#ancestral knowledge

Inspired by traditional hoodoo and folk law as documented by Catherine Yronwode, Paper in My Shoe

Woke academia strikes again.

Today's entry comes from the University of Victoria, where someone earned a PhD in the School of Indigenous Governance, which I had never heard of but appears to be where ordinary academic standards go to be ceremonially sacrificed.

The dissertation is titled, "Mnidoo-mkwendamwin: Beading and Restitching with Ancestral Threads of Memory." And before the dissertation even begins, we of course get a mandatory land acknowledgment.

The abstract opens with a typo. It says, quote, "This work was created to go beyond the study cultural mnemonic devices." It appears to be missing the word 'of' there, but maybe proofreading is an oppressive colonial construct as well.

But it gets better, or worse, however you look at it. The author says the dissertation documents how to make, quote, "ancestral knowledge encodements" through "indigenous beadwork, textile, other fiber arts." It seems to be missing the word 'and' there as well. So that's two typos, and we haven't even moved beyond the first sentence yet

It then explains that beading is, quote, "indigenous resurgence" explored through the author's intersecting lenses of being a, quote, "chronically ill neurodivergent two-spirit Mississauga Nishabi Lucanan artist and scholar."

The abstract also says that, quote, "the body, mind, spirit, land, and material expressions of culture" are only viewed as separate entities "due to colonization."

This dissertation is based on so-called "indigenous knowledges." But while cultural traditions, stories, and art can be personally meaningful, when universities start treating them as co-equal with scientific knowledge and dismiss skepticism as a form of colonial oppression, we've left the realm of serious scholarship entirely and dove headfirst into mystical woo-woo.

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Abstract

This work was created to go beyond the study cultural mnemonic devices and into the realm of documenting how to make ancestral knowledge encodements that synthesize research through Indigenous beadwork, textile, other fibre arts. Beading is Indigenous resurgence that connects me to my ancestors, and this research delves into what that means in a grounded wholistic way through my intersecting lenses of being a chronically ill neurodivergent Two-Spirit Mississauga Nishnaabe Lucbanin artist and scholar. Conceptualizations around the body, mind, spirit, land, and material expressions of culture are often thought of as separate entities due to colonization, so a foundational part of this work examines approaches to Indigenous ideas of wholeness in community and identifies what forms of decolonization and resurgence can facilitate reconnection with the spiritual. Beads come together and interplay with one another in similar ways that gained wisdoms do within the research process. While the overall design that is created through knowledge is powerful and important, so is every stitch that makes that design come into being. Each relative who collaborated on this dissertation brought a prismatic array of experiences and played a powerful role in shaping the trajectory of the ancestral knowledge encodement of this work in the Ngwaagan Regalia (2025). Throughout the dissertation are ancestral knowledge encodements—created through historical inspiration, depictions of relatives, tea-visits with kin, and narratives shared by family and community members. The encodements created and embedded into this written dissertation take the forms of photographs, historical images, digitally stitched collages, digital mixed media illustrations, paintings, and diagrams. I have chosen to honour this tradition of weaving in the threads of previous generations and connecting it to those in the future through integrating ancestral mkwendamwinan (memories) in the same way that I am including contemporary conversational dbaajmownan (stories).

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Art is not science. Any form of "knowledge" which is inaccessible to all but an anointed, special few is not "knowledge."

“Fact” is not anybody’s experience; it states the experience of no one in particular. … By definition, then, if we take the empirical rule (no personal authority) seriously, revelation cannot be the basis for fact, because it is not publicly available. Similarly, attempts to claim a special kind of experience or checking for any particular person or kind of person—male or female, black or white, tall or short—are strictly illicit. … if you make different rules for black and white checkers, you are not doing science. … if the way you are checking works only for people with a sympathetic attitude, or if your results are not replicable by others in a reasonably regular fashion, you are not doing science. … If the way you are seeing and explaining works only for the religious, you are breaking the rules. – Jonathan Rauch, "Kindly Inquisitors"

Episode II: Fire Agni

Fire was never decoration - it was infrastructure placed at the center of transformation. It wasn't there to symbolize change, but to make it possible: to burn, carry and translate reality.

If you feel called, pause today with a small flame and just to sit long enough to notice what shifts when attention and fire meet.

#tratakam

#thegreatremembering

#agni

#ritualintelligence

#inhabitingconsciousness

#ancestralknowledge

#somaticwisdom

#practicebeforebelief

#fireasteacher

www.srividyatantram.com

When we talk about Taíno cosmology, it is important to be precise about what that actually means.

This is not a fully preserved system we can reconstruct in complete detail. Instead, this article is discussing the core of it, a partial understanding built from archaeology, early colonial accounts, modern scholarly interpretation and individual family oral histories.

Cosmology, in this sense, refers to how a society understands:

the structure of the world

the relationship between humans and non-human forces

and the ways meaning is organized through land, objects, and experience

For Taíno societies, these ideas are not preserved as a single written system. They are inferred through material culture, recorded descriptions, and patterns that appear across the different sources listed.

For the purpose of this article, I am referring to it as a worldview instead of a belief system. It can be limiting to frame Taíno cosmology only as a “religion” or fixed set of beliefs, so I am not going to. Many Indigenous Caribbean systems are better understood as relational worldviews, where:

spiritual and physical worlds are not fully separated

objects, land, and beings can carry relational meaning

and knowledge is expressed through practice, place, and material engagement

Once again - this does not mean we can fully reconstruct those systems. It means we have to be careful not to force them into categories that may not fit and to keep in mind that every community may not fully commit or agree on all aspects.

One of the most consistent themes across interpretations and practices is that Taíno cosmology is often described in relational terms rather than abstract doctrine. Meaning theres priority to the relationship over abstraction.

Instead of a strict “system of beliefs,” what appears is:

connection between people and ancestral forces

interaction between material objects and meaning

and a landscape that holds significance beyond utility

Because cosmology is often popularized in simplified ways, it is important not to:

flatten Taíno worldview into a single unified doctrine

assume all symbolic meanings are fully known or decoded

or project modern spiritual categories onto fragmented historical evidence

What survives is partial, and different sources may not always align.

I’m explicitly stating all this before getting into it because the more you learn, the more you engage with different sectors of the Taíno community online- you are going to see disagreements on this and MANY authority-esque peoples stating things that are true for their yukayekes but not for others.

You also have to bear in mind the heavy influence of Christianity in the Caribbean. As a result, there are many communities trying to adopt the Taíno Cosmology through a Christian lens, or trying to practice it as a Christian, which often results in them referring to Cemí’nos as “helpers” or other demeaning and minimizing references instead of it being a scared object one should respect because its an extension of a deity or one’s own ancestral spirit. Many contemporary practitioners understand cemís as more than symbolic objects and may describe them as embodiments, manifestations, imbuements, or extensions of spiritual and ancestral relationships. Many struggle to respect Taíno cosmology/spirituality with the same respect they provide to modern religions. Its best to always listen and consider all of these factors when discussing the cosmology and spirituality.

Taíno Cosmology Basics

The most basic place to start is that the world isn’t singular. One of the most widely taught contemporary Taíno cosmological models organizes existence into multiple realms. In the Caney tradition (should note, they didn’t “invent” this model. It is widely believed and has been widely passed down in oral tradition. They are simply the best online resource and most open about discussing it,) these are often described as :

Turey (the Sky Realm)

Ku (the Earth or Middle Realm)

Koa Bay (the ancestral or spirit realm, as referred to as “Coa”)

Different yukayekes and spiritual lineages may describe these realms differently or recognize additional realms, but the three-realm framework is one of the most commonly encountered introductions to Taíno cosmology within contemporary practice.

Image is from the Caney Circle community, depicting the medicine wheel within the realm cosmology (https://www.caneycircle.org/legends/). This particular community is VERY open with their beliefs and you can interact with the Chief Behike online. He’s VERY active and open to discussion and including reconnecting peoples.

This is the most basic accepted cosmology. We acknowledge that there are refences and oral histories that include MORE realms than these, that are more complex. That’s valid. As seen above there's more to the cosmology, but we're just discussing the general core of it. Should you join a yukayeke, you can talk with your Behike directly and discuss. I am not a Behike, and thus will not have this conversation beyond the basic accepted shared cosmology.

Taíno discourse

A specific explanation I have heard for the variance in realm discussions is that some yukayekes connect to different energies and thus have access to specific realms others don’t or cannot. This is also the how and why many in the Caribbean practicing Yoruba spiritualities cross into Taíno cosmology and practice both. This is just a general conversation I’ve seen passed around, but I feel it helps others to understand why I keep saying calling it just a belief system isn’t fully encompassing the realities of what Taíno spirituality is, can be, and is accepted as.

Back to cosmology discussion

The most basic cosmology worldview is widely accepted because it is a) paired down to the very core, and b) it can mirror Christian ideology enough making it very easy to pass down in oral histories and making it most likely to be accurate in regards to preservation.

Contemporary Taíno communities are not limited to archaeology and colonial texts. Many communities maintain oral teachings, ceremonial practices, and cosmological interpretations that function as living traditions in the present. These should not automatically be treated as interchangeable with sixteenth-century historical evidence, but neither should they be dismissed simply because they are contemporary Indigenous knowledge.

If you wish to learn more- seek open Taíno spiritual communities, yukayekes, and ceremonial communities.

Citations Below

The Coconut Series ~ Shedding the Whitewash

Tabu Chronicles

⋆ ༅˚🥥.࿓• ⊹ ࣪ ˖ 𐙚 🥥˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚

𝘖𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘐 𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘦𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘺 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘶 (𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺). 𝘐𝘯 𝘛𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘪 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘶 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦: 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 (𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘶𝘬𝘶𝘭), 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 (𝘚𝘶𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘢), 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘴 (𝘈𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘪), 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘴. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺, 𝘪𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘴, 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦.

𝘛𝘢𝘣𝘶 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘕𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘶𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘥, 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴.

𐙚 🥥˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚

Reclaiming The Words That Were Taken By Colonizers