00:18:23.600Different tribes will utilize medicine person or whatnot, but at the end of the day,
00:18:29.880A shaman, to me, is an individual who works with energy, does not dominate nor control it, or manipulate it.
00:18:44.060It's an individual who works with energy on behalf of the group.
00:18:51.680And when I say energy, I'm talking spiritual energy, I'm talking mental energy, I'm talking emotional energy, and I'm talking physical energy.
00:18:59.220And so it basically is somebody who works with the natural world, with the spiritual world, with the emotional world, all of that. And some are more specific to certain things. But basically, a shaman is a person that is in a position where the group recognizes them as being that medicine person. So that's what comes up first for me.
00:19:25.680I think like a conduit you're kind of like a conduit for like all of those things that are
00:19:32.380like working um so like my my opinions on shamanism I guess like I find it to be a very
00:19:40.500co-opted word it's like definitely used as like a blanket term now um just because it's it's just
00:19:47.720like one of those co-opted words I think like we're at a point in our our history where we can
00:19:52.260pull away from it um a lot of i feel like there's like space for reclamation but we're
00:19:59.540but by the originators of like shamanism i don't think we're the people at least on our side of
00:20:08.160the continent in north america are not the ones to um to reclaim that kind of word i'm used to
00:20:14.700medicine person medicine healer like this kind of thing and that that's what's so interesting to me
00:20:22.400is that there seems to be like a distinction between the word and like the idea or the word
00:20:28.660and the thing and as you know michelle like you were the first person that i i hit up about this
00:20:34.820because it seemed to be that like low water mark what's the that low point um what happened in
00:20:41.340january with the with the cartoon character who stormed the capital and then called himself a0.89
00:20:48.380a shaman and that's when i was kind of like all right what does this word even fucking mean at
00:20:54.200this point it's 2021 what does it mean and that's why we're gathered here today please like michelle
00:21:00.040we we covered we covered it in our last in the last roundtable discussion we did a roundtable
00:21:06.280discussion on appropriation on cultural appropriation and i feel like just like the
00:21:13.300beginning of this podcast episode should just be that like script where like that like what was
00:21:18.720jason talking about when he was he was at a fair for inuit like makers and someone just walked up
00:21:25.200to them and they're like tell me about your shamanic practices like
00:21:29.820as you know me I I'm I always like to I like that we have like roundtable discussions on this
00:21:40.080because really these kinds of topics are something that there's no one person who's a monolith
00:21:46.600there's no one concept that's a monolith it is a community discussion it's only something that
00:21:51.200can be deconstructed through community consultations let's let's go to Margaret
00:21:55.700it because we are doing this like intersectional and again the word itself we'll get into the like
00:22:01.860etymology of the word but again the way that i see it being used is either like it's referring to
00:22:08.360from an outsider um a first nations you know medicine person or it's like a nordic thing
00:22:16.900like we see so much of that like nordic shamanism today at least or it's like some
00:22:24.200baloney you know it's a lot of it's like plastic plastic shamanism baloney and i think i remember
00:22:33.680what i wanted to say because it's like like i kept saying it's like a community discussion
00:22:37.820that we need to have because it's like i'm i'm not i'm not a um academic i'm only talking from
00:22:44.540my own experience from my own personal experience and a lot of people might come on to the show
00:22:49.120and hear our voices and be like this person's a great like resource of like information and
00:22:55.920like we need to like pull from various sources like it needs to be a community discussion
00:23:00.560is like what I'm getting to exactly and I think that um the the panel that we've put together here
00:23:07.260is um again it was important for me for Margaret to be here to sort of inspect that that geographical
00:23:13.240aspect of the origins of the word but also because like again you know we talk about it all the time
00:23:19.560like we're striving for this non-binary existence where academic approaches are important because
00:23:24.840they can inform historical context if you go into the world thinking that you can wear regalia
00:23:32.760because why not it's just clothes but then you learn that the sun dance was illegal up until like
00:23:39.620what 50 years ago the one the 1970s i want to say in canada maybe the 50s in canada the 70s in the
00:23:45.200united states so these were things that yeah so these are things that were like illegal like you're
00:23:51.480it's not legal for you to do this but you know 50 years later when a hipster walks around in this
00:23:57.700if you have an a historical context that's been informed by some modicum of study
00:24:04.700that's not given to us in our schools that's important to me you know and that academic in
00:24:11.480that sense like learning where words come from and how they get used and what happened 50 years ago
00:24:16.820that might be affecting how we're behaving and thinking today but also the real personal lived
00:24:23.680experience this is my problem with with academia is that it devalues that real personal lived
00:24:29.840experience so again the ideal of this podcast this panel specifically is to like break that
00:24:39.660binary of academic and personal you know because I think that there's so much to be gained from
00:24:44.740the intersection of not just this and that but the intersection of those things you know and
00:24:50.420also to raise money everybody please make a donation to uh if not the uh Native Women's
00:24:57.720Shelter of Montreal, then find your local. Make your donation of $10 or more. Take a screenshot
00:25:04.200of your receipt and email it to missingwitches at gmail.com with the subject line DONATION,
00:25:10.340all caps, preferably, thank you, what country you're in plus the amount of your donation.
00:25:16.220The amount is important because for every $10, you'll get one entry into the raffle for these
00:25:23.040prizes so if you donate fifty dollars you'll get five entries and so on margaret can you tell us
00:25:29.060about like nordic shamanism and how that word got absorbed into that part of the world um if i can
00:25:38.660just first address something that you said yes please do um i love that you said the thing about
00:25:45.080historic context because um i'm a big believer in the fact that historic context really matters
00:25:51.200um and especially with things like this um but yeah i mean i'm not sure when shamanism
00:26:04.340became a big thing here i know it has been for a long time and um i have my opinions on that
00:26:13.780But, um, I think there's been just as I'm assuming in North America, like with sort of like this new age movement, you see groups that are super into quote unquote shamanism, uh, people describing themselves as quote unquote shamans.
00:26:36.640um and I was doing a little research yesterday because excuse me I generally if I see the word
00:26:47.980shaman or shamanism I run the other way so I don't know uh so I haven't like been keeping
00:26:55.480track of what's been going on and like um the thing that hits me every time I sort of look
00:27:01.720into this is that we're talking about very different things um it's both academically and
00:27:08.340popularly um sort of like a very big umbrella term for a lot of different kind of practices um
00:27:15.960and i think that's the part of the problem with the word shamanism specifically
00:27:38.120And I mean, the origins of the word itself is problematic.
00:27:43.680And I think that needs to be taken into account
00:27:46.500when we talk about whether it's a word we want to keep or not.
00:27:52.560Yeah, I did. Thanks for the unmute, Amy. I was like, I mean, I really don't want to step in front of our next guest, Amanda, having an opportunity to speak because I'd really love to hear what you're thinking about this.
00:28:06.040But if you'll allow me two seconds on the context of the history of the word, because I do want to just agree and amplify that originally the word contained multiples.
00:28:19.500And so it was from the beginning of its usage, a settler term of oversimplification, right?
00:28:27.560So even when we, you know, we try to unpack where it came from, was it the German missionaries in Siberia?
00:28:36.560Was it an indigenous word? Was it an Arabic word for Satan that was being applied to spiritual leaders there?
00:28:43.720We don't really know, like the first use in Margaret, maybe you know this better than I do,
00:28:48.240But it seems like the first use comes in sort of the 15th century Russian, Christian, Orthodox settlers encountering indigenous people and encountering people in a place that they already had always narrated as both.
00:29:04.600There's nothing there. And two, it's full of magic. And three, for us to own it now, we have to go map it.
00:29:10.940So for us to have something like a European colony, for us to have something like an empire, we have to go map it.
00:29:17.560And so this place that they both said, oh, there's no one there and it's full of magic. Now they encounter really diverse people and people who in that diversity had both male, female and trans spiritual leaders really explicitly and called them all shaman and wrote stories about them that they can sell to audiences back home to begin to benefit off that process.
00:29:43.580so even from the beginning and then it sort of gets picked up by these like um kind of great man
00:29:51.500thinkers in like anthropology and i'm doing huge air quotes right where they're like we're we're
00:29:56.940gonna like everywhere we look now suddenly we see cave paintings and like oh look another great man
00:30:03.020another great man like and so what was probably like a lot of artists a lot of women a lot of
00:30:10.220scientists a lot of trans people and and binary people like telling stories about a lot of ways
00:30:16.940of encountering the world gets summarized by someone who's like oh look another great man like
00:30:21.900me you know and and now and i so i think inherent in the way the word gets used now is the way the
00:30:27.660word was used then and i think you're so right like we need we need diversity now for both in0.77
00:30:33.100our planet and in our language to understand what the fuck who's been talking about that's the end0.51
00:30:37.820end of my speech I'm sorry Amanda hi um I'm reflecting back and I think when um Margaret0.65
00:30:49.840said when I hear the word shaman I do kind of take a step back and feel guarded around that
00:30:56.660and I think it's because I associate um that word shamanism only in my North American context so
00:31:05.420it's limited by my knowledge base and what I've learned from my part of the world so I'm not an
00:31:11.120expert on it at all but it feels associated with capitalization or the commodification of spiritual
00:31:18.900practices and going from community to individualistic and that wasn't always necessarily
00:31:27.880the case um when i think of the word shaman you have um like distinct roles in various
00:31:36.920nationhoods and civilizations but they're assigned roles and depending on the nation
00:31:43.380and question some are considered to be within secret societies like the mid-ewin and they're
00:31:48.880initiated through a very like secret practice something that not everybody's um privy to
00:31:56.060or entitled to but when I think of people who are connected to spirit or medicine I like the
00:32:05.640words that I prefer to use are like helpers facilitators truth seers people that genuinely
00:32:12.820care about others and have that knowledge to benefit their society
00:32:19.440that actually got me thinking about um after the cultural appropriation episode
00:32:28.180we uh we spoke about like the cultural appropriation of like practices and how you're
00:32:36.620saying a lot of the amanda how a lot of the practices are closed i got into an interesting
00:32:41.240discussion with one of your listeners who wrote me and they're just yeah i some people write me
00:32:47.820amy's face is like whoa like it wasn't a negative discussion it was a positive discussion
00:32:53.820but it's okay it involved it involved a negative discussion that they had with another person
00:32:59.920and they're just what a relief i was like i felt responsible for somebody coming for you and i got
00:33:07.680so like angry and emotional it's a good lesson listeners let's let's let our guests finish before
00:33:13.220you react to their statement I'm muting myself now go ahead Michelle if there's anything I've
00:33:18.520learned in all this is to have a heavy block finger but um or you just send reparations first
00:33:25.960and then I'll have a discussion with you so but um so I had a discussion with someone and it was
00:33:31.940just about like you know um utilizing gods and figures of like other cultures and that's where
00:33:40.780a lot of like the miss where it got misconstrued because people assume a lot of our cultural heroes
00:33:48.600across different nations are gods and like i know at least like in like the nations that i am a part
00:33:57.660of like we have cultural heroes and different like um i want to say characters they're not
00:34:05.180characters but they're just like different figureheads that teach us lessons but we don't
00:34:09.680call them gods they're not gods they're not there for you to worship they're there to like fumble0.95
00:34:15.120and fall and laugh and teach us lessons like I know in Mi'kmaq culture we have Glooscap who's0.70
00:34:23.160like kind of like our our uh legend hero the sacred clown basically that's about it like
00:34:29.460like that kind of like crow medicine that like you
00:34:33.180crow is such an important like teacher for me too so i'm like just tripping and falling and
00:34:41.360learning those lessons but that were that's where a lot of the things got construed so
00:34:46.920shamanism like because i popped that into the chat so according to the encyclopedia britannica
00:34:53.040it is a manchu tungus word for a meaning one who knows and it's like kind of like that conduit and
00:35:02.780it's not this figurehead man who is like I don't know 50 plus it's like any age any gender any
00:35:11.700identity can be this person and because like I guess the word got construed at a certain point
00:35:19.720in time it just got slapped as like the kind of like the word like it's yeah it's a debated but
00:35:28.080to say on the encyclopedia britannica i don't know for sure but um so it's just something that
00:35:36.540got slapped on all indigenous cultures and our cultural teachings and our original instructions
00:35:43.900it just got slapped as a word for our religion and we're not we don't have a religion we don't
00:35:50.100have like a god there is creator but creator is everything creator has no gender like
00:35:55.800i love it and moreover i wanted to emphasize um what she was saying this is gdc again
00:36:05.500and um i am a member of the navajo nation and uh we don't call people shaman we call we say
00:36:14.900that is a singer or that is a hand trembler or that is a that person understands how to
00:36:22.720pray with peyote, or that person understands the wind. And so if you were to go down to
00:36:30.980the Navajo reservation in the US, which is basically the four corners, meaning Colorado,
00:36:37.500New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and utilize that word, the young generation would probably be like,
00:36:44.680oh, yeah, yeah, you know, but the older generation would be like, what are you saying?
00:36:49.620I do come from a long line of these spiritual people.
00:36:53.880My Aunt Alice, who passed about a year ago, she was a high priestess of the peyote way.
00:37:01.300And my grandfather also, he was a dancer and a singer.
00:37:07.600and I think that the just to explain we say singer because you were taught over that initiated period
00:37:15.080of how to sing a song that could last a day four days nine days and that is the beauty of it so
00:37:23.380secondly I wanted to emphasize that point that it's not all gods and goddesses within every
00:37:30.180culture I'll tell you a quick story there there's a story within the Navajo Nation that says
00:37:36.560there was a beautiful set of twins one was male and one was female and they stood on this
00:37:45.160mountaintop with the wind blowing through their hair and that was the only time that they were
00:37:51.760ever seen but they still exist because their names are thought and memory
00:37:58.440so that's kind of a really cool story so I just wanted to compliment
00:38:04.480what you were saying about those different things and build on that from another perspective
00:38:10.900and um but i do agree completely that you can people some people just take on the name oh i'm
00:38:19.000a shaman i'm a shaman but we need to also delineate between neo-shamanism a more of a new
00:38:26.420new age type of a i'm gonna take this word on because it gives me the excuse to smoke peyote
00:38:32.180sorry I went there usually that falls off at about two years for people who go to some sort
00:38:40.260of a spiritual belief I believe they go to a spiritual belief for two one of two reasons
00:38:44.280one they want to grow and learn two they want to escape something those that want to escape
00:38:53.120something usually fall off that religion within about two years after the religion starts saying
00:38:58.560you need to take responsibility. You're no longer a baby. Let's do this. And so when I look at
00:39:04.560things such as this QAnon shaman and everything, I want to respect everybody's free will. I want
00:39:13.580to respect everybody's authenticity. But the only cues that, that was funny, the cue that gave me
00:39:22.820this understanding that he is not of the same definition as I hold is that he says,
00:39:28.560You can use the world, you can control the energy, you can change reality, and I'm like, dude, go ahead and do this, and you will find yourself eating non-organic food in prison.
00:39:46.440it's really beautiful how you describe that as communities having different roles and gifts that
00:39:56.160they're used to offer to others when they're in need and i think part of that is also just
00:40:04.980having humility to be able to um not be overtaken by ego or the the cloud of popularity
00:40:15.900yeah and I think that that's something that Michelle you and I were talking about in the
00:40:21.520lead up to this is like we find a lot of times that it's these like these men and I you brought
00:40:29.740up an example and I'll let you tell that story but it reminded me of the man who invented Mormonism0.79
00:40:34.420who was like I found the new truth and it's the old truth and it belongs to me and only I have
00:40:39.660access to it and recent correct me if I'm wrong that was basically Gerald Gardner's approach as
00:40:45.540well largely to wicca yeah and the origin the origin of mormonism is he he has a he has a magic
00:40:53.740rock that only translates the golden text that only he can he only gets the rock and the text
00:40:59.160only appear for him and then it's all gone you know not to make fun of mormonism but so much
00:41:04.640mormonism is turning to this white nationalism right now that you kind of have to look at where
00:41:08.360this lack of rootedness leads to leads to violence and appropriation i think and i think that
00:41:17.320that to me really like puts a fine point on what amanda said like if we want to say like
00:41:24.940someone who is a shaman we'll say conceptually the word aside like conceptually is you know a
00:41:31.060seer a healer a medicine person versus someone who takes that word and uses it as like a hierarchical
00:41:37.940title of them being like closer to god than you or closer to this amanda how did you put it
00:41:44.860humility over ego and maybe this is where we can make a distinction between someone
00:41:50.400i don't know again i don't want to say right and wrong because far be it for me to be the one to
00:41:55.320decide but i think you know if we can if we can see people taking on this role from a place of
00:42:01.560humility um yeah a lot of so a lot of this and it happens with like healers it happens with any
00:42:11.100i think that that's a lot of why these people get drawn into like you know nationalistic um
00:42:18.680ideologies as well as because they have this like idea of it's like a hierarchy
00:42:23.780and you know you have the healer the shaman and they're the ones that are above everybody and
00:42:28.520people are just like worshipping them and even like like it's so it's so problematic but not just
00:42:34.880like in settlers white people it also happens uh in lateral violence as well where you'll have
00:42:43.260usually usually it is cis men who are using this hierarchical idea to have people pander over them
00:42:52.460and just like i i have to cut in because all i can like just envision in my head is those photos
00:43:00.520that came out from that like storming of the capital and you have that like dude sitting
00:43:05.380there not not not the guy in the buffalo hat that was like too much i although i did saw there was
00:43:12.180a lot of good memes that came out of it where someone like had him howling and they put it on
00:43:16.780a shirt and it's just like you know like spirits of a nation powwow 2020 yeah that guy who is
00:43:24.640wrapped up in pelts and he's just sitting there looking confused like why am I here and they're
00:43:29.240just like crudely tied on so that bring me brings me to my story about Mi'kmaq Jesus
00:43:34.660so I've coined this uh this I've nicknamed him Mi'kmaq Jesus and it's funny because this person
00:43:42.460popped up in my friend and like a discussion in my friend's circle last week before this pot like
00:43:48.100before we aired this and there's this guy in maine who claims himself to be an elder and if you know
00:43:55.760any elders elders don't go around saying i'm an elder like it's something like you know that's an
00:44:00.940elder and so this guy and i won't say any names or anything just like to we don't want any lawsuits
00:44:09.900but um he he's in Maine and he claims himself to be the last healer of the Mi'kmaq people
00:44:17.280because we're so extinct and I know that there's not like a large population down in Maine but
00:44:22.780there's a lot of Wabanaki people around that area so I don't know where he's getting this from so
00:44:27.900he apparently has been predicted his name by our ancestors 300 years ago and they said he would
00:44:35.340arrive now to teach the white people our ways and he holds something called the Mi'kmaq copper
00:44:41.080scrolls and and these scrolls I guess is to like teach white people about like our culture I don't
00:44:50.260know so there is like I don't even know so Amanda popped into the chat it speaks about like a lot
00:44:57.840about cultural disconnection I'm not even sure if this person is actually Mi'kmaq because he claims
00:45:02.680to be an elder. He claims he's Mi'kmaq, but he has no community ties. And I don't want to talk
00:45:08.400about disconnection because I'm someone who's been disconnected from my Mi'kmaq side. But like,
00:45:14.240if you've been in our communities long enough that people call you an elder, you've been adopted
00:45:20.240somewhere, you have some community tie somewhere that you can be like, hey, I represent these
00:45:26.280people nothing like that yeah again the distinction being that if you're called an elder that's one
00:45:33.060thing if you come in banging into the group chat like i'm an elder that's yeah yeah it's very
00:45:38.380different like we know there's a disconnection problem and we know that like there's a lot of
00:45:44.640kids who have been taken and are unsure where they belong like through the adoption through people
00:45:50.000being stolen through the 60s scoop but I don't think this guy is Mi'kmaq I think this guy is0.60
00:45:57.060just a plastic shaman who is using this to create lateral violence in our community but also0.99
00:46:04.220profit off of the ignorance of subtler people so it exists across all like aspects and I'm like0.91
00:46:13.980the copper scrolls like nobody no Mi'kmaq person that I've spoken to knows there's never heard of0.99
01:15:54.360and um bringing it down to this weird like whole can like idea of like white nationalist just kind
01:16:05.640of being like yeah shamanism natives like you know we're on the same side there is a huge problem
01:16:11.980with white nationalists trying to prey on indigenous people because they're just kind of like
01:16:16.760hey are you upset about immigrants coming to this land because those are the bad ones and we're the
01:16:22.200good ones and we're gonna fight for like this land of yours and like i don't know like like
01:16:28.620where I grew up in Toronto like and specifically like in a lovely little town that both me and
01:16:36.400Amy experienced called Oshawa represent definitely it's just like there is this
01:16:45.740odd fascination of white nationalists or neo-nazis who are just like yeah we accept
01:16:54.500native people like you know like we're on the same team like they try to recruit them it's really
01:17:00.420like a really really bizarre like phenomenon and i really think probably the nazi thing was that
01:17:07.200winnie two thing i told you about which i'm gonna plug that again if you haven't seen searching for
01:17:12.320winnie two you need to google searching for winnie two it's the documentary about why german people
01:17:19.660have powwows it's free in canada because it's a drew hayden that did it he's an author here but
01:17:30.800um basically like german there's this like book that came out and it's about winnie two who's
01:17:36.700supposed to be an epeche warrior that hunted buffalo which like it's just the person who
01:17:43.060wrote the book has never been in north america and it's just like this whole like fantasy of like
01:17:48.540how we're free out here and you know living off the land and it's like the german people trying
01:17:55.900to like tie back to germanic roots of like you know that freedom of like living off the land and
01:18:00.980now it's as big as disney winnie two is like mickey mouse from what i hear so and there's this
01:18:08.280you made me think of this problematic thing that colonialism has done and and you know keeps doing
01:18:13.980at least when I was in school that this sort of idea that it's like African culture is one thing
01:18:21.780like Africa is one thing or indigenous culture like indigenous culture is one thing but if you0.89
01:18:27.840try to tell a French man that he's the same as a German man then you know he's going to tell you
01:18:34.100many many things about why that's not true but we have these spaces like Turtle Island like the
01:18:39.800continent of africa that are huge and vast and what but we're like you know african spirituality
01:18:45.920like as if it's one thing indigenous spirituality as if it's one thing well if you think of the
01:18:51.220celts that's the best way i can like describe it is the celts they were comprised of like the
01:18:56.360scottish the irish and the french it's like a blanket it's like a blanket term like they were
01:19:03.540a migratory people like my irish celtic ancestors did not originate in that island they were
01:19:13.840originally coming from they think they were flemish originally if you go back to like the
01:19:18.480year 1000 or whatever it's like it's just that kind of like blanket term but everyone's like
01:19:25.160we we said the same thing about the word shamanism that it is this blanket term so maybe like
01:19:31.760together the six of us can come to a conclusion wherein like anything that's a blanket term is
01:19:37.940going to be reductive is going to be watered down is going to be not of the source is going to be
01:19:44.780you know through the telephone game do kids still play telephone game um you know where it's like
01:19:51.160it's it's it's made a blanket because it's been stretched so thin does that metaphor make any
01:19:58.600sense to anybody I see some nods thank goodness I think also like capitalism and colonialism
01:20:08.360work benefit by simplifying homogenizing like Amanda said and and selling us the simplest0.52
01:20:18.340possible idea to keep you know to keep selling us stuff um and so with people you know white
01:20:27.340settlers in north america fall prey to constantly re-victimizing indigenous people because they've
01:20:35.880over centuries lost their own indigeneity suffered the violence of the church suffered
01:20:44.000the violence of capitalism and just sort of we're we're there's a there's a wound there
01:20:48.840that is in all of us that's playing out this sort of constant cascading failure re-victimizing each
01:20:55.780other and I think coming together around the word shaman indicates you know it's a word that's like
01:21:03.200a talisman for this whole process you know I know Margaret you wanted you had I think more to tell
01:21:09.380us about racism in in the sort of the way that Nordic cultures have maybe been used and are using
01:21:18.420white nationalism or nazism yeah i just um amy mentioned the runes and like how they've been
01:21:27.220co-opted by white supremacists and white nationalism and and um i just wanted to touch
01:21:33.980on that really quickly because it's um i think it's it's to a point now where it's a little
01:21:41.360painful for some of us um that um that it's that it's become so synonymous with white supremacy
01:21:50.660and that like um I mean I have I have runes tattooed I have a and I also have a um a 16th
01:22:00.540century uh sigil on my back that's Icelandic but um but for me these are things that are you know
01:22:08.080part of my heritage they have connection to where I'm from and um and it's really
01:22:15.440it's really upsetting and tiring um to see sort of first of all like this sort of like um
01:22:27.540I don't know boiled down weird version of of like of Scandinavian and Nordic prehistory and
01:22:37.780history into some like I don't know Vikings which is so uh inadequate and misunderstood and it's
01:22:49.220and it's really hard to watch people um basically take your culture and your you know you're sort of
01:23:04.040um you know part of what makes you you and part of what makes your your people the way they are0.64
01:23:11.760and like drag it through the mud basically and um and i mean it happens here we have white
01:23:20.740supremacists here use um who use you know nordic religion and norse mythology this way and um
01:23:31.080and that's sort of our own problem to deal with but uh i know a lot of people who get really
01:23:37.320frustrated watching watching white nationalists in the u.s um sort of co-opting something that they
01:23:44.740don't understand apart from like the episodes of vikings they've watched or whatever
01:23:50.580and um and yeah make it sort of this like0.89
01:23:55.300this weird cartoon mythology for whiteness and uh yeah it's it's just it's really disgusting0.66
01:24:06.000and distressing to watch um and at the same time we do have in sort of the norse heathen neo-pagan0.87
01:24:15.020community we have a problem with white nationalism we do have a problem with white supremacy
01:24:21.200and um and that sort of attests to a larger problem of not addressing racism and um
01:24:31.800and systemic racism and societies here because we're like oh but we're so
01:24:36.640you know homogenous we are not racist um so yeah that was my long rant i'm sure a lot of us have
01:24:46.520our various and sundry um things that we get upset about when we see people who clearly like you say
01:24:53.880don't understand them for some of us they're um you know ancestral um and or ethnic
01:25:01.120um and for some of us you know like I consider myself a witch I consider myself a lifelong witch
01:25:07.880and you know one of the first things that we talked about on the podcast I think it was honestly like
01:25:12.700episode two um where I was interviewing a person and we were talking about the um
01:25:18.580the Sephora witch kit um you know I said everybody you guys can't you you gang can't hear them but
01:25:27.880Everyone's like, yeah, you know, so we raise your hand who has the most to get off your chest about this kind of like GDC, GDC up to bat, like, it seems like, you know, Margaret is talking about how painful it is to see these sacred things, you know, being used for white supremacy.
01:25:52.640and and obviously you know michelle and amanda and gdc you're talking about seeing these things
01:25:58.600that are part of your ancestral dna you know just being absolutely made illegal on plus not just like
01:26:05.340demonized but like illegalized and you know anyway you don't need to me to carry on with that
01:26:13.400but yeah yeah there's this i love it this pain that comes from the lack of understanding when
01:26:19.860when you see someone using your tools however you decide your tools are gdc can you can you go off
01:26:25.800yes absolutely and you know i actually want to not that i haven't been before but i really would
01:26:33.660love to address the audience and to let you know that um we all have pains we all have stances and
01:26:44.360this is a good thing because that means that we are all becoming more authentic right we are
01:26:50.120becoming authentic and how do we move forward we need to have more of these dialogues we want
01:26:56.720I don't know what I don't know you know and I think that this is where don't like I seriously
01:27:04.200have had people come up to me as GDC you know and I'm working I've got like you know a half you can
01:27:12.320tell I'm Native when I'm when I'm at work and they come up to me and they tell me they apologize
01:27:20.760for what their family has done so I have to step into the position of taking on the identity of
01:27:28.880Native American not you know of everyone to forgive this soul and you know it's so it's
01:27:35.240very interesting. So what I'm suggesting is if you heard something today that caused you to open
01:27:42.900your mind or learn about a different perspective within the circle, cheers to you. That's what
01:27:51.000we're doing here. I learned, I was schooled today. Do not be embarrassed about going, oh,
01:27:57.940there isn't, we don't all hold all of the knowledge in our head. This is why we sit in circle.
01:28:03.280I will learn something from across the Great Lake from Denmark, is it? And, you know, and Montreal and the East Coast and the West Coast. And then I actually sometimes I learn something by what just comes out of my mouth.
01:28:18.160What I'm saying is we all have some pain and now we're talking about it. Do you know how many years
01:28:28.700we haven't talked about it? We have accepted some sort of a cloak of how you are supposed to be as
01:28:36.160a, like, because of a gender thing, because of a cultural thing, because of a religious thing that
01:28:42.640you have to fit in this cookie cutter box now we get to talk about it and the first thing that we
01:28:48.460get to say is oh you know what I've been holding my breath on is how come this person says this
01:28:55.200and they think that and so there is a level of frustration that comes out but it's that fire
01:29:00.300that gets it cooking now don't be insulted don't don't be shamed I'm really asking you and I'm not
01:29:09.180speaking for the panel, but I am speaking from GDC herself, we all get to learn something new.
01:29:15.620The whole thing is know that you don't know everything. Learn how to study things from
01:29:22.040credible sources. Learn how to express yourself on your authentic story. Take your authentic
01:29:30.580experience and it has a place in the circle. It has a place in the circle. So take this
01:29:38.240because we are allowed to talk so freely about this and that this is coming to you that is a
01:29:46.140position of more and more dialogue more more curiosity and more authenticity may this give
01:29:52.200you permission to have your own ideas and in that always know that somebody else has another
01:29:59.060perspective and that we are here to learn and be curious about this so that's what I have to say
01:30:05.220Can you, GDC, you said something to me either in one of our previous conversations or in an email about the seasons, and obviously the seasons of nature, but like, personally, it really affected me. Can you like lay that on us as a group?
01:30:20.240Yeah, yeah. So, not to like self-promo.
01:30:28.180yeah right so wisdom of the natural world really it's it says wisdom of the natural world by
01:30:35.000granddaughter crow um spiritual and practical teachings from plants animals and mother earth
01:30:41.560and so there'll be a chapter on how we are communicating with the natural world
01:30:47.360irregardless of whether you speak english or not um because it's all about body language right
01:30:53.040and so then it has animals it has plants it has all these things but what amy is talking about is
01:31:02.560maybe look at the the seasons and how they roll wherever you stand on the globe you have different
01:31:12.220seasons and the spring is a season to plant and the summer is a season to grow and the autumn
01:31:19.500is the season to harvest and the winter is time to just be and wait for the next spring recognizing
01:31:28.220that we will always roll through these processes and when I might be in a winter in my home life
01:31:37.940like under the pandemic but in my physical world but I might be in the summer in my career and so
01:31:47.280don't force the seasons know the seasons and be in whatever season you're in is that what you're
01:31:55.060talking about that's exactly it because you know i i i live in northern quebec the seasons are very
01:32:02.100fucking clear and so when you said that to me you gave me this permission to like live within the
01:32:08.720seasons but also recognize like the seasons of my body and my spirit and and to recognize those0.95
01:32:15.320seasons too and not to necessarily assign them like this time you do this and it was really
01:32:21.080approach it without exactly approach it without judgment and I and I love what you just said Amy
01:32:26.760it you get to give yourself permission and so I would like to pose to the listening the listeners
01:32:33.660out there what are you going to give yourself permission to do or think today what is the best
01:32:42.140part of you that you need to give yourself permission to take a break you need to give
01:32:47.520yourself permission to um self-love saturday today is my day you know you need to you know
01:32:55.660and and the concept of having to give yourself permission only speaks to the negative construct
01:33:02.580that our societies have been in that say that we need to ask for permission in the first place which
01:33:08.080don't get me going there but be who you are you have the right to do it if you need permission
01:33:14.400to be who you are i will give you that permission until you can take it yourself
01:33:18.420i thank you so much gdc for the permission for all of us0.99
01:33:23.280now i want to um start with amanda amanda what do you want to get off your chest like we're
01:33:31.940talking about being open and honest and this is a place where you can just tell our listeners what
01:33:37.680you want them to hear oh i i feel like i'm just reflecting off of um a shared feeling that a lot
01:33:46.140of us have but um it's difficult to witness the ease that others can co-opt cultural or spiritual
01:33:54.720practices when our relatives or our ancestors have had to hide their identity out of either
01:34:01.580necessity or self-preservation or by simply being attacked in 1921. So it's like the 100th anniversary
01:34:15.180of when the deputy superintendent of Canada told Native people to stop dancing so much
01:34:21.100and to dissuade and prevent them from being indulgent and discouraged. These are the words1.00
01:34:27.540in the letter it's like an old-timey typewriter letter um that was found it's a really old
01:34:33.540document to discourage their sloth and idleness saying that they were being unproductive and when
01:34:40.060you think about it um these are spiritual practices these are ways in which we connect with
01:34:48.180our spirit body and to be of service to our communities and to and not to use the word
01:34:58.360shaman but it is a very shamanistic and meditative practice of dancing something that took me a
01:35:06.580really long time to understand from an outsider perspective and reconnecting as somebody that's
01:35:14.360been culturally displaced but um now become the cool thing to do and people um disregard that
01:35:24.500history thank you so much for speaking that amanda i'm gonna pass to margaret margaret
01:35:34.940go off what are you gonna get off your chest
01:35:37.900um I think what I really want to get off my chest at this point is just
01:35:47.280I really want to encourage people to do their research um and be critical and think about
01:35:57.880what you're doing and when it comes to your spiritual practice um
01:36:03.520yeah do your research figure out where do these things come from um am i am i adding to
01:36:13.980or sort of perpetuating something really painful or um am i co-opting something that isn't mine to
01:36:21.580use or and i mean like i said earlier when you know better hopefully you do better and like we
01:36:28.100don't like granddaughter crow said i think what she said was really powerful um but like you can't
01:36:35.960do better if you don't know better um but you have i think in this day and age where information is so
01:36:42.100easy to come by you have no excuse to be ignorant um and i mean just something as simple as instagram
01:36:53.420as a platform I've learned so much um just from following you know different people and I
01:37:00.540especially learned a lot from indigenous women um and I mean like being educated about things I knew
01:37:06.980nothing about about you know why we shouldn't use this or that or um practices that I didn't
01:37:13.420realize were harmful to you know be using as a white person um and like I I didn't know I always
01:37:21.240know everything. I still don't know everything. I make mistakes. I fuck up. We all do. And that's
01:37:26.780okay. Um, but commit yourself to doing better and to doing your research and to educating yourself.
01:37:32.840And, and like we talked about way at the beginning, historical context is important
01:37:38.340and it matters. Um, and it often helps you understand why people feel a certain way,
01:37:45.060um about things like why certain things are a no-go for you to borrow quote-unquote um
01:37:52.880yeah I think that's that's my my main thing to get off my chest at the moment yeah that really
01:38:01.440yeah thank you so much again like once again I just want to underscore that what we're trying
01:38:08.500to do here as an ideal is to take away that that barrier between like an academic study and a real
01:38:17.280personal emotional response to the world around you and I really appreciate what you said I think
01:38:22.940that that speaks to that exactly thank you again so much Margaret Michelle oh I know you got a
01:38:28.340beast to unleash hit us I always do yeah one of the many reasons that I love you so deeply is that
01:38:37.000You've always got to be just waiting to be let off the leash.
01:38:40.860I'm going to like pull it back to the first discussion because our very first podcast interview was about spiritual bypassing.
01:38:49.300And it's something I popped into the chat and it's just kind of like the whole concept of like plastic shamanism and like that.
01:38:58.540You can't sell a lifelong path in a four day online course.
01:39:02.880it's not going to give you like this fancy certificate that I'm like I can do all these
01:39:08.300things and my like I'm here now I've made it it's like it's a lifelong path it's you're constantly
01:39:15.480learning just kids learn elders are constantly learning no matter what stage you are in your
01:39:21.220life you have to be open to people challenging your beliefs and you have to be open to challenge
01:39:27.100your own beliefs and then that brings me to what's on my chest is it's great I love like
01:39:35.000pulling information from social media but at a certain point it's becoming it's creating a lot
01:39:41.820more binary as we like get really deep into it because a lot of people are just like taking one
01:39:48.280or two like infographics or one or two sources on Instagram or on Facebook and they're like yes this
01:39:53.640is the monolith this is like why all of this is horrible like this is the one thing i need to like
01:39:59.020listen to when you need to pull from like multiple sources and that's what i keep what i spoke about
01:40:05.800at the beginning of the podcast is community consulting you can't just get your uh you just
01:40:11.400can't get your all your resources from instagram you can't get all your resources from facebook
01:40:16.100you need to like go into your community you need to like learn whose land you're standing on and
01:40:22.580and hear what they're talking about because like one person like even within a community in itself
01:40:29.600there are multiple opinions on like just in itself so it needs to be an open and an ongoing
01:40:36.320discussion and we can't create more binaries like we're trying to remove these binaries that we've
01:40:42.680been stuck in i remember our first communication was you speaking of instagram you uh put a comment
01:40:51.320on a post, it was an interview that I had done with Annie Le Maron, and you were like, you know,
01:40:57.460I appreciate this. I find that, like, in the pagan community that, you know, Indigenous people are
01:41:03.700often ignored. I can't remember what the exact, you know, something to that effect, and I knew
01:41:08.440nothing about the pagan community. Like, I knew what I had done, and I knew, you know, what Risa
01:41:12.980and I were doing, but I had no idea what the pagan community, I'm using air quotes here, was doing,
01:41:18.420And when, Michelle, you told me that, like, the Indigenous community was being ignored, that seemed really, like, missing the point of paganism entirely, to not include this perspective.
01:41:31.740so once again I want to thank I want to thank you specifically Michelle but all of you for like
01:41:38.320helping me foster my understanding of like my own belief systems which you know your beliefs can
01:41:45.720change people and it's ideal if you're if you are you know presented with something else so let's
01:41:53.060all unmute um and as you're doing that I'm going to read this quote from Freya Norling who is not
01:42:00.080without problematicness. So keep that in mind, everybody. Language is not capable of describing
01:42:05.960true shamanism or the shamanic experience. And I think we've kind of established that here today
01:42:11.880between the six of us that we came to talk about a word and came to no conclusions other than
01:42:18.100reciprocity, research, compassion. Does anybody want to throw out some more words that we know
01:42:25.420for sure. Approach life with curiosity in everything that you do because then those defense
01:42:32.700mechanisms will drop. Approach it like a child that you get to learn something new. Don't make
01:42:39.120assumptions that it's going to be painful or that you're going to find out that you're wrong.
01:42:43.300Be curious. Curious. I love that word as a final thought. Risa, do you want to say goodbye to our
01:42:51.980listeners? Just thanks so much to our beautiful guests. I see your hearts and your wisdom and
01:43:00.940everything that you shared in your words and all the things that sometimes you held back and
01:43:05.540couldn't share. Those were all gifts for us and our listeners. We always say that we're a circle
01:43:12.260that we make in the darkness between our ears. And so I like to imagine all of those people in
01:43:18.160that spiraling circle of darkness out around us just holding you and the things you said and the
01:43:25.080things you couldn't say so thank you so much and thanks to everybody for your donations today and
01:43:30.380all month yes so uh i'm gonna hit you all listeners with that speech one more time and uh thank you
01:43:39.540again margaret gdc michelle amanda risa for being here with me like i would love to do this as often
01:43:47.420as possible let's hope we raise as much money as we can that'll really encourage us to just keep
01:43:52.440doing this over and over and over again i know once again we all have lives to live and i would
01:43:58.540love to just share an apartment with the five of you and just have this conversation constantly
01:44:03.140going but in the meantime michelle you are going to play us out thank you all listeners for your
01:44:09.560donations uh panelists for your time everyone for uh your compassion and your curiosity we love you
01:44:17.780i am going to close us off with the wildflower song and uh this was a song that was taught to
01:44:28.020me and the way that i was uh i guess like gifted it or whatever is it's a calling back song so you
01:44:35.920use it to like call back your spirit or call back like those who are missing.
01:44:39.840So I think that's a good one to lead off with.