The Do You Know Your Stories poster was created for handing out at powwows and other places where white settlers gather to immerse themselves in Indigenous culture. It is freely available for handing out at events or wherever you think people might benefit from connection with this site and exposure to these ideas. Click this link for the Adobe PDF download. If you don’t like this particular poster, you can suggest another, or let it inspire you to create your own!
POSTER TEXT
As settlers of european heritage to Turtle Island (North America) and many other places around the world, we have been described by its Indigenous peoples as ghost-like, haunted, disconnected, sick, anxious, heartless, predatory, and many other similar terms.
Instead of dismissing these characterizations, we benefit by realizing these are the natural consequences from being physically disconnected and spiritually removed from our home places, ancestors, and sacred ways of life in Europe. Most of us have forgotten our stories.
As our sacred stories of life fade, we adopt the so-called euro-centric “civilized” mind that futher disables healthy relationships with Indigenous peoples. Inevitably, we romanticize their assumed noble spiritual connection with the land, unjustly relegate their alive presence to the historical past, or seek erasure of their “savage” threat from our “new” paradise. But all of these perspectives are unhealthy and racist. Once the threat to our supremacy is removed, we are free to appropriate Indigenous culture and identity for our own purpose. We delude ourselves into thinking we are the Natives.
To maintain fragile comfort with these unhealthy attitudes, we are forced to devalue the intrinsic humanity in others. To handle the deep emotional and spiritual conflict of dehumanizing other people, we must assume a cruel, stone-like rigidity of thinking. In short, we must dehumanize ourselves as well.
But we don’t have to choose that path. There are healthier choices and paths of healing that restore our cultural capabilities.
Awakening the Horse People provides people of European heritage with resources to heal ourselves and provide a starting point for reconciling our relationships with Indigenous peoples. We also provide community education and outdoor experiential learning on issues related to Ancestral Recovery, Re-Indigenization, Earth-based Relationships, and Uprooting White Settler Colonialism.
For more information: awakeningthehorsepeople.org
Get the latest updates and resources...
