Pretendian: Someone claiming Native heritage falsely in order to either overcome an identity crisis about having mixed ancestry (Native and non-Native) or for personal gain
Am I a Pretendian because I use the word "indigenous?" Um. . .no! First of all, I do have some ancestry from Iroquoian tribes and the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia, but it's not my dominant ancestry, which is Celtic, German and a wee bit Norse. Secondly, the word "indigenous" is not only applicable to Native peoples of North and South America. There was a time when all the peoples of Europe were indigenous, and I happen to belong by ancestry and marriage to two groups.
By blood, in terms of European descent, I'm descended from three indigenous Celtic peoples called the Irish, the Scottish Gaels, and the Welsh. By marriage, I belong to my husband's tribe from Montenegro, the Njegushi. The tribal peoples of the Balkans are some of the few indigenous peoples who survive in Europe.
Why do I separate the terms Eastern Orthodox Christian and "indigenous" in the description of my blog? That's simple. My Eastern Orthodox Christian faith is one single tradition for me, a tapestry woven of many traditions from both my European ancestors and the ancestors of my husband's people. But I find it important to point out the indigenous thread of this tapestry, because many earth-honouring traditions are present in indigenous practice of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, and these traditions have often been misunderstood and vilified by three groups within the Orthodox Church today. Those three groups are: (1) new converts to Orthodoxy who come from evangelical traditions, and think that many indigenous Gaelic traditions, for example, are New Age or Pagan; (2) a pan-Slavic movement in Orthodoxy today largely fueled by the Russian expression of the faith, in which there are many zealous individuals who think that indigenous cultural traditions have no place in the life of an Orthodox Christian; (3) a Greek Athonite movement, made up largely of laypeople attracted to the Greek Mount Athos traditions of Orthodoxy and traditions popularised by Elder Ephraim in America, which also tends to misunderstand and demonise anything that seems different, including Western Rite Orthodox traditions.
So, I draw attention to two things: (1) The indigenous traditions both of the Balkans and of Celtic people are so deeply woven with Orthodox spirituality that you can't extract those traditions from the practice of the Orthodox faith without doing serious spiritual damage to these faithful; (2) the cultural appropriation of Gaelic practices and what survives of Welsh traditions by the New Age has caused so much confusion that people who demonise these ways, from an ex-evangelical perspective, are out of their depth and frankly quite wrong in their opinions. When I was newly Eastern Orthodox, I was influenced by two priests, both ex-evangelical converts, to jettison the Gaelic culture which I had rediscovered and adopted in my life, because it "wasn't Orthodox." I was told that replacing it with the prayers in the Jordanville Prayer Book would be enough.
Submitting to what those two priests told me caused me to tear a huge hole in my soul, a terrible rift in my spirit. Becoming the kind of Orthodox Christian those guys expected me to be was NOT enough AT ALL! It did me such great harm, giving up essentially what was part and parcel of daily life in which every moment was hallowed by prayer, even household activities like turning on the oven, that my spirit withered up and I almost left the Church. Since that time, although I have a very good father confessor now in my current Orthodox parish and I've left those other two priests way behind, I still feel fundamentally distrustful of Orthodox spiritual fathership. I have long since gone back to my Irish anamcara (soul-friend, spiritual father) who comes from the Gaeltacht (the name of several Irish Gaelic-speaking areas of Ireland); when it comes to deep spiritual questions about the Gaelic aspects of my practice of the Orthodox faith, I therefore turn to him. As a Gaelic-speaker, he understands these things and why it makes a difference to chant the Our Father, the Angelic Salutation, and the Breastplate of St. Patrick in Irish. A Gaelic-speaker understands the necessity of saying special blessings through the prayers of the Theotokos and St. Brigid when lighting the first candles and incense of each day, or when lighting the stove. He understands the importance of creating my own sacred songs, not only singing the set hymns of the Church. He also understands the place of artistry and creativity in home paraliturgical worship, and how sacred it is to worship at an icon shrine outdoors.
An ex-evangelical or ex-Catholic who is a product of the American educational system, which is essentially founded on WASP notions, just doesn't get it, not in my experience. However, I must point out in all fairness that my current Orthodox pastor and father-confessor has not "drunk the Kool-Aid" of the American educational experience. He actually has a very fine education, and is an educator himself. He has a grasp on Irish church history as well as an appreciation for Western indigenous heritage. He himself has explored his own heritage, which is a blend of Norse and Sephardic! But aside from people like him who are very well educated, I've run into a lot of ex-evangelicals and ex-Catholics in the Orthodox Church whose understanding of history and ability to research these matters leave quite a bit to be desired.
"But it's all one faith!" exclaims my current pastor. "The idea that the faith is all divided up along ethnic traditions is a fallacy." That all depends on what we mean by the word "one." It's one faith in terms of all Orthodoxy holding the same dogma and doctrine. In both the East and the West, there is a lot of oneness in liturgical seasons and traditions in the Divine Services, though the flavours slightly vary. But Orthodoxy is not completely "one" when it comes to daily practice of the faith by ordinary people, or to variety in liturgies, if by "one" you mean a homogenous approach defined by only one ethnicity in the Church. Ironically, the oneness of Orthodoxy is threatened when certain cultural and social traditions being used in Orthodox life--be they Serbian, Russian, Greek, or (insert prejudiced Eastern European ethnicity here)--are hailed as "truly Orthodox" while traditions from the Western Orthodox side are looked down upon and discouraged. Nor is true "oneness" of our faith expressed, when Celtic-descended indigenous people in the Balkans, like the Vlachs, are condemned by certain Orthodox jurisdictions as being practitioners of witchcraft. It's not "one faith" either when American new converts look at my celebrations of seasonal festivals from my ancestral traditions, or look at the colourful stones and Trinity knots on my Irish-style icon shrine to St. Brigid of Kildare, and accuse me of being "pagan." Nobody has accused me of that for a long time, because they found out quickly that I am a fierce defender of my ancestral heritage in Orthodoxy. However, the times they did accuse me of that really hurt and sometimes, after hearing such things, I wouldn't attend church for a while.
The aforementioned two priests, in my first three years of being in the Church, who tried to rip all of my heritage out of me in the name of making me "purely Orthodox" did damage that has taken years to heal. To be fair, I am the one who allowed them to do that, so hearken to me now when I advise caution when you are navigating your spiritual journey as a new Orthodox Christian. Don't accept everything people tell you at church without question, not even everything the priest tells you. Pay attention to your gut feeling if something doesn't feel right. Be watchful about whether or not the things you are being taught or told produce the fruits of the Spirit. It's not that you can't generally rely on teachings in Orthodox churches; it's that there are quite a few people out there who spread incorrect ideas because they have zeal without knowledge.
Eastern Orthodoxy is rich, nuanced, and varied in the cultural expressions of its practice. People who try to say that this variety doesn't exist are simply adopting Russian or Greek expressions of Orthodoxy and declaring those to be a standard that must be adhered to, rather than allowing for a rich tapestry of dress, language and hymnody in the various expressions of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Western Rite expressions are actually part of that richness, including Celtic traditions from Gaelic and Welsh people and Old English traditions from seventh, eighth and ninth-century Saxons. To be sure, surviving Gaelic traditions have Catholic and Protestant influences that anyone with discernment and education knows how to spot and adjust for Eastern Orthodox practice, but for the most part, pure Gaelic Christian tradition is founded in the golden age of the saints in Ireland and Scotland, before the Great Schism of 1054. In general, the Celtic traditions in Ireland, Scotland and Wales are also more influenced by Eastern Christian spirituality than other Western traditions before the Schism. So, dismissing them as "Papist" and therefore "not Orthodox," as one Greek diaconissa (deacon's wife) did once, is the true fallacy.
So, to return to my answer of the titular question in this article, I'm not a Pretendian. I honour my Native American ancestors, but I don't pretend to belong to their particular cultural traditions since I've not been raised with those or with Iroquoian or Algonquin people. I can, however, connect with the indigenous Saxon, Gaelic, Welsh and Norse traditions of my northern European ancestors. I also inadvertently end up doing many things that are Balkan, things that would be recognised by my husband's people, like censing the house and gardens every day at home, because of some similarities between Balkan and Celtic traditions.
These, then, are my indigenous ways. Indigenous does not just refer to Native peoples in the Americas or Africa. It refers to any people with their own deeply embedded culture, language, religion and societal/familial traditions before being conquered by an invading or colonising group which tried to eradicate them. The Christians of pre-schism Britain were indigenous before being conquered by Germanic invaders. Then, those people, the descendants of the Saxon invaders, were indigenous before being conquered by the Normans.
Both Celtic and Saxon cultures blended beautifully with pre-Schism Christian teaching, which was what we call Orthodox. The Saxons, Gaels, and Britons blended their languages, artwork and many other earth-honouring traditions with the New Faith. This is what I have found in my own research over several years. It was only after the Norman conquest and its support of the Roman See in the Great Schism that wisewomen started being doubted and demonised, priests were forced to celibacy, churches were taken away from married priests and their families, monasteries were more segregated between men and women and from farming communities, and misogyny took root in the Western churches.
Separate women and motherhood from the Church, and Her heart grows cold. So do the hearts of people belonging to tribal and clan-based societies where women are honoured and viewed as equal to men. That is my observation and my experience.
One more thing: the core teaching about life in general, in many indigenous cultures, is that there is no separation between sacred and secular life. The sacred permeates every moment, every breath, and even seemingly mundane tasks throughout the day. We are to invite the Creator into all moments, even our sleep. So, in Celtic indigenous practice, just generally, God's presence is invited into the simplest daily tasks like cooking, milking a cow, raking a garden, planting herbs or crops, and even making clothes. Not only is God invited, but the whole heavenly court of angels and saints, beginning with the most Holy Theotokos, the Mother of God. This presence is invited mostly through sacred song in the Celtic languages, such as Gaelic or Welsh, that have been passed down through the ages.
Every second is sacred, every moment in time. Every blade of grass or leaf of the tree hum with Divine energies, which are not to be confused with Divine Essence. The tree is not God, but God's Divine touch and energies and the breath of the Holy Spirit are upon the tree and all nature, including humankind. Does that make sense? This understanding and view of creation, and the inclusion of all creation in daily prayers, is at the heart of Orthodox Christian indigenous approaches to prayer. All life is sacred from its beginning to its end. All creation is connected to the Holy Trinity. The eternal salvific actions of the Trinity have eternally affected all creation. This also, then, is what I mean when I say "indigenous."
Celtic Cross from my back garden shrine
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