Today I Choose Love.

I choose to love my past, present and future.

I choose to say all the words I need to say with love.

This has been a difficult place for me to get to especially with this topic. The topic of spirituality. I will be touching one practice we see today.

As a girl, I was raised to honour everything around me. The green grass out my bedroom window, my friends, strangers on the street, trees, water little spiders and grasshoppers.

It was never a question of why, I just knew it needed to be done.

Traditional medicines were no different. Medicines were grown with love by our Mother, they were picked with good intentions, they were weaved with good thoughts and prayers, they were burned to cleanse my soul and ease my thoughts, and the smoke spread around my home with a feather gifted to my family from a crow.

Today, Sage, is commercially grown, it is no longer grown in the habitat being nurtured by our Mother. You can buy a commercially produced Sage Smudge Stick Kit for $35.99 on Amazon. Feather, Shell and Sage all included. All items that come from the land and have energy tied to them.

You can go to your local corner store and buy a pack of cigarettes filled with what was once a healing medicine, Tobacco. It has been chemically dowsed to forget its origin.

These are just a few traditional medicines that I grew up with that have been abused and commercialized to fulfill western needs.

The first time I saw a person use a non-Indigenous person use a “Sage stick” was at a music festival while she was intoxicated. She was in the friend group but I didn’t know her well enough and frankly I wasn’t confident enough to correct someone on my own culture (oppression, am I right?). It’s something that has stuck with me since that day.

Smudging for us is in the realm of going to a temple, it is sacred, it is a means to pray and cleanse our spirits. It is not a stick to be waved around while you are drunk.

In fact, Sage has the ability to bring in positive energies but it also has the ability to bring in negative energies if it’s not grown or used properly.

From the time it is planted, picked, dryed and used. It absorbs all the energy that has been put into it. What type of energy do think a factory produces? A person who doesn’t care about the plant? What type of energy does financial value put into it?

Sage shouldn’t be used in a drinking household, I was raised that if you drink in your home you are allowing bad energy in to begin with; so add a smudging practice in.. you might be in trouble. Drinking wasn’t allowed in my family home, I wasn’t allowed to smudge if I drank.

Memories of cleansing my energy fill my mind.

In my childhood home, if I was having a bad day my grandma would say “go get the smudge bowl” and we’d smudge together. On weekends she would take the same bowl and cleanse our home.

This medicine, these teachings are far beyond on some spiritual fad.

It is an honour that some won’t understand, to be able to use Sage freely. Smudging wasn’t banned under the Potlatch or the Sundance ban but as part of “Government Assimilation Policies” it was outlawed like all Indigenous practices and spiritual traditions. To “remove the savage out of the Indian”. We were killed for trying to use our spiritual practices but today, you will see unknowing or unacknowledging Instagram spiritualist using the medicine as if they discovered it, as if it wasn’t considered “savage”.

As Indigenous people we still struggle to use this medicine anywhere (Thunder Bay 2016, Regina 2017). I don’t want to sit and be a complete pessimist about the topic because we are seeing forms of reconciliation take place. Conversations are happening, smudging protocols and guidelines are being made. I wasn’t with my Ancestors when they were hiding our practices and trying to do them underground but I’m grateful that they fought to get here. To this place, where I do exist, where my voice can be heard and I can provide knowledge.

But it’s been hard for me to not feel some level of anger or resentment (I’m working past it) but it’s also up to me to teach those who will listen and I will forget the ones who don’t care enough to listen.

So before you buy a Sage stick or kit from some “Native American” store run by non-Indigenous people or online at Amazon. Remember that you are participating in Cultural Appropriation.

If you are lucky enough to have an Indigenous friend and you feel it’s appropriate, ask them for guidance.

As an Indigenous person, I have felt the pain of the lack of respect my people have felt for centuries. When it comes to spirituality, look at the origin story of the practices you are using. Give credit and honour the cultures and people who have blessed the world with their practices.

Miigwetch (Thank you)