Another cheery post from your resident Heathen theologian today, but this is something that has been weighing on my mind of late and which I've discussed with many of my colleagues quite recently so I'm going to talk a little about it here: cultural misappropriation -- what this is, how we do it, and even more importantly, how we can avoid doing it. Let me begin by saying that at its heart, I believe that the reconstruction of Pagan religions is the restoration of what once were indigenous traditions. Heathenry is the contemporary amalgamation of all those ancestral practices that once formed the indigenous religions of Germanic and Scandinavian Europe. Likewise Hellenismos is the contemporary amalgamation of those practices that once formed the indigenous religions of ancient Greece. Romuva is indigenous Lithuanian Paganism, Celtic polytheism the indigenous practices of the ancient Celts, etc. etc. -- indigenous that is before the destructive spread of monotheism. The spread of Christianity across Europe was a cultural and moreover a religious genocide (I do not use that word lightly. If one studies Lemke's original definition of the term which he created, it includes willful destruction of religious and cultural practices. The term was later watered down via the UN at the insistence, largely, of the Americans who did not want a UN precedent to be established that might lead to America being held responsible for the genocide of its native peoples).(1) We who are today embracing Paganisms and various polytheisms are in fact, engaged in the attempted restoration of our sundered indigenous traditions. That is good. That is absolutely necessary in today's world. Indigeny is, to my mind, the only possible key to a sustainable future for our planet. Moreover, it's about time and the sooner we cast off the shackles of monotheistic hegemony the better. That being said, there are problems that all of us engaged in this work must face. One of them is that of cultural misappropriation. Many people coming into Paganisms come from various New Age communities, communities enamored of anything that might be considered spiritual, communities that are themselves an outgrowth of the spiritual disease and disconnection that is the legacy of monotheism in our land. (In fact, the New Age sensibility which all too often seeks to remove any authenticity or challenge from spiritual life and to reduce spirituality to feel-good pabulum available to the masses--for a price, of course---is nearly every bit as destructive and dangerous as monotheism itself. In fact, perhaps they should be considered relatives. New Age attitudes are not that far removed from those of colonialism: let's take and use whatever we want "for the greater good of all" without respect for tradition and culture. We're more enlightened anyway and we know all these things really come from "One" sacred source." Right. I call that cultural imperialism. I call that spiritual colonialism. I call that, boys and girls, Bullshit. Those cut off from any sense of rootedness, any sense of spiritual continuity, any connection with their ancestors, and any sense of their own Holy Powers rightly attempt to remedy this by delving into spiritual pursuits. Unfortunately, many often delve randomly into spiritualities to which they have no right. Now, there are times when the Gods and ancestors will pull someone into a set of practices, into a tradition to which they have no ancestral or cultural connection. That is ok. It is right and proper to follow the guidance of one's ancestors and Gods. People adopted into a tradition like this are part of that tradition and have a legitimate right to its mysteries. That is a far cry from the average New-Ager who believes that he or she has a right to "use" any aspect of say, Native American traditions (randomly, by the way, as if there were only one Native American tradition) completely out of cultural context and without any thought let alone respect for the people to whom that tradition belongs.(2) There's a big difference between being legitimately called by the Gods and appropriating practices without respect because one thinks it's "cool." Can a people own a tradition? Hell yes. Traditions are those things that are transmitted through one's culture inter-generationally. They are ancestral markers, the things one's parents did and the things their parents did for generation after generation. You don't get to claim a thing just because it's bright and shiny and looks spiritual and you want it. These traditions are not commodities for the taking. Moreover, when a group of people, whose ancestors built a tradition, who died defending that tradition, and who themselves live those ways now say 'back off,’ I think it's just another type of colonialism and theft to refuse. I was discussing this with a colleague recently and she told me about a conversation she'd had with a local teacher. She was complaining about the flakiness, the lack of spiritual focus or discipline, the lack of respect for the Gods and ancestors that she had been seeing in her local community and the unnecessary drama it was causing. She made the comment (rightly I might add) that part of the problem was that the community was drawing people largely from the New Age community. Her colleague immediately objected with the words, "not true. We have a lot of people coming from Native American Traditions." …..no, they didn't. They had a lot of New Agers who were enamored of Native American traditions and thought they could pick and choose, take a weekend workshop, pop a feather in their hair, and claim that for themselves when not a single one of them was, in any way, Native. Her colleague had people who wanted the trappings of Native spirituality without the realities of living on a reservation. He had people who wanted Native spirituality without the Natives. I see the same thing with people who want to worship the Orisha but don't want to go through the years -long discipline of learning within a proper Ile. They want it all to be given to them right away. Or they want to work in an Ile but do things their own way, what feels good rather than what the tradition prescribes—because of course, someone just coming into a centuries old tradition would know better than the elders of that tradition. I don’t think so! I see it with people coming to me wanting to learn the runes and not understanding that this is not a game. It’s not another toy to add to one's spiritual tool box. These are sacred mysteries of my indigenous tradition. They require commitment and training and there is a right way to go about engaging with them. I see it with a certain group of Wiccans who want to worship Sekhmet but refuse to allow blood, alcohol or weapons in Her sanctuary…..despite the fact that Alcohol is traditionally Her sacred libation and She is a war Goddess all about blood and weapons. All of these things equal one thing: lack of respect. Before latching on to someone else's traditions (traditions that are the surviving remnant of cultures decimated, I might add, by our forebears), why don't we instead seek out and restore our own? Every single person of European descent (every single person on the earth actually), if you go back far enough, has an indigenous tradition. Your ancestors did something other than monotheism. Your people weren't always Christian. If you want to know what tradition you have a right to: look at where your people come from and peel back the layers of monotheistic dominance to find your people's Gods--and for those of us who are "Mutts," the way to go about this is to honor all of your ancestors. You'll be pushed where you need to go. (If you're claimed by a Deity, that changes the game. You might be English and claimed by Dionysus, for instance. That means, at least as I would counsel, that you have a responsibility to learn as much about the cultural practices and traditions in which His worship evolved as possible in addition to striving to keep your signal clarity with Him clear and clean so you can discover how He wishes you to honor Him. Then of course, there is honoring your own ancestors too. That doesn’t go away. There is a way to do this well and respectfully. Even though our ancestral ways were wiped out, I don't think that excuses us from honoring our ancestors and striving to reconstruct our ancestral practices. That's not something that comes from books. I don't have any problem with people honoring whatever Gods call them, but I think that the key is going through the direction of one's ancestors and the Gods, not feeling as though one is entitled to partake of indigenous rites and rituals simply because they are there and old. I suppose it's a matter of respect and engagement. My colleague Zilas Torelle put it this rather colorful way: "Spirits -- deities, divinities and the dead -- will choose whom they will, and it is never for us to be so bold and arrogant as to assume that our understanding of Their whims or wants actually matters. The gods of one culture have frequently had followers, priests and adherents from among a foreign people called into devotional relation and service. Those people, being foreigners, were tasked with adjusting their behaviors and practices to match and compliment those of the culture and deities that had adopted them, and in this adjustment there is no room for hubris. A person of foreign cultural origins may be adopted into a tradition; that tradition is never to be adopted by the foreigner. It is really that simple. The traditions, the cultures, the lineages, the honored and beloved lines of dead, and certainly the gods and goddesses Themselves, are bigger than an individual's desire or call to participate or "be included". Attempting to identify yourself (or your practices) by dressing them up to match a cultural flavor is to miss entirely what both identity and culture are, at their hearts. This is an issue of the New Age. This is an issue of pretentious, self-absorbed, linear monotheism. It is not an issue of racial exclusion, fascism, or other destructive extremes, but instead an issue of personal responsibility to have a sense of identity strongly developed enough that you're even capable of respecting the sacredness of culture and tradition at all, wherever it is from. While a people can certainly own a tradition, an individual can never own a culture, because culture owns the individual. If you think yourself master of whatever culture you identify with or play at practicing, you're doing it wrong. You are meant to be your sacred culture's bitch." It's so much harder to seek to restore one's own ways. We are tasked with that, however. We don't need to steal Native Gods. We have our own. We don't need to steal their ceremonies: when we are truly connected to and engaged with our ancestors and holy Powers, our ceremonies will come. What we can do is talk to other Indigenous people, work with them, and learn to tear down the filter of privilege with which most of us, by virtue of the very cultural and religious paradigm in which we were raised, carry. We need to learn to see the world through the lens of our own indigeny or we're getting nowhere. We're getting nowhere and we're doing damage in the process. What we should not be doing, as we struggle to figure all of this out, is randomly stealing other people's sacred traditions. Notes
CommentsLiam 02/09/2012 12:29pm
My apologies, this has little to do with your post (though I did like it, and I agree), but I was just curious about what a lle is. You used in asociation with Orisha so I assume it is of Afro-Carribean origin, but what exactly is it? I can't find any information online. Galina 02/09/2012 7:32pm
Liam, an "Ile" is, to the best of my ability to describe, a spiritual House in Santeria and/or Lukumi. Salix_03 02/09/2012 8:05pm
I love your forthrightness - it is refreshing! 02/10/2012 6:19am
Hi, I read your post, and I'd like to offer a counterpoint. Kitty Emma LaCroix 02/10/2012 3:31pm
Mr. Gupta, Kevin French 02/11/2012 5:22am
I think that there are two separate issues here. One is New Agers cherry-picking without context, fooling themselves and possibly others into believing in their authenticity. Returning to the ways of your own ancestors is a completely separate one. 02/11/2012 5:15pm
From everything I've read (and I've also asked a couple people who know more than I do) the Egyptians would have been horrified at the idea of offering blood to Sekhmet. They wrote about not awakening her blood lust. It's the theological equivalent of rubbing yourself down with bacon and taunting a grizzly bear. Alcohol, yes. Copious amounts of alcohol! Get her drunk, happy, and in a healing mood. So the Wiccans were accidentally right about part of it. @helmsinepu: Stephen Glaser 02/12/2012 9:41am
> You might be English and claimed by Dionysus, for instance. @Stephen Glaser: Galina 02/12/2012 10:10am
I think I answered this in the article already, Stephen. Yvonne Chireau 02/12/2012 11:03am
New here, redirected from Kenaz, thanks for writing. In the interest of precision, I would like to know who these "New Agers" are that seem to be the brunt of much criticism these days. Who are these New Age authorities and writers that amount to nothing less than culture-vultures? If we are talking about Lynn Andrews-types and the Indian-spirituality-appropriators of the 80s, that is a far cry from what I would consider the perspective of the leading teachers in the contemporary New Age movement, which focuses far more on metaphysics and alternative models of consciousness for a more integrated conceptualization of reality - whether it includes religion or not. So again, who are the authorities of the New Age who would argue for this kind of spiritual and cultural theft? Any citations for us academics? Galina 02/12/2012 11:20am
Yvonne, if you have any experience trying to teach or mentor in the community at all, you see this dynamic. While there ARE leaders (not only Anderson; start with Michael Harner, start with the man who write "the Secret"...it all comes from the same poisoned well), this goes beyond the encouragement of any given leader. It is a cultural dynamic and if i knew the ultimate source, i think it would be a hell of a lot easier to counter-act. Yvonne Chireau 02/12/2012 1:27pm
Thanks. Harner is one of those old-head white shamans, like Casteneda (who got to pass from white to brown exotic because he was born in Peru). Like any professional anthropologist I think Harner paid his dues to become the "honorary chief" of the Whatever-the-f@ck Tribe, and anyway I don't consider him an exemplary leader of the contemporary New Age movement. Although I don't teach within this culture - I have the privilege of working to educate the clueless children of liberals in the plutocratic classes - I know many of these New Age folks as my neighbors, friends, etc. I just don't see what you describe, but I guess that I could be wrong about this. I am just wondering about the interesting racial discourse that we find ourselves in this current context in which white people can ALSO claim cultural misappropriation of ancestral traditions, as did blacks, Indians, etc. etc , in other times. Keisha 02/12/2012 12:36pm
I agree with your argument, as far as showing respect for religious traditions that are strongly rooted in a given culture and geographical location. However, to use a broad brush and put the blame on the New Age phenomenon is a bit much, I feel. Seeking the divine by reconstructing one's indigenous tradition is simply one way, one approach and one perspective out of many. I agree that - if one chooses this approach - one should do it the respectful and proper way by seeking one's own ancestors. However, for several of us out here, unless a God or Goddess chooses us, we prefer a different approach: via spiritual paths that are not as rooted in (or may be inspired modifications of) the practices of the past. To choose such does not automatically one less genuine or less committed. It does not make our spiritual experiences less real. Someone that is unwilling to pay the price for true spiritual experience in one area will be the same way in most other aspects of their lives. It is a problem with the person's character, attitude and immaturity - not the path they choose, be it New Age or otherwise. Galina 02/12/2012 5:41pm
Yvonne, the difference may be that you're not teaching the same subjects that I and Kenaz, and other of my colleagues are teaching. You're teaching the entitled from (at least as I'm inferring from your response) an academic standpoint. I and my colleagues have folks like I describe coming to us asking to be trained in spiritual disciplines, or in spiritwork, or devotional practices. As far as race is concerned I think that's a red herring in this discussion. "Race" is an artificial construct. "Race" as a taxonomy by which we classify and diminish human beings is a child of colonialism. It's the outgrowth of a monotheistic culture devoid of its ancestral connections. Every person, white, black or otherwise has indigenous traditions. It's about time we *all* start reclaiming them. <b>(If you're claimed by a Deity, that changes the game. You might be English and claimed by Dionysus, for instance. That means, at least as I would counsel, that you have a responsibility to learn as much about the cultural practices and traditions in which His worship evolved as possible in addition to striving to keep your signal clarity with Him clear and clean so you can discover how He wishes you to honor Him. Then of course, there is honoring your own ancestors too. That doesn’t go away. There is a way to do this well and respectfully.)</b> Lily 02/20/2012 12:41am
hey, i am new here and enjoying it. great post. butone thing that constantly comes to my mind in the context of discussions like these: i have a problem with talking about "tradition" and "our ancestors" and then skipping the larger part of generations of our ancestors and the believes and practices that they followed. i am not a christian at all but i am a bit appalled by the less-nuanced black/white way in which some neopagans (and new agers even more so!) classify the role of christianity in the history of european spirituality. yes,evil things happened in the name of christ and the name of the church. evil things also happened before in the name of roman emperorsand others.cultures got destroyed and religious motives were involved in this centuries before christ and centuries after. hindu brahmanism currently destroys many tribal traditions in india and in the late 19th century shintoism tried to destroy buddhism in japan . this is the way of the world. we could debate for hours on the relevance of all of this in our own believes today but when it comes to tradition what truly matters is only what was really believed and practiced by our ancestors. and that includes paganism as much as christianity and maybe even some other believes and practices. up to the early 20th century the most common belief system of european peasants was a combination of pagan and christian elements which did not fight each other but complemented each other. and our ancestors did cherish the pagan elements in this system as much as the christian elements, just as some santeros, umbandistas or vodouisants do today within their belief systems. when they wanted to heal someone they called the holy trinity and catholic saints as often as the old fairies and half-rememberes names of ancient gods and they did not think that these belong to two different sides at all.the trinity, the saints,wodan, holda and the fairies...they were all on the sideof healing and they did their job well and that alone mattered to our ancestors. this was what was believed and practiced by our ancestors during a historical epoch that was far longer than any other religious epoch of europe. and when we want to talk about an "authentic indigenous european tradition" we need to aknowledge this.you know, this is cultural misappropriation as well: hordes of pagan reconstructionists who constantly talk about honoring their ancestors of centuries ago but who are unable to honor the spirits of their grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents and who are unable to respect what they respected! Galina 02/21/2012 5:52am
Good to see that you've completely miss the point. I'm going to be fairly blunt in my response. It's morning and I don't have a lot of time to sit at the computer today. Part of our humility and acceptance around this issue that Galina raises with such clarity is to be able to see how our responses come from exactly the place she warns us about. Part of the problem of "new age-ism" IS the path itself and how it was forged out of the clarity and directness of our old, old Ancestral ways, how it sits atop our indigeny much like the United States of America Settler-Colony sits atop Turtle Island. I disagree with Keisha's point that it is about "the person's character" as opposed to also being about that path taken. Its clearly the path that assails our characters. It IS the proper engagement of our Ancestors and their mistakes, legacies, gifts and clarity that allows us to be grounded and genuine spiritual channels and co-creators here on this earth in a time of "new age", "love & light" appropriational neo-liberalism. This is a challenge to be discerning, honest and forthright in a time where colonialism and the "it's all good" mystique goads us to accept the manure with the fruit and consume it all as if it was food. I have every right to be hyper-critical of the cultural mistake of my father's deep embrace of roamin catholicism as I pour libation for him out of respect and admiration for him at my altar or as I feed him and my other Ancestors daily as I eat - because of them. Even as I know it was christian churches that sheltered and sustained the bodies of my Ancestors (directly and indirectly), I know that their spirits have not been liberated in those same churches and that there is a deeper call to critique and call out the cultural imperialism that the very presence of christianity on Turtle Island (what most people call the United States of America) represents. Just as there are numerous prophecies that said Europeans would come to Turtle Island (with varying degrees of imperialistic and pernicious intent), there are prophecies that say we are in a time of return to the earth (a far different paradigm than the narrowly drawn conceptualizations and practices of monotheism) where we will again - AGAIN - engage our traditions of indigeny and harrmony with All That Is (Lily, we must fight the modernist, neo-liberal idea that violence and colonialism are simply and de facto "the way of the world"...just consider how our Ancestors must bristle at that thought!). Laura 02/21/2012 6:41pm
Bravo Ukumbwa, well said! And Brava Galina, for your integrity in pointing out the perils inherent in living an unexamined life in a colonized mind. I have noticed how a lot of discussions get derailed when the third rail of Monotheism and Conquest is addressed (and it must be addressed and looked at critically and unblinkingly if we are to step beyond reactionary defense of the status quo which has been INCULCATED in us INTENTIONALLY as a response to any threat to the dominant societal paradigm). We live in a society where Monotheism is the default lens through which all is judged. How it GOT to be the default lens is a story of genocide (cultural and spiritual and sometimes physical) and a systematic targeting and destruction of any other worldview or practice. 02/21/2012 10:18pm
Speaking strictly from my own practices: yes, I work with Christian (specifically Roman Catholic) spirits ancestral and otherwise. I honor them with Bibles, prayer books, rosaries, etc. This is out of respect for their tradition. I've also worked with a Muslim spirit whom I provided with a Q'uran although I am not a Muslim. And don't get me started on the deceased Jewish gynecologist... 02/22/2012 10:56am
I must say that this article was very well written and thought out. Your comment will be posted after it is approved. Leave a Reply | AuthorGalina Krasskova is a Heathen author and devotee of Odin, Loki and Sigyn. ArchivesMay 2012 CategoriesAll |
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