Lakota Medicine Keepers were shackled with balls and chains for holding medicinal sweat lodges.
Colonizers criminalized native ceremonial medicine practices. They were not officially decriminalized till 1978-1979.
There are two important things that we must contend with and digest here.
The first is this dark history. We must move to heal our lineages and understand what brought us to a point where we would allow such things to occur.
The second, is that we must never allow this kind of criminalization of differing medicine paths to occur again.
We are on the verge of this same madness.
It is terribly important to understand this, and to stop holding the belief system that the allopathic way is the only way.
It is not.
The allopathic model kills 250,000-400,000 Americans yearly through “medical error” according to John’s Hopkins University. This includes through drug overdose, poisoning, surgical error, and more. It is the third leading cause of death in the US, and this does not include the humans who are injured and maimed by it.
The allopathic way neglects the wisdom of nature and spirit completely and entirely.
This atrocity must never happen again.
Let us heal the lines, and awaken to truth.
If you choose to follow the allopathic model of heaith, this is your choice. You happen to have the power of the media and state behind you. But, when you stand with those who would persecute others for walking another medicine path, you are the colonizer. You have been colonized, and you are colonizing.
Heal the lines. Heal the lines.
This is why I feel the Women’s Ceremony and Circle work to be some of the most important healing practices that I engage.
How have we severed our relationship to the wisdom lineages from which we all spring?
How have we severed our relationship to the land and to spirit?
How can we heal and reignite the sacred flame, carrying it forward within our heart and soul?
This is the deeper work of our times. As we move to address the sacred wounds and come into deep and abiding alignment with spirit, we make right the wrongs of our history.
We tend to what it most holy.