White Stuff? A First Whiff from Our Pilgrimage to England/Scotland

Brian and I are newly returned from a two week meander of southern England, then the Scottish highlands. So much landed in me from this collection of pilgrimages, it will take several ‘whiles’ to come to speech about it. But something Brian said has caught my heart and mind both. Sitting in a peaceful pasture behind the Rowan Tree Inn, he said quietly, “It feels different somehow to be where white people were indigenous.” [image from "New Town," a retail space in Edinburgh, right off of St. Andrew Square.]

I loved that he observed it first, in those words, though he caveated for a while before saying what he wanted to say. He’s a white man with a tender heart, which has been wounded more often than not when he opens his mouth about something touching indigenous or racial wounds in our USA today. Sometimes he’s said things that are insensitive. But sometimes his tender heart speaks to mine. Like this time.

I don’t have a lot of words about this yet, but I do want to mark the visceral experience of it, given some shape in his words. There was an ease of bodysoul for me too, especially in the highlands. A sense of alignment or resonance, though I’d never been there before. I’ve joked about my Outlander obsession, watching and rewatching the tv-series while reading and re-reading the books, but it’s connected here too. 

It was different being on a geographical-historical land on which white people were indigenous. I felt tears come a couple times on the journey, some expected, some unexpected. What did it take for my ancestors (some of whom left from Swiss-German lands) to leave the land they loved? The only land they’d known? What grief did they carry with them? What fears?

Human populations have moved all over this planet, spurred by circumstance, safety, risk for something more, escape from so much else…but also curiosity, adventure, greed, control, domination. 

What if white people, unaware of their own ancestral lineages, could become aware of being indigenous themselves? Would it matter for becoming more fully human, sensitive to the fears and pains of others? Would it shift relationship to the Land in a constructive, transformative way?

I wonder.