Cultural Appropriation in Spiritual Practice, Part Four: A Checklist for Evaluating your Practices

8/14/2019

The path forward: an ancient pathway through an indigenous Irish oak and hazel forest. Photo credit: Murphy Robinson

What have we learned?

To sum up, here are some things to think about when assessing your own use of practices from cultures other than your own:

How did you receive the practices?
Have you gone through the traditional initiations of that culture, or skipped over them?
Have you examined your white privilege and settler privilege generally (or just your settler privilege, if you’re a non-native person of color)?
Do you practice the traditions privately or publicly? Public practice requires extra care and scrutiny.
How thoroughly do you explain the source, transmission, and permission when you discuss the practices with others?
Do you teach the practices to others? Who gave you permission to do this?
Do you receive any money associated with these practices (this a HUGE red flag)?
Are you in current relationship with living people of the culture they come from?
What are you doing anything to give back and support the struggle against ongoing cultural genocide?
Are you using your privilege to lift up the voices of oppressed peoples and not just to promote yourself?

I don't think that all settlers completely shunning native practices is the answer to this problem, but I think that most settlers aren't doing it right. I've met two or three white settlers who seem to be doing it well, and hundreds who are doing it poorly. I don’t think I’m doing it entirely right yet, but I’m getting much closer. Awareness of your ethical impact demands constant evaluation and updating of your practices as you learn better ways to do things.
Always remember: the power of your magic is created by your integrity. Be as impeccable as you know how to be. We are all figuring this out together, and we’ve all made individual and collective mistakes in the past. Don’t get bogged down in guilt and shame, but once you know better, do better.

Recommended Reading:
Johnson, Lyla June. “The Vast and Beautiful World of Indigenous Europe.” https://whiteawake.org/2018/01/31/the-vast-and-beautiful-world-of-indigenous-europe/

Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 1.40. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/staff-profiles/data/docs/fjcollins.pdf

Federici, Sylvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. 2004.

For training in open-source priestess/priestx/priest skills in a culturally aware setting:
The Way of the Weaver, a spiritual training taught by Murphy Robinson and Jamie Waggoner:
http://www.mountainsongexpeditions.com/wayoftheweaver.html

6 Comments

Sarah Strickland

1/29/2020 07:09:33 am

Thank you very much for this series and the resources. I have been looking for help on this and have found it!

Marc Bubar

1/29/2020 03:53:08 pm

This is a very well written series. I find it very useful. Thank you!

Eris Boyd

2/25/2020 11:59:15 am

This is a well written article, but saying we need to follow the traditions of our own ancestors is an invalid response to the concept of cultural appropriation.

For one ... truly who are our ancestors? I am Caucasian and grew up in northeast Texas, but I don't exactly look Nordic (I have very curly dark hair and large lips, among other features). Also, I don't know my "ancestors" past a few generations. Do I have black ancestry in my background? Who knows? Genetic tests indicate a strong link with the Saami people of northern Finland ... but that's really just an educated guess.

The thing is, for most people in the United States, we can only ASSUME who SOME of our ancestors are, based on how we physically look, and what little knowledge we have of our immediate ancestors. With that in mind, should we really limit ourselves to only what we know for sure? If so, then that would limit me to the evangelical Protestant beliefs of my parents and grandparents ... and I explored Christianity deeply for years before firmly determining it was not the right belief system for me.

Spirituality is a critical aspect of life for many people, including myself. I seek on a daily basis to maintain a connection to the divine, and for more than three decades I have sought spiritual truth. I'm talking about who we are, our spirits, our souls, and how we connect to other spirits, other realms and the afterlife. This isn't about some fraternity girl appropriating a repressed culture by wearing a "slutty Indian" Halloween costume. This is about the big stuff in life, the important stuff, the stuff that literally transcends our bodies, culture, race and genetic background.

So if somebody wants to say I shouldn't call myself a "shaman" because I'm not following traditional Mongolian spiritual practices ... okay, I can live with that. But for somebody to say I shouldn't use a drum to help me enter into a trance because I'm Caucasian is simply wrong, just as it's wrong to say I can't work with Coyote spirit for healing because other white people persecuted the indigenous people of the Plains Nations. That would be like saying, "Our people have a cure for the coronavirus, but you can't use it because your grandfather killed my grandfather."

Somebody once said that, if we go back far enough, we all have ancestors from shamanic cultures. Hey, if we go back REALLY far, we as humans ALL have African ancestors! Does that mean we're all entitled to use African spiritual practices in our daily lives? Honestly, I can't answer that question... but it does highlight why limiting (or allowing) our spiritual practices strictly to the beliefs of our "ancestors" is an invalid premise that doesn't hold up under scrutiny, despite one's best intentions.

Take care, my friend, and go in peace. ❤

david kendall

9/4/2020 05:40:48 am

After much contemplation, and some reading and research I find myself somewhat aligned with this thoughtful response from Eris Boyd. If we can be objective about this very subjective topic, we come to know that ALL traditions come from others before and around us. Human migrations throughout human history is all about the learning from others of traditions, methods, tools belief systems etc. Native peoples of North America also came at different times in waves of migration from many cultural and ethnic sources. They surely borrowed from other cultures they encountered, and inculcated and passed them as their own. It seems the issue today is more about intention and respect, but is being magnified in order to re-balance the many atrocious actions taken in the recent past to eradicate previous cultures?

catie

6/23/2020 12:58:43 pm

Wow- thank you so much for this. It has been incredibly helpful on my journey towards being more aware and educated about being a white woman who connects deeply with many spiritual traditions and has always felt guilty or weird about appropriation.

Jen

10/2/2020 05:18:56 pm

Thank you so much for your knowledge and research. I was looking for some resources as to be aware of cultural appropriation during women's circles. This is so very helpfu.

Murphy

Murphy has been writing about connection to nature since they were a teenager. Their work has been published in Communities Magazine and Stepping Into Ourselves: An Anthology on Priestesses. Murphy is a huntress, wilderness guide, Tiny House dweller, and the founder of Mountainsong Expeditions.