This piece touches on the displacement of Latin Americans and draws a parallel between this experience and that of Native Americans, as well as the ongoing abuse Indigenous peoples experience due to imperialism. Some may find it distressing.
I identify as Latin American and Latinx, and recognise that our experiences of colonisation and war on that land are different, but we share blood; we are iachs; in spite of the people who conquered it, Las Tres Raíces lives on.
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“I come from a family of witches.”
I say this jokingly to those who notice my attention to detail, my party tricks, my sensory awareness. It is easier to say it with humour than to admit that I believe it.
But I insist on having my mum cleanse my house before I move in. She chants as she holds the smudge stick around the doorframes, the walls, the windows, warding off anything bad that tries to come my way. Then she envelopes me in the thick smoke from the white sage, asking me to chant to keep the bad spirits away from myself. I place crystals in the corners of each room, and light some incense she gives me ‘for everyday cleansing’. It gives me a sense of security I can’t explain.
The sage itself costs her an arm and a leg because what’s usually sold in chains is, well, shit. The skunkweed of the spiritual world—a cheap knock-off sold to people who don’t know better, a poor substitute for the real thing.
Native people in the Americas struggle to practice these ceremonies regularly because of the limited access they have to sage. It grows naturally in in California, but is disappearing rapidly due to the large numbers of wildfires that threaten its habitats.
Reports come out frequently by big news organisations about the ‘witch healers’ of Latin America, or the Indigenous people of North America who have kept their traditions and rituals alive. National Geographic has dozens of these mini-documentaries on YouTube, playing ominous music and making subtle suggestions that these are the beliefs of a backwards people.
Which is why it felt wrong that Sephora, a worldwide makeup chain, would be selling ‘witch starter kits’ created by Pinrose, a perfumery founded by two white women whose ethos revolves around a ‘short but significant’ ritual when applying perfume. The ‘witch starter kit’ itself comes complete with a tarot deck, a rose quartz, white sage, and perfume—all without any explanation of what this paraphernalia represented.
The rhetoric that it’s shocking how people living today continue to practice such ancient and dated traditions feels patronizing, especially seeing how easily these traditions are appropriated and marketed for $38 a piece.
For a casual shopper it’s easy to look at something covered in millennial pink and think it’s cute enough to ‘add to cart’, but for the rest of us the survival of our long-lived traditions has been a hard-fought battle.
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There’s a photo that has been making the rounds on Twitter of a Lakota medicine man in shackles and chains, arrested for practicing healing ceremonies in the 1880s.
Lakota medicine man, arrested for practicing traditional sweat lodge healing ceremonies by Father Francis M. Craft, 1880’s. Photographed here in iron shackles, ball and chains. pic.twitter.com/r2QdqWRlii
— Matt Remle (@wakiyan7) March 10, 2018
Today it’s reported Native American students living in college dorms still face harassment and in many schools, policies are put in place that forbid them from practicing certain ceremonies. Some students have had to fight just to wear Native regalia at graduation, being told if they do so they will not be allowed to graduate. Others have had the police called on them for being too quiet. We are surrounded by people who decided very early on that we are to be kept an eye on just for being in their presence.
When people’s existence still feels like it’s being denied, has anything really changed in 150 years since the colonisers put a system in place that punished and continues to punish Indigenous people for what they believe in?
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Things white people have taken from me and put on the basic bitch bandwagon:
- protruding lips, over-lining protruding lips with brown liner and filling them with pink gloss;
- quinoa, chia, black beans;
- gold bamboo hoop earrings;
- all Cholx fashion, actually;
- reggaeton;
- pretty much my entire culture/traditions/spirituality.
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In 2013, Sephora made an estimated US$4 billion in revenue. I shop at Sephora, and I’m certain a lot of people reading this have in the past or will in the future.
That is what makes this whole situation, more than anything else, really disappointing—they don’t need a gimmick to get shoppers. They dominate an industry so over-saturated it’s practically drowning in brands and influencers.
But even as a customer who buys into the idea that my beauty is not enough without accruing Sephora Beauty Points, I shouldn’t have to pretend I’m okay with Sephora and Pinrose monetising a spiritual belief that is part of the fabric of my culture, with no relevance to their brand, and no support to the people from whom they have taken this belief.
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Since beginning this piece, Pinrose has pulled the starter kit from Sephora, stating that they won’t be manufacturing the product after hearing people’s ‘disappointment and offense’. This is great, but it doesn’t change the fact that POC are an afterthought: a minority they will hear because of backlash and not because we were taken into consideration to begin with.
I’m probably not a witch—my sense of logic reminds me of that every day— but still, it’s disappointing to learn that my greatest power is the financial liability I can be to a corporation.
About the author
Vanessa Giron is a Latinx freelance writer based in Naarm. She primarily writes on identity and culture, and how these things have shaped her as a woman in country that is not her own. She is a member of the West Writers Group with Footscray Community Arts Centre as well as a critic for The Big Issue. You can find Vanessa on Twitter @vanesssagiron or on her website vanessagiron.com