social responsibility” (109). Although she is referring to the appropriation of Asian Indian spirituality, her argument is applicable in relation to Paganism as well. My point is that to decolonise Paganism, Pagans must be willing not only to name oppressive practices within the religion, but also to commit to repairing harms done to others in the name of Paganism.

On the topic of decolonising Irish polytheism, the Irish Pagan School offers a course called “Decolonising Your Druidry & Spiritual Practice: The roots of Druidic Religion & how to ensure your modern practice is authentic and respectful” in which Lora O’Brien unpacks the history of the modern Druid movement and advocates for spiritual practices that are rooted in the mythologies and living culture of Ireland.49  Notably, O’Brien does not propose that Indigenous Irish spirituality is for Irish natives and/or the Irish diasporic community only. Instead, O’Brien posits that anyone can practice pre-colonised Irish spirituality so long as the practice is not taken out of context of the living Irish culture and its histories. She does promote learning from Irish practitioners such as herself, as well as non-Irish practitioners who are immersed in the culture, histories, and folklore of Ireland (such as American writer Morgan Daimler). From this perspective, Indigenous Irish polytheism is not a closed religion, but respectful engagement is required.

O’Brien’s approach here aligns with Elder Dumont’s advice that everyone ought to reclaim their own Indigenous knowledges. Yet it should also be recognized that “The Gods were your Gods because they were the ones you honoured, the ones you prayed to and offered to, not because you passed some litmus test of color or ancestry. The culture was your culture because it was what you lived, valued, and passed on,” as Daimler succinctly puts it (2015, 69). In fact, in the context of Irish Paganism and reconstruction pre-colonised Irish Polytheism, Daimler is critical when cultural belonging and intention to preserve ancestral knowledges become a form of cultural “possession” (2015, 68), an act that excludes some folks from participation while permitting participation by others.
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As these examples demonstrate, what constitutes closed religions versus open religions and cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation is not a straightforward matter. By extension, who is permitted to participate in specific cultural traditions and who is excluded from participation, is a complicated matter that is deeply entwined with both the historical and contemporary context of unequal power relations and matters of resiliency and, therefore, must work toward autonomy and self-determination for marginalized groups.​

                                       GINA SNOOKS

"Between Worlds: Artful Auto/Biography and/as Pagan Healing"  by Gina Snooks, Electronic Thesis, The University of Western Ontario,  Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, 2022.     Access the full paper >here<

WORKS CITED

​McLoughlin, Lisa A. “US Pagans and Indigenous Americans: Land and Identity.” Religions, vol. 10, 152, 2019, pp.1-16.

Sunseri, Lina. Being Again of One Mind: Oneida Women and the Struggle for Decolonization. UBC Press, 2011

Eyers, Pegi. Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community. Stone Circle Press, 2016.

Duran, Eduardo. Healing the Wounded Soul: Counseling with American Indians and Other Native Peoples. New York and London: Teachers College Press, 2006

Ferlat, Anne. “Rediscovering Old Gaul: Within or Beyond the Nation State?” Religions vol. 10, no. 331, 2019, pp. 1-15.

Morgensen, Scott Lauria. Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

“Self-help guru convicted in sweat lodge deaths.” CBC, 23 June 2011,

Fernandes, Leela. Transforming Feminist Practice: Non-Violence, Social Justice and the Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2003.

O’Brien, Lora. Lora O’Brien Irish Author & Guide, 2021,
https://loraobrien.ie/about-lora-obrien/. Accessed 20 April 2022.

Daimler, Morgan. Irish Paganism. Moon Books, 2015.
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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 social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon
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Holders of Staff and Bone

11/21/2022

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Reprint from >Red Moon Mystery School<

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​OFFERINGS BY NIKIAH SEEDS

This personal quest will take you through four stages or portals, starting with Blood.  In this portal you will be taken to meet a healthy,,loving ancestral guide and from there begin a strong ancestral practice that includes healing for one lineage in your family line.
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Moving next into Bones. In this portal the bones we speak of here are the bones of the earth, animism, and being a staff holder. We work with the bones of the earth/trees and each student is granted access to the Magic and Folklore of Trees course.
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Moving from bones we begin to work with the Moon. Here the moon represents community and gatherings, and how as a leader you hold yourself with integrity and of course the shadow side of the moon, leaning into circle ethics, mentoring and dreaming future courses you may wish to lead.
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Lastly we Return and reflect on the quest that has taken you away from leadership and into your own personal time of reflection and journeywork.
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All of the materials in this course are yours to keep forever so you may return to them as many times as you wish, and also so you are not rushed in your own process of the content.
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PRACTICAL DETAILS

This is an online course with no set timeline. What this means is that you can begin and finish whenever you feel ready to dive in, and are complete with the quest.  You will receive 2 mentorship sessions with Nikiah one for each of the phases of her quest. This will be via Zoom and will be between an hour in length depending on what is needed. You will also also have access to the "Magic and Folklore of the Sacred Trees" course, as a further support to the journey. Within the course are videos and PDF's available.

We will be reading certain chapters from the book "Ancient Spirit Rising" by Pegi Eyers and this book comes with the cost of the course.

Upon completion you will receive a red bone wrapped and corded that you may hang onto your staff.  This course is open now!  Register >here<
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Nikiah Seeds
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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 social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. 
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Passage to Dartmoor

11/15/2022

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PEGI EYERS

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In September of 2022 the most amazing thing happened.  My dear friend Kat Elliot visited Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer of Braided River Books and Seventh Wave Music in Dartmoor in southern Devon, England, and presented them with a copy of my book Ancient Spirit Rising~! It's wonderful when our creations find new homes all over the world, especially with amazing people and sacred sites. Tapadh leat gu dearbh (!) dear Kat, for your amazing friendship, and support of ASR~!

Excerpt from Ancient Spirit Rising / Chapter 25 / "Practices"

For the ultimate inspiration on how to recover and embody our ancient European Indigenous Wisdom directly, we can look to the work of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer in fine art, music, ceremony, material culture and daily life that sings to the Celtic heart and sets our souls on fire. Deeply embedded in the English landscape, Seventh Wave Music offers texts, poetry, music, artwork and musical instruments from richly-reconstructed Indigenous traditions affirming the Celtic, Nordic and Northern tribes of Europe. Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer “live and work on a thousand-year-old farm in the heart of Dartmoor, a mist-veiled landscape of wild hills and moors, and the inspiration for their work is drawn from the raw beauty, hidden spirit and ancient memory of this deep ancestral land.” [1]  Music has the powerful ability to bring us back to our originating culture, and with hand-crafted drums, flutes, rattles and other musical instruments using locally-sourced wood, stone and other materials, the soundscape journeys and primordial rhythms of Seventh Wave Music restore us to the spirit of the wild landscape and the gifts of the land.  

“What is the story of our forgotten people? It is a story of return.  It is a story of hearthstones and home; of amber from oceans and copper from earth; of men who soar with buzzards and women who weave heron feathers into their hair.  It is also, however, the story of ourselves; in a landscape where time spirals rather than runs ahead of us in rigid lines, we look to our forgotten people to remember something about our own lives. Remembering our people, those who are connected to us by blood or clan or land or any other bond that serves to entwine hearts and souls, is part of rooting ourselves in our landscape and shaping the road along which we chose to travel. We learn from our ancestors in order to understand the ancestors we might become.” [2]   Carolyn Hillyer
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Seventh Wave Music, Lower Merripit Farm, Dartmoor
With a foot in both worlds, Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer are immersed in the Old Ways, and have manifested ancient EIK (European Indigenous Knowledge) on their Dartmoor land by building a Neolithic-style Celtic Roundhouse using granite, oak and rye grass thatch, for ceremony and to evoke sacred space.  Like a miracle from a dream, or the answer to a yearning we never knew we had, hearing their music or reading Carolyn’s words transports us directly to our ancestral roots, reconnecting our hearts to the heartbeat of the Earth and the glowing hearth, to stone, bone, willow, reed, antler, feather, copper - and to the warp and weft of stories that are woven in the land. 
 
“we will build our dwelling from the bones of the earth
we are wed to the body of the earth
we will kindle our fire from the heart of the wood
we are wed to the soul of the land
now that the first hearth is set on the ground
to the spirit of this place we are bound……” [3]   (Carolyn Hillyer)
 
The astonishing creative output of Seventh Wave Music and their hosted gatherings take us along ancient paths where we can reconnect with the energies of the earth, experience deep animist interactions with the nonhuman world, and feel the echoes of ancient forests, Atlantic coasts and stone circles once again. For over 20 years Carolyn has been offering workshop journeys for women, weaving together shared songs, chants, poetry, stories, ancient mythology, sacred symbols, hearth circles, ritual drumming, ceremony, oracle work, magical ways, rites of passage, wildcrafting, earth shrines, vigil, wayfaring, and interaction with the sacred wild sanctuaries of the land. Viewing her mixed-media art (“life-size images of archetypal spirit women, the ancient landscape in human form” [4]), and learning from the sacred prose and poetry of her mystic teachings can ignite our own deep well of remembrance and Indigenous talents as seer, bard, story-teller, hearthkeeper, healer, wanderer, hunter, gatherer, shapeshifter or lover of the land.
 
“Ancient shadows of women spiralling/
through the coils of time
we are part of those women spiralling
with the song of the land
and the dance of the moon inside.” [5]  (Carolyn Hillyer)
 
The work of reviving an ancestral paradigm can arise from different motivations, methodologies, groups or inspirations, and diverse sources can guide our passage back to the ancient clan mothers while evoking the vibrancy of our Celtic sensibility in the modern era. With their rich tapestry of music, performance, poetry, story, ceremony and hearthfire, the works of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer give form and song to our personal journeys of cultural resurgence, and show us the way home to our EIK.
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Beautiful T-shirt design from Seventh Wave. Click on image to order.
​NOTES
[1] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[2] Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer, “About Seventh Wave Music: Words from the Wild Hills,” Seventh Wave Music, 2014. For information on music CDs, books, prints, hand-crafted instruments, concerts, events, Rivenstone, Festival of Bones, Thirteen Moons Women’s Festival and Workshop Journeys for Women: Hearth, Trail or Threshold Weekends, go to 
www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk.
​[3] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[4] Carolyn Hillyer, “Books and Prints” Seventh Wave Music, 2014
www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk
​[5] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
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Access the books, art, music, workshops and events of Carolyn Hillyer and Nigel Shaw at Seventh Wave Music >here<
Instagram >here<

Neolithic-style Roundhouse at Lower Merripit Farm
Seventh Wave Music and Braided River Books
Photography by Kat and Russ Elliott

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CAROLYN HILLYER and NIGEL SHAW, BRAIDED RIVER BOOKS and  SEVENTH WAVE MUSIC, DARTMOOR www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk

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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 social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. 
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Oceans Divide Us

7/18/2022

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PEGI EYERS

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painting by Ian David Soar
ANCESTRAL LANDS

With blessings and benediction

Ancestral lands of my spirit -
the passage of time and oceans divide us
yet my heart-home yearns for you still

Your feminine forms rest deep in the earth
sacred earth goddesses that live on
in DNA memory - of kin, of connection

The eternal cycles, the great stone circles
nourish my thoughts and prayers

Your spirits of place that speak
to all those with open hearts

Touching the loam, immersed in sounds & scents
the coastlines, moors, your meadow-grasses

May my sisters give voice to my name
palms down, ancient spirit rising

May the Great Heart in the land
send blessings to her daughter across the sea
​
Send messages of belonging
beloved motherline that fills my soul
​
Mythopoetics by Pegi Eyers May, 2022.  I don't usually use the term "benediction" due to associations with religiosity, but in this instance it seems to work.
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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 social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. ​
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    ​~ BLOG ~

    Pegi Eyers

    ஜ
    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.
    ​

    ​Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community


    Ancient Spirit Rising
    is the recipient of a
    2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award
    in the Current Events/ Social Change category!     
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    First Nations on Ancestral Connection

    Soulskin Journeys
    ​
    ​    A Thousand Apologies

    ​    Dream World

    ​Forest Thriving

    The "Cultural Orphan" and Spiritual White Women

    ​ACQUIESCE

    ​The Medusa Mythos Inspires Us to Rage Against the Machine

    ​SOUL WALKER

    ​ECO-AGONY

    ​Eco-Agony - Presentation

    Decolonization & Uncolonization Defined: Implications for Ecopsychology
    ​
    ​    Spiritual Extractivism
    ​
    ​​​Animist Quotes: Exploring the Animist Philosophy of Life

    7 Books to Deepen Spiritual Nature Connection ​

    Indigenous Peoples: Key Trends

    ​Between Worlds
    ​
    ​Holders of Staff and Bone

    ​Passage to Dartmoor

    ​Oceans Divide Us

    ​    Ecovillages: The Shadow Side

    ​The Lessons We Need to Learn from Indigenous People
    ​
    ​Ancestral Motherline ~ Guided Meditation
    ​
    ​    The Life Force: Restoring Sacred Myth

    ECO-SOUL

    Shifting Borderlands of Tame and Wild

    ​Ancient Spirit Rising is Recommended Reading-!
    ​
    ​Earth First 

    The World of Small

    European Roots ~ A Call for Leadership

    Settler Re-landing: Reclaiming Patterns of Connection

    Waeccan Means to "Wake Up"

    Initiation Now: Rethinking the World as Alive

    Dangerous Women

    Ancient Covenant

    "Earthing" in the Garden

    The Promise of Ecopsychology

    Kinomagewapkong ~ The Teaching Rocks

    The Ecomystic Experience

    Controversies in the Ancestral Arts

    The Sacred Balance

    Uncolonizing the “Bounty of the Land” Narratives

    We Live in a Death Culture

    Customary Law

    Earth Love

    The Green Burial Movement: In Conversation With Emma Restall Orr

    Letters to the Earth

    I Walked and Walked

    Sacred Tears

    Taking Issue With "We Are All One"

    Dear Greenmantle ~ Review Rebuttal

    Finding Our Long-Lost Ancestral Traditions

    Ancestor Quilt

    Our Struggles Are Not the Same

    Ally Mistakes - Oops ~!

    Love from the Earth

    The Problem with Far-Away Ecotherapy and Nature Connection Retreats

    Earth-Emergent in the City

    Voices of Earth ~ Archaic Whispers

    Good Allies 
     
    Song of the Ancestors

    Decolonization ~ Meaning What Exactly?

    Animism Unbound

    More Settler-Colonialism: Boomers and the Rez (True Story)

    What is Cultural Appropriation?

    The Story Behind the Story

    Cultural Appropriation in Goddess Spirituality and Matriarchal Studies

    Climate Disaster & Massive Change 

    We Are the Ancestors of the Future

    Earth Mother Magic

    True Reconciliation Requires Restitution 

    Are White People Indigenous?

    Full Disclosure/My Positionality on New Age!

    Allyship and Solidarity with First Nations

    Pagan Values - "Know Thyself" 

    Welcome to Stone Circle Press!
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