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07/04/2006: "Lies, Damn Lies, and Celtic Reconstructionism"
music: Fooling Yourself - Styxmood: Dumbfounded
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Take a moment before you go any further and visit http://www.sioux.org/our_history.html
If you are an American, i.e. specifically a USA citizen of caucasian Indo European descent, you may know a little about the Sioux, the tribes that compose the Nation, and some of its history as written from the perspective of white Americans. It is not my purpose here, however, to emphasize color or race; the emphasis is on language, culture, worldview, and traditional values associated with those three things.
While you are reading the history on the site from the perspective of the Sioux, every time you come upon the word Sioux, exchange the word Celtic. Every time
you come upon the name of particular Sioux tribes, exchange their names with Irish, Welsh, Breton, Manx, Scots Gaelic, or Cornish. Every time you read a reference to the USA, non-Indian or the "white" man, exchange them with the words Imperialist monoculture.
When you do this, if you are educated on the history of the Celtic peoples and their cultures, you will see an amazing (to a white Anglo-speaking American) pattern of similarity develop between the histories of the Sioux and the Celts. Both are cultures struggling to preserve their language and cultural traditions against an Imperialistic monoculture (IMC). Both have suffered in the past at the hands of the IMC. And both have peoples from outside their language and cultural worldviews striving to "recreate" religious traditions from outside the cultures and label them as culturally "authentic".
Perhaps you are an American who realizes that in your genealogy, you have family that hailed from one or more of the Sioux nations. You feel a pull towards this, perhaps even what some would refer to as an inner spiritual calling. You have a need to honor those ancestors in your past. Or perhaps your calling is not ancestral in nature, but one wishing to connect with the living spirit of the land through the native cultures that respect it still today. You may even feel what you call a "godly" calling to do more. How are you going to satisfy these desires?
One way you could do this would be to link up with existing Sioux culture and its resources, begin studying the historical background of the tribes through "Sioux" eyes, begin studying the mythology and spirituality bound up within the Sioux culture and its language. You would realize the importance and the need of the spirituality you are trying to personally develop coming from within Sioux culture and its worldview for it to be considered Sioux. As an outsider with an IMC worldview, you would be incapable of doing this from outside the direct influence of Sioux culture. As you studied the language, the traditions, the history and the folklore, indeed, the culture, you would find your worldview or perspective begin to change. Your respect of the culture, language and worldview would come first, realizing that without these things, your spirituality would not be Sioux.
Another way to attempt to satisfy these desires would be to gather a group of similar Americans of non-Indian descent, begin studying the works of non-Indian writers concerning the Sioux, their tribes, the language, traditions, history, and culture, and start "building" a spirituality that your group would believe to be what Sioux spirituality should be if its development had been uninterrupted by IMC (or Christians, or any other group you wish to insert here), and then start calling it a "re-creation" or "restoration", even though neither is really the case, since what is being "made" now by the non-Sioux in the name of a cultural religion never existed in the first place. You develop little to no functional skills related to the comprehension of Sioux language, you don't visit the cultural lands personally, then you begin to eclectically pick and choose which "traditions" are appropriate for your modern "recreation" of Sioux spirituality and what is not. You introduce you own inspiration and divination practices, proclaiming them to be a part of your religion. Some of you go further and criticize the work of native Sioux speakers as racist, misogynist (woman haters), or marginalize the works because they are pan-Sioux or were not written with your new "recreation" in mind. Anyone defending actual Sioux tribal traditions comes under fire from members of your group because they do not mesh well with your politically correct monoculture worldview filter of what you believe Sioux spirituality should properly be. You then set up websites using Sioux language for your new terms, you claim that your "recreated" Sioux spirituality is actually Sioux culturally as well as religiously, and is indeed a branch of living Sioux culture. You start calling yourself Sioux, then set up organizations like Sioux Against Oppression, Racism, and Neo-Nazism.
Why that's absurd, you would say. Who outside of Sioux culture has a right to do such things and show such disrespect to an extant minority culture struggling to stay alive? The proper answer would be no one. Yet is has happened. The Lakota tribes found it necessary to declare war upon those disrespecting their culture. http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/war.html
More importantly in relation to Celtic cultures, all I have described in relation to the Sioux is happening right now. Don't take my word for it. Go to http://www.paganachd.com/faq/index.html and read it for yourself. Erynn Laurie and Kathryn NicDh�na, two of the self proclaimed elders of Celtic Reconstructionism (CR), have done all I have described and put it together, with the help of some other like minded individuals, into a neat CR FAQ, which some say is soon to become a book.
I am here, not to personally attack these two named writers, or their helpers, but only to shine light on the work they are doing and why I believe a significant portion of it mirrors what has and is happening to native cultures in America today. Two of the three moderators of IMBAS-public, the Yahoo group, Brenda and Bob Daverin, have also contributed to this FAQ and use their positions of list ownership and moderatorship to further its CR agenda and marginalize debate as to the cultural exploitation this FAQ represents. Furthermore, under the CR FAQ recommended reading section, I find the references by NicDhana to Dr. Michael Newton's work as being racist and misogynist a disgusting, uneducated, and misguided opinion offered up by an American non-Celt against a learned man and recognized defender of Celtic culture. Similar references to Alexei Kondratiev's Apple Branch as being misleading are as equally absurd and rejected here. Public apologies to these two noted Celtic scholars and removal of the references in question from the CR FAQ would be the best start in reversing this idiocy.
If one wishes to create a religion, do so. Call it what it is, a creation. Don't call it a living branch of Sioux, Celtic or whatever other minority cultural name you want to identify with just because it fancy's you. If you do, prepare to be called a liar. Strong words, yes, but the Truth has always been a virtue identified with Celtic culture and a virtue from which we on this weblog will not shy away.