UC Santa Barbara

Removal and displacement of indigenous people cause spiritual dislocation and something that most healers would consider - a spiritual un-wellness. But migration is often described as a positive step that migrants take to “find a better life”. Most Filipinx families have displacement stories, and we often tell them as migration or immigration stories - something our families are proud of, because it shows our resilience. From the life histories of Filipinx migrant and immigrants, this project looked for any indications of rootedness to any ancestral places, and for the impacts that displacement had on our relationships and connection with both people and places. The life histories showed the deep hurt that migrants sustained because of their separation from their people and their places. They showed that the hurts are not contained in just their generation but rather were passed on to the generations that followed them, especially that profound feeling of loneliness, feeling of not belonging, and the longing for home (kamingaw). Their life histories also showed that despite being away from their places and traditional medicinal plants, they still held on as best they could to their healing practices and the epistemologies under the practices.