why our souls hunger for medicine ceremonies

I’m indigenous, too. My tribal DNA includes Celtic, Etruscan, Germanic and Slavic codes.

This is generally thought to make me “white.”

Ok. Well, I’m just popping up to challenge the notion that white people aren’t indigenous, also.

Yes, I know about European imperialism and its atrocities. I’m not seeking to downplay those.

I also maintain that healing racism against black and brown peoples is crucially important.

I’m just saying - white peoples are obviously indigenous to this earth too, and I’m done kowtowing to any ideology that insinuates that I’m somehow not allowed to acknowledge this, or to talk about the 1000s of years of trauma, addiction, abuse and madness in my family that arose as a result of Christian imperialism.

I’m also very over the notion that white people’s participation in medicine ceremonies / gratefully and humbly learning from Native American peoples / and then after years of learning coming eventually to lead medicine ceremonies too .... is “cultural appropriation.”

“Cultural appropriation” was when the British Museum literally stole religious treasures from their colonized countries to put them on display and fetishize them.

The grateful, humble acquisition and sharing of wisdom and healing is not “cultural appropriation.”

My European tribal ancestors had medicine ceremonies also, but those were so effectively erased by Imperial Christianity that no trace of them remained to be passed to me.

So my soul hungers for medicine ceremonies. So do the souls of many white people I know.

I’ve been blessed to encounter Native American peoples with intact medicine ceremony traditions who have generously and kindly allowed me to participate and learn and heal with them.

Part of why I’m so so so eternally grateful for this (and express that gratitude materially and emotionally) is....

... how the f*ck else would I ever get to experience medicine ceremony healing than by the kindness of teachers from tribes I don’t genetically belong to ...

... when my own genetic tribal medicine traditions were literally exterminated over 1000 years ago?

best,

Carolyn Elliott