Reclaiming Our Traditions

Does This Really Belong to Us?

We talk a lot about appropriation… and we should because our medicines, ceremonies, and teachings have been stolen, watered down, and sold back to us in wellness kits and yoga studios, no context, no consent. That pain is real. That protection is necessary.

But sometimes, I find myself asking: from where my ceremony ideas come from? I do know that some land quietly, naturally and others I invent to the occasion; some of this and some of that. It’s in my bones. The point being is the intention behind it. Love is all it takes.

Does this ALL really belong to us?

Because smudging, sweat, ceremony… these aren’t things one Nation created and others copied. These are things all our ancestors across the world once knew.

In Scotland, they burned juniper and spoke blessings in a practice called saining, cleansing homes and spirits before colonization told them it was superstition.

In Ireland, folks crawled into stone sweat houses to sweat out grief, and illness and after they would have a cold river plunge.

In Wales, they burned mugwort and used smoke and sacred water during solstice transitions. Spoiler alert: their “magic” got demonized too.

And the Romans? They basically built luxury spiritual wellness centres across Europe. Steam rooms, hot baths, and cold plunges, not just to get clean, but to come clean. With gods. With each other. With themselves.

So let’s be honest… It’s not that these practices “didn’t start with us.” It’s that they didn’t start with any of us. Because they lived in all of us.

Sometimes what hurts my heart most isn’t just that people are misusing the medicines… It’s that they don’t even know they once had their own.

Because colonization didn’t just take land. It took memory. It told entire peoples, “You don’t have culture anymore.” And now here we are trying to reclaim ours while watching others forget they ever had theirs.

We’re not just living through appropriation. We’re living through global ancestral amnesia.

And besides… if we’re gonna start gatekeeping everything we think is ours?

Let’s start with bannock. That’s right. Bannock is Scottish. Flour, lard, fire. It came over with the fur traders.

At Naqsmist, our name means “many come together as one.” And our mission is to accelerate the human collective’s understanding that we can think and do different by remembering who we are.

So the real work? It’s not about guarding the fire. It’s about tending it long enough for others to remember they had one too.

Not everything belongs to us. But some of us were born with the knowing that we’d have to carry the remembering until our relatives were ready to wake up. One of my teachers once said “we will sing our songs and tell our stories until you remember yours” and despite the pain I see happening in the world, I also have hope as I witness people waking up to remembering who they are and where they come from.

www.naqsmist.com
#RelationalLeadership #GlobalAmnesia #Naqsmist #RememberWhoYouAre #ThinkDifferentLeadBold #AlsoBannock