The man across the desk has been explaining the nuances of his spiritual awakening for , and I have exactly nine ways to say “please leave” that I am currently cycling through in my head. I am a refugee resettlement advisor; my days are usually measured in visa categories, housing vouchers, and the specific, crushing weight of bureaucratic wait times. But today, I am listening to a donor-or a potential donor-who just returned from a “transformational immersion” in the Amazon and wants to “give back” by offering mindfulness workshops to people who have lost their homes to mortar fire.
He slides a brochure across my desk. It is beautiful. The paper is heavy, at least 109lb cover stock, with a matte finish that feels like sun-warmed stone. The typography is elegant, a serif font that whispers authority and “ancient wisdom.” On the front cover, there is a high-resolution photograph of a Shipibo textile, its geometric patterns pulsing with a complexity that the man sitting across from me will never truly understand. He points to a paragraph about “honoring the lineage” and “integrating the indigenous soul.”
I look at the brochure, and then I look at the man. I think about the nineteen families I processed this week who are currently sleeping in a converted gymnasium because the federal funding hasn’t cleared. I think about the fact that this man probably paid $7,499 for his retreat, not including his carbon-heavy flight to Iquitos. And I know, before I even turn the page, what I will find-or rather, what I won’t find.
The Masterpiece of Modern Marketing
The retreat website, which I had pulled up earlier while waiting for him to arrive, is a masterpiece of modern marketing. It hits all the right notes: it mentions the specific tribes, it uses the word “sacred” forty-nine times, and it promises a deep, ancestral connection to the earth. But the “Book Now” button leads to a Stripe checkout flow that deposits funds directly into a Delaware LLC.
There is no mention of a profit-sharing agreement. There is no scholarship fund for the local youth in the Ucayali region. There is only the citation. We have entered an era where “acknowledgment” is treated as a form of currency. If you name the lineage, the logic goes, you have paid your dues. If you put a photo of a Shaman on your landing page, you have “honored” the culture.
It is a form of decorative ethics. We decorate our businesses with the aesthetics of indigenous wisdom to give them a moral gravity they haven’t actually earned through relationship or redistribution.
The Asymmetry: We are essentially ghost-writing our spiritualities using indigenous ink, then keeping all the royalties for ourselves.
I once made a mistake, about , during a particularly grueling week of resettlement cases. I was so exhausted that I misfiled a housing voucher for a family of six, sending it to a landlord who had been blacklisted for safety violations. I spent three nights staring at the ceiling, wondering if my desire to “do good” was actually just a way to manage my own middle-class guilt while failing the people I was supposed to serve.
That is the feeling I get when I look at these brochures. They are managing guilt through aesthetic alignment. The asymmetry is the actual story. It’s the gap between the $5,999 price tag of the experience and the $0.00 that ever makes it back to the water systems or legal defense funds of the people whose traditions are being “curated.”
Flattening Culture into Ingredients
The man is still talking. He’s telling me about the “oneness” he felt. I wonder if that oneness included the realization that the average income in the region he visited is less than $349 a month. I wonder if he knows that the Shipibo-Konibo people are currently fighting massive incursions from illegal loggers and oil interests. Probably not. The “oneness” usually stops at the edge of the retreat center’s manicured grounds.
When we talk about lineage in a marketing context, we are often just talking about branding. We use the names of indigenous groups like they are ingredients in a recipe-a dash of Q’ero, a pinch of Huni Kuin-to flavor a product that is ultimately designed for Western consumption.
In my work with refugees, I see the result of what happens when “lineage” is stripped of its protection. I see people who carry the stories of their ancestors in their bodies but have no place to put their feet down. They are the living remnants of lineages that have been shattered by the same global forces that now allow a tech executive to fly south for a week of “healing” before returning to a job that likely contributes to the very displacement I spend my life trying to mitigate.
The Limit of Patience
The man finally pauses. He expects me to be moved. He expects me to say that his mindfulness workshops are exactly what a traumatized family from a war zone needs. I take a breath. I’ve been trying to end this conversation politely for , but my patience has reached its absolute limit.
“It’s a beautiful brochure,” I say, and I mean it. “But I’m looking through your ‘Impact’ section, and I don’t see any mention of where the money goes. You mention the lineage on every page, but does the lineage have a seat on your board? Does 19% of your gross revenue go to the indigenous federations representing the people in these photos?”
He blinks. The “oneness” look flickers. He starts talking about “overhead” and “the cost of high-quality facilitators.” He mentions that they “donated some blankets” to a local school. Blankets. It’s always blankets. Or a few bags of rice. Something that looks good in a grainy social media photo but does nothing to shift the power dynamics of the relationship.
Tending to the Soil
We need to stop pretending that citation is the same as solidarity. If a movement wants moral cover from a tradition, it needs to send that tradition something more than a “thank you” in the footnotes. It needs to send resources. It needs to send legal support. It needs to send the kind of funding that allows those communities to define their own futures.
This is why I find the approach of
so relevant to the current crisis in the space. They seem to understand that you cannot simply harvest the “wisdom” without tending to the soil it grew in. There has to be a refusal to flatten lineage into an ornament. There has to be an acknowledgment that the “sacred” is not a commodity to be extracted, but a relationship to be maintained.
I think back to a woman I worked with last year, a grandmother from a mountain village who had lost everything. She didn’t want mindfulness workshops. She wanted her grandchildren to have shoes that fit and a way to remember the songs of their people without feeling like they were museum exhibits.
The man across from me isn’t a bad person. He’s just a participant in a system that has taught him that consumption is the same as connection. He thinks that by paying for the “experience,” he has somehow entered into the lineage. But lineage isn’t something you buy; it’s something you carry, and it usually costs a lot more than $8,999. It costs your ego. It costs your comfort. It costs your willingness to be the center of the story.
I finally stand up. I tell him that I have another appointment-a family of nine who just arrived from the airport. I hand him back his brochure. “If you want to help,” I say, “don’t bring us workshops. Bring us the names of the indigenous organizations you’re actually funding. Show me the wire transfers. Show me that the people in these photos are partners, not just props.”
He looks surprised, maybe even a little offended. He gathers his things, his expensive linen shirt crinkling as he moves. He leaves, and the room feels suddenly lighter, though the air is still thick with the scent of his expensive palo santo.
I sit back down and look at the pile of asylum applications on my desk. There are forty-nine of them today. Each one represents a person whose lineage is being tested by the harshest realities of the modern world. They don’t have glossy brochures. They don’t have serif fonts. They just have the truth of their survival.
I think about the “ancient wisdom” mentioned in the man’s flyer. If there is any wisdom to be found, it’s in the endurance of those who have been stripped of everything and still refuse to become ornaments. It’s in the messy, unphotogenic work of actually showing up, of actually paying the debt, and of realizing that the most “sacred” thing we can do is stop lying to ourselves about what we owe each other.
The “citational economy” is a house of cards. It relies on the hope that we will be so dazzled by the typography that we won’t ask to see the books. But the books always tell the story. They tell us who is being fed and who is being used. They tell us if the “honor” we speak of is a real commitment or just a clever bit of copy.
As I pick up my pen to start the next file, I realize I’ve spent too many on the decorative, and I have of the real work left to do. The lineages that matter aren’t the ones on the brochures; they are the ones walking through my door, carrying nothing but their names and the hope that, for once, the world might actually give back more than it takes.