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Culturally Appropriate

I have been asking myself a question that I can’t find an answer to. Where does cultural appropriation stop?

I have been practicing yoga for a while. The instructor–a Western millenial–uses Sanskrit words to describe postures and bbereathing, and ends every session with “Namaste.” I have been listening to elders speak about indigenous practices like smudging and drumming to connect with the energy of the collective. If I now adopt those practices as my own–yoga, meditation, earth medicine–have I appropriated them?

I am a colonized Westerner. I am not sure how to honour the heritage of the practices within the culture without feeling like a Westerner who takes everything for their own and it becomes a pale reflection of the original–think power yoga and the dangerous sweat lodge practices of years ago.

One elder offered help:

because these people [Westerners] were not created here. By proxy we are the ones with our fires and they need to come to us with that honour and respect and humility to be able to heal and to connect to their ancestors. And they always need to be told that you come from a place that is your homeland. To tell them consistently, the white people that come to our ceremonies, we are happy to share our sacred fire with you because at this fire is the essence of life, of who the Creator is. If you make your offerings, you make your prayers, have your fast, your vision quest, or whatever, we’ll help you with that, but you’ve gotta do your work to find out who is the Creator and what does the Creator want you to do in your life. We’ll help you with it but in that journey of your healing, you need to go back to your homelands, walk in the place of your ancestors, and that will change you forever. Because that is where you belong and we are sharing this land with you, and we also have a duty to share with you how to respect and honour these homelands, and you need to live with those natural laws and those spiritual laws that govern Turtle Island [North America]. You come here and we’re not interested in your passport, we’re interested in if you will adhere to these natural laws and spiritual laws.1

It seems that we can come together and learn from each other; and we need to respect where each has come from. In my heart, I hope that I am respecting the essence of the practice will making it part of my heritage that my grandchildren will honour.

  1. https://jabsc.org/index.php/jabsc/article/view/577
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Quietly Bold

As I retold an embarrassing moment from my childhood–doing something that made me foolishly stand out, that still brings a head-shaking colour to my cheeks, a colleague suggested that maybe I am meant to be bold and stand out, and this moment squashed my spirit. I told her that I would only do it if I could stand out quietly.

That reflection led to a Google rabbit trail about what it means to be quietly bold (boldly quiet led to websites about introverts). The first number of entries related to Quietly Bold Films who boldly tell stories through the female lens. There is also quite a discussion on how to translate quietly bold well into French, with a distinction between bold and loud. I can get a t-shirt with quietly bold written under a symbol which might something to someone. And there is a horse named Quietly Bold. Three pages in I could only find one reference that might help me understand what it means to be quietly bold.

Boldness doesn’t mean rude, obnoxious, loud, or disrespectful. Being bold is being firm, sure, confident, fearless, daring, strong, resilient, and not easily intimidated. It means you’re willing to go where you’ve never been, willing to try what you’ve never tried, and willing to trust what you’ve never trusted. Boldness is quiet, not noisy.1

It seems that Bold does not need a descriptor. It needs courage. That might be a rabbit trail for another day.

  1. https://dustyholcomb.com/2019/09/10/quietly-bold/
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Pondering Eco thoughts

In my reading this week, these two thoughts have been rattling around in my head. I am wondering how they are connected, if they are and where will they take me.

Joseph Campbell in Pathways to Bliss, Mythology and Personal Transformation says

There lives in us, says Durchheim, a life wisdom. We are all manifestations of a mystic power: the power of life, which has shaped all life, and which has shaped up all in our mother’s womb. And this kind of wisdom lives in us, and it represented the force of this power, this energy, pouring into the field of time and space. But it’s a transcendent energy. It’s an energy that comes from a realm beyond our powers of knowledge.

In Ecopsychology: Eight Principles, Theodore Roszak says

If ecopsychology has anything to add to the Socratic-Freudian project of self-knowledge, it is to remind us of what our ancestors took to be common knowledge: there is more to know about the self, or rather more self to know, than our personal history reveals. Making a personality, the task that Jung called “individuation,” may be the adventure of a lifetime. But every person’s lifetime is anchored within a greater universal lifetime…the needs of the planet are the needs of the person, the rights of the person are the rights of the planet.

I feel like these are both saying the same thing. What is present in the seed to create a tree, or a human is the energy of the universe. How can I use this without feeling very small and insignificant?

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Nature is Intelligent. Am I?

It was serendipity that lead me to Intelligence in Nature by Jeremy Narby. I had been signing “to a wonder-full year” on my new year’s cards and stumbled on this book on my way out the door for my walk. I was looking for a short book to listen to on a Saturday. This one was it. And it was wonder-full.

Jeremy takes us on his learning journey as he explores whether we should/could consider non-humans intelligent and he does it in remarkable, off-the-beaten path places: bees, slime mold, butterflies and parrots.

On a gray January, my world filled with light as I learned some astounding things:

  • South American birds like macaws, parakeets and parrots “were behaving in ways strongly reminiscent of humans, holding loud get-togethers and food fests and self-medicating by using the most detoxifying clay.” (Chapter 1)
  • Slime molds can find the shortest path through a maze. (Chapter 8)
  • Ants will dry out seeds to prevent mold. (Chapter 4)
  • And researchers might need to ask better questions to get the answers they seek: “when animals are found not to accomplish a given task, this is not proof of their stupidity. In most cases, the problem lies with the person conducting the experiment and involves incapacity of the researcher to develop experiments that pose the problem correctly and allow one to answer it properly. If you will: a negative result shows nothing in the final analysis; a positive result shows something, but when an animal cannot do something, the question remains is it incapable of doing it or have I not been clever enough in my research concepts and experimental design?” (Chapter 5) And when we design experiments well, be recognize colours, shapes and abstract concepts.

I liked Jeremy’s classification of nature’s intelligence as “chisei.” Using a word from a foreign language–to me as an English-speaker–allows me to consider intelligence in its many forms. It is not surprising that we consider mammals like my dogs and cat intelligent. They are responsive and adaptive. It is fascinating to hear that we do not have the knowing to understand nature in it’s glorious intelligence.