Becoming Indigenous - Rewilding

Brasilian Portuguese has a well used word 'saudade' that is not simple to translate directly into English, however, it is easy to translate into Welsh 'hiraeth'. It variously means longing, homesickness, yearning. The translation websites then take the meaning to another place 'nostalgia' and this is where we take a wrong term in my opinion because it harks to the past. Moving between languages and cultures can reach a boundary of understanding.

There are languages that still carry words to describe this feeling of coming home or longing for home that English does not describe in a single word. That in itself is interesting to me. Why does the English language not have a hireath or a saudade?

A hiraerth or saudade for what? That is where I find myself today. I'm asking what does this feeling of longing and yearning have to do with people living in the modern world? For me it suggests that modernity is missing something or ailing in some way. That deep inside people are waking up to this notion of separation within themselves, from life, from Gaia and the cosmos.

It is said that Indigenous peoples have kept this connection, this flame of transcendence alive. Indigenous people use ritual, ceremony and rites of passage to maintain and build their relationship of deep belonging and connection to all that is.

I have been on this path, that I call the heart path for quite a  number of years now. Nevertheless, from September I am taking a deep and intentional dive into becoming indigenous. Will I be claimed by the land, animals, trees and plants of this place in which I now live? Will I discover new worlds? How will I be shaped and changed by this experience? I cannot say until I live into each moment. I guess this is not so much a place of destination as a reordering of perspectives. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

What I don't want is a mimic of other cultures or a misappropriation of ways from other lands. This would represent another form of exploitation and theft upon which much of my ancestral inheritance is based. If nothing else a certain humility, respect and etiquette needs to emerge from this experience if it is to be different from the modern path I have been brought up in and that predominates around me. I live in a taking culture, a  linear world that feeds a story of competition, scarcity and lack. All of this breeds enormous amounts of fear and anxiety. That results in hierarchy and separation. 

To live from a place of connection, relationship, wholeness, cyclicality, reverence and love would be counter cultural. To learn how to give now that would be different, and to uncover what my gifts are that I am meant to give back into my community, now that would be good to know.

I like to think of this process I am going through as 'Rewilding'. The word 'Wild' in English has resonance and energy. Wild acknowledges that we humans are not in control of everything nor are we at the top of the chain of evolution. Wild indicates to me that I share in common with all forms a life a sense of togetherness in process and with purpose.