We have many ancient cultural lenses and even complex legal systems (such as the Gaelic Brehon Law) that can offer us clarity and sign posts as we begin to remember what each of our indigenous ancestors understood (yes we all have them regardless of skin color and genetic background).

The concepts explored in this post (and that instance of a Quebec town declaring trees have rights) are not new or emergent, but rather reflections of very ancient ways of knowing and being, representing part of a process when some of the wisdom of their own ancestors is being re-membered by those that had been suffering from the trauma that results from multigenerational trauma and what some call wendigo sickness.

There are many facets of modern western culture that perpetuate generational amnesia and instill an arrogant and disrespectful attitude in humans towards our non human kin.

For instance, the English language is structured to re-enforce anthropocentric delusions of grandeur, relegating all our non-human relations on earth to the demeaning status of being an “it”. Older languages with an animistic ethos of deep belonging to place do not refer to the trees, or the birds, or the fish, or the river or the mountain as an “it”, they refer to those beings as kin.

These variations in language in how we refer to the beings we share this world with may seem inconsequential to the indoctrinated self-important statist that trusts “The Science”, but ask yourself this, how much easier is it to train human beings to be willing to poison a river, or carve into a mountain for lithium or clear cut an ancient forest for profit when you raise them describing those beings as inanimate objects, rather than referring to them in the same way you would refer to a sister or a grandfather?

The forest and all aspects of the living Earth were seen as sacred and revered by the Druids, and their successors, the Brehon.

Within ancient Gaelic cultures the springs, rivers, lakes, mountains and trees were seen as beings that have a spirit and innate rights. Under their Brehon Laws (known in the Gaelic language as 'Fénechas) the Gaels (Druids and their Brehon successors) acknowledged the living waters of the Earth had innate rights just as all human beings did (including equal rights for women, which at the time was far ahead of any other European laws for women). The Brehon Law defined our Kinship with Water, our responsibilities to respect her and offer blessings and express gratitude when we receive her gifts.

Brehon Law (is seen by some) to have facilitated the foundation for a peaceful and productive (stateless) society which existed for nearly a millennium without police or prisons.

Jesus of Nazareth tried to tell people of the importance of respecting the beings we share this world with by speaking words like “what you do to the least you do to me” (no he was not just talking about humans) but the Romans did a great job distorting his teachings to be anthropocentric instead of filled with humility.

In the times before Christ, Ireland was known as a place of advanced learning and young nobles from kingdoms far and wide were sent by their families to study with the Druidic teachers before returning home. This illustrious culture of higher learning was almost totally annihilated by the imperialistic Roman invasion.

Even after the Romans sought to commit cultural and literal genocide, the Druids were wise enough to preserve their knowledge in a small few individuals and pass it onto who would become the Brehon.

The Bardic Schools had existed as renowned institutions instructing in the native tongue the Irish language, literature, history and Brehon Law. They were highly developed and scholarly institutions providing what amounted to a university education in multiple subjects of study up until the middle of the seventeenth century. This long tradition had produced an abundance of poets, physicians, historians and Brehon’s – skills and knowledge which was often found overlapping in individuals.

Thanks to the courageous Eolaí (Gaelic knowledge keepers of the Druidic/Brehon ways) of the hedge schools and the harpists of the Scottish highlands (which preserved the Druidic knowledge “wrapped in the thread of poetry”) we still have pieces of their wisdom to help guide us forward.

Many in modern times have been conditioned to see the ancient Druids and their Celtic predecessors the Brehon (Breitheamh) Judges as "savages". This is also nothing more than the sad propaganda of a socially, agriculturally and scientifically inferior involuntary governance Statist regime attempting to erase the cultural accomplishments and memory of those they sought to silence and dehumanize in the name of imperialistic conquest and greed.

The Druidic wisdom keepers encapsulated their combined memory of medicines, conflicts, natural disasters, geology, meteorology, pathways to peaceful resolution and stories that educate the listener about astronomy, mathematics and ecology into rhymed verse (often recited as part of a song with harps or flutes). Those concentrated expressions of their culture were passed down to the time of the Celts arriving and were then written down in Ogham on stone and wood to become the Brehon (Breitheamh) Laws (or Fenechus).

They had laws to honor and protect the bees and the trees and saw men and women as equals (long before anyone in Europe).

The first recordings of the Brehon (Breitheamh) Laws were made around the year 700 BC. They were collected (not invented) by a great Breitheamh (judge) named Ollamh Fodhla and inscribed into Ogham in stone and on elongated wooden panels. These were said to be the written form of laws, ways of seeing and knowledge with much more ancient roots and deep history in that land which was (up until then) passed down through the form of rhymes and verse (in the form of music).

The Roman church began attempting to erase that cultural history in the year 438 AD when monks were sent to gather all the Brehon laws (recorded on wooden panels and stone) and transcribe them (censoring that which did not align with the Christian views of the world and our place in it). The Christian statist interlopers gathered the sacred laws of the Breitheamh in Teamhair na Rí ('Tara of the kings'), and formerly also Liathdruim ('the grey ridge') and after transcribing them in what they described as a ”purified” form (meaning censored, altered and redacted) they destroyed all the original Ogham writing they could get their hands on. This attempt to steam roll the old Druidic ways and distort Brehon Law to serve as another tool for indoctrinating and assimilating the Celtic people failed as much of the Ogham which recorded the ancient knowledge was carved into large stones all over the land in hidden corners, cliffs and boulders.

The ancient knowledge keepers (Breitheamh or “Brehon” judges) of the time saw what the Roman Christian church was attempting to do and so they made sure to infuse their wisdom into verse “wrapped in a thread of poetry” and taught these songs to the bards and townsfolk far and wide to preserve the essence of their culture.

This wise covert approach to preserving their cultural wisdom persisted for well over a millennia until it again came under direct threat from statist regimes that sought to erase the past and impose their degenerative involuntary governance structures upon the Celtic tribes.

That is why the statists of the British monarchy (queen Elizabeth) ordered her thugs to "Hang harpers, wherever found, and destroy their instruments".

Harpers, however, were not the only Irish treated with such hostility. In an attempt to gain control of Ireland, laws were enacted by the English Crown making it illegal for the Irish to speak their language, own land, become educated and to marry. The penalty was death.

This forbidding of the bards from reciting their verses in their native Gaelic tongue (under penalty of death) was similar to how the Canadian Government would later force the First Nation children of Turtle Island into concentration camps (euphemistically called “residential schools”) cutting off their hair, forbidding them to speak their language and thus attempting to sever the hereditary line of knowledge which was passed down in verbal stories in their own language.

Between 1650 and 1660, Oliver Cromwell ordered the destruction of harps and organs. Harps were burned and harpers were forbidden to congregate. Despite this, various records indicate that some Highland chiefs retained their harpers well into the eighteenth century, and place names such as Harper’s Pass, Harper’s Field (both on the island of Mull), Harper’s Window (Isle of Skye) and Harper’s Gallery (Castlelachlan in Argyle) remind us of the one-time importance of the harp in these areas.

The truth is, that like the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands of Turtle Island (what is now called "Canada") the Druidic way of seeing, living and interacting with our fellow beings on this world (which was passed down to their Celtic descendants) represented a clear example of how people can live, prosper and interact without the existence of a state (centralized involuntary governance structure). Those people who were speaking the languages of those ancient ways of being, living in close connection with the land and in a stateless society were seen as a threat to the imperialistic statists who were attempting to impose their degenerative and unnecessary systems of domination on those two separate continents.

(continued in comment below this note..)