Full Moon Through the Trees
Well into my thirties, I lived in a socially approved trance. I did not understand that I was white; I just thought of myself as being normal. … I had never heard of settler colonialism; I just thought America was a nation of immigrants. There was no point in learning about my ancestors; I was an individual, and they were uninteresting people from a long time ago. Hilary Giovale, Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair
Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America – “from California … to the Gulf Stream waters” – are interred bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians. They cry out for their stories to be heard through their descendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today. Roxanne Dubar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
One of the views that colonization has forced upon us is the belief that there is a separation between us and our Creator (God). This distorted image was designed with the specific intent of controlling the masses. … Reestablishing an immediate connection to our Creator is one of the most important steps that we can take in ending the hold of colonization in our lives. Recognizing that the Creator is the source of our being and that we can never be separated from that source informs us of our true power. Sherri Mitchell – Weh’Ha’Mu’ Kwasset (She Who Brings the Light), Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change
As I looked up to the Mountain this Full Moon Morning, I was present to the satisfaction of completing the repair of something that needed attention; to the often hard work of repair; to the ongoing nature of what begs for repair in our culture; and to the dedication that’s needed to engage in repair whatever form it needs to take.
Lingering in the satisfaction of yesterday's completion of repairs in the form of a new roof on the home I’m blessed to steward, I thought of a family member who is on a dedicated journey of repairing a break in his family and whose journey reached a significant milestone yesterday.
While overjoyed with yesterday’s outcome, he knows that the process is more a journey than a destination that’s been reached. His dedication may now expand beyond healing experienced and inherited trauma to the deep work of past trauma not continuing into future generations, one of the forms of repair so needed in our culture.
That need for dedication to collective repair and reparation looms large in my field of awareness, inquiry, and intention. I feel the call to repair that in me which may keep me tethered, even lightly, to the ways of separation; to repair my complicity in the devastating colonization that my ancestors perpetrated on Indigenous peoples of this land generations ago.
Toward that end I’m returning my attention to finding a pathway for returning Indigenous artifacts collected by family members two generations back to the peoples to whom they rightfully belong. They have hung in my living room for decades, at first proudly, but in more recent years as a reminder, a call that I have work to do.
I’m also reckoning with a family story, some remnants of which are packed away in my garage, that I was reminded of in a dream just a few days ago. The prideful story is of one of many ‘reverends’ in my family who was a missionary and who “taught phonetics to the Indians”, a story that I had little interest in when I heard it in my younger years. Now, that story and its cruel intent to destroy a rich culture for the purpose of “civilizing the heathens”, along with the recognition that I ‘own’ and occupy stolen land are alive in me, evoking sincere questioning: What IS mine to do? What is the dedicated work that I am called to?
I’ve been aware of the question in my exploration of and engagement in regeneration of land, economics, etc. I sense strong connection and interweaving in the territories of repair/restoration and regeneration for both are matters of consciousness, of the shift from living the myth of separation to living in the knowing that we are all one.
What’s alive in your field of attention, inviting you to engage in the dedicated work of repair?
Morning Beauty and a New Plaque at the Padmasambhava Stupa