I was born on the lands of the Sinixt(sin-aik-st) and the
Ktunaxa(two-nah-ha) peoples in the West Kootenays. Like many
on these lands, my ancestry is mostly mixed European.
I’ve never felt fully connected to the lands I was born on,
and when I was younger I learned German and travelled
throughout Europe, and I almost moved there. Yet I ended up
back here because all of my family connections are here now,
and even though my kinship ties are complex and painful at
times, I still feel like what is now called British Columbia
is my home. At the same time, these are not my ancestral
lands, and to inhabit this space means to inherit the
responsibility of being a part of the healing of these lands
and making retribution to the First Peoples. To take up space
here is uncomfortable and it carries a huge weight.
The province I was born in is incredibly beautiful and there
are wild places here that are unlike anything else in the
world. In the past few years I’ve committed myself to staying
here, yet treading lightly and accepting that I’m a guest who
has much work to do before myself and my ancestors can feel
rooted in this soil.
☠☠
My heritage is mostly Swiss-German, Swiss-French, Slovakian,
French Canadian and Irish. Some of my ancestors have olive
skin and black hair, and some are fair haired, pale skinned
and blue eyed. I don’t know all my ancestry because some of my
ancestors were orphans.
My ancestors have many stories to tell. Some of them went
through hardships and were displaced. Some were deeply
religious and some were not. I don’t look like anyone in my
immediate family. I’ve seen photos of some of my Irish
ancestors and I seem to look the most like them. In some ways
I feel very connected to my ancestors and in other ways I feel
very much like an outsider. I think a lot about how I can
connect to ancestry, culture and spirituality on lands that
have been colonized. I’ve been fortunate to participate in
some cultural traditions of local Indigenous people, though I
go into those spaces as a visitor and being invited into this
spaces as a big honour.
☠☠
I feel drawn to Celtic and Germanic neo-Pagan spirituality and
I regularly engage in ritual practice. Part of the practice
involves honouring the ancestors of these lands, living and
dead. When I engage in other spiritual practices in Indigenous
communities or learn the deeper aspects of Yogic traditions, I
stay rooted in my own ancestral spiritual practices* and
engage in ways that honour but don’t appropriate. I may add a
few elements that I’ve been taught from elders into my ritual
structure in private, but I don’t teach them to others. I also
find the common resonances that each spiritual system has, as
each vein feathers out of the same heart and flows into the
same ocean.
While doing Indigenous-led land protection, I learned that
sometimes it isn’t appropriate for me to do rituals in spaces
that are being decolonized, and that I should always ask
permission. This wasn’t easy for me to do, as ritual and magic
are such a big part of my life, but I reflected on how for
many years Indigenous people on these lands were prevented
from practicing ceremony or holding cultural festivals, and
many communities are in the process of healing and
reconnecting to their spirit world. For me to bring my own
practice into these spaces can be disruptful to that process.
I now seek consent before doing even small rituals in
decolonized spaces and make sure to show respect to the
peoples whose lands I’m on.
Navigating all of is uncomfortable and complex, and it’s an
ongoing reminder of the work that needs to be done and my deep
commitment to do that work. When in doubt I connect to the
spirit world through my pendulum and I ask for guidance:
Should I pick up this feather? Does the spirit of this dead
deer feel okay about me using their bones for my Samhain
altar? How should I return this sage to the earth? I’m worried
about my Indigenous friend, xxxxxx, should I reach out or
should I give them space? I have conversations with the
ancestors of the lands and I make amends for times that I
haven't honoured them.
☠☠
Part of why European people in particular should be careful
about the appropriation of other cultures is because there’s a
power imbalance that exists in the world; and because of
various genocides have taken place, and are still taking
place, that seek to erase non-European and Indigenous
spiritual traditions. It might seem unfair that White people
are sometimes excluded from certain cultural spaces, but part
of the reason for that is that many cultural groups have been
oppressed and need time and space to heal and become strong
and sovereign before we can all have a big rainbow party. We
have to be careful not to mistake equality and retribution for
repression.
Though in my experience, many people in Indigenous communities
are eager to share their wisdom and knowledge and I’ve
participated in sacred cultural traditions - yet to claim them
as my own or take benefit from them either by raising my
social status or making money would be very disrespectful.
Right now is a very fragile and vulnerable time for a lot of
communities as mass graves of Indigenous children are still
being discovered all over so-called Canada, so I’m extra
careful to be sensitive. I look to empowered youth and those
who are on the frontlines of Indigenous sovereignty movements
as to the best practices to follow.
☠☠
For Samhain I'm getting together an altar to honour my
ancestors and those who have passed on in my life over the
past year – and the new life that has been brought into my
world.
I’m also coming to the painful recognition that someone who I
loved very much wasn’t faithful to me. It was pretty obvious
at the time and I knew it in my mind, though this year I'm
feeling it fully in my heart and it hurts like fuck, but it’s
time to face up to the pain and let it go.
I’m winding down from an exciting week with aching feet and
tired eyes and a scrambled egg brain. Sometimes when I get
myself into a manic state, I feel like I can somehow escape
the built up anxiety by outrunning it or choking it out with
further layers of information and stimulation, when what I
really need is to just calm the fuck down and stop moving.
I had a totally awesome day with an elder Witch who I’ve
learned so much from over the years, and despite a huge gap in
our ages we both become like teenagers when we hang out
together. We drove out to little farms on the outskirts of the
city and bought local honey and vegetables, fed goats peacocks
and sheep, and she gave me a really cool tin of fancy
Halloween chocolates. The sky was moody and broody all day,
morphing from giant swirls and blobs of clouds over blue sky
into monochromatic and overcast, then rain, then sun, then
patches of sun and clouds, then grey clouds, and then a thin
sweep of clouds with the sunset breaking through, and a sliver
of a crescent moon was glowing on our right as we drove back
into the city in the Car co-op rental I picked up for the day.
☠☠
On Saturday night I got invited out to a Halloween party and
decided to dress up like a ghoul. I knew that the friend I was
going with would be dressing up like a 60’s spy movie
character and I wondered if we would match at all, but the
vintage dress I wore totally matched his outfit and we looked
pretty darn cool together. The house we went to was decorated
super fucking well and they had a little gas fire pit on the
deck - and there were pumpkins, skulls, spooky lights and
other campy decorations all over the place. I lost my friend
at one point and ended up in the living room where Ernest
Scared Stupid was playing on a big screen with CC on;
and as I sat on the edge of the couch feeling my usual pangs
of social anxiety, I looked around and realized that nearly
everyone there was male and they seemed quite bro-ey, yet they
all had very good costumes on. One of the guys was dressed up
as Jeffrey Dahmer as he was seen in ubiquitous photos of him
in an orange correctional facility outfit. His face and hair
were eerily similar to Dahmer’s.
Later on my friend revealed to me that the person who invited
us was gay and most of the people at the party were gay men
from Saskatchewan. I was like doh, of course! No
wonder all the outfits were so good and the dudes were all
touchey feely with each other haha. Everyone there was very
nice and fun to hang out with and it was my first Victoria
house party experience.
My friend was high on LSD, and I had taken some blue lotus and
green tea and was feeling a bit high myself, so we decided to
leave the party and head down to the ocean. It was a
relatively balmy Autumn night with the fragrance of musty
leaves in the air, and we walked down wide residential streets
with large looming oak trees that muzzled the street lights
and cast strange shadows on the rain slick roads. As we got
closer to the water the houses became larger and the fences
became taller, and we eventually came to an ocean sprawl with
soft sand and giant logs to sit on. We could see America and
the Cattle Point Star Park, and I was introduced to a new
genre of music: Witchhouse.
We had taken a bus out to the party and when we were ready to
leave we decided to call a cab, as the buses weren’t running
anymore. The numbers were all unavailable and so we tried to
see if we could find a Co-Op car nearby but we were in bougie
town so there were none anywhere close to us. We decided to
start walking and see if we could make it to some kind of
landmark, and after some time, miraculously, a cab appeared
out of nowhere around the corner of a mist shrouded street!
The light above his car was off but the guy stopped for us
when we flagged him down, and thankfully we made it out of
there. Right after we got back to my place it started pouring
rain. And that day there was an extra red curry noodle box at
the restaurant I work at, so we heated it up and hungrily
scarfed it down as we reminisced on our insane luck. It was so
freaking delicious.
Anyway I went on a big tangent there.. I really wanted to talk
about how I got back from the ride out to the farms and was
planning to do a million things and then realized that what I
really needed to do was sit down and relax, so I meditated for
a while and now I’m taking some time to write about the good
things that are happening in my life. I still cry a lot and I
still feel fucked up about the world, but I’m also feeling
stronger and have let go of a lot of garbage that I was
carrying inside of me. I’m catching myself when I start being
an asshole to myself and am spending time curled up in my bed
telling myself that everything is okay and that I’m okay and
that I don’t need to hate myself or tear myself to shreds over
every little thing that goes wrong and falls apart. Life is
messy. It’s okay to be a chaotic mess and not know what the
fuck I’m doing with my life. I’m so lucky in so many ways, and
I live in such a great part of the world. I’ve taken so much
for granted in my life and have passed up so many good
opportunities because I was scared or I didn’t think I
deserved it. I’ve also felt a lot of shame over not feeling
like I fit in in the world and for being a loner. Though the
more that I understand myself and understand neurodiversity
and meet other unique and creative weirdos, the more I realize
that I’m fine just the way I am. Not in an arrogant way where
I don’t feel like I ever need to grow and learn, but just that
so many of the quirks about myself that have made life
difficult are totally okay, and there are others who are
similar to me who can understand and relate to me, and I don’t
need to compromise myself or people please.
Anyway, it’s Samhain and this morning I drummed along to
Dunkelheit** (with a skin drum I bought to replace the one
stolen by the RCMP at Adaitsx - fuckin jerks) and this
evening I burned Bay leaves*** and lit candles and honoured
those who have passed on over the past year and those who have
come into the world. I’m also honouring myself and that I’m
too tired to do a big ritual and I just want to curl up in my
bed and disconnect from everything.
* Please don’t mistake my adherence to pre-Christian European
spiritual systems as an avocation to any kind of racializing
of spiritual practice. I just personally feel a resonance to
these systems in my soul and like I’ve practiced them in
previous lifetimes, and I’m following a thread that makes
sense to me. A person who is ethnically non-European yet
culturally or spiritually European may also practice Celtic
and Nordic spirituality. And there are many people of mixed
ancestry who may feel a connection to multiple different
spiritual lineages.
The idea of racial homogeneity is a bit silly at this point in
the evolution of humanity after so many thousands of years of
inter-mixing on the planet. Even the Vikings, who inspired so
many of the Volkish practices of pro-White spiritual groups,
were not racially pure, which has been proven by DNA testing.
No there weren’t black Vikings like in the TV show, that
wasn’t historically accurate; though maybe the film world is
finally getting back at White people for making a parody out
of other races for so long, y’know black face and casting
Italians as Indigenous people in Westerns and throwing
prosthetics on White people to make them look Asian – and like
Ben Kingsley playing Ghandi??
I had an encounter with a man from the Asatru Folk Assembly
who equated my interest in Asatru and connection to Germanic
lands and the German language as being synchronistic with the
principles of the AFA. There were times in my youth that I was
attracted to such groups and explored their ideologies, though
in the end I didn’t find that they made any sense or felt good
in my heart and soul. A person who I learned a lot about
Asatru from and who inspired me to return to the practice
after avoiding it due to it’s racist associations, was
half-Nordic and half-Ethiopian. He had ancestral ties to these
practices, though because he also has African ancestry, he
would never be accepted into the AFA. This is one of the many
reasons why they are racist, despite claiming that they
aren’t. I get the feeling they would accept a person who is
half-Finnish and half-Norwegian, despite Finnish language and
culture being entirely different from that of the Nordic and
Germanic peoples, and many Finnish people having East Asian
ancestry.
The AFA and other Volkish groups are more concerned with 19th
and 20th century eugenics, and ideas inspired by national
socialism as it was practised in Germany, than they are with
connecting to the ancient roots of Nordic spirituality. The
Vikings and other Germanic tribes intermixed with many
different races, and their social structure was based around
kinship ties, not “Whiteness”. It would be interesting to see
what AFA member’s DNA profiles look like - maybe they’d have a
similar crisis as many members of the popular racist webforum
Stormfront did when DNA testing revealed many of them as
having mixed non-White ancestry. Looking at images of AFA
members, they don’t seem to be of pure Nordic heritage.
All that being said, there is a particular resonance that a
spiritual practice has when it’s connected to one’s heritage
and ancestry and that’s something I’ve felt when travelling
throughout Europe and visiting sacred sites there. I think
where things go sideways is when groups become fixated on
racial purity and leave out those with darker skin who have
mixed ancestry. That’s when belief systems become ideologies
and become potentially harmful.
** Like many fans of the band Burzum I’m conflicted by my love
for the music and the terrible ideologies and actions of Varg
Vikerners. Over the years I’ve disassociated myself from most
NSBM bands I used to listen to, yet I haven’t been able to let
go of the album Filosefem. In the Winter months when I
am purging the blackness from my soul this album is my portal
through the darkness and back into the light.
*** There’s a great herbal store in Victoria called Green Muse
and through being a customer there and going to markets that
they put on, I’ve learned about the art of saining, which is a
Celtic smoke cleansing practice.
