The word "Shaman" was taken first from Evenk indigenous culture of North Asia by anthropologist and then blended into our western collective consciousness to describe our rising awareness and re-introduction to our human heritage. While the term Shamanic Healer cannot fully describe the many worldwide spiritual practices of Energy Medicine it does provide a starting point. Unfortunately, "Shamanism" and "Shamanic" have been used as labels to package ancestral practices without acknowledging their traditions of origins or the cultural appropriation of vending these traditions. In my sessions and trainings I offer anti-oppression tips and opportunities for healing justice. We are meeting the collective consciousness where it's at and gently shifting our language around "shamanism". We are slowly replacing the word “shamanism” with “animism” to align with our social justice philosophy.
On Cultural Appropriation and Healing Justice For me, the way to be a responsible and ethical healer is to transparently address the challenges of Cultural Appropriation and the Commodification of Ancestral Healing Traditions when offering Animistic Healing and Energy medicine. As I have been trained and initiated into Ancestral Healing Traditions that are neither my biological ancestry nor direct cultural ancestry I often journey through these complex waters.
It is not enough for me to say "we are all love and light". For the truth is while we are indeed all love and light we are not all treated equally. Social justice is still a much needed movement! Select few of us are privileged with the financial resources, education/training, citizenship, time, gender, physical stamina, etc to become a practitioner of our own Ancestral Healing Traditions never-mind someone else's. And this privileged is often at the expense of the poor people, people of color, and indigenous people who developed these systems of healing.
I say this not to shame or blame anyone but to acknowledge my responsibility to ask myself: "What does it mean for me in my own cultural, political, economic, spiritual and personal context to offer these healing traditions to others. AND how do I give back to the communities and peoples who have shared and taught me so that we are in Sacred Reciprocity?"
I am continually redefining my answers to that question. However ultimately I agree that,
"For us, healing justice can be a space where a dialogue around cultural appropriation has a framework, that is, a framework of healing, understanding that appropriation has been central to the formation of many wounds, YET sharing can also be a source of healing. We need many different medicine practices to heal our communities and ourselves and we believe in exchanging and sharing these across differences in order to heal more holistically and collaboratively. We hope through grounding in ethical and politically responsible methods, we can build ways to share (read :appropriate) healing practices that can become ways to heal the colonial wound. That is we hope to re-member ways of sharing across cultures that do not harm each other in the process." -BadAss Visonary Healers
OUR GROVE: Ho we create a container for this training.
Our grove of animistic wisdom is rooted with ideas shared by the Q’ero, original descendants of the Inka priesthood, as well as practices from pagan traditions, contemporary spirit-workers, sorcery, traditions of the African Diaspora, and your own ancestral wisdom traditions that you will uncover in this Path. We are the mighty tree trunks connecting the realms of above, middle, and below. The branches of our grove will grow from additional traditions including the ancestral wisdom traditions offered by guest teachers. Our integrity forms the leaves that exchange the Love and Healing Justice that feed our grove. We uplift models of antioppression and decolonizing with compassion. Together, we do our best to acknowledge the origins of these wisdom-practices, affirm the resiliency of their respective cultures, respect cultural boundaries and find ways to give back to these communities.
I teach a range of different practices. The spiritual technologies that spring up from the ancestral traditions of BIPOC have been developed by long time community members who developed these practices for non-initiates in a "western" context. These folks received approval from their elders to offer these practices. Many of the spiritual technologies I teach were developed by me and other present-day spirit workers. When working with beings like Oshun, I do not teach from my Ifa practice. Instead, I received acknowledgement from the presiding priest of my Ile that Oshun has many roads and works in present-day people's lives outside of the Ifa ritual/temple community. Therefore, this is how we engage Oshun for non-initiates. In terms of Aset-Isis, we approach her as a being who came from cultures that sought to spread her worship to the ends of their empire and beyond. Our engagement with Aset-Isis is not through Khemtic ritual but through gnostic (direct personal) experience. Throughout my career as a private practitioner and teacher I have tithed from tuitions to non-profit organizations designed to rejuvenate the communities and environments of the BIPOC people who contributed to the course syllabus or healing modality. This training's group will decide where my tithes go.