Sacred Trees and Colonizers

Originally published in my Facebook post December 26 2020.

Screenshot **Image Description**: A fake green Christmas tree on a white background. Tree is covered in Christmas lights of blue, green, red, and golden.

I learned recently that during the European winter solstice celebrations, Indigenous tribes in Northern Europe worshipped a particular evergreen tree. Some tribes considered the tree to be a goddess. They would go into the forests where the sacred trees grew, bring candles, offerings, say prayers while kneeling before those sacred roots that gave life even in the dead of winter.

When the Christian missionaries and colonizers came along centuries later, they coopted that tradition by cutting that sacred tree down and calling her a CHRISTMAS TREE (because Jesus who lived his entire life in the Middle East was going to have any connection to a Native evergreen tree from Northern Europe). The idea of a Christmas tree only became popular in England when Queen Victoria and her consort the German Prince Albert, imported the idea from Germany, where it came from. Queen Victoria and her government greatly expanded the British empire, by the way. They cut down trees everywhere for profit.

White European descendants: A sacred tree that was worshipped by your Indigenous ancestors was turned, by colonizers, into a tree that the Europeans grew solely for the purpose of cutting down and exploiting.

The desecration and violence of cultural appropriation and colonization never ceases.

Did you know that in Western Europe, there are almost no old growth or "primary" forests left in existence? They cut them all down. A primary forest is a forest that shows no signs of past human use or influence. Of the few that remain in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, many are being logged and sold off as we speak. Few have legal protections.

Because Europe lost its Indigeneity a long time ago. The people were forced or manipulated (which is another way of saying forced) into becoming Christians. They were taught that they should cut trees down and profit from them instead of worshipping them.

It's no surprise then that wherever they went in the world, European descendants cut down trees and sold them off, particularly in the Global South where Indigenous peoples still hold their forests sacred and will risk their lives to defend them. This is old trauma from Europe that has never been acknowledged or spoken out loud, only forced on the rest of the world because Europeans refuse to acknowledge their trauma or heal.

Did you know that before the Romans colonized Northern Europe and cut down the trees there, they eliminated their own forests in Italy? They needed the wood, you see, to build fires to forge their bronze weapons and their Roman coins. Endless wars are highly profitable, don't you know. Endless wars against Indigenous peoples to exploit their resources for profit. So you see, environmental destruction called "resource extraction" caused by empire and imperialism is a 2,000 years old story. Just as old as the colonizer story of Jesus Christ. That's not a coincidence.

Meanwhile, we are in the 6th mass extinction, caused by the relentless environmental destruction called "resource extraction" for profit by empire. The stage for this tragic reality was set almost 2,000 years ago in Europe.

To decolonize means to give the land back. But you can also decolonize your soul, white people. Give your soul back to your ancestors who worshipped the trees.

Hold your ancestors' land as sacred. Protect the trees. Your ancestors who resisted colonizers and died to defend their trees want you to come home.

#DecolonizeYourSoul #DefendTheTrees #SmashThePatriarchy #DefendMotherEarth