Overview: I share about the process of recovering one’s indigenous mind and a prayer for all those of European descent to find a way back to their indigenous ancestral roots as a path of healing and repair.

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Preface to Prayer for the Descendants

My name is Atava Garcia Swiecicki, daughter of Julia Garcia and Michael Swiecicki.  My ancestors come from the high deserts of Mexico, the mountains of Northern New Mexico, and the fields, farms and forests of Poland and Hungary.  My ancestors from Europe are Slavic and Magyar.  My family from Mexico and New Mexico are a mix of Spanish ancestry and tribes indigenous to the regions where they lived.  These ancestors have been detribalized and I don’t know the exact indigenous communities that I come from in these regions.

As a young adult in the 1990’s, I had curiosity about my ancestors and their healing traditions, although the practice of traditional medicine from any of my lineages was not part of the culture of my family.   Both my parents grew up during a time when assimilation into mainstream “American” culture was necessary for their survival.  Although my grandparents spoke Polish and Spanish, both of my parents only learned to speak English.  In the same way that our language was lost, many of the healing practices of my grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond also vanished due to the pressure of assimilation.

When I started studying herbalism, I remember wondering about how my ancestors worked with herbs.   I felt called to become and herbalist and was close to enrolling in acupuncture school to study Traditional Chinese Medicine.   Yet a voice (which I now identify as the voice of my Ancestors, although I didn’t know it at the time) kept asking me, “What is the medicine of your own ancestors?”   This question led me first to Mexico to study with curanderas (practitioners of traditional Mexican medicine) and I began a life-long path of studying and practicing curanderismo.  

In a time of personal upheaval, a few years later in 2001 I was guided to a circle of people that changed my life and transformed my relationship to all my ancestors, but especially to my Polish Slavic ones.  After a painful breakup with my herbal mentor that left me lost and confused about my path, by “chance” I happened to discover a brand-new Master’s Program at Naropa University Oakland.  The Indigenous Mind program was dreamed into being by Dr. Apela Colorado, founder of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network.   Dr. Colorado, a woman of French/Frank and Oneida ancestry, had come of age as a member of the American Indian Movement and was one of a very few Native American scholars in Ivy League colleges at the time. Years later, after both surviving the oppressive, colonial dynamics in academia as well as breast cancer, Apela experienced a spiritual awakening that connected her with her French ancestors.  After viscerally experiencing the power of her own indigenous European ancestry, Apela founded an academic program where each student was invited to remember and reconnect with the indigenous ways of their ancestors.  Apela called this process Remembering Our Indigenous Mind.  Indigenous Mind is our original state of consciousness as human beings, one that inherently understands our connection as human beings in the web of life and that knows how to respect and care for earth, water, plants, and animals.  At some point, all of our ancestors lived in an Indigenous Mind state of consciousness, until forces of colonization, wars, plagues, religion, patriarchy, genocide, and capitalism not only erased our ancestors’ connection to the natural world but also forced us to forget our sacred responsibility as human beings, or what indigenous elders call our “original instructions.”

As students of Indigenous Mind, we were asked to remember our indigenous ancestral ways and connect to our ancestors of blood lineage who had been living in their Indigenous Minds.  Dr. Apela Colorado and the ensemble of elders who also guided us in the process believed that even if hundreds of years had passed since our ancestors had been living in their Indigenous Mind, there was a way to find our way back.   It was possible to remember.  To reconnect.  To heal.

Dr. Colorado asked us to choose one lineage to work with during our time in the program.  As a person of multiple ancestral lines, I wasn’t sure which lineage to choose.  The logical choice would be to work with my Mexican ancestors, as I had already been traveling to Mexico, learning Spanish and studying with different curanderas. 

However, my Ancestors had different plans for me and I did not take the easy path and continue to work with my Mexican ancestors.  The Ancestors who beckoned me with repeated signs, signals and synchronicities were my Polish Slavic ancestors.  These Ancestors provided financial support for my tuition, through scholarships I received from two Polish sources.   One day on campus, I was handed an envelope with scholarship funds from an anonymous donor.  Inside the envelop was the image of Lady of Częstochowa, the famous Black Madonna of Poland.  I remember wondering how the donor knew I was Polish.  As it turned out, the Indigenous Mind Program had just received a generous grant from a Polish American woman, and the Lady of Częstochowa image represented her Polish ancestry.  Each of us who were enrolled as students in the founding class of the Indigenous Mind program received scholarship from this Polish donor.

“Pay attention to what shows up.”  Dr. Kimmy Johnson

Kimmy Johnson, one of our core instructors, would repeatedly say this to us students as we grappled with the process of connecting to our ancestors and to our Indigenous Mind.  When I paid attention, I could not ignore the fact that my Polish ancestors were clamoring for my attention.

I had felt resistant about connecting with my Polish ancestors.  My relationship with my Polish-American father was difficult. He had struggled with gambling addiction while I was growing up, and I still carried scars years after he had stopped gambling.   Also, I wasn’t really close to the Polish side of the family and always felt uncomfortable around my Polish grandmother.  I later learned that when I was born, the first thing she asked my father was, “What color is she?” This grandmother had no desire to hide her racist beliefs towards my brown-skinned mother. Furthermore, as mixed-race person, I was reluctant to connect to my own white European ancestry, even though I walked in the world with white skin and white privilege.  At the time (the early 2000’s), there was very little mainstream discourse about unlearning racism, white privilege, mixed-race identity, or any of the other issues I grappled with internally.  I had an instinctual aversion to connecting with my Polish side of the family, although at the time I didn’t understand all the layers in myself that fueled this aversion.

What followed in the next few years was an initiatory journey guided by my Polish Slavic ancestors as well as the circle of living Elders and mentors who supported the Indigenous Mind circle.  The experience was beautiful and transformative, but also grueling, terrifying and heartbreaking.   During the process I encountered Baba Yaga, the powerful crone/hag of the Slavic world.  I travelled to Poland and walked on the land where my ancestors had dwelled for thousands of years.   I was welcomed into the homes of traditional Polish farmers and nourished by the abundance of grains, fruits, vegetables, cheese and meats grown on Polish soil.    In ancient birch groves I made offerings to the Leszy, the guardians of the forest.  I met Bronislawa, the Polish wood witch, an elder who still gathered mushrooms and herbs from the forest and sang her prayers each day to the rising sun. After returning from Poland, I got into a huge fight with my Polish travelling companion and sister student, Barbara.  A few months later Barbara was diagnosed with terminal cancer and we never had the chance to reconcile before she died.   All of these events were part of the initiation by my Ancestors.

I learned first-hand that the recovery of one’s Indigenous Mind is arduous and the process is not linear or logical.   To recover one’s Indigenous Mind means to step into the unknown and to leave behind our familiar ways of being and thinking, ways that have been deeply ingrained in us from the mindset of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy.   On the quest to remember we encounter the skeletons hidden in our family closet which may have been buried for generations.  We must face the trauma that our ancestors endured throughout history as well at the horrors that our ancestors may have inflicted on others.   And perhaps the most difficult part is to recognize the ways that our ancestral history lives in us and plays out in our ways of thinking, our mental health, our behavior, and in our relationships.

Yet the process of remembering and reconnecting with my Polish Slavic indigenous ancestry was the most deeply rewarding of my entire life.  I understood, deep in my bones, that I was not merely “white,” but that I was the descendant from people who for countless generations lovingly tended to Matka Ziema (Moist Mother Earth); people who had their own rituals, customs, art, stories, prayers, songs, herbs, star knowledge, cosmology, mythology and healing traditions. 

The most unexpected gift I received was a profound healing with my Polish father, who just a few years later would be diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.   The Ancestors gave us this gift of healing before my father, Michael, became an Ancestor himself.  As I understood more about our family, our history, and our ancient Polish culture, I saw my father in a new light and I was not only able to forgive him but to also love and appreciate him in a new way.  I learned about the wars and occupations which my Polish ancestors had endured, and understood the discrimination my father had experienced during a time in the so-called “US” when Polish immigrants were scapegoated, discriminated against and were the target of cruel jokes.   I also discovered the earth-based reverence of the Polish Slavs, a reverence which I saw living in my father.   My father was a man with a deep and mystical love for the natural world.  He would talk to rocks, to birds and to the clouds.  At his home in Sacramento, he planted a grove of redwood trees, and dug by hand a koi pond which he decorated with rocks he gathered from the mountains, transforming his suburban back yard into a nature sanctuary.  My father was in attendance when I presented my Master’s thesis entitled, “Journey to my Polish Indigenous Mind.”  He was glowing with pride and I felt something shift not only in us, but also in our lineage. 

After graduating from the Indigenous Mind Program, I continued to support Dr. Apela Colorado with many more cohorts of students engaged in this ancestral remembrance process.  I witnessed people with ancestors from many continents and cultures walk through a similar process as I had.  Collectively we observed that the process, while not linear or logical, seemed to move through predictable phases.   These phases included facing the ancestral shadow and experiencing a period of disorientation as our western mind (rational, colonized thinking) began to dissolve.  Many of us experienced elation when we uncovered some hidden treasure in our lineage or reconnected with the language, the star knowledge or the ancient stories of our ancestors.  We all moved through waves of emotional turbulence, including intense grief over what had been lost, anger about the traumatic experiences our ancestors endured and guilt for what our ancestors may have inflicted upon others.   During the remembrance process, it was common for the Ancestors to visit in dreams and to communicate in sacred synchronicities in waking life. 

Later, when I was running Ancestral Apothecary School in Oakland/Huchiun, I adopted what I had learned in the Indigenous Mind Program to create an assignment for my herbal students.  I called this the Ancestral Medicine Project.  I invited students to connect to their ancestral medicine and they were asked to research an herb, recipe, or ritual from their ancestry and then present their findings to the class.  As I guided several groups of students through this process, I observed similar themes and patterns as they began to remember and reconnect to their ancestors.  Each presentation was healing and transformative for everyone, and really deepened our bonds as a community.

At this moment in the history of the so-called US, it is crucial that those of us with European ancestry wake up and remember our Indigenous Minds.  So much violence, harm and destruction against people and the earth have sprung from our westernized, colonized, patriarchal mindset.  I do not know what remembering our European Indigenous Minds on a large scale will look like or how it will come about.   My Ancestors are asking me to pray.  To write a prayer that will be broadcast on this Ancestral Ground platform and reach the minds and hearts of many.  May this prayer be a seed that blooms in your heart.  May these words help connect you to your wise and well ancestors and guide you on your path of healing and self/ancestral discovery.  May we as a collective of people with ancestral roots in Europe be guided to mend and repair the damage that has been done by not only our European ancestors, but by those who continue to use their whiteness to inflict harm against others. 

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Prayer for the Descendants

For the descendants of the ancestral people of Europe.

As a daughter of Slavic people from what is now called Poland, I use words in the Polish language and refer to rituals of the Slavic people.  May this inspire those of you from other ancestral groups of Europe to remember your language, stories and rituals.

May we,
the descendants
of the ancestral peoples of Europe:

Slavic,
Celtic,
Anglo-Saxon,
Frank,
Goth,
Teutonic

Remember.

Names of the Sacred
whispered in ancient tongues.

Matka Ziema,
Moist Mother Earth.

Remember.

The ancestral ways
of tending the land:

Sowing fields of wheat,
rye, barley

Milking cows at sunrise
Plowing fields by horse
Celebrating the harvest
Dożynki.

Remember.

The ways our Babcias¹
healed.

Stepping softly
through the birch forest,
grey hair tucked beneath
a flowered babushka,

singing to the rising sun
as they gathered
mushrooms and herbs
with gnarled hands.

Under a thatched roof,
grinding herbs
with mortar and pestle

whispering zamawianie
stirring bitter brews
over an open fire,

soaking cloths
to tend the child
sick with fever.

Remember.

Our ancestral ceremonies:

weaving strands
of cornflower, marigold and lily

chaber, nagietek lekarski, lilja

offering these wreaths
to rivers
on Kapula,²
honoring
Rusałki
the spirits of water.

May we remember.

The language
of trees,
birds,
animals,
the guardian spirits
of home, forest, and field.

Domowik,
Leszy, 
Polewik

May ancient memories,
dwelling in bones and blood,
spiraling through our DNA,

Awaken.

Until our hearts
pulse with the knowing,

our connection
to the universe,

our place
in the sacred web of life,

our responsibility
to care for
Matka Ziema.

May we have space to grieve.

Countless tragedies:

wars,
invasions,
plagues,
forced immigration,

the loss
of land,
culture,
language.

May we find ways
to release the trauma

frozen in ancestral memory

centuries of brutality

witch hunts
waged against
our wise women:

healers,
midwives,
herbalists,
dreamers.

May we stop
the cycles of violence

perpetuated
through unhealed ancestral trauma:

colonization,
land theft,
slavery,
internment camps,
boarding schools,
prisons,
detention centers.

May we find ways
to repair the harm.

rooted in reverence,
fueled by fierce love,
guided with grace.

May we remember
who we are

The prayers and dreams of our ancestors
People of Earth,

belonging
to the sacred web
of life.

May we remember.

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