I am Monica, and my tribes are:
the Saxons, Franks, and Norse–sons and daughters of the flooded lands;
the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland–the Tuatha Dé Danann and the sons of Mil;
the Britons and Picts of the “Old North” and Caledonia;
the Ashkenazim of Europe and the Middle East;
and through marriage, the Alemanni of the Austrian Alps.
Aotearoa–land of the long white cloud–is my birth place,
and Cascadia–land of the falling waters–is my home.
Who are you?
It seems few other people know their tribes. 
Can’t say I know a whole lot either, aside from Celtic and Cherokee, though I know I’m mostly some breed of Germanic and Slavic. xD It seems as if my kin are a tribe of their own at times, thus the name I’ve given them and myself of Firekin: people of fiery hair, fiery eyes, and fiery hearts who were forged in the fires of generational turbulence. We have our own ways, our own unspoken code that has been passed down for 100 years, and while I may be ashamed of their domestication, I am proud to be one of their tribe. :3
Yes, most people do not know there tribes, not that everyone needs to. I actually reside in Appalacia, Asheville NC and the Cherokee once called this region home. Here is a photo for you of what may be the oldest mountains in the world. This particular area gave me a sense of what a fearless indian would have felt while standing on the ridge looking over the land…enjoy and I hope it helps you remember. 
I’m German, English, Cherokee, Iroquois, Blackfoot and Dutch… Not sure of specific tribes, though. How’d you trace your lineage? I can go back 250-300 years, but never tried more than that. I know that I have some famous ancestors… George Washington is an uncle, Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde is a cousin, I have a grandfather that was an Iroquois chief, some ancestors came over on the Mayflower… That’s about it, lol xD cool topic, though!
i grew up on the lands of the delaware/lenape and susquehannock, climbing the trees in their beautiful, hilly, creek-filled forests. for a few years in my adolescence i swam the rivers & wandered the forests of what was at times territory of the chickasaw and cherokee. i homesteaded for several years in the territory of the illini, and briefly lived on osage and kiowa lands. i spent a year building a home on the remote & eerily beautiful lands of the upper kuskokwim athabaskans, and just a few months ago landed in the rainforests of the tlingit, haida, and tsimshian.
my father was irish and hungarian. one of my hungarian ancestors took her family into hiding after killing a rich man for raping her daughter. i come from strong women on both sides. the rolling plains of hungary and its dark, ancient forests feed my soul.
my mother was adopted by an irish family, and later found her birth mother, who is irish, scottish, and french. she didn’t know much about the man she created my mother with, though his last name was chandler. i identify with the histories of ireland & scotland, of fierce rebellions, cultures that don’t take themselves very seriously, and beautiful traditions of poetry, strong warriors of both genders, and traditions of storytelling. hearing traditional irish & scottish music makes me cry. for the past few months i’ve been living in a coastal temperate rainforest, what much of ireland was like before its forests were cleared for animals & agriculture.
i wasn’t raised with a sense of any of my ancestral cultures, and i mourn that loss. my family is still much more directly struggling with emotional and psychological survival, especially on my father’s side. my grandparents were the first generation (on both sides) to work up through the ranks of blue collar trades & save enough to have respectable homes with food always on the table. my parents were the first generation in their families to complete college. my two brothers & i are struggling to heal the traumas & addictions that were passed on to us. i wish we had strong family & community by our sides to help, but we don’t.
i’ve spent my whole adult life seeking healthier forms of community than this country normally offers. i especially want not just socially healthy community/culture, but also ecologically healthy culture that’s in right relationship with its native american neighbors. i want a home among like-minded friends where i can live in a way that feels honorable.
I was born in the Kanzi (Kansas) Watershed, along the banks of the Cowskin Creek, before it joins the Arkansas River, south of the northern summer camp of the Wichita tribe (historically).
I dwell in the Appalachia Region, within the Blankened Foreset on the Cumberland Plateau, just a bit south of Cumberland Fall near Laurel Lake and the Laurel RIver, on the banks of Sutton Branch Creek at the bottom of the Holler.
I am Celtic, decedent from the Last King of Galatia, from the Irish espeically the Mac Giolla Padriag Clan of Ossory, early welsh/scottish from the Clan Lancelot and Harding. I am of the Viking bloodline of Ragnar Lothbroke via Bojorn (or so I am told). On my father’s side, I am told I am of Roma Gypsy and Choctaw blood, but I am unsure, as have no contact with my birth father’s family.
My family had no roots having moved about alot after leaving Ireland, while my husbands Irish/Scottish family has been in Kentucky since 1790s, and married into the Cherokee (more than once)… one family member even went on the Trail of Tears, before returning 7 years later, or so the story tells. So when we had a choice, we returned to Kentucky and are seeking a piece of land to rewild on, and teach others rewilding skills.
What’re everyone’s thoughts around using the word “tribe”? Every time I see or hear this word used by white people I cringe 'cause it makes me think of white folks appropriating Native American culture. I know that’s not what’s meant in this thread but still here I am cringing. What do the rest of you think?
Mindy, tribe is also used for the Celtic people groups and the German Tribes. There are tribes in Africa. There are tribes in just about every continent.
Tribe is word from the Latan Language… Tribus, orginally used for the 3 division of the Roman people, so as such it is from people of Europe themselves, pre-domestication.
Example of tribes among the Celts, are: Anitolia (which inclueds the Galations), Hispania, Gallia, Herbernia, Britiannia, to name a few… Clans would be such as as MacNichals (Nickles), MacGiollaPhadriag (Fitzpatrick), and Lancelot, for just a few.
I understand how you feel, though. It is my experience living among the Dine (Navajo) for 7 years, and being friends with people who are Lakota and Tsaligi (Cherokee), they are more offend by people dishonoring them by not using their true names like Dine (Navajo), not respecting their cultures, and continuing to not return stolen artifacts found in graves, including the bodies! One elder also told me he morns white people not having true tribes, for then they would understand better where his people were coming from. I make no claim to speak for them, only repeating what I have been told.
I hope that helps, explain why so many use tribe without feeling guilty.
Thanks, ladyfoxfeather. 
I understand what you’re saying. I think if everyone out there used the word the way it’s used here I wouldn’t feel as squirmy about it. It’s not that I feel “guilty” about it, though, it’s that based on the context and place in which I live, where so many people throw around this word in a way that is disrespectful to Native people, I prefer not to use it.
Anyway, not sure if I ever answered for myself on this thread. From what I have pieced together so far my ancestral lineage extends into Ireland, England, Germany, Switzerland, and Jewish Romania. Of all those places I’ve only yet set foot in Ireland and England. I undoubtedly still have ancestors living in all of those places but don’t know their names and have little hope of ever meeting any of them.
I was born in Osage territory (Kansas City, KS), grew up in Puget Sound Salish and Duwamish territory, and have lived in Chinookan territory since 1997.
As best as I can know, my ancestral tribes are about a third each of Celtic (Scottish, Welsh and Irish), Scandinavian and Choctaw. The area I live is the ancestral lands of the Osage people.
@mindyfitch I myself, am not really comfortable using that language. As @ladyfoxfeather mentioned, it’s linguistic roots are Latin. However, it is most definitely post-domestication. Iron Age europe began 5,000 years ago at least, which required deforestation and sedentism to smelt iron. This is my understanding of tribe. “Tribe” were the 3 branches of the roman government, but also a listing of the people who were forced to pay a “Tribute” to the Roman government (taxes, coercion). The reason we call river systems “Tributaries” is because those were regions that the Roman government would tax. “Germanic tribes” were horticulturalist/agriculturalists who were forced to pay taxes to the Roman government. The world “Colonize” has it’s roots in this process as well. The word comes from the city of Cologne (Colony). The word Cologne comes from the latin “Colere” which meant “To till the soil.” Same root as Culture/Cultivate. Cologne was a city the Romans built deep in Germania so that they could tax (force to give a “tribute”) more Germanic peoples.
Obviously now that’s not how we are using the word tribe. Now it’s deeply tied to identity politics. People want to “belong” and they use identity to do so. By giving a group/thing a name and attributing it to yourself it solidify’s a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself. For me, I find it interesting to research Iron Age Europe, pre-iron age Europe, and prehistoric migrations of the Homo genus throughout the world. But I don’t want to belong to any of those groups of people (the labeling and distinguishing of groups is often arbitrary anyway–groups are ever-changing and amorphous). I want to belong to the land where I live. I want to be place-based, not genetic lineage based. So while I think it’s interesting and part of my identity/story to understand where my lineage came from and how I got here, I don’t consider any of that my “tribe.” I consider the land and other-than humans here more my “tribe” or “community” or identity than I do the present day occupational culture of this land or it’s different iterations over the last 10,000 years.
Some very interesting facts there Peter. Glad you shared them. I, too, enjoy poking around in history to get perspective on the here and now.
Incidentally, three of my grandparents were Swedes and all of my ancestors made their livings from the land as do I. I am a small farmer and forager selling what I grow and forage at our local farmer’s market. I am also an accomplished trapper hence the name as I have a reputation among my peers as being a pretty fast skinner. I enjoy wild meats a lot; beaver being a favorite.
I found this site just today as I was researching some of our local Indian lore and your name (Peter) came up. I also like to think I can make some Chinook wawa. LOL
To add a little more substance to my introduction, I am 60 years old and grew up on a small farm that didn’t use chemicals. Dad didn’t believe in growing fruits and vegetables with poisons. I continue that belief and operate a certified organic farm. (One of the oldest in Oregon).
Like Sacha (is she still around?), I lived for two years in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle from 1983-85 as a Peace Corps volunteer. I worked on an agroforestry project on the Napo river. I came to admire the lifestyle of indigenous peoples in the areas that I worked compared to the mestizo colonists. I noted that the average Quichua family had an average of 30 different cultivated or wild gathered plants that were important to them, compared to about 7-8 for the Mestizo colonists.
I have always believed that we humans are meant to live in small groups (tribes if you will). I am convinced that much of the apparent mental illness that manifests itself in todays’ society is a result of our hunter-gatherer brains not capable of assimilating the rapid changes taking place around us.
I look forward to getting to know more of the people of this site. I read most of the introductions and it seems like a pretty good group.
When people talk about ‘tribes’ here, especially when naming the ones they know of in their lineage, I hear a search for connection. A very rough start indeed, but then again, with so much migration having gone on, one has to start somewhere.
I hear the same when locals here meet - they search for a common surname, village, acquaintance, work place or experience, anything to place the other in their web of relations. When they have found such a common point, they’ll try and run as many threads from there as they can, like when they know they visited the same bar regularly, they try if the other remembers this or that other person, and if so, how they are doing. The more thy have in common, they more extensive this talk gets, like naming every single house on a long street, who lived there, if they are still alive, or where they live now, and the same about their children.
Talking about tribes, with surnames we see the same thing; most of these got established just to facilitate counting and registering the colonized. Still, however much we may dislike this practice, we can still use them to create our web of connections.
How about adding in the rivers, watersheds, lakes and seas we grew up with?
Hello Monica, I actually really appreciate this thread and way of introduction. My ancestors are Celtic and Germanic. While I am of Celtic and Germanic ancestry, I identify more with my Germanic tribal traditions and ancestors. So my people are primarily Saxon and Norman and Dane. My land of birth is Northern Germany, but I grew upon along the Northwest coast of North America and call it home. I’ve found that it’s generally been welcomed by other tribal people and elders when one introduces oneself in this way - with a tribal people and a landbase that one represents.
I certainly have no qualms with identifying with my most recent tribal ancestors and peoples. I can see how, within the rewilding scene, that there is a strong emphasis on hunter-gatherer culture vs agrarian and horticultural societies. I have personally begun to err on the side of being a bit more open minded when working with my ancestral tribal heritage - the relationships between hunter/gatherers, early farmers and then later pastoralists of Europe were not so cut and dry, and neither were they as oppositional as I think a lot of Western “Anti-Civ” folks assume. A resource which I’ve really gleaned a lot from and someone whom I respect as a Celtic/Germanic elder is the German gardener, traveler, and author Wolf Dieter Storl. I recommend his books, but he is well-represented on youtube as well, albeit usually in the German language. A Sioux leader, poet and speaker who both embraced tribal identity and encouraged descendants of Europe to remember their tribal past, was John Trudell.
Additionally, When I was younger I once had the opportunity of meeting a well respected Aztec Elder. After giving a talk on the importance of keeping the continuum of old traditions running through colonialism, he was asked by one woman what he would suggest doing for people who are “white” and who “have no tribal roots”. He answered that it would be wise to question the identity of “whiteness” and that even people of European heritage have a tribal tradition to draw from. When asked about lost traditions, he said that if there was truly nothing at all left in a persons heritage to draw from, to ask and look for guidance from dreaming.
For myself, I kind of started with the dreaming and was only made aware of my tribal heritage after and through a period of intense dreaming. When I really dedicated myself to doing ancestral work and asked for ancestral guidance on my rewilding path, I was intensely inundated with Germanic tribal symbolism and imagery and even made “contact” with certain Germanic spirits/deities. Once I began to familiarize myself with Germanic tribal culture and traditions, I saw how clearly these were represented in my dreaming and my prior experiences of intense synchronicity. So through rewilding and then through dreaming, I came to a Northern European tribal identity. Though I had originally come from an ideological camp of rewilding that was fervently hunter/gatherer and against anything that smacked of agrarian culture, being able to have these experiences without judgement was really important and helped me deepen my relationship to rewilding. Sometimes I suspect that a lot of Rewilders get too caught up in the ideological aspects and party-politics of rewilding vs keeping themselves open to an experiential orientation. Personally, my rewilding path is definitely inspired by a desire to rid myself of the civilized need for ideologizing (I don’t think that’s actually a word) and to orient myself more towards the freshness of the direct source of experience (like dreaming, for example).
I wouldn’t opt for moving towards increased urbanization and an agrarian societal model if I were allowed to dictate the trajectory of my peoples, now. But then I am not them, I am only left with what was passed down to me, for better or for worse. I think the building momentum away from the “Heath” (Heathen means “of the land”) and towards industrialization and urbanization in Europe coincided with a severance from what might be called “dreaming culture”, something which I think is vital to any healthy tribal culture. If my ancestors had been able to maintain a strong relationship to their dreaming and syncronistic ways of relating to the world, then I think it’s likely that they wouldn’t have adopted urban lifeways (which Christianity introduced to Heathen Europe). I don’t feel any obligation to virtually kick any of my ancestors out of my tribal past. This is in part because I see a tribal identity beneath even my colonizer ancestors, and because I want to relate to myself in the same way as I want to relate to my colonizer ancestors, which is in the spirit of healing and the acknowledgement of a ever present stream of ur-humanness throughout the generations and since mythic time. I also take this perspective of my ancestors because my approach to rewilding is one that emphasizes remembrance. From the perspective of remembrance, “white” was an identity that only took hold after tribal identity had been mostly forgotten. To my mind, civilized identities (ie being “white”) are empty because they are a covering over of a human expressions that is inherently far more organic and which was forgotten, like a church over a living sacred grove. Maybe this can be compared to the concept of the “toxic mimic” within civilized cultures, where an item is created to “mimic” or replace it’s healthy true form, like candy is created that looks like fruit, or the identity of whiteness is created to stand in for something which was forgotten and for the organic need to belong.
I’m definitely interested in finding other Rewilders who want to open up the general discussion of where Rewilding, tribal identity and Heathenism meet and crossover, specifically on an ancestral level. It’s interesting to me to see how there are both Rewilders and Heathens to whom tribal identity is not important. I know there is already some strong overlap between Heathenism and Rewilding as well, and quite a bit of controversy. Maybe that’s an entirely different topic though.
Thanks for posting, Monica
Aludog
I like the idea of this thread. It has been interesting to read through the responses here. Regardless of what our blood heritage is, framing our relationship with the land by describing the ancient tribal associations is a way of telling a deeper story. I don’t see it as appropriation because it is pushing for more depth of understanding as well as acknowledgement of colonial wrongdoings, rather than the simple superficialities of cultural appropriation.
I was born beside Minguanan, an old Lenape Indian town where the Unami lived (“the people downriver”). Minguanan was a place of importance and power because it was a place of portage, the closest and lowest point between the two major rivers of the Susquehanna and the Delaware. The Susquehanna is one of the top 3 or 4 oldest rivers in the world. The totem of the Unami Lenape was the tortoise, a symbol of age and wisdom. There were a very ancient people, even compared to other Native American groups, and they had a reputation for sagacity and peacefulness. Their neighbors referred to them as the Old Grandmothers. Minguanan was also situated not too far from the north of the Chesapeake Bay, which was one of the most biologically rich areas in all of North America.
Growing up and through land-associations of other family members, I also developed relationships with other Lenape lands to the north, as well as the lands of the Matapeake, Piscataway, Croatan, and Youghiogheny branch of the Shawnee. Some years back I homesteaded in an area where the Monacans lived prior to colonization. I lived also for about a year in the lands of the Takelma. I spent a couple years traveling over much of the lower 48 and have become acquainted with many other places and peoples. My home in Appalachia and the surrounding piedmont always calls me back though and I’m content and peaceful with her. I couldn’t bare to miss a spring in my beloved hills!
Ancestrally, by blood, I’m mostly northern European. My father’s lineage and surname comes from the north of Germany on the mouth of the Elbe river. My surname Elfers is actually a place-name of sorts. Because of the consonantal shifts between Low and High German, there are three surnames Elfers/Elvers/Elbers which all share the same origin, and mean roughly “people of the river” (Elbe-rs). The name Elbe for the German river itself has deeper connotations in mythology. Elbe means both “river” as well as “elf / little people.” It actually refers to something like the water people, the elemental spirits living in rivers. That’s why elf and river are both cognate with the same root. It is also cognate with the word white. Elf/Alv/Elbe/Albe thus may all be translated as white, elf, river, or all three at the same time. In the Nibelungenlied, Alberich (“albe” = “elbe”) the dwarf, is an animistic/ancestral little person who lives in the underworld realm beneath a mountain. Tribally these north Germans would have been Saxons. My paternal grandmother was born to a Welsh immigrant father who abandoned his child as soon as he learned of the pregnancy, so there’s also some Celtic or possibly Basque in there too from my father’s line.
On my mothers side, there is more German, and some Swiss. When she was growing up my mom was told a story that her mother (my grandmother) who grew up in rural West Virginia was part “Cherokee.” I remember her, she had jet black hair and dark eyes and different facial features. Nevertheless other family members don’t acknowledge the story, and my mom got genetic testing which didn’t directly find any Native American, but did say she shared heritage (at a low level) with other individuals who were part Native American. So kind of a confusing result. The story remains just a rumor.
Ancestrally, by spirit, the picture is different still. I’m glad to hear about Aludog’s experiences dreaming. I too have met ancestral beings through my dreams. In some of my earliest dreams I emerged out of the forest. I can still feel the crunch of leaves underfoot. A couple years ago I had a dream where I met a race of little people, who I believe to have been Germanic elven ancestors. However, in that dream I came out of the forest, again, and found their presence on top of a big hill and it was a disturbance to my environment. They were high-tech machine elves, exactly as people like Terrence McKenna describe meeting under high doses of DMT. But I was not one of them, and rather an outsider from the forest, and therefore I was able to receive a story about how these little people (though they are now as tall as you and I) came to earth to sing to sleep the Old Fathers and Old Mothers, who were the stewards of the earth, causing the world to fall into a state of disrepair and disarray. Anyhow, disturbed by their motives, I rebelled and fought against these little people and as a consequence, they killed me in the dream, but then I was reborn as a child immune to their song of sleep and tasked with a mission. This is all complicated to discuss and a bit “out there” for most people, but as I understand things it seems the spirit of land I was born to has stood as an ancestor to me for probably my whole life, for whatever reason, and it wasn’t until I was old enough and also on my path that through dreaming I was able to encounter and face-up to the other, teleologically-opposed ancestors in my spiritual heritage, who are perhaps most strongly related by blood. I’ve also had a powerful experience with bears in my dreamtime, and so have begun looking to the bear as a personal symbol of strength and vulnerability. I have been working to go further into this dream work, and intend to welcome more indigenous/land-based ancestors into my life.
Heyzach,
Thanks for sharing your dream. Yeah, I refrain from sharing some of my dreaming for that reason, because I know it’s a bit “out there” for most folks. I’m not ashamed of my experiences, it’s more so that I’ve found that sharing these sorts of sacred experiences with folks who are not receptive feels like it’s not good for the power of that the experiences carry. I had a dreaming teacher with whom I was very close with, years back, who offered that one should refrain from sharing any dream completely, and to keep at least some of it contained because it safeguards the power they hold. I’ve found that to be true and helpful advice.
About your Cherokee grandmother/oma - I know that the Pensylvania Deitsch (Deutsch, as in German, not Dutch, as many people mistakenly assume), who were made up of mostly Palatinate Germans and also Swiss immigrants had “dark” immigrants among them. My Maternal German great grandmother was very dark and even had frizzy afro-like like hair for which she was shunned and had her life threatened durring the second world war, but a recent DNA sample told us that she was entirely German by blood - so dark skinned Germanic folks are definitely a thing. The dark Immigrants among the Deitsch were often referred to as “dark Germans” by outsiders, and many of them were rumored to be either part native or fully native folks who were trying to hide themselves among the insular Deitsch communities. Apparently there was enough overlap between native peoples and German immigrants to where people suspected them of collaboration. Of course the stereotype of Northern Europeans and Germans being primarily blond and blue eyed is not an entirely accurate stereotype. Especially among the Swiss Tyroler and Southern Germans, there are many darker skinned and dark eyed people. Something else that I find interesting is that the Germans (along with the Scots, Irish, and I believe the Welsh), were shipped to the new world to function basically as a cultural “buffer zone” between the indigenous populations and the European settlements. Have you ever read about the practice of the Powwow? Powwowing was basically a healing practice that the Deitsch brought with them from the Old World, where they would hold outdoor gatherings for healing rituals, and supposedly many native peoples would also attend, as Powwowing would have been familiar to indigenous shamanic tribal practices. Whether or not the word was adopted from native peoples is still contested, but from what I’ve read it looks like it was likely a Deitsch word, not an indigenous lone-word, though that is still a possibility. Some of Deitsch Powwow tradition can be traced very far back indeed to old tribal Germanic traditions. There was a popular Deitsch book that cataloged healing charms called Pow-Wow’s or The Long Lost Friend, by John George Hohman, which was a common household item and published extensively during the early and mid 1800’s, which even references Thor as spirit to invoke for healing.
About the Elves, I think it was pretty common for people to claim Elven ancestry. Unfortunately the Victorian era really reinvented elves as tiny winged people, but in the Heathen era they look quite different. There is some information on the Alfar-Blot, an important and very secretive ritual held annually around the Autumn season that seems to not only have been held to honor the Alfar, but to which they also actually showed up and took part. It seems that in Germanic tradition, the Alfar were associated very much with ancestors, and perhaps even more specifically with the paternal line of ancestors. They may be distinct from the Zwergen, which are sometimes referred to as the “dark elves” and the “little people”, but likely are related. But it is important to note that the Elves of Celtic culture seem to differ quite a bit in behavior and appearance than how they appeared to the Germanic peoples. I suspect that now-days they probably take different forms (like your machine-elves) based on who they appear to, since our traditions are no longer as much of a consensus reality as they were to our Heathen ancestors. Much has changed, but I think the essence is still the same. One time, I woke up in bed just before a fairly strong earthquake happened, and I looked down through the bed I was sleeping on with my girlfriend and saw a hole open up in the rock below the house and countless “little people” stream out of the ground. The earthquake struck seconds afterwords, so I think they were sort of getting out of the way or something. What struck me was there very large eyes. They were obviously “little people” and ground dwelling, but they didn’t feel like “elves”. I’ve also interacted with “little people” which were much more child-like and playful, but seemed quite distinct from the Alfar of Germanic tradition… So I dunno how to classify these beings. Maybe there are many different kinds of elves? I haven’t adopted the idea that the elves definitively represent hunter/gatherer ancestral spirits at all - it seems far too simplistic and maybe even kind of like a way to sort of force them into a category which might too neatly suit the desired Rewilding story-line. Plus, if Freyr is their Lord, that would point to a Neolithic and agrarian source, right? I’m still on the fence about it all, and I’m ok with that. I’d be stoked to get a first hand account from the Elves themselves, of course, haha… That the word means “white” is also interesting - it seems to be common description for beauty and radiance in the lore. Beautiful women are describes as having “white arms” and such. And the connections with water and rivers is also really interesting to me - I guess rivers have often been regarded as liminal spaces, where the mundane/human world (from wer-ald, “man-age”) overlaps with the otherworldly. I dunno. They are a slippery people, aren’t they?
Cool about the bear! I’ve been having ancestral bear-synchronicties and dreaming a lot, recently. Also, there is a very intriguing book on the bear in old Germanic tradition which Wolf Dieter Storl recently released, but which I have not read yet. Venerating the bear spirit as an ancestral being seems to be a common thing among hunter/gatherer circumpolar peoples. In Germanic tradition, he often appears as an ancient king in disguise. I’d really like to learn more about the ursine stuff.
Again, thanks for sharing your dreaming. Good stuff.
My ancestry is Polish. All my gg came from what is now Poland, although at the time it was partitioned by three empires and no longer on the map until after WW2. 23 & me shows most relatives in SE Poland with some also in the Ukraine, Russia, and Germany and also in the USA. Also, I have the original Apo allele, ApoE4. Are there any ApoE4’s here? I grew up in the Chicago area before coming to California.
I believe if I try giving an account of my ancestral heritage, I would leave out uncounted myriads of people who were forgotten in the waves of invasion, and genetic reshuffling. I do know English heritage is counting in that, and there is Scottish and maybe Welsh though there is no certainty of that except one earlier relative saying so, and Irish, and Dutch, and German, and French. I am inclined to think that somewhere back in time there are elves in my ancestry too. There is no distinct place that calls to me as an ancestral home for me to return to with rewilding ways. Rather I think it would be better for me to choose a workable place that can provide well enough that is relatively empty of other people using the area. If I find others going with me for that, as I think groups are better for anticivilization living, the place would be determinined as much by them for what they look for.