Hunger for ancestral stories isn't an accident.
The stories are part of the way forward from here.
I’ve been having a lot of trouble ‘fitting back in’ to the world since I left the wilds of Argyll last year. And I’ve fought it quite a bit. I keep trying to reweave myself back into work and society as it is and it won’t seem to hold.
This week I came across a brilliant organisation and reading their work I began to understand why I was struggling. I cannot go back to doing things the old way; we cannot keep going.
Many of us are the products of ancestors who were the cogs of empire, pushed away from the places they had existed in for centuries. Moved off forcibly or economically from places their feet and guts had intimate relationship with, a landscape they knew and were known by, to be the extractors only from this new landscape of North America. This landscape that also knew different feet who were killed or pushed off. So many of us are longing for that connection to the landscape again.
That’s why the stories about the original peoples of our ancestral homelands are magnetic. We are so thirsty for their connection, their belonging, their knowing of how to be in relationship with nature not separate and above it. They knew the gods of where they were from and what they wanted of them. It has been such a gift for me to delve deeply into that space. To spend three years with my cells in the landscape of Scotland re-learning how it feels to be there. It’s been so impactful and I’m thrilled to be writing my novel imagining a bit more of that world. I want my work to be a way of allowing others to share it with me, and be inspired to find their own ways of noticing and retaking their position as part of nature, not just an observer, wherever they find themselves.
But we can’t just stay in the past. We have to bridge the gap between there and here. Maybe this is one of the reasons I was strongly called to move back to Canada. To start construction of my bridge. We have an amazing opportunity now to reclaim relationship with place not out of necessity but out of intention. We can recognise the impacts of colonialism on us and the indigenous peoples of the land we now live on.
Here are some of my thoughts on what we might be able to do:
We need to be re-learning how to be in relationship with nature. Start however you can. Learn the names of things. Notice. Grow things. Think about the journey of your nourishment. Think about your impact on the more than human world. What ever you can manage will help.
Support indigenous people as they are reclaiming their connection to their ancestral landscapes here. There is a lot to be returned, trauma recognised, and reconciliation that needs to be done. Invest in their leadership and knowledge.
Social change has a small rudder and takes a while to turn. We need to be diverting whatever resources we can from continuing down the business as usual, extractive path to creating community and building resiliency. I’m really thinking about this one right now!
What would you add?
Ok back to my story, which I will now think about as being part of the bridge. Thanks for being here.
Susie