The Expanse Part 2: The politics of restorative ancestor practices
Moving through the world in dynamic action, relationality, and reciprocity
The last time I wrote for this series, which I’ve lovingly titled The Expanse, I talked about futurism, nonlinear time, and how in reaching towards the future perhaps we can heal, if not change the past; the implication being they’re inextricable in any movement we take—we’re always simultaneously moving in all these directions at once. This feels profound. To travel this way through the world, through life, and through relationships, acknowledging the ways in which we are in all times, at all times. How incredible to realize the potency of malleable time as part of how we may effect change.
I believe that one of the most important pieces of building better futures, and a better present, is in rooting ourselves in our lineages. I say this with an invitation to consider the possibility of this work’s ability to be secular, for those among us who aren’t spiritual; but for those of us who are, our spirituality deepens the knowledge and wisdom that we find embedded within and throughout those histories. I believe this in part because throughout the history of humanity, our ancestors practiced earth-based traditions that built culture, language, art, music, ceremony, and storytelling around relationships and relationality and held a deep understanding of the connections between humans and all beings, seen and unseen, as well as the land, sea, and sky. We need to know and understand how those traditions in our past are still here in the present, and that we can return to them at any time. Land-based traditions of reciprocity and relationality are not the sole purview of Indigenous cultures—when we believe that, we tokenize Indigenous Peoples in very dangerous ways. Part of that is in the way we’ve become disconnected from our past and all the knowledge it contains; and how we continue to remain disconnected because we believe that it’s gone, not ours to have, or no longer relevant. I think this often leads to feelings of not belonging anywhere, lost hope, or despair. Because of this, when we do attempt to build some sort of spiritual path, we’ll often start by taking what isn’t ours, from others. Yet when we’re able to combat despair and remember and reconnect to our ancestral traditions and practices (in the ways that Indigenous and Black people have been asking us to do for decades) and commit to their directives on how to do better, we bring the hope for a meaningful life and a better future for all into tangible, concrete practice. I think that’s when we come to a better understanding of what Indigenous Peoples have been trying to teach us, and we can then come together to dismantle capitalist colonial individualism, white supremacy, racism, extractivism, exploitation, consumerism, and all other forms of oppression. Re-rooting ourselves in our lineages and the land and connecting to each other is liberatory work.
In part one of The Expanse, I briefly touched on some of my past work, a course about connecting to ancestral lineages and traditions. So I thought I would begin with an excerpt of my lecture at Roundhouse of the Ancestors: Death Work & Death Care in Celtic Polytheism in 2021. The text for this material is built from a four-week course I taught twice a year for three years beginning in 2018, titled Restorative Ancestor Practices, at Madrona House Apothecary here in Seattle. It’s my hope that you find some relevance and resonance within these words for yourself.
ON ORIGINS
I imagine my experience of enchantment and connection to the land is a familiar story to many. It began in my animist childhood when I innately understood animals, stones, trees, and clouds to be people with histories and families, just the same as me. This quickly grew into an irrepressible urge to learn about my own family’s language, culture, and broader history—for whatever reason, I knew this was incredibly important. And it’s not just important, it’s political. I’m a settler identified as white with a complicated lineage living on Turtle Island (the so-called US), on land that was stolen from Coast Salish peoples (in so-called Seattle). My more recent ancestors' arrival in the last 150 years to the land where I now live is fraught with complications, but thanks to my grandmother’s teachings I learned about these things at a young age. So over the course of my entire life, I’ve been trying to find my way through connection to lineage and land in right and respectful ways, ever since. What I felt but couldn’t articulate then, and know very well now, was how my family’s purchase into whiteness had eventually erased language, culture, heritage, wisdom, and right ways of living with each other and the land. This is an origin story to many of our shared and overlapping contemporary situations, but it is not the story of our origin. For that, we must travel further into our past, but also into our future.
WHAT IS “RESTORATIVE” ANCESTOR PRACTICE, & WHY IS IT POLITICAL?
So the title of this talk, or manifesto, is Beyond the Altar: The Politics of Restorative Ancestor Practices. And it's called this because I believe as spiritual people we walk through the material world in ways that are necessarily spiritually defined, but I'm interested in addressing how this work unravels and unwinds in all areas of our lives, our communities, and our work. If we believe time to be nonlinear—that we are already ancestors and our descendants are also already ancestors, and the work moves across time—then we believe this work not only changes the future but the past, also. This is a profound realization, in regards to understanding the depth of what we mean when we say we’re planting seeds that we’ll not see sown in our lifetime.
It’s my belief the root of our movement through the world begins with our understanding of who we are and where we come from. This is a foundation of ancestor work. Ancestor work is spiritual, but it is also very practical. Through the hard work of acknowledging, recognizing, and naming our ancestors and our cultural pasts, good and bad, we begin to unravel that work again, outward in all directions of our lives. This work is deeply personal, but hopefully, those changes within us lead to changes beyond us.
To me, the restorative part of restorative ancestor practices means that every aspect of the way we live in the world, and move through it, is affected by the ways we rebuild the missing parts of ourselves. Knowing there are few unbroken lines from the past to the present, we do this by connecting to—if not striving to rebuild—lineage, language, culture, art, music, and tradition. By ancestor practices I mean a connection to cultural or spiritual ancestry and kinship that has nothing to do with DNA or so-called “blood lineage” which is a racist dog whistle. What I mean is, some of these practices may be culturally ancestral to us in one way or another, or we’re simply drawn to them for various reasons, but we find ourselves aligned with the cosmology and the cultural tradition of an ancestral spirituality. And when we align ourselves with any long standing lineage, we are engaging all of our ancestors of that same lineage (or lineages, when we are accessing multiple traditions as many of us are or will be). So restorative ancestor practices to me means the ways in which we reconnect to these things in respect and in reciprocity and in ways that change us and the world around us for the better. Re-rooting ourselves in a better understanding of our various and varied traditional cultures increases our literacy, respect, and understanding of—and solidarity with—a multitude of others. So personally, connecting to the various roots of my ancestors has helped me understand the traditions and practices of other people in the ways that they’re similar, but also in appreciation of the ways that they’re different.
So how does our spiritual work show up in the world through our actions; how do our beliefs, ethics, and philosophies lead to action beyond the altar. To me this phrase acknowledges that our work is political because our spirituality has material effect and impact. Our actions must reflect our understanding of the actual histories of our lineages (both abstract and concrete) and demonstrate our commitment to our shared social responsibilities. For example, when Indigenous People of Turtle Island explain the importance of relationships, protocols, and responsibilities on the lands where I live, learning the folklore of lands across Europe that illustrate people’s relationships, protocols, and responsibilities provides a concrete demonstration for how I’m able to rightfully honor the relationships and responsibilities Indigenous People describe. Or, when Indigenous Peoples talk about how lands and ancient monuments throughout the world are sacred and filled with important wisdom and knowledge, it compels me to learn ancestral histories that inform me how the lands and ancient monuments of my ancestors were also sacred and filled with wisdom and knowledge. In drawing these throughlines, the conviction that it is my duty and my responsibility to stand with those who are on the front lines of protecting the land, sea, and sky everywhere becomes more tangible.
I want to believe that strengthening our ethics through the sacred means that we stay consistent between what we believe, spiritually; and the way we act, politically. In a world that is not yet truly post-colonial (colonialism is still very much occurring and present); that is globally ravaged by racism, capitalism, extraction, and exploitation; there is no action, expression, or belief that is not political. Even claiming to be apolitical is a relational statement that would not exist without the presence of the political; therefore it is also…political.
I don’t think there are clear answers or absolutes to what this work should look like; and I think this changes with time as our world, and we, also change. Even what we talk about today, in regards to the shape of our reconnection and revitalization practices, will itself change over time with new issues, new conversation, new information, right? That’s how it should be. This work is not static or set in stone.
HOW CAN ANCESTOR WORK LEAD TO POSITIVE IMPACT IN OUR LIVES & COMMUNITIES
I believe connecting to our ancestors and traditions reroutes and rewires our way of looking at the world, our lives, and relationships; and most importantly, the narratives we have them all. It also reframes our ideas about the structure of society and community.
Who are we without ancestors? What is the future without us?
A life in which we are engaged with our ancestors and their traditions hopefully breaks down our assumptions about time and effect to consider the impact of our actions upon the future in a tangible way. What world do we want to leave for our descendants, how do we set them up for a future that benefits them, so they have the ability to make a better world for their descendants, too?
Working with and reconnecting to our (multiple and varied) ancestors and traditions is an act of anticapitalist political resistance in our refusal to engage in ongoing erasure of histories, and the exploitation of land and people. As we embrace relearning these traditions and heal our ancestral severances and disruptions, we work towards building our resilience and capacity for self-examination; the foundation needed to begin nurturing our community through reciprocity and authenticity.
THE LAND, SEA, AND SKY
What does reciprocity with land, spirits, Gods, and the world of beings whether human, animal, plant, fungi, or mineral look like in our everyday life?
This may simply be my personal read, or practice, of my own ancestral lineages and lore. But in animist folklore (which, “folklore” directly translates to “the wisdom of the people") from around the world, I see acknowledgements that all beings and places, seen and unseen; animal, vegetable, and mineral; are persons with inherent life and spirit; that all things live even if they don’t appear to be animate. This means we must reckon with an accountability that extends our commitments and relationships not just to other humans, but to all other beings, places, and things; and there are consequences to our actions. Memory itself extends beyond the hearts of minds of the people we know to become an embodied and indelible memory held by the land, sea, and sky themselves. There are ancestors of this land whom I interpret to be the ancestors of all beings; humans, spirits, plants, animals, stones, earth, and so on.
How do we build a relationship to the land? By learning and respecting the history of place, and its people, only some of whom happen to be human; by observing daily and seasonal cycles; through listening, engaging, and communicating—this is about developing a relationship, like any other. Visit areas you're drawn to, often, to understand why you're attracted to them and pay attention if they don't feel welcoming—not all places are for us.
How do we give back? Look for neighborhood groups or orgs you can join to tend garden patches, urban farms, or greenbelt restoration; seek out local environmental activism or climate justice organizations, mutual aid groups, and social justice organizations you can work for, donate time and/or money to, and signal boost. If they are Indigenous or Black and POC-led and center Indigenous decolonization and Land Back, all the better. If there's a program or place to volunteer ir send donations or rent to your local Indigenous tribe and other local Indigenous organizations whose land you're on, do that and amplify them. Appreciation is one thing, but action is another and it is our responsibility to not sit idle in our relationship to people, land, skies, and waters.
Our ancestry is invariably broad-ranging, multicultural, and multi-ethnic; embodying a multitude of lived experiences, spiritualities, politics, class identities, sexuality, and gender. As we work towards reconnection, justice, liberation, and right relationship to each other and the land, we must remember and acknowledge our ancestors who did the same. They were there, just as we're here now; and as our descendants are doing the work alongside us in the future. This work is nonlinear, outside of time, and deeply collaborative. Embrace the ancestors, and don't let anyone tell you that you don't or can't have them and their knowledge. They have already claimed you!