indigenous? not for millenia

I keep coming across training courses that promise, "During this week, we will rediscover our indigenous heart". Or some such other variant of this promise. "We'll rediscover our indigenous heart." What?

These statements about our "inner indigenous nature" are generally accompanied by glowing testimonials from people who describe themselves as "I've traced my roots. I'm Celtic, German, Spanish, Greek and Irish", or, "I've discovered I'm Swedish, Italian, French, Czech and English". What on earth are these laundry lists of the nationality of their ancestors supposed to signify?

It seems to me to be an insult and a belittlement of indigenous people to assume that a one week course, or even a two year course, or even a ten year one for that matter, can enable people who have not been indigenous for MILLENIA to "rediscover" anything about themselves which is indigenous. Indigenous culture is not some bundle of practices one can learn from reading a book or two about spirit medecine, or by invoking some set of diverse ancestors in dubious ceremonies involving the burning of sage, or even by completing an MA in anthropology.

You can go back through your family tree and discover that you have people in it from Spain, England, Germany, Greece etc. But what does that mean? It certainly doesn't take you back to anything indigenous. Indigenous means local to the land, linked to the land, of the land (a good clue is whether a people practise an hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with shamanistic medecine and religion). None of these cultures is indigenous. These are cultures of empire!

Practically no-one in Europe, unless they are from the far flung Northern regions of Finland, or perhaps some of the very rural areas of ex-USSR, has been indigenous within several thousand years. The Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, the Huns, the Goths, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Gauls, the Normans, and countless others dealt with the indigenous in Europe from before the time of Christ. Some small pockets remain, for example in Lappland. But basically most of Europe has not been populated by its indigenous people for a v-e-r-y long time.

I for example will never be able to become indigenous--even I spent the next 20 years learning to live on the land, to listen to its spirits and creatures, and imitating the practises of some real natives, I would never be able to unlearn the habits of the non-indigenous cultures I have been part of. I can never BE the way I would be had I been brought up within an indigenous culture. It's not about what you DO.

I read somewhere that ferrets will not go feral--they have been domesticated too long. You can release them into the wild (they tried it in Australia to keep the rabbits down) but they will not go back to the land and turn feral. Well it's the same for humans. My Welsh family has been traced back to 1066 and there's not an indigenous soul in there. I am not going to belittle the milennia of culture, knowledge, study, wisdom and invention of the truly indigenous by claiming that I can "reclaim" all that for myself.

The indigenous are on the verge of extinction in this world, and appropriating them culturally is part of the process of devaluing their real existence so that it can be recuperated by the mainstream, and so that they can be rendered extinct without hitch--after all, we're all indigenous, aren't we? So they weren't that special after all. Nor was their ancestral habitat. Bye. Resist this crap, people. Rediscover your dignity, and your right to live on and with the earth. Support the fight of the indigenous for the right to life for themselves and their land. But don't steal their identity as well as their birthright. Don't claim to be indigenous if you are not.

the wild wood

For a while during my childhood my family lived in England. In the north of Yorkshire, on the edge of the national park. So after school and on weekends, I began to wander out of the housing estate and up the lane into the woods.

The woods were mostly beech and chestnut, but with some pine, hawthorn and oak mixed in. The path through the trees led to a river, and further across the river was more forest. When I went into the further areas of forest I found unexpected delights: a whole clearing of wild bluebells one spring; a huge ancient quarry covered in brambles, with caves in the chalky walls. Once I paused on the path and looked up through the trees and met the eyes of a small owl, sitting up there looking down.

In winter I followed the traces of rabbits and foxes through snow. When I was in the areas that weren't my habitual territory, I felt prickly and wary. I stalked along like a rodent, looking over my shoulder and just a wee bit twitchy. (I'm small and I'm female, so I tend to think like prey.)
Many years later, visiting my parents as an adult, I went up down to the woods, crossed the river and walked much, much further than I had ever done, until I came into a much denser part of the forest. It was an early spring afternoon, a little chilly but very clear. As I proceeded along the path through the conifers, I began to have A Feeling.

It was unlike any other feeling I had ever had in the woods, and it went much deeper than the sensible wariness of a small animal off its normal beaten track. It wasn't just that I was out of my territory--it was more that I felt out of my DEPTH. I felt I was in the presence of a power that was completely undomesticated. Like a truly wild, very large animal. This wood could eat me if it chose. It knew I was there and it was breathing all around me and tolerating me. I was awed, and not a little scared.

As I walked along, pondering what this feeling meant, and what it wanted me to do, a voice in my mind said, "I'm in the Wildwood". The Wildwood was the ancient, primary forest that covered Old Britain. The place of bears and wild boar, outlaws and Robin Hood. The domain of the Horned One and the source of legends and myths that persist to this day.

I continued along with my shoulders prickling for about ten steps, whereupon the path turned into a small clearing. There on a panel it said, "This forest was once part of the old wild wood, which covered most of Britain". (Or words to that effect.) All the hair stood up on the back of my head. Because I had KNOWN it, and it was the wood itself that told me.