When I first started being interested in my Irish Ancestry, I was laughed at. I was a devout Christian at the time, albeit a progressive one, deeply engaged in projects concerning the people of the rain forest who were followers of Christ. When a group of women came together in NY to pool resources, creativity and support the women’s projects in the forest, I expected to feel a sense of relief, to have a break from catering to some of the male ego that had grown out of control in our larger institutions. The kind of male ego that dismisses the women’s desire to gather together independently of them… what could we possibly need to do on our own? The attitude of men who see no need for checks and balances, no need for women’s council, who will actually stand in the way of women coming together.
Instead of relief, what I encountered were women who had taken to defending the male ego. Women who insisted that we could only do what we were told, what we were “allowed” to do. Women who insisted we must follow the leadership of men and of the elder women who were oppressed by them. What I found were women who accused me of not being Christian, of taking other women away from Christ, because I wanted to explore our shared Irish heritage and spiritual history. Yes, truly, this occurred in the US of A, in NYC, in 2007.
It’s a powerful thing – control. Asserting the right over another being whether or not it is permissible for them to have access to their own ancestry is bizarre and I would have said unfathomable, if I had not experienced it myself. The fear that Earth Based Spirituality is not in Christ is as old as the Doctrine of Discovery. This belief was enacted into law by the Catholic Church approving of European Christians’ right to seize lands from, enslave, and murder those of other faiths in particular those who would not renounce their rites or convert to monotheism. We tend to think of this as an issue of skin color, as so many of those oppressed, captured, and slain were brown or black. But as I started to look deeper into my own history, I realized this was not only an issue of what we used to think of as ‘race’.
A year after our failed women’s group, I had a most unusual opportunity. Some friends had invited a Road Man, a man who holds Native American ceremony, to come and facilitate a community prayer. The preparations include months or even a year to plan and require days of laborious set up. In a traditional sense, no one is paid to do this. It is truly a labor of love. All of the work that is done in advance, is all part of the prayer. It is done meticulously and protocols are followed. It is largely believed and demonstrated that the greater the integrity with which one walks leading up to the prayer, the more benefit it will bring to the community. By a series of unusual events, the Road Man did not have a helper for the day of the ceremony, and I was asked if I could step in and accompany him. I was taken aback as this was a coveted opportunity and I had no formal standing within the group. So, with great humility, I agreed.
We spent the day checking the prayer site, getting supplies of cornmeal, herbs, other sacred foods and fire wood. We visited the land, cleaned the area where people would sit, readied the ground where the fire would be lit, and I listened as the man explained carefully how each thing was done and why. While Native traditions and rituals are often kept from Westerners or white people, sometimes deep relationships can be formed across cultural lines when there is an event such as a healing prayer, and in this moment lives change and new friendships are made.
From the first time I was allowed to help build a sweat lodge, it had been ingrained in me: “People died to keep these traditions. We must walk with reverence around these people and these rituals. Their ancestors died so you could be here and go inside this sweat. Do not be disrespectful. Follow the guidelines asked of you, even if you don’t understand them, yet. Each action has a meaning.” I applied this same reverence to the day I spent with this incredibly generous man who shared teachings with me that had been passed down to him from his grandfather and his grandfather before him.
The most surprising moment of the afternoon came as we were driving from the prayer site back to our host’s home for a much needed rest. On the way, the Road Man asked me what my ethnic background was. I hung my head low. We all know the story. White people came from Europe and decimated these people. We gave them smallpox infested blankets, we brought them alcohol to distort their senses, took their land and forced them like slaves, onto small parcels of land that previously had not been ‘owned’. Later, we gave them more addiction in the form of gambling, to ‘make up’ economically for what we had stolen. Shame on us.
I felt like I needed to apologize, and yet, some part of me felt excited at this question, too. I told him what a ‘mutt’ I am – my Father’s side being an amalgamation of Polish, Russian and Spanish Jews and my Mother’s side being Irish, Scottish and English. He seemed genuinely taken aback by my mix and curious what it meant for me to grow up that way and to walk with so many ancestral influences. I don’t remember all of the conversation that unfolded from there. I might have explained how I used to wear a necklace with a cross and a 6 pointed star to show both my parents’ religious heritage and how people used to stop me on the street. “Do you know you are wearing a Cross and a Star of David ?”, they would actually ask. As if somehow I had accidentally put both pendants on the same silver chain unaware of their meaning. But there was no accident, and tempers were flaring between Israel and the rest of the world. And even at 18, I knew that it was important to recognize I came from both of these things. I knew it was my responsibility to make peace with myself and who I was. If I could be by blood, this combination of things, and if I could find peace with that, then surely the world could find peace with that, as well.
I might have shared about that knowing, and conversations with people on the topic, but what I remember most clearly about that conversation was a realization that changed my life forever. He was asking about my Irish heritage and I shared about the family name and as much as I knew, which wasn’t much, about when they came over and from where. It occurred to me in that moment that my ancestors were likely to have been people who had fled their homelands because of famine and religious persecution. And while I was happy to bow my head in apology for the crimes committed against my new Native relatives, by whites as a general rule, it was also now dawning on me that perhaps it was not my direct ancestors who were responsible for the tragedy that befell them. In fact, I suddenly became desperately aware that I might have more in common with this Native man than I ever could have imagined. Our people had both suffered forced migration. We had both endured hatred and discrimination. And we were both still carrying it in our family lines.
Any walls that I perceived between he and I in that moment came crumbling down. Suddenly I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of his pick up truck as a human. An equal. Not the enemy. Laughter and gratitude filled the space between us. In my mind, I remember it as though it was as deep a realization for him as it was for me. Now, I know better, that sometimes good teachers just allow you to think that way.
Since that day, I have been walking towards my ancestors instead of away from them. I have learned how millions of medicine women / medicine people of European descent were also killed under similar orders of the church in the days of the Witches’ Hammer. Those who slaughtered my brown and black brothers and sisters also killed the midwives and herbalists of our Celtic cultures and those who recognized women with the calling to be Priests. I do not pretend that I have not had the privilege of fitting in, with my white skin, to the dominant culture, but I know my relationship with the earth was torn from me, and hidden from me by the legacy of the church and emigration and I have suffered, sometimes quietly, sometimes fiercely, each and every day that I have been exiled from it. I know now on a deeply profound level what my Mother’s tears have truly meant as she recites her poetry … expressing the longing to go ‘home’.
To be continued...
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