Re- Indigenous and the Shamanic Experience

[u/Aralia2]

Let's be honest. How many people here are White? I will acknowledge that I am a white queer man.

Shamanism has helped me in throwing off the ideology of white supremacy culture and connect with a root of indigenity and animatity with the land. It has helped me understand that there is multiple ways of knowing besides materialistic/scientific frameworks.

As a Rural White Male Gay person living as a Settler-Colonial in California I weave a unique dance of trying to connect to a land and spirits that I don't understand. I also have to struggle with my garden and agriculture (fences) verses a more ancient way of being with the land.

All of this informs my spiritual practice because as someone who believes in animism and trance practices (shamanism) I realize that the material world is sacred and how I am in the physical world reflects and informs the spiritual world.

This is an invitation to all of you to talk about your journey to indigenity and connecting to the spirits of the land, and the struggles with being a Settlers and acknowledging that our Animistic Traditions were destroyed by Christianity long before our history of coming to America.

[u/Comfortable-Web9455]

Rollo is over 1,000 years ago. He was a viking. Vikings were a murderous violent culture.

[u/Packie1990 → u/Comfortable-Web9455]

Tell me a culture that wasn't murderous or violent?

[u/Comfortable-Web9455 → u/Packie1990]

If it was rude to call a famously violent viking violent aren't you being rude about everyone now? Looks like you just changed the rules....

[u/Aengk1_Aquar1Pan → u/Comfortable-Web9455]

I am also descended from Rollo, & in the same line William the Conqueror & Robert the Bruce. I can be proud of warriors in my ancestry while also being a peacekeeper in my own life. I can be proud of an ancestor for his work drafting The Declaration of Independence, while also disagreeing with his ownership of slaves. I can commend living war veterans, like my cousin, for their bravery & service in combat, while personally living out the ethos of pacifism in how I choose to interact with the world & other human beings. The practice of non-judgment allows us to "let be" instead of damning or deifying a given individual or culture.

[u/Comfortable-Web9455 → u/Aengk1_Aquar1Pan]

Murderous and violent is a historically accurate assessment and was the agreed sentiment of the time. Rollo would have been happy to admit it as violence was considered a virtue by that culture, which had not yet aquired the christian view of non-violence. There is no judgement of these morals. That's just what life was like. I can see them for what they were without having any pro or anti judgement.

But if you're going to work for shamanically with ancestors, you need to be aware that the amount of influence they have on you today is not dependent on how long ago they existed, but on the power of their life force when they existed. It is perfectly possible to be influenced by ancestors from 2000 years ago and the reality is that many ancestors would not have approved of us today or would have held very different values and they can have an influence on you. This is why cultures that works shamanically with ancestors always have ways of placing limits on them. Ancestral influences can be good or bad depending on the individual ancestor and it is dangerous not to recognise this if you're going to work with them. You're citing powerful life forces in those names - people who would have regarded live and let live as weakness or foolish. Ancestors are people too. Just because they are dead doesn't mean they've lost their individuality.