Ep 54. Approaching with Protocol: re-storying good relationship with place, culture, ancestors, story, and our own humanity (w/ Tad Hargrave and Kâkîsimow Iskwêw)

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” - Wendell Berry

Tad Hargrave, one of our guests in today’s episode, likes to reference this quote. And seeing a need to call people back into their humanity, finding ways to help them go about their days with more goodness and beauty, is something at the heart of both of our work. We also both love stories and myths. In fact, we talked about those very things in episode 38.

Recently, he’s been teaming up with Kakisimow Iskwew (aka Natalie Pepin) - a Metis Cultural Educator who helps guide Indigenous people reclaiming their culture to connect with their living teachings around art, food, language and connection to spirit. And together, they’re offering deep spirals into the story ‘Briar Rose’ as a way of beginning to access indigenous cultural memory of Mother Europe.

I jumped at the chance to have them both gather with me here to spiral around some of the big, important questions many of us who want to live as creatures and want to do something about the ugliness which seems to be everywhere in the world today seem to be grappling with and wondering about.

Questions like:

• What is culture? And if we’re ‘white’ or of European descent (particularly if we live in so-called ‘North America’), do we have ‘culture’?
• How are we defining indigenous - as an identity or something else?
• What does it mean that stories hold memory?
• How do we navigate the hunger, the thirst, the grief and shame which seem to be in so many of us these days as we reach for something meaningful and nourishing? And if we find some deeper roots, and they feel like their ‘ours’, how do we go about honoring them in a good way?

Since we recorded the conversation, I attended a three-hour online version of their spiral into Briar Rose and the story is still resonating within me and moving me in ways that aren’t ready to be articulated yet; but are inviting me into deeper relationship, into protocol, with the story itself and the living culture it’s carrying.

May this conversation be a way of growing more culture - may it offer you some soil, or perhaps the glimpse of some roots, an idea of where to dig to find something which invites you back into deeper humanity. 

And if you’re feeling the call, I highly recommend their work with Briar Rose. You can find more about it here: https://meetingmyancestors.com/briar-rose/ 

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As always - if this conversation moves you in some way, please help share and pass it on to others you think might also be moved. This type of sharing helps feed these conversations and the work we’re up to in the world.

Find Tad: https://tadhargrave.substack.com/

Find Natalie/ Kakisimow Iskwew: https://meetingmyancestors.com/

Find Kate: www.wildsacredjourney.com