Reindigenizing: A pathway through the Polycrisis

I envision Reindigenizing as a multifaceted and comprehensive framework of belonging that addresses the root causes of the global polycrisis. It is also a pilgrimage —a transformative journey— an ongoing process of cultivating deep healing, spiritual resilience, and the wisdom to act with integrity.

It can feel like a difficult word: Reindigenizing. I understand. You are welcome to use a different phrase: rewilding, revitalization, renewal or resurgence. My framework of Reindigenizing is rooted in a well researched fact that our collective survival depends on respecting (and if we have permission, integrating) Indigenous wisdom and technologies. Empowered Tribal Nations or Indigenous communities are tied to a specific geographic area: They possess rich orally transmitted traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), including ways to increase biodiversity and resilience in the face of floods or droughts and ecosystem management practices to increase potency and availability of food, water, fiber, fuel and medicines. This framework seeks to make humans a systems-level animist “keystone species” i.e., a species that feels, thinks and problem-solves for our local ecosystems by considering the wellness of human/wildlife, birds, trees and insects simultaneously.

For me, the framework of Reindigenizing explores what it means to be “Indigenous”. It offers a path to honoring a primal truth: every human being has ancestors who were once Indigenous to a land. While reindigenizing is a multidimensional framework, a deep sense of belonging to the sacred web of life is its foundational fabric.

What reindigenizing is NOT

My call to Reindigenize is not an invitation to become a hunter-gatherer,  to live in poverty, to seek to develop compassion for those hwo have less favorable position in the socity, or to start meditating, praying, or drumming in ways that we don’t have permission and training to engage in. It is also not simply a call to move away from corporate profits, over-production, and excess consumption towards simplicity, degrowth and local economies. It is much more juicy, deep and joyous. Many have already spoken about the necessity of recognizing and saying “no” to the late-stage capitalism that has landed us where we are. But what do we want to continue to have in our lives? What will nourish us? Reindigenizing is a call to respectfully and humbly reintroduce healing modalities, spiritual technologies, values and skills that have been lost in the process of modernization.

A fundamental building block

Lands and ecosystems are alive, sentient and intelligent: they have their own will. They recognize who loves, respects and tends to them with an ethic of sacred reciprocity. Immigrants, settlers or colonizers who are living away from their ancestral lands and who have lost active connection with their own Indigeneity, must help revitalize Indigenous languages, spiritualities, ecological knowledge systems, governance traditions, and ways of life that were suppressed due to colonialism.

Reindigenizing, therefore, includes the ability of tribal nations in the U.S. and Indigenous tribes across the world to regain their sovereignty over lands and ecosystems that they were keystone, inextricable and sacred parts of, and that were forcibly taken from them.

Four layers of ceremonial belonging

My definition of Reindigenizing upholds the possibility of healing and belonging at four levels. The path of Reindigenzing includes restoring  sacred belonging to (i.e., kinship) and spiritual communication with

1. our “individual” bodies and hurting parts of our heart-minds

2. our human communities (across difference)

3. the local ecosystems and more-than-human world

4. the invisible realms and spiritual forcefields

These four layers are all crucial common components of “Indigeneity” that I am exploring in depth in my upcoming book. Here, I simply want to emphasize for those who are new to the path of Reindigenizing: these four layers are not faced in a “linear” way. We spiral through these four interconnected and interdependent layers. We must pay attention to all of these aspects but some of these layers will seem more approachable to us than others when we first embark on this pilgrimage.

Trauma Healing & Reindigenizing

The relationship between trauma healing and Reindigenizing is like the one between a chicken and an egg. Without trust in our human communities, or the deeper mystery and intelligence of more-than-human realms, we can not heal our traumas. Without looking at our shame, guilt, grief, rage, fear and stuckness, we will have a hard time trusting other human beings or the bigger universe and invisible realms. How will we know the message of the rivers and mountains if we cannot hear the pain of our own sacred body and mind? Initially, for modern humans stuck in cycles of being exploited by the mainstream oppressive and capitalist systems, trauma healing might feel like a portal that must be passed through in some way to begin the journey of Reindigenizing. Ultimately, a wholehearted embrace of animism and shamanism aspects of our ancestral lineages, regardless of how much we need to search to identify these aspects, is a core aspect of Reindigenizing.

Reindigenizing economically, politically & organizationally

The journey of reindigenizing will not be complete for me without humans consciously examining our relationships with money, technology and speed, food, lifestyle, policing, education, conflict/law, governments and land ownership. In practical terms, it means that we can Reindigenize our families, communities and organizations in a way that honor the four layers of belonging mentioned above. For example, I have explored how Western Buddhism can be Reindigenized.

Let us start where we are

We can start from where we are right now. This spiraling journey of reindigenzing is one of spiritual healing, rediscovery, empowerment and joy. I refer to this journey as one that “spirals”, as we are never done with the process of grieving or healing, or with the endeavor of belonging—our actions in the socio-political world enable us to spiral around these topics, with each new turn providing us with a new insight or experience.

An alive Earth can be greeted and cherished as a relative, a beloved friend, and an ancestor. As a Zen Buddhist teacher, I understand that we are not just interconnected or interdependent; we are inter-being, a term coined by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh to describe the concept that “you are me and I am you.” When one is in this state of consciousness, there is no “other”; there is only “one body.”

Reindigenzing encompasses a spiritual, psychological, cultural and socio-economic knowing that humans, regardless of our ancestry, belong to and can spiritually communicate with a sacred and beautiful web of life.