As European Americans, our task is to honor our ancestors and honor as well the pain that we have yet to truly process and that way we can be free and that way we don't have to

perpetuate that to other people.

Hello friends. Welcome to the Medicine Stories podcast where we are remembering what it is to be human upon the earth. I am

Amber Magnolia Hill. This is episode 38, synchronistically

being released the week of my 38th birthday. And today I'm sharing in my interview with Lila June. This is a really beautiful

meaningful and I think really important conversation that we have today. We talk about how Lila

raised to acknowledge only her Native American side came to understand and honor her indigenous European ancestors.

What happens when people hate or feel massive amounts of guilt

around their ancestors, their ancestry.

Making space for everyone's healing, permission to grieve all the ancestral traumas of all peoples.

Going way back in time to understand colonizer slash oppressor actions.

Lila said, you don't just wake up one day drink your coffee and say I feel like

committing genocide on a whole continent of people and of course we are in no way

excusing what has happened in the past between Europeans and the Native peoples of this land,

people of Africa.

Lila and I are just talking about bringing a wider perspective into these really important

cultural conversations that we're having right now.

Lila's early experiences with sexual abuse, alcohol, and drugs and how they informed her perspective on restorative justice.

Her pilgrimage to the sacred motherland of Europe, she said,

these mountains may have lost their people, but that doesn't mean they don't need ceremony.

We talk about seeing through the thin wall of time that dominates our understanding of history

and remembering that the vast majority of our ancestors lived before things got broken,

...