Reclaiming ancestral practices

This chapter was co-developed by attendees at the Contemplative Pedagogies Summit session titled “Exploring tensions in (re)claiming ancestral practices as a settler mixed-race educator” facilitated by Emil Briones

This gathering was held on Tuesday November 11, 2025 at Concordia University Hall Building, located on the island of Tio’tia:ke, unceded territories of the Kanien’keha:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Eleven individuals were present in the session, in spite of the challenging winter weather and navigating a transit worker’s strike. Those gathered come from diverse ancestral contexts, with a considerable number who might describe their identities and experience as mixed-race. Together, people told or witnessed stories, and had dialogue on the meanings and implications of bringing in practices and teachings stemming from non-indigenous ancestral traditions and lineages into Tio’tia:ke and Turtle Island as a whole. From there, two core questions guided the dialogues:

1. What are the possibilities for educators, practitioners, facilitators etc. in drawing on ancestral inquiry; as a practice, and what are the complexities in this?
2. How might the diverse, and perhaps unequal arrivals (…see below… ) inform, shape, complicate bringing in ancestral practices?
   • … into Tio’tia:ke for those who are not Indigenous to these lands…
   • … into the practice / role of educator / facilitator…
   • … into the University context …

Below is a summary of key insights, invitations for reflection, and ongoing questions that the eleven who gathered on that day generated during their time together:

• Drawing on ancestral knowledge and practices not Indigenous to the land bring up tensions, anxieties, and dissonances for some. What does it mean to bring in ancestral ways not Indigenous to the land, especially considering the colonial relations underpinning University contexts and other educational contexts? What is a relational approach, justice-oriented approach, or holistic approach to thinking through these tensions and questions? What might each perspective interrogate, question, or clarify?
• A number of those gathered meditated on the “shadow” side of some people’s ancestral context – where either in part or all of one’s ancestral context is linked to a dominant group (settlers, colonizers). There was an invitation to think through ways of integrating the “shadow-side”, rather than denying, invisibilizing, or totally severing. As educators and facilitators, how might acknowledging and integrating these “shadows” provide insight or direction that can lead to doing better by the traditional stewards of stolen lands and waters?
• There were many who gathered who wished to honour non–human ancestry and connection with non-human kin – the water, the mountains, the mushrooms, the trees, the animals, the rivers, the sky. There was an invitation extended to others to reflect on these relations, and to ask how might non-human kin show or remind us of ancestral ways and ancestral calls? How might we integrate this in ways we invite and engage with students and participants?
• While arrival into unceded stolen land is a trajectory that we often contend with as non-indigenous educators and facilitators, for some, the context of ancestral departures (displacement, diaspora, etc.) also has bearing on their ancestral context. For some, arrival into Tio’tia:ke might be marked by forced departures from ancestral lands and waters, or by generations of displacement. Some lineages and ancestral knowledge are more difficult to trace, restore, and reclaim; subjected to certain forms of violence and erasure that make the call to reflect on the possibilities in embracing and harnessing one’s ancestral ways, more difficult, loaded, and riddled with unjust and painful realities.

Ancestral inquiry and reflecting on one’s context of arrival into Tio’tia:ke are deeply personal tasks, and should be willingly taken on by individuals; how might educators and facilitators respectfully extend invitations to students and participants, acknowledging the vulnerability in engaging in ancestral inquiry and arrival stories? Intergenerational trauma, war, displacement, genocide – any or all of them might be weaved into one’s ancestral context and there is deep care, critical awareness, and skillfulness needed for educators and facilitators in bringing these questions and invitations into their work.