Why cultivating belonging with our pre-colonial ancestors is key to our changemakership in turning times

I took a breath, sensing into how and where to begin. I closed my eyes and placed my hand on my belly. I sensed the land beneath me, me as an extension of that very land.

I agree with social justice author & the Revolutionary Love Project founder Valerie Kaur: I feel strangely prepared for this moment.

Because I feel rooted.
Rooted in my values – yes.
Rooted in my contribution – yes.
Rooted in my connection to Nature, land, Earth. Yes.

And – rooted in lineage.

I have spent the past 5 years tuning into my pre-colonial ancestors. They have played a life-defining part of my coming home to place, to my body, to Earth.

Myself.

I have come to know with every fibre of my being that there is a reason why more and more of us are starting to sense the vital and deep connection between feeling anchored in our ancestors’ wisdom and our capacity to hold and lead change – in business, communities, families, neighbourhoods right here and now, in these treacherous and unpredictable times.

It is activism.

Yes, there I said it: it is essential activism work.
And it is becoming more and more vital by the day.

Because feeling rooted in where we come from and how those who walked the Earth long before us navigated life and death, darkness, uncertainty and the unknown, not only helps us to see ourselves as ancestors too who are here to care for the whole in all directions, but it enables us to show up with an inner compass, decolonise our minds and hearts, re-connect with life-aligned ways of operating, and dream what a different world can look, feel and be like.

Being separated from our ancestors’ wisdom is the same as being separated from Earth.

It makes us hollow, lonely, lead only from the head, breeding greed, grabbing, taking.

When we wander the Earth as lost children, supremacy culture can easily sweep in and wrap us in its fold. Become the home of hungry ghosts wandering aimlessly through the void of ‘never enough’ in search of ever more.

Our ancestors help us see that the bulk of our thoughts, emotions, judgements and opinions never belonged to us. They were forced upon us by a paradigm where no-one is free.

We simply cannot plant a thriving future garden using cut flowers, as Daniel Boorstin would say.

We are our ancestors seeds, and without acknowledging them there will be no life-giving crops for our children’s future.

Tuning in to the myths and worldviews of our distant past, encourages the remembrance of the 5 indigenous minds as described by Tyson Yunkaporta, as perspectives that have the capacity to change the world if we were to embrace them.

It is therefore not a ‘nice to have’ quirky pastime to reconnect with our ancestors: it is essential, to us moving forward.

Our connection to them supports us in slowing down and embody Nature’s cycles and seasons, and therefore also divest from the degenerative system that is killing us all.

Knowing our ancestors ways of celebration, ritual, ceremony remind us to play, create, rest, and nourish ourselves with seasonal foods, music, poetry, dance. All of the things that makes for the heartbeat of community.

Family.

The necessary regenerative revolution depends on our radical joy.

And rituals that help us to connect with our inner worlds, our deepest selves and the selves of our kin. The stuff that weaves the precise inter-being mycelium that make us resilient, strong.

The very things (that aren’t things!) that help us to move from me to we, and to become humble: it is for sure a rite of passage to come to know our pre-colonial ancestors’ ways.

It changes how we hold ourselves on our courageous hike through our lives: we have a whole long line of people behind us who have our back, no matter what we face.

If we are of European decent, connecting with our pre-colonial ancestors enable us to let go of White Cultural loss and cultural appropriation, which plays an essential part of healing white supremacy.

We [peoples of European descent] have our own guiding stories, and they are deeply rooted in the heart of our own native landscapes. We draw them out of the wells and the waters; beachcombing, we lift them out of the sand. We dive for them from the bogs, we follow their tracks through the shadowy glades of the enchanted forest. Those stories not only ground us: they show us what we might have once been..

Sharon Blackie

And when we understand that white supremacy truly is an intentional construct that seeks to oppress and control people of European descent too, simply in different ways, we can begin to notice how all of us have been manipulated into a toxic system that is leading us towards collapse. We can course correct, we can choose to regenerate.

I have come to know that when we connect with our ancestors’ wisdom we connect with a sovereign space inside of us, one that strengthens our spine, replenishes our cells, focuses our minds, fuels our courage, anchor us back into the Earth.

The precise metamorphosis we need for this moment.

This very moment.

Without a shadow of a doubt, we are who our ancestors prayed for, and they are calling us home, loud and clear.

Are you listening? Can you hear their songs?

🌳The Glade is a gentle & nurturing space in the deep forests of our lives where we tune into the wisdom of ancestors, trees, folklore, poetry, Nature’s cycles & seasons. You can join us in the Glade anytime here.