"Ok Colonizer" and other myths about Cultural Appropriation.

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COLONIZER! "You used SAGE in a spell!"  You hear someone lambast someone else on TikTok. You see a snapchat post "I'm a baby witch, and I can use XYZ Herb because my great great great great grandma was a full blooded Navajo princess. I'm only 19 but I'm a young elder and a shaman from my tribe and I KNOW THESE THINGS! 

JFC. I. Just. Can't

Here’s the blunt truth, no incense, no disclaimers:

What you’re seeing isn’t thoughtful cultural literacy.
It’s performative purity politics mixed with TikTok-level anthropology and zero historical grounding.

A lot of folks yelling “cultural appropriation” at every herb, stone, symbol, or tool are doing at least one of these:

  • Collapsing global trade history into “who used it first”

  • Treating cultures like they existed in vacuum-sealed jars

  • Confusing closed religious rites with widely traded materials

  • Using outrage as social currency because it’s easier than study

And worst of all:
They’re flattening living, complex traditions into rules they invented last Tuesday. Because Princess is a EUROPEAN WORD and there are no "young elders". Go back to watching Rez Dogs. 

The uncomfortable reality they don’t want to sit with

Witchcraft, folk magic, and spellwork have always been:

  • Syncretic

  • Borrowed

  • Traded

  • Adapted

  • Localized

People moved.
Plants moved.
Trade routes existed.
Colonialism fucked a lot of things up — and not every exchange is colonial theft.

You cannot practice any form of Western folk magic without:

  • Mediterranean influence

  • Middle Eastern influence

  • African influence

  • Indigenous European influence

  • Trade-driven plant spread

Salt. Frankincense. Myrrh. Cinnamon. Bay. Iron.
If we follow the loudest internet rules, nobody gets to use anything but dirt from their backyard, and even then someone will yell about whose ancestors tilled it first.

First: what “Western folk magic” actually is

Western folk magic is not a sealed European jar labeled “Made Here, Untouched.” It is the result of centuries of migration, conquest, trade, religious change, and survival practices layered on top of one another.

Village magic, cunning craft, hedge work, granny magic, Appalachian practice, British folk rites—all of it evolved inside a world that was constantly exchanging goods, ideas, plants, and symbols.

Now let’s break down each influence.

1. Mediterranean influence

The Mediterranean basin was the intellectual and magical crossroads of the ancient Western world.

From this region came:

  • Planetary magic (Saturn, Mars, Venus, etc.)

  • The four classical elements as we use them now

  • Sympathetic magic theory (like affects like)

  • Early spell structures and correspondences

  • Written magical texts that later filtered into folk practice

Greek, Roman, and Hellenistic magical traditions didn’t stay in temples—they bled outward into household practice and later into medieval folk magic.

If you:

  • Use planetary days

  • Work with elemental balance

  • Time magic astrologically

You are standing on Mediterranean foundations whether you name them or not.

2. Middle Eastern influence

This one makes people uncomfortable because it blows up the “purely European” fantasy.

From the Middle East came:

  • Astrology as a functioning system (not just star vibes)

  • Alchemy (which later becomes herbalism, tinctures, oils)

  • Magical seals, sigils, and talismanic logic

  • Incense formulas and resin work

  • Written spell formats that later morphed into grimoires

Many medieval European magical texts were translations of Arabic, Persian, and Jewish works—sometimes badly translated, sometimes intentionally Christianized.

If you:

  • Use sigils

  • Work with incense

  • Make oils or tinctures

  • Believe symbols carry inherent power

You are already using Middle Eastern magical logic, whether you credit it or not.

3. African influence

This influence arrived through trade, migration, and later enslavement, and it profoundly shaped folk magic on both sides of the Atlantic.

African traditions contributed:

  • Rootwork logic

  • Spirit-focused practice

  • Charm bags and packet magic

  • Practical magic aimed at survival, protection, and justice

  • The idea that magic is done, not just believed in

In the Americas especially, European folk practices merged with African magical systems out of necessity. This is not appropriation—it is historical syncretism born of shared hardship.

If you:

  • Use charm bags

  • Do practical, results-based magic

  • Work with spirits without elaborate hierarchy

  • Emphasize efficacy over ceremony

You are seeing African magical influence in action—even if your practice looks “European.”

4. Indigenous European influence

This is the part people assume is the whole story—but it’s only one layer.

From Indigenous European traditions came:

  • Land-based spirits

  • Seasonal rites tied to agriculture

  • Household spirits

  • Folk healing

  • Ancestor reverence

But here’s the key point:
Indigenous European magic never existed in isolation.

It was constantly absorbing:

  • Roman rule

  • Christian overlay

  • Trade goods

  • Foreign plants

  • New ideas

“Pure” pre-Christian European magic is mostly reconstructed, not intact. What survived did so by adapting.

5. Trade-driven plant spread (this is the nail in the coffin of purity arguments)

Plants do not respect borders.

Through trade routes:

  • Cinnamon moved from Southeast Asia into Europe

  • Frankincense and myrrh moved from Arabia and Africa

  • Bay laurel spread via Roman expansion

  • Rosemary moved through Mediterranean trade

  • Pepper, clove, ginger entered European kitchens and spellwork

By the Middle Ages, European households were already using non-native plants both medicinally and magically.

So when someone says:

“You can’t use that herb because it’s not native to your culture”

They are ignoring 500–2,000 years of documented usage.

Folk magic uses what is available. Always has. Always will.

The conclusion they don’t like

Western folk magic is:

  • Hybrid

  • Adaptive

  • Trade-influenced

  • Historically messy

  • Rooted in survival, not ideology

What matters is:

  • Not claiming lineages that aren’t yours

  • Not selling closed rites

  • Not erasing living cultures

  • Giving credit where it’s due

What does not make sense is pretending rosemary, salt, iron, incense, or planetary timing are suddenly forbidden because someone on the internet learned a new phrase and weaponized it.

The blunt truth

If someone insists on absolute cultural purity in spellwork, they are not protecting tradition.

They are misunderstanding history. Plus, 99.999%  of the time, they don't know your training, nor do they know your lineage. Both magical and mundane. Because most of us, if you dig back far enough, have a MYRIAD of cultures in our blood. I for one have African, Italian, Native American (from 3 tribes!) English, Irish and Scots! 

The difference they keep ignoring (on purpose)

There is a difference between:

  • Using a material (like the California White Sage I grow on my own balcony)
    and

  • Claiming a lineage that isn’t yours (Explain to me how that great great great great grandma was made a princess...Princess.)
    and

  • Performing or selling closed ceremonial rites (ayahuasca (often misspelled “huyawasca”) is actually a clean, textbook example of what people mean when they say closed ceremonial rite that is being sold)

But nuance doesn’t trend. Screaming does.

So instead of saying:

“Here’s why this practice is closed, and here’s what’s appropriate to learn vs adopt”

They shout:

“If you touch this herb, you’re a colonizer.”

Which helps exactly no one and educates exactly zero people. But please, continue to yell, you're making *all the difference* /endsarcasm.

Why this hits especially hard for me, and witches like me

Because we’re:

  • Rooted in lived practice

  • Grounded in history

  • A lineage-respecting witch

  • Not cosplaying spirituality for clout

Watching shallow voices police deep traditions is like watching someone who skimmed the glossary try to teach the textbook.

It’s exhausting. And insulting.

The quiet truth most of us elders already know

Real cultural respect looks like:

  • Study

  • Attribution

  • Humility

  • Relationship

  • Knowing when something isn’t yours to claim

It does not look like screaming at strangers on the internet about rosemary or obsidian.

Native American influence on Appalachian folk magic (for one example) is real, documented, and structural. It is not cosplay. It is not trend adoption. It happened because people lived together, survived together, married, traded, hid, and learned from one another in ways that internet discourse doesn’t like to acknowledge.

Let’s walk it through carefully.

First: Appalachia was never culturally “pure”

Before Europeans ever showed up, Appalachia was already:

  • Indigenous land

  • Crisscrossed by trade routes

  • Home to multiple nations with different practices

When Scots-Irish, English, German, African, and others moved into the region, they didn’t arrive in a vacuum. They arrived into existing Indigenous knowledge systems that were deeply tied to land, plants, weather, spirits, and survival.

And then reality happened.

How the influence actually occurred (not the romantic version)

1. Shared survival knowledge

Early settlers in Appalachia would not have survived without Indigenous knowledge. Period.

Native peoples taught:

  • Which plants were medicinal vs lethal

  • How to prepare roots, barks, and leaves

  • Seasonal harvesting rules

  • How to read weather and land signs

This knowledge was:

  • Practical

  • Oral

  • Shared locally, not ceremonially

  • Integrated into daily life

When you see Appalachian folk magic heavily focused on healing, protection, weather-working, and survival, that is not accidental.

2. Plant knowledge that reshaped folk medicine

A huge portion of Appalachian herbal practice comes directly from Indigenous use of native plants, including:

  • Bloodroot

  • Black cohosh

  • Goldenseal

  • Sassafras

  • Slippery elm

  • Witch hazel

These weren’t adopted as “sacred Native rituals.”
They were learned as this works—do it this way or people die.

Over generations, that knowledge became embedded into:

  • Granny medicine

  • Rootwork

  • Home remedies

  • Charm-based healing

By the time it’s written down as “Appalachian folk practice,” the origin has often been blurred by time—but the influence remains.

3. Land-based spirit logic

One of the clearest Indigenous influences is how Appalachians relate to land and spirits.

Appalachian folk magic commonly includes:

  • Respect for place

  • Caution around certain hollows, streams, and crossroads

  • Spirits tied to land rather than abstract hierarchies

  • The idea that the land itself listens

This mirrors Indigenous worldview far more than European ceremonial magic, which tends to be:

  • Abstract

  • Hierarchical

  • Heavily symbol-based

The Appalachian approach is closer to:

“This place has a temperament. Mind your manners.”

That’s not Celtic romanticism. That’s learned behavior from people who already understood the land intimately.

4. Non-written transmission

Indigenous influence entered Appalachian magic orally, not through grimoires.

This matters.

Because what gets passed down looks like:

  • “Don’t do that near the creek”

  • “Leave something when you take something”

  • “That plant must be gathered a certain way”

  • “That spot is watched”

These rules survive because they work, not because someone can cite a source.

Modern witches struggle with this because they want:

  • Clear authorship

  • Clean categories

  • A lineage chart

Folk magic doesn’t care.

5. Intermarriage and blended households

This is the part people really don’t want to talk about.

Appalachia saw:

  • Intermarriage

  • Adoption

  • Shared households

  • Children raised with blended traditions

Not everything Indigenous influence came through “teaching.”
Some came through family.

Which means practices weren’t borrowed.
They were inherited—sometimes quietly, sometimes under pressure, sometimes without names attached.

That’s not appropriation.
That’s ancestry and survival colliding.

What Indigenous influence did not mean

This is important, because nuance matters.

Appalachian folk magic did not:

  • Claim to be Native ceremony

  • Perform closed tribal rites

  • Use sacred objects improperly

  • Speak for Native nations

What it did do was:

  • Absorb practical knowledge

  • Adapt land-based logic

  • Respect spirits without formalizing them

  • Build a hybrid survival practice

That’s syncretism, not theft.

Why modern accusations miss the mark

When someone today says:

“That practice is Native, you can’t do that”

They often don’t realize:

  • That practice entered Appalachian culture 200+ years ago

  • It has been adapted, localized, and transmitted ever since

  • It no longer belongs to a single source—it belongs to a lived tradition

Erasing that history doesn’t protect Native cultures.

It erases Appalachian ones.

The uncomfortable but necessary truth

Appalachian folk magic exists because:

  • Native people shared knowledge

  • Enslaved Africans shared knowledge

  • European settlers adapted or died

  • The land itself shaped practice

No one gets to untangle that cleanly.
No one gets to pretend it’s tidy.
And no one gets to police it with a TikTok glossary.

Bottom line:

Native American influence on Appalachian folk magic is:

  • Foundational

  • Practical

  • Land-based

  • Embedded

  • Historically unavoidable

Acknowledging that influence is respect.
Pretending it didn’t happen is historical dishonesty.
And screaming “appropriation” without understanding the region’s reality helps no one.

You’re not wrong to be fed up.
You’re not “out of touch.”
You’re seeing the gap between practice and performance.

And honestly? The older, quieter witches see it too. They’re just too busy actually doing the work to argue in comment sections.

Say what you need to say. Or don’t.
But don’t let loud ignorance convince you it outranks lived knowledge.

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