Fullalove, C. (2025). A heuristic inquiry into the translation and integration of indigenous earth-based practices into multicultural modern life [Unpublished Master’s thesis]. Alef Trust & Liverpool John Moores University.
This inquiry explores how to integrate Indigenous practices into a Western context without recolonising the Indigenous other. The primary aim of this study was to understand how experienced earth-based, animist practitioners of multicultural heritage have integrated Indigenous traditions, that are not their own, into their spiritual practise. A secondary aim was to find out how the co-researchers had processed and integrated cultural shadow, such as colonialism. The research method is based on heuristic inquiry but has been adapted to reflect certain principles of earth-based practise such as the phases of the moon and the seasons. The study showed that the co-researchers had integrated their own living histories, as multi-cultural individuals, into their practise by working with their cultural shadow in ways that were inspired by Indigenous traditions but adapted to work within their own social political context. In addition, the co-researchers’ spiritual practises were often contextualised within a political purpose that had developed beyond the personal growth paradigms that are familiar in the West. The findings suggest that working with Indigenous traditions, that are not your own, in a Western context, has the capacity to foster cultural reconciliation rather than perpetrate the recolonisation of Indigenous cultures when certain factors are taken into consideration.
