Contemporary conspiracy theories and older witchcraft beliefs have a lot in common. Both are networks of ideas, mostly unconnected with each other, but linked by tenuous theories. This comparison has been explored by a team of researchers at UCLA and Berkeley using AI and folklore to map the key people, things, and relationships in thousands of social media posts.
Continue readingNews Commentary
Place names
Indigenous people frequently and correctly point out that Indigenous place names in North America are based on geographical features or things that happened in that place, whereas settler place names in North America are either named after the first person to settle there, or a place in Britain or Europe. This is true.
What’s more, the place names in Britain and Europe are named after geographical features, things that happened there, Pagan deities, and previous inhabitants’ names for the place. So it makes no sense to transplant them to a place with different geographical features (though I assume people did it for nostalgic reasons).
Continue readingOrange Shirt Day
I’m wearing my orange shirt from the Woodland Cultural Centre today, Orange Shirt Day, in honour of residential school survivors and all those who didn’t make it home.
Continue readingIndigenous resources
In the wake of the awful discoveries of unmarked graves in residential schools, more and more Canadians want to learn the truth about the destruction of the cultures and languages of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and the theft of their lands.
I have created a new resources page with links to websites where you can learn more about Indigenous culture and issues, and identified the key resources to get started on your learning journey.
If you only have time to interact with a few things on this list, check out the ones with a star next to them.🌟
Continue readingBryson Syliboy interview
For the ones who did not come home
Thread a bead for me,
Not a rosary:
A bright bubble of blood
From that river in flood
Between the worlds.
Carve a flute for me,
To breathe a memory,
Thread a song from the air,
Where the land is bare
On that distant shore.
Hold a hand for me,
Dream a dream for me,
Of summer days I cannot see,
Woven beneath the oldest tree,
Beyond the door.
Light a fire for me,
Down by that inland sea
Where the stars drink the night
And a bright scarf of light
Dances in the sky.
By Yvonne Aburrow
©️Yvonne Aburrow, 2021. Repost only with clear written credit to me. Please include this copyleft notice and all the information below as well.
The imagery in this poem is Pagan imagery (the World Tree, the river between the worlds in The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, the land of the dead being over the ocean). The poem is dedicated to the children who did not come home from residential schools. I woke up this morning with the fragment of a dream in my head with beads being threaded on a string as some sort of remembrance ritual. The poem is an attempt to capture the dream.
We all rise together
On solidarity with other people, small acts of kindness, self-care, and activism.
Continue readingArtemis of Ephesus
The news that Hagia Sophia possibly contains eight green marble columns from the temple of Artemis at Ephesus reminded me of this poem I wrote in 2008.
Terra Nullius, Terra Pagana, Terra Indigena
Recently there was an excellent column on The Wild Hunt by Luke Babb, Reckoning with Racism through a Pagan Lens. It was a good analysis of the relationship of Protestant Christianity with racism, and of attempts to use that tradition to justify racism.
In the column’s comments section, some readers said they felt that the evidence offered for the intimate connection of racism and Christianity was insufficient. The disconnect seemed to stem from a conception of racism as only being its more extreme manifestations – that is, as actual expressions of violence toward Black, Indigenous, and other people of color – rather than the everyday reinforcement of white supremacy and privilege by those who choose to ignore the fact that they are living in a colonial state that grew rich from the exploitation, dispossession, and destruction of Black and Indigenous communities.
Three major pieces of evidence – the concept of terra nullius, the activities of Christian missionaries, and Indian residential schools – reinforce the relationship between Christianity, colonialism, and racism, and reaffirm the points Babb made in their original article.
» Read the rest of the article at The Wild Hunt
Featured image: native-land.ca
BIPOC Science Fiction & Fantasy
A complete list of Science Fiction and Fantasy by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) would be very long indeed, so I am going to highlight a few of my favourites and add links to more lists.
Dowsing for Divinity 