Indigenous Europe and Re-Membering History

^{Source: Wikipedia - Slovenia}

Dedicated to the land now known as “Europe”…

to the memory of the lives of the humans of those lands…

and to our collective liberation as humankind. 

By Rachelle Seliga

I write this article as a woman largely of European descent, who is fourth generation in the lands now known as the “United States of America.” I grew up in Los Angeles, California in the 80s and 90s. I studied and I practice original birth arts. I was adopted through spiritual adoption in my 20s by my spiritual Father and medicine man of the Ojibwe nation, and my elder of the Carib nation; I have spent many years and much time in the ceremonies of the lands of “North America.” I am a Mother. 

This article is written based upon what has come to me and through while holding specific inquiries on the history of indigenous Europe. Because Truth has been purposefully hidden from us for a very long time, this communion with Spirit for me, is one of the best ways to understand our human history. 

This article focuses on the past approximately 2,000 years of time, with a specific focus on the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. I chose to focus this article in this way, because these are the entities that are most responsible for colonizing indigenous Europe into the homogeneity that still exists today – not only in Europe, but the entire world.

I visited Europe this past summer for my first time. The first place that I went was Southern Sardinia, Italy. I became so ill, and I was vomiting like I never have before. While I was vomiting alongside the Mediterranean Sea, I saw this map: 

^{Map of the Roman Emprie in 117 AD - Source: Wikipedia – the Roman Empire}

It wasn’t literally THIS map – rather it was a map I was seeing in my mind’s eye of what this map here shows. 

I am not sure if I was vomiting because I was SEEING this map and understanding all that it implies - or if it was me vomiting that allowed me to SEE this map and understand all that it implies.  

There is a massive, worldwide amnesia of what occurred in Europe over the past 2000+ years. 

This amnesia exists even amongst many Europeans themselves. I interpret this forgetting as a trauma response to the horrific unfolding of a 2000+ year period of time. 

The true history of what happened to the indigenous peoples of Europe is a massive, unacknowledged wound in the collective psyche of this world.  

We cannot heal ourselves individually nor collectively - if we do not even know HOW we are wounded or ill.  

The common narratives as to WHY Europeans came to the lands of the Americas in masses include: 

• Famine in Europe
• Work opportunities
• A “better way of life”
• Power and greed
• Because Europeans are evil
• And on….

And when European colonization is discussed – there is a wide spectrum of distortions.  

On the one end is the distortion of Europeans “discovering” “new lands” - and "Manifest Destiny" - or the (still believed) belief that American settlers were "destined" to expand westward across North America. (1) Within this storyline, the indigenous peoples of the Americas were / are “savages” who need/ed to be “educated” and “white (skin) is right.” 

 On the other end of the spectrum of distortions – is that European descendant people or “white people” are the root cause of all of the world’s current problems; and all evil in the world for that matter. Within this storyline, evil began with Europeans - and “white people” owe reparations to the Native and Black communities of what is currently called the United States.  

Within the overculture of North America, history is taught about and thought about as having begun 500 years ago – when the Americas were “discovered” and the building of the nation states as we now know them came into existence.

But history did not begin 500 years ago.   

The questions I’ve asked myself and continue to ask myself are – and invite you to consider along with me are:   

• WHY would indigenous European people leave their homelands in masses? 
• WHY would indigenous people EVER choose to leave their homelands? 
• WHY do the mass migrations that happen at this time - happen? 

Indigenous means OF PLACE. It means belonging to A PLACE. And when you belong to A PLACE, there is an inherent understanding that your life IS the life of the land and the waterways; that you are alive because of THAT PLACE. That the PLACE takes care of you and you take care of it. These understandings all exist within Nature’s laws of reciprocity.  

I have spent time with various indigenous groups throughout the Americas, who continue to live their indigenous ways of life. Two of these groups being the Innu people of northeastern Quebec and the Wixárika people of western-central Mexico. 

I imagine to myself: Why would these people – why would any indigenous people - ever CHOOSE to leave their lands, their territories? Why do mass migrations of people ever occur? 

Indigenous people would CHOOSE to leave their lands, mass migrations of people occur - ONLY WHEN- there is grave assault to the continuation of life.  

What then was the grave assault to the continuation of life in Europe - that drove a mass migration of Europeans out of Europe?

We know about the genocides of Native Americans because of European colonization. 

We know about the land that has been stolen and all that this implies; the destruction of culture and language and ceremonies, of food systems; the attempt to annihilate a vast diversity of ways of life. We know about the horrors of boarding schools and the torturing of children – all done in the name of “assimilation.”  

We see the impacts of European colonization from past to present – as a connected timeline of destruction.  

In my lived experience, in this body that I am in - both the land and the people of these lands of the “Americas,” are acutely aware of this ‘history’ and its impact through present time; the anger and the grief in both land and people deeply palpable. 

The genocides, the degradation to LIFE that occurred throughout the indigenous Americas also occurred throughout indigenous Europe - only they occurred over one thousand years prior.   

I wonder if the reason that the European genocides are not remembered in the bodies of European people is because the genocides were so horrific, over such an extended period of time - that there is very little lived memory of them remaining? I wonder if European people were so beaten down after so many generations - that they were branded into silence on a cellular level? 

The genocides of indigenous Europe were facilitated by the same Empire as the genocides of indigenous America: The Roman Empire. 

Colonization of indigenous Europe began by the Roman Empire in the years “Before Christ” BC. This is approximately 1,500 years prior to the beginning of the Empire’s colonization of the Americas.

I share this not for “trauma competition” but to put things in perspective in TIME. 

It was the Roman Empire that had the largest, most destructive impact across indigenous Europe. 

^{Slide source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/iron_01.shtml}

The Roman Empire existed from approximately 27 B.C. to A.D. 476, and included territories in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia and was ruled by emperors. The Romans ruled Gaul (a region of Western Europe described by the Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy) beginning in 58 BC. Modern day “Britain” was invaded by the Romans in 55 BC and ruled by the Romans by 57 AD. (2)

Even though the Roman Empire “fell” over 1000 years prior to colonization of the “Americas”  – it is this Empire that colonized and continues to colonize the rest of the world; colonized indigenous Europeans, colonizing the indigenous Americas. 

That which was seeded by the Roman Empire continues to colonize until this day.

To understand the violence and brutality of the Roman Empire, all one needs to do is to:

1. Tap into the time that Yeshua (commonly known as Jesus Christ) was living in – and the circumstances that he was crucified (tortured and killed): for teaching about LOVE, brotherhood, sovereignty and Life. Yeshua’s crucifixion was one of thousands of crucifixions and hard violence the Roman’s used to control their empire. Under Roman rule indigenous ways of life were demonized and destroyed – in the name of “Romanizing” the people.
2. Look at what happened to the indigenous peoples of the Americas during colonization. In Europe AND in the Americas, Roman-influenced colonization looked /looks like::

• Genocides
• Children taken from their families and placed in boarding schools; forced assimilation.
• Indigenous Europeans were called: Barbarians by the Empire. Indigenous Americans were called: Savages by the Empire. 
• Ways of life destroyed
• The Church violently imposed upon the people.  
• Throughout Europe and the Americas, Churches were built on top of the sacred sites of the indigenous people. 

I also want to take a moment here to be clear - that I am not painting a picture of indigenous Europeans being helpless victims to the Roman Empire. 

Roman colonization came with much resistance by indigenous groups throughout Europe; some for very long periods of time, and some indigenous groups in Europe were never colonized by Rome. (3)

Here is a brief account: 

“By the year 50AD most of southern England had fallen to the soldiers of Rome. In the wild areas of the west, however, the legions had made little progress and the Welsh tribes, the Silures and the Ordovices in the south, the Demaete in the north, kept up an almost constant guerilla campaign against the invaders.

The date is not exactly clear but in around 57AD the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus decided that enough was enough. He led his legions out from the fortress town of Chester, heading for a final reckoning on the island of Anglesey, or Mona as it was then known.

The island was doubly significant for the defending tribesmen. To begin with Anglesey was the sacred home of the Druids, the spiritual leaders of the native people. Many, if not most, of the Druids actually lived there and were certainly on the island when Suetonius attacked…..

Eventually Suetonius Paulinus and his legions reached the shores of the Menai Straits. Knowing that the time had come to make a final stand, the tribesmen and their priests gathered on the opposite shore of the island.

Tacitus gave the following description: "On the shore stood the forces of the enemy, a dense array of arms and men, with women dashing through the ranks like the furies --- The Druids pouring forth dire imprecations with their hands uplifted towards the heavens, struck terror into the soldiers…It was the appearance of the women, wild haired and all bearing torches, that most frightened the legionaries. They were not used to facing such an enemy.”

Such fear did not last long. Urged on by their officers, the Roman cavalrymen swam their horses across the Straits while the infantry made the crossing in small, flat-bottomed boats. And when they reached the Anglesey side, their blood-lust knew no bounds.

Tacitus simply said: "they bore down upon them, smote all who opposed them to the earth and wrapped them in the flames they had themselves kindled."

What happened was a massacre. Men, women and children - armed and unarmed, young and old - fell under the swords of the Romans. The bodies of the dead and dying were unceremoniously hurled onto makeshift funeral pyres.

Suetonius and his soldiers then roamed across the island, destroying the druids sacred oak groves, smashing their altars and temples and killing anyone they could find.

The Roman general next proceeded to establish a garrison on Anglesey, a military fortress that kept the native tribes in total subjugation. Rebellion in other parts of Britain soon took Suetonius away from the western lands and it was another 20 years before Wales was totally conquered.

Yet by his actions on Anglesey, Suetonius Paulinus smashed the heart out of Welsh resistance and with the demise of the druids the people of Britain had lost their spiritual driving force.” (4) (5) 

During the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine (306–337 AD), Christianity began to transition to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. (6)  In the year 381, the catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians was recognized as the Roman Empire's state religion. Historians refer to the Nicene Church in a variety of ways: as the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the Imperial Church, the Roman Church, or the Byzantine Church.(7) 

From this point on was the era of the church-state of the Roman Empire.   

New laws began to be issued by the church state– and these laws applied to every nation in Europe. 

Some say it was the rise of Christianity that contributed to the end of the Roman Empire. Some say lead poisoning in the water supply is a large cause. Some say it’s because human population was on a sharp decline. It is also thought that political corruption led to the fall of the Roman Empire, along with the Huns of Mongolia attacking European lands from the East.  (8) (9)

After the fall of the Roman Empire….

In Europe - The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period) - sometimes called the Dark Ages - is typically regarded as lasting from the late 5th to the 10th century. And the High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the period of time that lasted from approximately AD 1000 to 1300. 

"Law can be used for justice of injustice. And law is primarily used for injustice by those in power." - Hermine Hayes Klein, Human Rights Lawyer

Between the years 1300 – 1450 throughout Europe: There was a "Little Ice Age": where there was extreme cold, rain, and crop failure – which resulted in food shortages and famines; weakening the population. The Black Death & Great Plague affected a weakened population. By the early 1400s, the population of Europe had dropped by 50%. (10) 

Men in power during this time were the Feudal lords and Ecclesiastical lords (Ecclesiastical lords were those who controlled the Church and the government) – and these men complained of labor shortage.

The low birth rates throughout Europe were blamed on “women’s secrets.”
(Rather than what it was from: famine / under nourishment / right tending to self and family because of feudalism, etc).

New laws were created to address the problem of the labor shortage - and these laws defined a new crime called: "Witchcraft." 

Accurate information relative to the “Witch hunts” or the Inquisitions, is very difficult, to access.  

While I have been teaching on this subject as part of INNATE Postpartum Care’s curriculum since 2016, in 2021, Human Rights Lawyer Hermine Hayes Klein (11) shared vital information about the “witch hunts” with both me and students of INNATE Postpartum Care, from her time living and teaching at the International School of Law in the Hague Netherlands. Below what I share is an interweaving of what she shared with me, with what I have taught for years on this matter.  

While the crime of sorcery had been illegal / defined by the Bible - all the way back to the Old Testament: Exodus 22:18-31 English Standard Version “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.” “Witchcraft” came to be defined as a new crime, differentiated from sorcery: Facilitating or enabling any activity that allows for sexual release without reproduction. 

New laws were issued by the Catholic Church. 

Again – at this time, the power of the Catholic Church at the time was applied to every nation in Europe; Ecclesiastical Lords controlled the Church and Government. 

Allopathic medicine had come forth in Europe in the 1200s, and only men were allowed to attend medical schools and work as doctors. The belief was that 'God's cures work only through priests and doctors' - therefore any healing done on the part of women was automatically considered to be the work of evil. Healing cures facilitated by the hands of women, were accused as an interference with the will of God and achieved with the help of the Devil 

Doctors were positioned as "medical experts" within judicial proceedings.

The crimes of witchcraft were defined as:

•  Having sex without desiring to have a baby (contraception)
• Having sex and becoming pregnant - and not wanting to keep the baby (abortion).
• Sterilization- to have sex and never become pregnant.
• Homosexuality

The crimes of witchcraft were punishable with torture and death.

It was the women healers and the midwives who held the information relative to "women's secrets" - relative to body literacy and sovereignty.

The Malleus Maleficarum or: “The Hammer of Witches” is one of the most famous "legal" books written on torture, confession extraction, trial and execution of the “witches” (the midwives), in 1484 by Reverends Kramer and Sprenger - sons of Pope Innocent the VIII. (12)

^{Source: Wikipedia – European Witchcraft}

Some direct quotes from The Malleus Maleficarum are:

• “No one does more harm to the Catholic Church than midwives.”
• “The most severe punishments should go to those who procure poisons {herbs} to extinguish and destroy the conceived fetus within the womb… and those who by poisons, potions, and maleficia induce sterility in women, or impede by cursed medicines their conceiving and bearing.”

For 400 years - any man could bring this book: the Malleus Maleficarum into any village in Europe and say: "Bring out the midwife." Preceding to brutally torture and execute her. For 400 years women were tortured, raped and killed - because of women's knowledge.

There were villages throughout Europe with only one or two women left standing by the time the witch hunter left town. The TRUTH is that nearly all midwives in Europe were executed. 

This represents many generations of Europeans who grew up within this terror campaign. 

Children were made to watch their Mothers be burned, tortured and killed. Branding them into silence. 

Men witnessed their Mothers, Wives, Daughters being tortured and killed. Branding them into resignation; not being able to defend and protect their women.   

It is estimated that around 9 million European women were killed during the Inquisitions / the "Witch hunts." 

^{A 1555 German print showing the burning of “witches” (midwives and women healers).} 

^{Source: Wikipedia - European Witchcraft}

As I shared in the beginning of this writing: In the present day there is almost absolute AMNESIA to the fact that these “witch hunts,” these genocides took place – even by the vast majority of people who still live on European lands. 

I wonder if the constant persecution throughout Europe, contributed to a people who stopped caring so much about the land anymore; stopped caring so much about their story anymore? 

I wonder if European people fled their homelands of Europe – and came to “America” to escape this approximately 1,500 year period of persecution?

Genocide, terror, assault on life – are the reasons why people of today choose to leave their homelands, migrating to new territories. So perhaps this is true for the mass migration of Europeans away from their homelands approximately 500 years ago...

Again, while the “Roman Empire” fell approximately 1000 years before the mass migrations of Europeans out of Europe and to the Americas – because it was the Roman empire that destroyed indigenous European ways of life and “Romanized” the indigenous Europeans – when Europeans colonized the Americas, they were in fact colonizing through the same consciousness and the same tactics utilized by the Roman Empire. 

To find support for this line of thought, look at what has transpired in the land now known as the “United States” over the past 500 year period of time: Clear evidence of how much can be altered through colonialism within that time frame. Indigenous Europe was colonized by Rome as well for about 500 years, followed by colonization of other empires and then the genocides of the “witch hunts.” 

Present day colonialism is in fact - still the Roman Empire.  

The term ‘white’ as in “white person” (rather than European person), was established as a legal concept after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 in the “United States,” to separate the Native American, European and African people who had united against the colonial elite.  

When European descendant people relinquished their cultural identities in exchange for being “WHITE” in the “United States”– they would be given land, and they were told “a new start to life.” This identity of “white” furthered the process of Empire assimilation.

• Why is the word “indigenous” often correlated only with brown and black bodied ancestors – but not white ancestors? 
• Why if you try to research “indigenous Europeans,” you can find almost nothing? 
• Why is the term “Neolithic” used to describe European ancestors – as opposed to “indigenous”?

To me – the answers I land upon to these questions of WHY are: 

• So European people would forget our past; who we are and the power we come from – creating a whole “race” of deeply disembodied and therefore disempowered peoples – who are easy to control. 
• Because “white people” traded in their indignity for their “white privileges.” 
• And because these are strategic ways of Empire to separate and divide the people.

Racism – a system of white supremacy - is an intentionally created system to separate and divide the people.  

When we are separated from: ourSelves, each other, our land, LIFE itself – we can be easily controlled and manipulated – to serve the Empire. Separation and division is one of the oldest tools of evil - because it is in UNIFICATION where our spiritual sovereignty lives.  

Racism was intentionally forged into every facet of the collective on a structural level from past to present; with white-bodied people still benefiting from it. 

Through understanding some of the history of the people of Europe – prior to colonization of the Americas - it helps bring awareness and recognition to the trauma of European descendant people - which is ESSENTIAL for our collective healing as humankind.

Most "white people" have forgotten that they have ancestors.

Most "white people" are so disconnected from our own history - that the TRAUMA our people went through is not in conscious awareness – and therefore impossible to bring a healing to. 

Last year at my 13 year old daughter’s school, my daughter and her class were learning about the Inquisitions / the “witch hunts.” They had a day where they had “mock trials” in her classroom – where some of the kids were being “tried” for practicing herbalism, for praying, for doing women’s healing work – and some of the kids were the judges / other members of “the court.” My daughter shared with me that everyone in class was laughing so hard throughout the whole thing….

While I appreciate the element of play and acknowledge the goodness of her class’s dynamic – the distortions are also so blatantly present to me:

Here is a group of children – all of whom have European ancestry – joking about the genocides of their ancestors; perhaps their very reason for being on “American” soil in the first place. 

Can you imagine this happening with a group of African-American children? Or a group of Native-American children? Laughing at the genocides of their own peoples?

To me there is a profound, maleficent reason that the collective -  including Europeans themselves – have so deeply forgotten the history of indigenous Europe.

In the present moment of time as a collective - we are engaged in the imperative conversations of dismantling racism and white supremacy. 

While many “white people” are programmed with white supremacy and its overt and covert violence – many “white people” are also programmed with “white guilt” and “white shame” – manifesting as profound disempowerment and immobilization.  

Guilt and shame prevent humans from being in their POWER – because guilt and shame disconnects us from our INHERENT WORTH AND DIGNITY AS HUMAN BEINGS.   

How does this agenda of “white guilt” and shame work in the present time?

White people following ideologies of what a “GOOD” white person does:

• HOW you should speak, and how you shouldn’t.
• WHEN you should speak, and when you shouldn’t.
• WHAT you should do, and what you shouldn’t. 

This form of guilt and shame actually bolsters white supremacy – through the lack of personal authority and self-empowerment - deeply limiting relational depth and possibility.  

Guilt as a strategy for restoration delays the possibility of finding wholeness, oneness.

Roman Empire colonialism has purposefully fostered not only hatred of others (separation and division / racism), but also hatred of Self (hating one’s ancestral inheritance, hating the color of one’s skin, hatred for one’s fortunes, hatred for one’s mis-fortunes).

I call on - and call in - everyone with European ancestry to STAND UP; to remember WHO YOU ARE – as children of this Earth. 

I call on you to remember your ancestors, our ancestors as wise, indigenous people. I call on you to walk in dignity for yourself, and for them. 

In order to dismantle the program of racism from the INSIDE-OUT (meaning from WITHIN US), we must acknowledge the paradoxical Truth that: 

• Race doesn’t biologically exist. The concept was manufactured - so that we would annihilate each other and ourselves

AND

• Simultaneously, racism exists SO MUCH SO in the present time – that humans die daily because of IT.

We must also take a hard, honest look within - as to where we have subscribed to the beliefs of both superiority and inferiority. 

We need to collectively re-member at this time on the planet - almost all / if not all - of our respective people have lived through genocide. That all our people have been oppressed and all our people have been oppressors at some point in history.

In this re-membrance, we return to what is essential for both our individual and collective HEALING:

• The honoring of our ancestors – all they have lived through, so that we could be HERE, now.

• Grieving what has been lost, destroyed, desecrated – acknowledging the massive losses we have experienced cross-culturally and how the dysfunctional ways of life most of us have in the modern world, are a result of this. 

• Acknowledging that these losses are PART OF what we have in common as humankind at this time: Loss of traditions. Loss of cultures. Loss of lands. Loss of freedom. Loss of humanity.  

• Orienting to the present time. My adopted Dad always told me: We must go beyond the TRUTH to the INTEGRITY of the SOURCE of the TRUTH. Meaning: What are the gems of the Truth that we are in search of that facilitate evolution of consciousness on Earth for Thriving Life? 
• Stepping into our personal authority – to heal our respective and collective intergenerational Trauma –  so that we may CREATE BEAUTY ON EARTH. 

 

There is beauty in discord if it burns away the impurities that create divide.

-Virginia Rosenberg

Rachelle Seliga 

© September, 2024.

Credits and Resources: 

A special thanks to my co-Mothers for their support in the birthing of this writing into the world: Margarita Garcia and Taryn McKei

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaul
3. Book: The Barbarians Speak : How the conquered peoples shaped Roman Europe by Peter S. Wells
4.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/375ec5d4-a10c-3f1a-929c-12d9697f3f58
5. https://britishheritage.com/history/history-druids-britain
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Christianity
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_as_the_Roman_state_religion
8. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-the-fall-of-rome-112688
9. https://retrospectjournal.com/2019/02/03/the-influence-of-the-roman-empire-on-the-catholic-church/ 
10. Book:  “Witchcraft, Population Catastrophe and Economic Crisis in Renaissance Europe: An Alternative Macroeconomic Explanation,” by Gunnar Heinsohn and Otto Steiger
11. Hermine Hayes Klein - Lawyer who focuses on Human Rights in Childbirth and Reproductive Rights https://www.hayeskleinlaw.com
12. Book: Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English