As Westerners, raised in an era of “progress”, there is often a longing for a deeper sense of connection to others and to the natural world. This longing heralds the awakening of the #indigenous mind, a recognition that the colonized mind is the consciousness behind this sense of separation.

The colonized mind is one which engages in privilege, exploitation, domination and labeling of the “other”.

In order to fully recover from the colonized mind, we must acknowledge and embrace the historical legacies of our ancestral lineages – by whatever race or culture with which we identify. It also invites a militant endeavor to herald change, transformation and healing the ills of #colonization and claiming or reclaiming the traces of the earth-based world view of our ancestral pasts.

This awakening of #indigenous consciousness is not about adopting (sometimes co-opting) a mixed bag of “native” ceremonies and rites, or assuming native-sounding names. This is often the case for those whose indigenous roots have long been forgotten. Call it romancing the indigenous if you will, this quest for indigenousity, says Jürgen W. Kremer, author of #Ethnoautobiagraphy,

…emerges out of the shambles of modernity, the critique and breakdown of assurances about self and other, personal and transpersonal, man and nature, science and inquiry.

Indigenous traditional knowledge is every person’s birthright. And it can be recovered, lineage by lineage. To awaken the indigenous mind within the heart of modernity involves remembering traces of the earth-based world views of our ancestral lineages. The stories and traditions from our ancestral cultures shapes our identities and sense of belonging.

In the interest of decolonizing the mind, it becomes necessary to examine the breaking points in our blood lines  – those wounded places where our ancestors may have suffered loss of connection to place, community, language, traditions, and spirituality.