reclaiming indigeneity
At the same time, most of us can trace our ancestry to many different cultures and traditions. Being on a journey of reclaiming indigeneity frees us from centering just one. Instead, we're broadly affirming the life-supporting practices that sustained the vast majority of humanity over time. Reclaiming indigeneity invites us to illume for ourselves how these practices might come forward in this time. Our bodies and our relationship with the living planet become the authority.
what the bones know
The majority of our ancestors (regardless of how your body is racialized today) lived in reverence to the more than human world. We all come from people who engaged in ritual practices; whose somatic intelligence was intact as they moved their bodies, told stories and sang around a communal fire. Our ancestors trusted the unseen and honored these spirits, protectors, gods, goddesses, and mischief-makers.
between inhalations
The waxing and waning of the moon, flooding and ebbing of the tides, blossoming and decaying of the fruit, and so forth are a kind of breath. In and out, expansion and contraction, becoming and releasing. From a zoomed-out perspective, there's impartiality to the process. The cycle simply is. Tracking this dance orients us. There's something comforting about recognizing the season of a thing. Where things get tricky, however, is not trusting this process in our own lives.
an invitation to holding complexity
Because thanksgiving is holiday that's rooted in a painful history, we may focus only on what is wrong with it. We feel judgement of those who celebrate, or guilt about our own desire to participate. I believe this day is really about learning to hold complexity.
a tale of racial imposter syndrome
In the Salt Lake City suburb where I grew up, surrounded by whiteness and conservative values, when my “friends” called me an Oreo, I thought this was a good thing. They were saying I was like them, right? White on the inside?
it is the work
There was a time when I felt guilty about the practices my body needed to arrive for the day.
Conditioned by an education system built to support compliant and productive little workers, when I wasn’t pumping out the emails by 9:00 a.m., there was a sense that I should probably hide what I was actually doing. I felt this even when I didn’t go into a formal office, even when I worked for myself.
a new myth
The day the colonizers came, when they looked upon our people it was like staring into the sun. They were so bright. So alive. So gifted. It was painful. The presence of such brilliance was intolerable to these men. It scorched their skin and illuminated their wounds festering with hate, violence and greed.