🔥
10d • 🗨️ General discussion
July is National Indigenous History Month
July is National Indigenous History Month
This is a beautiful time to celebration Indigenous Culture no matter where we are located across the globe. In America, The Truth about The Indigenous is heavy territory, but an important one.
Here's an honest look:
The historical truth
- Population collapse: Estimates of the pre-contact Indigenous population of what's now the U.S. range widely, but by the late 1800s, disease, warfare, and displacement had reduced Native populations by somewhere between 80-95%. Most of that wasn't intentional biological warfare (though there are documented instances) — it was largely disease compounded by starvation, war, and the destruction of ways of life that let people survive and recover.
- Broken treaties as policy, not accident: The U.S. government signed hundreds of treaties with tribal nations — and violated the vast majority of them, often as soon as the land in question became valuable (gold, farmland, resources). This wasn't occasional bad faith; it was close to the norm.
- Forced removal: The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and events like the Trail of Tears forcibly relocated tens of thousands of people, with thousands dying along the way. This was official U.S. government policy, not rogue action.
- Cultural erasure as explicit strategy: Starting in the late 1800s, the U.S. ran boarding schools with an openly stated goal — "kill the Indian, save the man." Children were forcibly removed from families, punished for speaking their languages, and often abused. This continued into the 1960s-70s in various forms. The last of these federally-run boarding schools didn't close until relatively recently, and a U.S. Department of Interior investigation only formally documented and acknowledged this history in 2022.
In relation to this, the influence of the culture can be felt across the globe.
North America
- Smudging (burning sage, sweetgrass, cedar, or tobacco to cleanse a space or person) — widely practiced by many Plains and other Native nations, and now extremely common in mainstream "spiritual" spaces. This is one of the most appropriated practices out there — white sage specifically is also facing ecological strain from overharvesting for commercial sale.
- Vision quests and sweat lodges — ceremonial practices for guidance, purification, and rites of passage, traditionally held by trained knowledge-keepers within specific nations (Lakota sweat lodges, for example, follow protocols that outsiders running "sweat lodge experiences" often don't honor).
- Medicine wheel teachings — a framework mapping directions, elements, seasons, and life stages, used across many Plains nations, now popularized in wellness spaces (sometimes accurately, sometimes not).
- HooDoo is a folk spiritual practice — not a religion in itself — developed by enslaved and free Black Americans, primarily in the U.S. South. It's distinct from religions like Vodou or Santería, though it shares roots with them. Hoodoo is often described as a practice people do alongside whatever religion they hold (historically, often Christianity), rather than a belief system with its own theology, deities, or church structure.
Central & South America
- Ayahuasca ceremonies — used by Amazonian peoples (Shipibo, and others) for healing and spiritual insight, now the center of a global "ayahuasca tourism" industry — genuinely powerful when held by trained curanderos, but also a place where a lot of harm happens from untrained facilitators.
- Cacao ceremonies — rooted in Mayan and Aztec traditions, now widespread in wellness/yoga circles worldwide as a heart-opening ritual.
- Curanderismo — Mexican/Latin American folk healing blending Indigenous, African, and Catholic elements — herbalism, energy work, limpias (spiritual cleansings).
Africa
- Ifá divination (Yoruba, Nigeria) — a complex divination system using cowrie shells or the opele chain, foundational to Yoruba spirituality and diasporic practices like Santería, Candomblé, and Vodou in the Americas — direct ancestor to a lot of what shows up in modern tarot-adjacent divination culture.
- Ancestor veneration — central across many African traditional religions, and carried into diaspora practices (Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé) that blended West African cosmology with Catholicism under colonization.
Australia & Oceania
- Dreamtime/Songlines — Aboriginal Australian cosmology mapping creation, land, and law through story and song — this one is particularly guarded; specific Songlines are sacred and not meant to be shared outside community, which is worth noting as a contrast to more "shared" practices.
Asia (often overlooked in this conversation)
- Shamanism in Siberia/Mongolia/Korea — trance-based practices for healing and communication with spirits, some of the oldest continuously practiced shamanic traditions on Earth.
- Many "New Age" concepts (chakras, energy work) trace to Indigenous South Asian and Himalayan traditions that predate colonial contact and have their own complex relationship with modern Western wellness culture.
Thank you Donna for the opportunity to share.
2
4 comments
July is National Indigenous History Month
powered by
skool.com/paganism-folk-magic-9448
This space is dedicated to Old-School Paganism, Folk Magic and Esoteric Practice for those seeking a deeper understanding of a lived Spiritual Path.
Suggested communities
Powered by