I came over here from Wild Hunt blog to see what the hoopla was about.

I afraid Freeman has a point about the “indigenous European” designation – it really is a “dog whistle” phrase used by white supremacist groups to denote “racial purity”, generally by right-wing racists decrying the number of Muslim immigrants in Europe. A simple Google search will show this to be the case.

You can complain about how unfair it is for such a phrase to be co-opted by racist bigots, but you may as well complain that no one can use the Fylfot Cross anymore without it immediately conjuring connections to the Nazi Swastika. Yes, it sucks, but that’s the way it is. Even Heathens realize it’s a futile effort to try to reclaim the Fylfot as a simple, innocuous Solar symbol. (Spanish Catholics have a hard time using white robes with pointed hoods also, even though they used them for centuries before the Ku Klux Klan did.)

Simply changing the phrase to “traditional” or “ancient” or “pre-Christian” European religion would eliminate the unintended connotation. But unfair or not, if you try to hold workshops or gatherings under the banner of “indigenous European”, you might not like some of the people who show up.

And they won’t like you either.

@Angie re “I certainly take issue with the declaration that it is a “white supremest code word.”

I don’t think you really want to make a stand on this disingenuous statement. If white supremacist groups use the term, that makes it one of their code words. You might as well be trying to rescue the swastika from its recent associations.

There are also legitimate European Indigenous peoples (Basque, Saami, etc.) who most likely do not want to have their self-determination struggle identified with Paganism.

I am interested that “Pagan” may be understood to refer particularly to Old European heritage, since it is a European word after all: in the past before PWR I have used the term very broadly to encompass Indigeneity in general … “having to do with Place, and Earth-based religious practice of any kind” as I have put it.

In my presentation to PWR, I said: “Pagan” as I understand it means a person “of the country”. It is related to Place and it is a place that is Native … and we are all Native. “Place” these days could and perhaps should, mean/ at least include Gaian/Planetary and extend not just to the Planet but to Cosmos as well.

As an Australian European transplant I have identified with the long journey to a sense of belonging Here (in my Habitat), and to my roots – a child of a conquered people who came to this Land, already lost. I have written a lot about that. I have done the work of re-creating Earth-based religious practice very seriously: of what I understand as “Gaian Poetic Practice”… named as “PaGaian Cosmology” (I understand that Gaia is a European name for Earth, and that She is named in many other ways globally – but this is my cultural heritage). My practice of seasonal ritual (eight a year for almost 2 decades) has been for me “geo-therapy”, a method of situating myself. For myself I have come to represent my practice and heritage with the Triple Spiral of Bru-na-Boinne in Ireland – which has impressed itself upon me though I have never been there. I feel that the motif l has deep Cosmic significance beyond its locale, and I feel it as Home, and/but also that it does represent my particular heritage in large part, but my roots extend to Eastern Europe too, and to ancient Mesopatamia and lots of other places (and perhaps in the past our forebears were not so precious about cultural exchange and mingling of deities and metaphors – they actually got about quite a bit and apparently shared deep understandings) .

One comment here from another Australian woman (bloodlines are Celtic, Romany and Anglo-Saxon (mostly Irish Celt) on an Australian Pagan list – she was attending a session at PWR, and she said: “I asked a question about how folks like myself, who come from a tradition where we were dispossessed of our lands, moved to a radically different country where the old ways didn’t fit in the same way, and had our language destroyed, (even while we can try to reconstruct that culture), who are trying to find a new way to connect with our spirituality and experiment with what other cultures can teach us to see what can fit, and how we might do that with respect.”

I would like also to refer to the work of Eimear O’Neill http://www.rekindlingindigenousspirit.org/presentations.htm … who has been dojng work of “Rekindling Indigenous Spirit” within her context, with which some may identify.

It is a very complex subject … and I find it difficult to do it any justice here, but I suppose the discussion is very good, as at least we get alerted to the subjectivity and sensitivities involved. I think Thorn’s suggestion to Freeman is a good one: to write “from your unique point of view” and contribute to the pot – one major feature of Earth is Her infinite diversity, and the expression of one’s unique perspective is a primary urge I think.

Glenys

If I were to have a panel called, “People Call Us Dog Trainers – The Irish Setter,” would that confine all Dog Trainers to one specific method of training and negate the names, titles, value or existence of all other dogs? No, it would not. And I probably wouldn’t be talking about French Poodles on that panel either. Should the Poodles be insulted or feel excluded or offended?

Would the fact that some people refer to Irish Setters as Irish Pointers, mean that they are wrong and should cease using that name? No, not anymore than someone being offended by the term Indigenous European sets a requirement upon me to change it or to submit to some sort of punitive “lump” in order to be accommodating.

As for the term Neo-Pagan; my personal opinion is that it’s an oxymoron and offensive so, I don’t use it in the places I speak, or in the work I do; it does not define my practice. I don’t expect anyone else to stop using it though, if it in fact describes what they are doing in their own practice.

Thanks to Mary for re-stating those points and to Glenys, too short a pleasure as always.

I also think non-Native Americans calling themselves members of “Indigenous European” traditions, even if it weren’t associated with some seriously racist groups, is still offensive to the actual European communities that have living traditions. Even those of us who have some folkloric survivals in our diasporic families… we would never claim to be Indigenous to Europe or America.

Calling an American Neopagan tradition “Indigenous” or “Traditional” may feel romantic and more dignified than calling it as it is, but we are all better served by simple honesty, and by an awareness of how other cultures are using these words.

Whichever way I turn, I do not find the term “European Indigenous” merely problematic, I find it offensive. It is especially bothersome that it is a white-supremacist codeword as well. We have enough of that coming up on the fringes of some Pagan revival movements without embracing its terminology.

So there it is; I am civilly but firmly asking that people stop talking around this and acknowledge the very negative implications of the Euro-indigene claim.