By Patricia Vickers, Director, Mental Wellness
Colonization as a spiritual act is a curse. The spiritual act of colonization dehumanizes both the colonizer and the colonized and operates from principles of unjust domination through control and authority over another. Spiritual acts, according to teachings of healers and medicine people, cannot be reversed. A curse can only be faced, recognized and an antidote used to nullify the curse by lifting the spiritual, emotional and psychological weight of it.
On one of my many visits to a friend and lodge keeper, he told me about one winter when he became very ill and weak. While sick with fever, he saw with his spiritual mind that he had been cursed. In the spiritual state, he saw the person who cursed him and the medicine used to make him ill. He knew the plant medicine he needed for the antidote, and he said he had to crawl in the snow to where the plant medicine grew and then dig to find the roots for the antidote. There was no bitterness in the tone of his voice and no words of resentment or righteousness as he recounted his escape from his near brush with death.
I thought about his story for some time. He focused on the spiritual experience, on the curse and the importance of securing the antidote to cancel the curse. There was no focus on the person who cursed him, only on regaining his health.
Colonization as a spiritual act cannot be reversed. Decolonization is not possible, it is a merely a variation on oppression. When a group, organization or individual sets out to decolonize systems, there must be definitions, policies and someone to confirm whether or not all parties meet the set standards. Decolonization, then, is simply another form of one group dominating another through definitions and methodologies.
There is no invitation to dominate or control in ceremony and ritual; instead, one is encouraged to open the heart-mind to the supernatural so that one is able to see what is actual. Although one is in ceremony with a group, connected with others, when it comes to opening the heart-mind to receive direction, the opening is a relationship of the individual with the supernatural, and there is no one who can tell you how to relate to the supernatural—only that one must be respectful, honest, open and without judgment, acting from all of the principles and values that come from the ancestors to seek peace and freedom. Ceremony and ritual help us to pray for healing for self or healing for loved ones. In ceremony, we are able to see the condition of the heart-mind and the importance of respect for self, respect for those who have harmed us and all beings.
A colleague asked, what is on the flip side of colonization? I responded by asking, you mean the antidote? What is the antidote? First, one must see that colonization is a curse, a curse that leaves no one unaffected. Colonization is a spiritual act. And then, to see the curse and the impact of the curse without blaming the one who delivered the curse. The antidote medicine is respect. Respect for self, for life, for the other, for the supernatural. The pathway in choosing respect as the healing medicine is narrow, and we're unable to see around the corner, to see what may be coming our way. But our sacred stories tell us over and over again that balance, peace, freedom and blessing all come through choosing respect.
