What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.
What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.
Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.
1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.
2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.
3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.
I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™
Can’t agree enough with point #3 especially. That’s a big problem here on Tumblr.
virgo is a healer’s sign. hermes was the god of mercury and the carrier of the sacred caduceus, a symbol appearing in modern day as the symbol of nurses. but none of this is any good if they they must be given the time, space, and respect to practice their own self-care, and let them self-heal. they need quiet from the chaos and problems of other people so they can actually hear themselves think - this is also something they are simultaneously fearful of. they have never been able to find the exact place on their body or mind where the bandage should go. this is also the way that humanity receives the complete scope of the spirit’s service through virgo. when virgos are being ‘self-centred’ enough to self-care, then everybody benefits from the potential wisdom, guidance, and counsel that the mother goddess in this sign longs to return back to you
Armed paramilitary RCMP forces are marching on the Unist’ot’en camp in unceded Wet’suwet’en
territory in northern BC to enforce the interests of an oil company over the rights of the indigenous nation and remove protesters. This is in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. There is limited-to-no cell service and wifi in the area and the media are being held back at checkpoints while almost 40 RCMP vehicles are being sent in and they have at least one helicopter circling the area. The RCMP has been used to subdue and terrify indigenous communities since its inception. I know Canada is a racist colonial state and it is heartbreaking to see this same bullshit still being carried out in such breathtakingly horrific ways.
Please don’t ignore that things like this are going on. By virtue of comparison to the US or the rise of right-wing powers in Europe, Canada gets cut a lot of slack because we have a Prime Minister who goes out on a limb and declares that women are people, too, and is applauded; but his government continues to ignore and ride roughshod over indigenous rights to self-determination and the MMIWG inquiry has been a shambolic disappointment to many almost from the beginning, to say the least.
I’m not even going to get into the environmental or legal debates over the pipeline and the injunction and what’s going on there; the details are out there for anyone who wants to read up on it. But the force and tactics being used right now by the government on behalf of a corporation are unjustifiable.
