HAPPY remember-that-we-are-living-on-Turtle-Island-indigenous-land-that-colonialism-then-genocided-to-make-way-for-canada DAY!

Although, I’m quite certain the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island were not interested in OWNING the land at all and, in fact, resisted the entire concept of land ownership to a certain degree.

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Surely tribal territories existed and they also saw themselves, geniusly, as an extension of the sacred ecology of Mother Earth, Her children, as much as all life was thusly perceived, animal, plant, even rock, tree and elementals, in their profound interdependent and animistic worldview.

CANADA DAY can be a time for deep reflection on the horrific undergrowth of what gave this nation fertile soil to rise. Nothing is more brazen in that sense than acknowledging and sitting with the unimaginable tragedy of the Residential Schools where indigenous children were abused and murdered in recently discovered mass graves, traumatizing generations.

Since last Spring, over 1100 mass graves have been discovered across Canada. And more will come. Genocide. Full stop.

How did such inhumane madness come to be? How could such egregious superiority complexes arise where one kind of people were deemed erasable and another exalted in psychopathic judiciousness?

My journeys in Scotland have been telling for me, someone of European and also ambiguous descent. The Pagan peoples, who were the original tribes of Europe and the indigenous Europans, were also victims of genocide for centuries by the brutal and rapacious Roman Christian Empire and nefarious crusades that exterminated millions of ‘heretics’.

One of my own First Nations teachers taught that this severance of European peoples from their own indigenous heritage set the stage for a race-wide insanity, caused by loss of traditional identity and being exiled from communal societies that were married to the land. The Earth and Her natural laws keeps us all in balance. To transgress such laws leads to inevitable danger, uprooting us from appropriate ways of living on this planet.

The colonized themselves became agents of colonization generations later when amnesia took grip and they were programmed to see then other indigenous peoples as lesser-than savages. With no present sense of indigenous solidarity with their own indigenous ancestry obscured, they became easily manipulated in the horrifying logic of the Empire.

My First Nations teacher also taught there would be a day when those Europeans would wake-up to the agony of their crimes and their own ancient suffering and would then go to the fires of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island to relearn about how to connect to the Earth again as peoples of the Great Mother. May that time continue to bloom in this holy now.

We in Canada have an incredible opportunity to heal these profoundly complex and ancient wounds. We have done a lot of work to educate, learn and seek resolution with the original peoples of Turtle Island. And it is just the beginning. There is much more to do and it is good work, fulfilling and healing for the Earth, and for all.

Ultimately, the indigenous understand the sacredness of the Earth, which is the antidote for the ecociding behaviour of colonialism, the most dire threat to our future. This is why indigenous wisdom keepers, artists, elders, and peoples in general should be given space to share their wisdom and to lead. We as colonial people must come to grips with our madness and also understand its roots. We too were indigenous once and we can again become so and only through such mentoring by those that have kept the traditions alive.

My own studies in Celtic culture, Druidry, Gnosticism and Paganism in general have been one of the most regenerative forces in my life. And returning again to Scotland has been in many ways a homecoming. Much of my ancestry, as many Europeans have experienced, has been ravaged due to the maddening conflicts and rampages of Church and State.

And yet, the land washes that all away. The beauty of the land is a remembering in itself, along with all the neolithic sacred sites, stone circles and other places of nature-worship our ancestors left for us to recover and be re-activated by, whirling the locked secrets in our DNA.

I do this work not only for myself but to also understand the roots of the colonial nightmare that I have been bound to as part of a perpetrator culture. I do this work to become a part of the stopping of that horrible cycle and to find more ways to empathize with indigenous peoples and support them in whatever ways they need.

May this Canada Day be a remembrance of the tattered and complex story of another nation rising out of the suffering of an indigenous culture that we were blind to honour. We are now realizing the First Nations peoples were brilliant, noble, wise, and even awe-inspiring in their magnificent eco-spiritual ways. Indigenous peoples not only represent some of the most beautiful cultures in our human story and also hold the wisdom to save us from ourselves.

It’s not to romanticize or tokenize them. All humans, all cultures have shadows too. And yet, colonialism, in its psychopathy from its severance and persecution of its own indigenous roots, sought to destroy with terrible absolutism all that is indigenous of our world en masse. In so doing, it unleashed a disenchanted culture that has brought the natural environment to the brink.

May CANADA DAY be an opportunity to vision a new nation where willing indigenous and colonial peoples can come together to co-create a sacred civilization together. It may still be a ways off and there’s so many steps till we get there and yet I feel that possibility so strongly.

PRAYERS to all the indigenous peoples killed in the name of Empire. May they be remembered and not have died in vain. May we be part of their renewal in choosing to live in ways of honour and deep love for Mother Earth and all of Her Creation.

Artwork by amazing First Nations, Ojibwe artist, Kevin Belmore (“Minowewegabow”): https://www.thecreativecompany.ca/kevin-belmore