Concerning cultural appropriation concerns

Letter to a young friend concerned he may be transgressing on another's territories by taking part in their spiritual ceremonies, concerned to try to find his own indigenous heritage, his own lineage therein....

Dear .....

 I would be honoured to hear more of your journey and that of others as they unfold. 

As for me, I am like Squirrel, I was put here onto this land by Mother Earth to find my spiritual practice, my spiritual gift, which I am then compelled to follow. All I have is not my fault, it is my gift from Mother Earth. I owe nothing to any traditions save those which are gifted to me, and which I discovered for myself from the habitat in which I landed, just like Squirrel...In one way Squirrel has an advantage over me, he did not have to search for the Way he is compelled to follow, he was born following it. And I am not accountable to Manitou for the way in which others do or did live their lives, only for the way in which I live mine. Walking lightly, disturbing nothing, I need manage only myself... That is enough for one life. Even writing this, is a kind of disturbance, but I am not yet a hermit, though that I may become in time..... 

Donato  Feb. 5  2016

Indigenous or not?

Some idea that indigenous people are different from us. That they have some status and claim to live safely on this land that we do not have. 

Thinking of myself, whose grandparents came from Italy, where their DNA had lived in a small village for 2000 years or more, and from America, after travelling all across Europe with the Celts and the French Huguenots and the Puritans, to what is now called by some the USA. My DNA has done lots of travelling since it last resided in what most today would call indigenous cultures. I prefer to say of my ancestry that I am descended from a long line of poets and drum-makers, for thousands of years. My DNA heritage in this spiritual calling is more important to me than what my DNA has encountered in the various language and cultural groups it has travelled in the past 40 000 years or so back to the Cro-Magnon people of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

So I would be happy to listen to anyone who had spent time and effort to track their own DNA in history, and learn what spiritual practices and songs it has been exposed to…

And I say Mother Earth birthed me here out of my DNA heritage, because this is where she needed another human poet and drum maker.. And I have the word of my Anishnabe friends living North of Superior that they too recognize me in that way…I am not taking anything from them, In fact they freely welcomed me and gifted me with the spiritual values and practices I now follow, as I gifted them with with what I was called to do. 

I say it is better to base your spiritual practices on the ways you choose to follow, or are gifted with, out of knowing your own spiritual gifts, than to blindly adhere to one or two of the probably hundreds of spiritual practices your DNA has encountered over the millenia. And if ancestors are important, then I am already an ancestor of a thousand who will come after me, and so I too am important. as we all are…

Donato Feb. 3  2016