VIDEO: Intergenerational Trauma and Making Peace With European Heritage, with Lyla June, a native of Turtle Island (America)

"Throughout the world (it is) homeland and story and the cultural metaphor that binds a human-group together... if they lose that, and all those things are intertwined, a lot of our stories are rooted in homeland; a lot of our guiding principles are rooted in homeland; and if we lose a sense of self, and self is also very rooted in land -often times we say "we are the land", in indigenous communities, "and the land is us".

When you have that detachment from homeland, which didn't start at the point of (European) migration to Turtle Island (America) but rather started even before that, when you have the Roman expansion already relocating people, dislocating people... you have what I would say is an identity crisis.

... and so a lot of European-Americans have lost that Earth-based identity, not just Earth based but place based identity... for example, being Tuscan, you know, you are from Tuscany and you are from those hills and you know those trees, and you know those mountains. If you are Gaelic, you know, you are connected to THESE Oak groves, you are connected to THESE sacred sites; and so when you lose that sense of Self, indigenous Self, which is connected to homeland that your ancestors have been on for millennia, then you start to try and create a new culture for yourself, a new sense of identity and that identity that we've been given... is consumerism, and individualism and just complete materialism, and that's why a lot of European-Americans either cling to that, or they reject that and have no-where to go.

What I'm saying is, when you uproot yourself from your homeland, or you are forced to uproot yourself, there's a huge loss of original-self, original-story and then you have what we seeing today which is people trying to fill that void with a new culture of consumerism, and we also have many European-Americans rejecting that and wondering where to go, so they study Hinduism, they study Shamanism - never fully realising that they have THEIR OWN indigenous culture right inside of them, even if it's buried under millennia of torture - it is still there and it's still powerful, it's still sacred and it's still connected to homeland!"